Late summer blooms

Photos emerging slowly

Yes, I'm still going through the photos that jumped into my camera last week. Here's another glimpse... quiet water on a gray day in Kouchibouguac National Park.

Sunflower smiles

I've just started to sort through my photos from my vacation in the east. I think I'll share an occasional glimpse before the galleries are fully built.

Tired, happy...

Home again... I had a good wander in New Brunswick last week. I even made a quick stop at Acadia National Park on my way home.

But now, I think I need some rest! I usually come home from vacation on Saturday so that I can have a quiet day before heading back to work. Somehow I stuffed too much into the week; I didn't get home until yesterday evening, no rest after play this time.

It was a good trip, and like all good trips it left me with the feeling that I'm not done wandering in New Brunswick. For now, I have some good memories and I hope I have some good photos. I'm just starting to look through the images that my camera captured (with my help, of course). And yes, I'll post a note in my blog when the galleries are complete.

Off...

It's time for me to wander to the north and east, to the Acadian coast of New Brunswick, along the Fundy coast, and yes, I'll be making another quick stop at Acadia National Park too.

There won't be any new blog entries for the next week (plus), but I will still be playing with words. If you'd like to watch over my shoulder as I wander, follow my words in my journal A tale of two.

Escape approaching...

It's amazing how fast a vacation appears when it's not planned until close to the last minute. It was just a week and a half ago when when poked my finger at a map and landed on the Acadian coast of New Brunswick, and my departure is a short two days from now.

I've put in a request with the weather wizard for dry weather. It appears that New Brunswick has been having the same kind of weather that we have here in eastern Massachusetts - a bit wet, and somewhat cool.

Weather wizard, are you listening? Can I please have some days (or at least pieces of days) when water isn't falling from the sky? Please?

Peeking

A beautiful sunlit day, blue skies, moving clouds, light peeking around the edges...

Sunlight captured

Who wins...

...when you have an argument with yourself?

I think I just did! I've had a week-long trip to England planned for September for a long, long time now. I managed a couple of long weekends wandering in June, but I never managed to put together the plans for another week-long vacation. I think I've been arguing with myself for weeks! (Or is that months?)

My initial thoughts were for that vacation week to be in July, with a nice gap between that escape and my September trip. Plans never happened, and I pushed my vacation off to the first week in August. But wait - that was this past week, and I wasn't on vacation, was I? Nope, I was still working; I pushed off my vacation week again to be the week of August 18th. And that week is coming up really fast.

Vacations are supposed to be fun. And it is not supposed to be hard to plan them. But this year...

My problem wasn't a lack of places to go. It was a combination of my decision to stay (sort of) close to home - in the northeast corner of the United States or spilling over to the bordering provinces in Canada - and my coming up with too many ideas of where to go and what to do. That's a good problem to have, isn't it?

I started with the thought of getting my bike and me to North Station in Boston so I could hop aboard a train to Portland, Maine. I was going to head away from home along the coast for a bit, then I was going to turn to the south and west to head towards home. One of these days I'm going to do that trip, but it didn't feel right for now. I think my problem is that this is an area that I wander in on a somewhat regular basis, so it's not new territory for me. And I think I need something a little different.

My eyes turned to Quebec - to Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, a fjord and a lake - for a bike tour. That area still looks interesting to me, but the more I looked the more I suspected that riding around the lake would mean riding around the lake in the woods. That may or may not be true, but I'm not willing to take that chance. Don't get me wrong - woods can be beautiful - but I'd rather not be surrounded by trees for an entire trip. And it's a really long drive to get to what would be my tour jumping off point. Nope, not now. A visit to Quebec will wait for later.

Then this week I had a really wacky idea. Well, it's classified as wacky only because I'm stuffing this vacation into a week. My idea? I was going to take the train to Portland (accompanied by my bike), then take the ferry from Portland to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. And then - then I was going to ride around the edges of the Bay of Fundy, following the road through Nova Scotia, across the connecting land to New Brunswick, into Maine, and then all of the way back to home. That sounds like a great ride to me - but it would take much longer than a week. Nope, not now.

My eyes wandered over maps once again. Ah, that's it! New Brunswick! I want to wander along the section of the province tagged with the name Acadian Coastal Drive, from Bathurst east to the Acadian Peninsula, then to the south along the east coast, beaches, water views, and then... heading to the west along the Fundy coast. And you know me, I need to stop at Acadia National Park in Maine on my way home. Two Acadias!

My trip has morphed into riding and hiking, taking day trips as opposed to a bike tour. I'll be sandwiching some walking - along the beaches on the eastern shore of New Brunswick, at Hopewell Cape, and at Fundy National Park - with some riding - in the area around Bathurst, in the Acadian Peninsula, and in Acadia National Park (back in Maine). It's only a week away now...

And yes, I did win the argument!

Splat!

Warning... computer talk here...

I was in a meeting today, talking about how to set up a parameter in an application that I was using. My colleague gave me the text string in words, saying something splat dot all. I understood the beginning and the end, but splat?

I looked up the word, and the definition that matched my understanding of the word was "a sound made by splattering or slapping", or "A smacking or splashing noise". Hmm... that didn't help.

Yes, I did ask my colleague what splat meant. It means an asterisk, the wild card character. So something splat dot all translates to something*.all.

I like that! I think I'll add splat to my vocabulary.

Matching blog to photo galleries

Quite a while ago I made changes to my blog template so that the transition from my photo galleries to my blog was seamless. Seamless from a top of the screen, overall look & feel standpoint, that is.

I've been fielding questions in the Digital Grin forum about matching blogs to photo sites, so last week I took the time to document the steps to perform this magic.

If you have a blog in Blogger and a (customized) SmugMug photo gallery, you might be interested in my notes. You can find them in the thread on Digital Grin titled HOW TO match your blog to your smug site (blogger-specific, + some general info).

If you have questions, please post them in that thread so we can share both the questions and the answers.

After the storm

Water flowing, reflections

Before water started falling from the sky, my bicycle wheels took me to visit beauty created by water. I saw reflections of old mill buildings in canals. I saw water flowing in a fountain that bears the name of Robert Frost (yes, the poet!). I saw water swiftly flowing over a dam in the Merrimack River.

Beautiful.

What beautiful eyes!

Color & light