This is my first post in a long time. Jackie died on March 8, and I pretty much lost interest in everything, including photography and living. I also got a new computer and had to switch my photos over to the new hard drive. I have to say I'm enjoying the new system. Editing my photos is amazingly fast. I had been using a laptop with a small screen that was starting to burn out and gave everything a pink hue. I now have 2 gigantic flatscreen monitors (soon to be 3). It's great to see my photos so big, in such detail... and the color is amazing. On the downside, the bigger better screens allow me to see the flaws better. My sensor needs a good cleaning... and some of the photos that had been my favorites are embarrassingly blurry. Graem has pointed out some crooked horizons, but I'm still not able to see them as crooked. That's always been one of my biggest challenges as a photographer - getting my horizons straight.

I'm trying to get my life back in order, and I hoped to spend the last 2 weekends taking pictures. It didn't happen... Work is conspiring to wreck what remains of my life, and then last Saturday I got my compact flash card stuck in the card reader, and spent the day journeying across the city to buy a new one. I lost about 400 photos from the past 3 months, including photos from the final days of Jackie's life. This weekend has been a write-off... cold and rainy. In fact, the weather forecast tells me it's snowing now, though I don't dare to look out the window.

I did make it to the botanical gardens last Sunday, though. I got some decent tulip shots, despite the wind. I don't even think the tulips were blooming yet in Saskatoon last year at this time. Here in Ottawa, there were crocuses and daffodils blooming as early as March 18. Prairie homesickness be damned, I say! I'll try to be better about updating regularly. I don't have much time to take new photos, but I have a bunch saved from the botanical garden. May 23-June 6 we'll be vacationing in Iceland... and that should bring an entirely new breed of photography!