Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Photo walk various places and one of my songs
I am enjoying Animoto. This is an online program where you upload your photographs and music (or use online ones that don't have copyright issues), and a video is mixed. If you don't like the first mix, you get to mix it again. I found out about this on Fleur de lisa's site and this is my second one in 24 hours, woah baby, get some "real" work done. In point of fact this is easy as pie to do and fast. I thought it might be fun for this one to use a recording of one of my original songs sung by me in 1998 combined with some of my 2006 and 2007 photographs. Click inside video to start and to stop.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Autumn and doctor stuff
There are so many things that I love about autumn, I barely know where to start. Although October and November are when autumn is in full swing, where I live, the beginnings are almost more fun. The first trees whose leaves change colors are especially beautiful to me. I spied the splash of color above in the woods near where I live and it was such a treat. Surrounded by a sea of green, as well as the brown which was a reminder of the summer's drought, the vibrant colors held the promise of what is to come. It was as if those leaves were saying, yes, autumn is on the way.
It has been an unusually hot and dry summer and I was thrilled when we had a nice soaking rain on Friday. Then the temperatures dropped and it has been chilly at night and in the morning. Perfect weather for me. I am so happy to be retiring my shorts and to be digging through my closets for long pants and long sleeved shirts.
There is a little bit of everything. While a few trees are changing colors ahead of schedule, others are hanging on to a few of their summer blossoms. Even the sky has it all. I took the cloudy sky picture and the blue sky picture at the same time. The only difference was which direction I pointed my camera in.
The rain was in time to save a few of the fall flowering plants. It also was a hard enough downpour for me to collect a lot of rain water to use when watering my newly planted boxes; which incidentally are burgeoning with spinach, lettuce, and radish seedlings. I went to my dermatologist today and I was relieved that he was amenable to doing a biopsy on a little spot that's near my scar from where my melanoma primary was. I'm not overly nervous but it's hard for me to follow that spot, freckle, whatever you want to call it. The location made me feel like I needed to keep an eye on it. 
The dermatologists agreed with me that it might as well come off and that the location was the issue although he also agreed that it was unlikely to be anything of concern. It's gone now and the pathology will be back before my regular oncology follow up next week which is also good. The dermatologist said that I should get them to take the stitches out when I go to the oncologist next week and save myself a trip back to his office. I love it when things are easy.Monday, September 17, 2007
My flower garden video
I am trying out a video program click on video to play and click on video to stop. If you want to try out this nifty program which mixes your photographs into a video, you can go to Animoto.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Weekend Snapshot: Number 2
I went to my neighborhood lake Friday morning to go on a photo walk before the storm moved in and delivered some much needed rain. I had a pleasant walk, snapped some pictures, and then we got some rain which rejuvenated everything.
There were quite a few parents with children who were feeding the ducks and geese at the lake and the competition was fierce. There were food fights and it amused me to hear small children saying, bad ducks, fighting is bad. Their mothers were agreeing with the children that fighting was bad and I guess the lesson about the pros and cons to feeding wild animals could wait for another day.
I was fascinated with how the geese and ducks would sense a new group of children at a different area in the lake and make a beeline for the new source of food.
The take off, flight plans, and landings are particularly impressive given how congested the lake is this time of year.
Although this post is focused on the canadian geese, there are numerous different types of ducks which are part of this feeding frenzy and I posted photographs of some of them below in the blogger award and thank you post I did earlier today.To find other participants in weekend snapshot you can go here. There are instructions at the WS site on how to join in the fun. Since the official post day is Monday, please check back at WS for other participants, if you are interested. I'm looking forward to seeing what the others have done this weekend.
Blogging Award and a thank you
I am flattered that Vic Grace at Cariboo Ponderer has passed on the Blogging Star Award to me. After she received the award she wanted to pass it on to all the new friends she made through the Warm the Globe thru Friendship initiative, which she started, but since you are supposed to name 5 people, she did. I'm flattered that she named me as one of those five. I think her Warm the Globe thru Frienship initiative is a wonderful way to find blogs and her original post where she started this initiative is here. The Blogging Star Award originated from Skittles' Place and is for the following:
This award is for bloggers who shine their light throughout the Blogosphere. Some do it with humour, others with creativity, and others with their kind and thoughtful natures. We all know more than a few of them so why not give them some recognition?
