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It’s totally brilliant, right?

After a mild climb (well, for other people – it was pretty brutal, for me), we reached a decent viewpoint. On the way down to the Bight, the trail ran parallel to a cascading waterfall.

A little bit further down the slope, there was a bench. I don’t recall sitting on it, but I do recall wishing that there were benches on the return trip. Anyway, at the bottom of the trail was McKenzie Bight – it was a low tide, so we were able to walk out pretty far. It was neat.

We went out to the “green point” and relaxed for a bit. A funny brown dog was carrying a tree in its mouth with great vigor, so I just had to snap a photo.

On the way back from the “green point”, I spotted a snake fleeing to a nearby tree trunk. It provided a very entertaining photo op

Then we headed back, and I did my best impersonation of Zach Galifianakis in the car, on the way to get an awesome sandwich from the Red Barn Market.

The jumping-off point for this domestic adventure occurred when I was given a choice of corporate gifts for my 2nd anniversary at my job. I chose a set of pots and pans, to replace the rather depressing set I’ve been relying on for the past five years. I was told that the pots were put on the list as a last-minute choice, and that they expected almost no one to be interested; as it turned out, my anniversary was one of the first ones of the year. So, I showed them otherwise, I guess. Anyway, I ended up with the rather impressive collection seen here:

In 2009, one of my wife’s favourite meals was a risotto-from-a-box that we would get at Superstore. Of course, such a meal is rather unhealthy, containing relatively high levels of sodium and other potentially bad things (including preservatives, I’m sure). The last time we purchased one of these risotto solutions, I made a mental note of the kind of rice it used: Superfino Arborio. After receiving the pots and pans from work, I decided that I would try to track down that rice at the local grocery store. And, I was surprised to find it almost immediately. Even more helpful, the package itself had a recipe for a simple risotto.

After picking out all the ingredients I needed (an onion, and a carton of chicken broth), I took it all home and commenced the experiment.

I realized that I would need to halve the provided recipe, otherwise I wouldn’t have enough room for everything in my sauté pan. Six cups of chicken broth is a bit excessive. As a result, I came up with the following recipe:

• 375 grams Superfino Arborio rice
• 1.5 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 an onion, chopped very finely
• 3 cups chicken broth
• Parmesan cheese

Add the oil and onions to the pan, and sauté until the onions have browned. While doing this, heat the chicken broth in a separate saucepan; the heating will help the rice absorb the broth. Once onions are browned and broth is heated, add the rice to the onions. Stir it in, coating the rice with as much of the oil as possible. Then slowly begin adding the chicken broth, maintaining a slow boil in the sauté pan. As it is absorbed into the rice, add more, until it’s all in. At this point, cover the sauté pan with a lid and simmer for 16-20 minutes (until deliciousness has set in).

Then, add Parmesan to taste. Other flavours, such as black pepper, are also recommended.

I’ve now made this a few times, and it has turned out deliciously each time. The two most recent times I’ve made it, I’ve added another ingredient: Mushrooms. Thinly sliced mushrooms, added during the sautéeing process, turned out to be an excellent complement to the dish.

This newfound delicious discovery, coupled with home-made chili, spaghetti sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, and other delicious home-cooked food adventures, have made my weekends very interesting this year.

I hope to keep it up for some time to come – and I can’t wait for BBQ season!

Anyway, something I came across this evening caught my eye – it’s a contest hosted by CBS for people to submit their best impersonation of CSI Miami’s Horatio Cane (David Caruso). I have a few ideas I wanted to write down, so I thought – what better place to put them than on my blog, which is starving for attention?

Cold Open One:

Scene: A deep freezer has been opened. Wisps of cold air are emanating from its cold interior. A body (or body parts, in a nod to Dexter Season 1) can be seen, lit by a cold blue light.

Random Crimelab Lackey: “H, we won’t be able to get an accurate time of death from the body. It’s been frozen for too long. We’ll have to look through our cold cases to see if anything fits.”