It's hard for me to pick individual bloggers to pass the award on to because I'm amazed at what a fun, kind, group of people are out there blogging, but I'll give it a try.
JMB at Nobody Important - I found JMB's blog through a fun blog called Addicted to Medblogs. I stumbled on medblogs through a friend I made through a melanoma support group. It is amazing how we find these interesting blogs. JMB's blog, Nobody Important, drew me in through her excellent accounts of where she lives and places she visits. She accompanies her posts with photographs which set the scene. She has a series of temptations, which show various spots in Vancouver which is where she is from, and I'm very tempted to go visit some of the beautiful places she photographs and describes. I found out about Photohunter through JMB's blog and in turn have discovered other blogs through that fun activity.
Since this is getting long, as is usual with me, I'm going to break up the post with pictures because that's what I do in all of my posts. The pictures are from my neighborhood park when I went on a photo walk.
The next person I want to name is a small town RN who blogs at A Place I call Home and whose blog I found through one of the medblogger links and later rediscovered through the Photohunters. It was through her blog that I found out about Warm the Globe thru Friendship and discovered Vic Grace and her blog Cariboo Ponderer. I am glad to have rediscovered a small town RN's blog because she has very thoughtful and interesting posts. She also has beautiful photographs.
The next person I want to name is Sabine at Days of my Life in Gozo. I found Sabine's blog through Photohunters and was quickly drawn in by her writing style and photographs. Sabine is originally from Berlin and moved to Gozo in the 1980s. I will confess that I didn't know about Gozo until I found Sabine's blog and it has been interesting to discover this island in the Maltese archipelago in the Mediterranean sea. One of the great things to me about blogs is how we can meet people in parts of the world we've never been and thus learn something about these places.
The next person I'm going to name is Lori, who is also known as Miss Melanoma and who maintains the Official Site for the Fun Side of Cancer as well as her Miss Melanoma blog where she discusses whatever is on her mind. I have been inspired by her sense of humor, compassion and by the way she has tried to spread the word about melanoma. Lori has one of the first blogs I visited, long before I had a blog. She's in her early 30s and has maintained her sense of fun but is also wise. She returned back to teaching last year after taking a year off for the grueling interferon treatment, and is back to teaching this year, after having another surgery over the summer (thankfully that enlarged node was benign and not a recurrence as feared).
Many of the bloggers with melanoma have blogs on myspace and you have to be on their friend's list to read their blog. One of those myspace bloggers is Jane at Operation Sunshield who has battled back from stage IV melanoma (spread to lungs, liver, femur, multiple nodes) and after doing the rough interleukine-2 treatment is currently N.E.D. - no evidence of disease. In addition to her myspace blog she also has started a non profit organization called Operation Sunshield and anyone can visit the OSS site and read her story. I am naming Jane for this award and if you can't get on her myspace blog, you can still read her story on the main OSS site. 
Although I have named the 5 people I am passing on the award to there are so many others. I have a partial list of people with melanoma who blog and then there are all those people I've gotten to know through the MPIP who don't blog, but participate on that bulletin board and encourage each other. In terms of my blogging community, I think about so many who leave thoughtful comments but don't have blogs themselves which I can point you to. Their names come up in the comment section and to me the comments are often so much more insightful than my original post.
I want to extend a big thank you to everyone I have gotten to know through this amazingly supportive internet community. I never would have believed such a community existed if I hadn't stumbled on the MPIP and then discovered this wide world of interesting and kind bloggers.
The scary side of the internet receives a lot of publicity, as well it should. It's important to protect children and as adults we also have to use a certain amount of caution. That said, I think the positive side of the internet could use a little more publicity. There are all these communities springing up of people that encourage, support, entertain, amuse, enlighten, and inform each other. These are people that in the ordinary course of events you would never meet. Through the blogs and internet support groups, there are an amazing amount of positive connections that can be made. I want to extend a big thank you to all of my friends who I've met through the internet.