Horatio: “Do that, Officer Lackey. And let me know what you find, because this is what I call …”

*Horatio puts on his sunglasses, despite being inside*

Horatio: “A cold open.”

YEEEEOWW!

Okay, that one might not be all that great. But the next one isn’t any better, I promise!

Cold Open Two:

Scene: A gently flowing river. Fall. Leaves on the shoreline. Shallow focus on a cat licking something out of a plastic bag, a police cruiser’s lights flashing in the blurred depths of the frame. A dark silhouette moves toward the camera.

* Horatio approaches the cat, crouches, shoos it out of the way, revealing a limb protruding from the bag *

Horatio: The cat’s in the bag.

*takes off sunglasses, stands up, notices another bag floating in the stream*

Horatio: And the bag’s in the river.

MEEEEEOWWWW!

Okay, that’s all I got. Heh. Here are a few that are a bit more creative than mine.

The goal of this project was to take at least one photo for every day of 2009. In 2008, I only managed to get 182 photo-a-day shots; 2009’s effort has smashed that number with a 100% success factor.

The quality of the photos runs the gamut from blurry or grainy or terribly composed to uniquely-lighted, almost properly composed, or downright artistically pleasant to look at.

There are rainbows, fireworks, pink elephants, meals, olympic torches, grassy fields, flowers, leaves, books, boats, buildings, parking meters, newspapers, retail items, business signs, desserts, cats, dogs, squirrels, birds, planes, trains, and automobiles.

I documented myself fishing, kayaking for the first time, getting married (I suppose it was only hinted at in these photos), having a stag party wherein an *actual stag* showed up (although I ended up using a colourful fishing reel photo instead of a blurry zoomed photo for that day), getting my new computer, honeymooning at Disneyland, and (in a way) celebrating the successful completion of the project.

I am considering taking the photos and making them into a book. While that might end up being a bit too pricey, it would make a nice cap on an already impressive project follow-through.

This concludes our broadcast day. *Click*

We went and saw the Olympic Torch at Mile Zero here in Victoria. It wasn’t exactly what we expected, and the weather was pretty wet, but it was fun. Apparently the torch had been re-routed at the checkpoint prior to mile zero, due to protests, and we happened to luck out in our positioning such that it didn’t skip over our lookout spot. Quelle chance.

A kitty in a strange bind, and a very unusual bike accessory that was pointed out by a coworker.

Photographic proof that I rode the California Screamin’ rollercoaster at Disneyland.

Additionally, on Nov 30th, I participated in the Movember fundraiser for prostate cancer research, and I raised a small sum of money thanks to that hideous and horrifying moustache. I’d like to extend a special thanks to my primary donor, “b!” from SlackerTalk. Thanks, b!

Eventually, I retreated to the safety of the car.

A brilliant orange sunset one day, and a rain-slick leaf laying on the street soon after. October had a lot of weather surprises, but altogether it was very enjoyable.

Trees were dropping seed pods and leaves all over the place.

Despite the randomness of the weather, however, I found that I was able to take striking photos in both gloomy and radiant conditions.

Ironically, in the bright and seemingly cheerful highway photo above, I was on my way to a funeral. My aunt Bridget passed away this October, after a long battle with cancer. My mom flew all the way out from Nova Scotia for the funeral service. I’m glad that the weather was so nice for the day, and that my mom was able to make the trip out to attend. She had visited almost exactly a month prior, for my wedding; thankfully, she was able to visit Bridget for a bit during that trip.

The sailboat photo was taken at the location of our wedding, Poets Cove Resort on Pender Island. The ice cream sandwich photo was taken on the honeymoon at Disneyland. We also got to meet Shaggy, Scooby, Marge, Bart, and Lisa at Universal Studios (Shaggy complimented my wardrobe).

On our last full day in Anaheim, I took this night-time photo of our hotel. It turned out rather nice, I think.

Well, that’s all for now. I might upload some of the wedding day photos later on, but for now, this will have to do. In the coming weeks I hope to make more posts with my latest photos, as my photo-a-day project nears its conclusion.

336 days, 336 photos. Some of the photos are nice, some of them are rushed, some are terrible, some are artful. It’s all part of The Project, and there are only 29 days left!

We ended up getting freshwater licenses in Victoria, prior to heading up-island after work on Friday for the trip. Saturday morning, we packed up the Tahoe and headed to North Vancouver Island to Other Kevin’s top-secret fishing destination. On the way, we stopped to get some extra flies so we wouldn’t run out, and then grabbed some breakfast at white spot. After a not-so-brief stop at a Campbell River shopping centre to try and find wading gear for Jordan and Rich, we hit the road for the long trek to our secret destination. (I may be mis-remembering the chronological order of all that … guess it’s not that important, though)



Once we arrived at the secret fishing location, Other Kevin showed us the basics of fly casting and gave us some strategy hints for attracting fish. He told us that because we were fishing for spawning Chinook salmon in a river, we weren’t actually trying to make the flies look appetizing; rather, we were trying to make them look like interlopers so that the fish would attack to defend their spawning areas.

Although I had listened intently, I ended up being virtually unable to apply the teachings to my actual technique. However, being outdoors is half the fun of fishing trips, and nature was determined not to disappoint us on this trip. We saw quite a collection of fauna on the river, and I managed to get some illustrative (but not necessarily artistic) photographs. Starting with an eagle flyby that I tried to quickly snap a picture of, nature paraded creatures of all kinds. Rich even got a photo of a frog, although I don’t think he’s uploaded it anywhere yet. I had waders on, and at one point I waded in pretty deep to free up one of Jordan’s adventuresome flies – I snapped a quick pic of the water and the opposite bank of the river (it might not be all that interesting, but I like it).

As I returned to the shore from rescuing Jordan’s line, I noticed that Other Kevin was trying to get our attention – and as you can see above, I soon found out why. Rich was stalking a giant elk that turned up! He was trying to get as close as possible to it for a great photo.

Following the elk sighting, we had the first (and as it later turned out, only) landed fish of the day – Other Kevin successfully fought a long battle with a very large Chinook before getting it to the shore … whereupon we grabbed a few photos and then he released it. Catch and release – the most sporting of sport fishing endeavours.

Shortly after that, Rich (who was fishing further down-river than the rest of us) announced that he had seen a bear. He quickly hauled back to the main group, for safety reasons, and we eventually started making our way back to the truck. On the way back, we stopped and chatted with some other fishermen – it turned out that one of them was from the same area as Other Kevin, which was neat. I snapped a photo of his reel, since I thought it looked particularly colourful, and then we continued back to the truck. As we were packing up the truck, I spotted yet another bear across the river. This time, Rich was prepared with his telephoto lens on his DSLR, so he got some great shots of that one as it fished.

Once packed up, we headed back to Campbell River, ostensibly to get some food. After stopping in Gold River for snacks, we found that we weren’t very hungry by the time we got to Campbell River. The solution? To fish until the hunger hit. We pulled up to the BC Heritage building, the former home of conservationist Roderick Haig-Brown, and asked the caretaker if we could fish the river from the area in front of the house. She graciously gave us her blessings, and we proceeded to see what we could catch. We ended up not getting very many bites, but we did get to see our *third* bear of the day. After we wrapped up the fishing due to the coming darkness, the caretaker extended an invitation to us to tour the study that belong to Haig-Brown. Never ones to pass up a photo opportunity, all four of us jumped at the chance, and had a great time learning a bit of the history of the BC conservationist movement and a local fly fishing legend.

All in all, I think it was a great way to spend a bachelor party type outing – and what stag party is complete without seeing an actual stag, am I right? We capped the night off with some delicious pizza and video games, but ended up heading to bed much earlier than expected due to being quite exhausted from the long day.

My thanks go out to Other Kevin, for planning and organizing the trip, and to Jordan and Rich for coming along and helping make it as fun as it was. And, erm, my apologies to Rich (again) for accidentally slamming his fingers in the car door on that Friday night – it was dark and I didn’t realize his hand was there. He says the weather stripping softened the blow, but I still feel bad about it.