This award is for bloggers who shine their light throughout the Blogosphere. Some do it with humour, others with creativity, and others with their kind and thoughtful natures. We all know more than a few of them so why not give them some recognition?
It's hard for me to pick individual bloggers to pass the award on to because I'm amazed at what a fun, kind, group of people are out there blogging, but I'll give it a try.
JMB at Nobody Important - I found JMB's blog through a fun blog called Addicted to Medblogs. I stumbled on medblogs through a friend I made through a melanoma support group. It is amazing how we find these interesting blogs. JMB's blog, Nobody Important, drew me in through her excellent accounts of where she lives and places she visits. She accompanies her posts with photographs which set the scene. She has a series of temptations, which show various spots in Vancouver which is where she is from, and I'm very tempted to go visit some of the beautiful places she photographs and describes. I found out about Photohunter through JMB's blog and in turn have discovered other blogs through that fun activity.Since this is getting long, as is usual with me, I'm going to break up the post with pictures because that's what I do in all of my posts. The pictures are from my neighborhood park when I went on a photo walk.
The next person I want to name is a small town RN who blogs at A Place I call Home and whose blog I found through one of the medblogger links and later rediscovered through the Photohunters. It was through her blog that I found out about Warm the Globe thru Friendship and discovered Vic Grace and her blog Cariboo Ponderer. I am glad to have rediscovered a small town RN's blog because she has very thoughtful and interesting posts. She also has beautiful photographs.
The next person I want to name is Sabine at Days of my Life in Gozo. I found Sabine's blog through Photohunters and was quickly drawn in by her writing style and photographs. Sabine is originally from Berlin and moved to Gozo in the 1980s. I will confess that I didn't know about Gozo until I found Sabine's blog and it has been interesting to discover this island in the Maltese archipelago in the Mediterranean sea. One of the great things to me about blogs is how we can meet people in parts of the world we've never been and thus learn something about these places.
The next person I'm going to name is Lori, who is also known as Miss Melanoma and who maintains the Official Site for the Fun Side of Cancer as well as her Miss Melanoma blog where she discusses whatever is on her mind. I have been inspired by her sense of humor, compassion and by the way she has tried to spread the word about melanoma. Lori has one of the first blogs I visited, long before I had a blog. She's in her early 30s and has maintained her sense of fun but is also wise. She returned back to teaching last year after taking a year off for the grueling interferon treatment, and is back to teaching this year, after having another surgery over the summer (thankfully that enlarged node was benign and not a recurrence as feared). 
Many of the bloggers with melanoma have blogs on myspace and you have to be on their friend's list to read their blog. One of those myspace bloggers is Jane at Operation Sunshield who has battled back from stage IV melanoma (spread to lungs, liver, femur, multiple nodes) and after doing the rough interleukine-2 treatment is currently N.E.D. - no evidence of disease. In addition to her myspace blog she also has started a non profit organization called Operation Sunshield and anyone can visit the OSS site and read her story. I am naming Jane for this award and if you can't get on her myspace blog, you can still read her story on the main OSS site. 
Although I have named the 5 people I am passing on the award to there are so many others. I have a partial list of people with melanoma who blog and then there are all those people I've gotten to know through the MPIP who don't blog, but participate on that bulletin board and encourage each other. In terms of my blogging community, I think about so many who leave thoughtful comments but don't have blogs themselves which I can point you to. Their names come up in the comment section and to me the comments are often so much more insightful than my original post.
I want to extend a big thank you to everyone I have gotten to know through this amazingly supportive internet community. I never would have believed such a community existed if I hadn't stumbled on the MPIP and then discovered this wide world of interesting and kind bloggers.
The scary side of the internet receives a lot of publicity, as well it should. It's important to protect children and as adults we also have to use a certain amount of caution. That said, I think the positive side of the internet could use a little more publicity. There are all these communities springing up of people that encourage, support, entertain, amuse, enlighten, and inform each other. These are people that in the ordinary course of events you would never meet. Through the blogs and internet support groups, there are an amazing amount of positive connections that can be made. I want to extend a big thank you to all of my friends who I've met through the internet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)