Sephy’s Platzish

If I’m going to give alternate titles to this, it’d be the “back on track” edition.

Without further ado, back on Sundays now

Sunday, 4th May

Look carefully! There’s a duck in the middle of the puddle-cum-lake. It was just paddling through as it was probably resting in a trip further north. However, we don’t know that.

Distance - 6257 steps, 5.00km

Monday, 5th May

Alright, this is something that most people don’t see on their commutes - it’s a play area for kids that is situated a ways off of the road. Fortunately, it is right where two roads intersect at a 4-way stop, so it’s relatively safe

Distance - 4434 steps, 3.54km (including walking around a parking lot investigating a haircut deal for $8.95)

Tuesday, 6th May

I did take a couple of pictures, but really, they’re nothing to write home about since they’re pictures of a drive-thru Starbucks in the distance…

Distance - 2359 steps, 1.88km

Wednesday, 7th May

This is a picture that almost could be considered for inclusion on a gas sign website. This is the Citgo station that I’ve filled at a couple of times because they’ve had cheaper prices for gas than other stations in the area. From what I had heard on this day, I saved anywhere from 7-10 cents per gallon by filling up there.

Distance - 2457 steps, 1.96km

Thursday, 8th May

This is the lesser photographed, but more often scene of a train - passing by when you and some of your closest commuting compadres are sitting patiently in line for it to get through so that we can continue on our merry ways.

Distance - 2000 steps, 1.60km

Friday, 9th May

Some people take their devotion seriously by putting a simple bumper sticker on their vehicle. Others fly a flag. For some, not only do they have a whole bunch of lips on their vehicle, they put up three separate phone numbers on the vehicle to drum up her business in the Avon trade…wonder if she’ll be seeing people interested in her products with the van than without…

Distance - 6132 steps, 4.90km

Saturday, 10th May

The tulips in one of the outdoor beds have decided to come to life. Now, after having a bit of a break from flowers, we have this specimen. For some reason, I like taking pictures of flowers - I think it’s the color myself.

Distance - 6918 steps, 5.53km

In other news… I’ve been feeling a bit discombobulated lately. I’m not totally sure why, but I kinda feel like I’m complacent with where I am now. Truth be told, I am happy with where I am now - I still want to find a second job on the weekend possibly. Also, I’ve heard some success stories about products being sold on Craigslist and about some things that I should have the knowledge of how to go about doing it.

Speaking of my talents at work, I hinted at it earlier, but I’ve had the fortune to help a couple of people out with their sites. To be honest, I’ve enjoyed the process, even though in one case, it was something that I would have not have thought of for a long time.

…or the way too late edition

I’ve been slack in working on this blog because I’ve been involved in a couple of other projects, so let’s just get this darn thing done, eh?

Sunday, 27th April

The first buds of the season are starting to appear on the trees this spring, making some green finally appear.

In the horse paddock, we have a bird sitting on the wire fence meant to hold the horses in, but definitely not the water

Again, I have some good luck with the camera, snapping this great shot of an airplane flying overhead while I was walking.

This is another shot of the red tree at the far end of the paddock, but with a slightly different angle, showing off more of trees surrounding the paddock-cum-lake

Distance - 5038 steps, 4.03km

Monday, 28th April

More with the trees again, this time with another tree just getting some buds on it. As you can see, some of the trees here can get quite tall here.

Distance - 1990 steps, 1.59km

Tuesday, 29th April

Looking exciting, eh? Well, this is now the closest I’ve gotten to $1.00 per litre for fuel - $3.759 per gallon. Thankfully, I don’t have to fill up with Diesel, at $4.229 per gallon…but I fear that the price of fuel will be getting there. I hope I’m wrong…

Distance - 2869 steps, 2.29km

Wednesday, 30th April

A little hard to see, I know, but there are two dots which is where two deer are located. They had crossed the road in front of me.

Distance - 2069 steps, 1.65km

Thursday, 1st May

Apparently too embarrassed to display the costs of their food, one of the local supermarkets have decided to only say that they have a sale. That’s not unusual because they have a sale every week, from Thursday to Wednesday. Either that, or they just were too lazy to set out the actual sale prices (for example, avocados for 88¢ each).

Distance - 2433 steps, 1.94km

Friday, 2nd May

A few weeks ago, I showed a shot of this looking the other way, up the ramp in the foreground. Here’s an opportunity to see things from the other side. The grass is getting greener and greener by the day, and folks are now going out to mow their lawns and do some yardwork which needs to get done…

Distance - 4487 steps, 3.58km

Saturday, 3rd May

I didn’t put the pedometer on, or take any pictures, but I did do a bit of walking around some stores both in the morning and then in the afternoon when I went to get one of the converter boxes that I’m going to get for the digital TV

In other news… As I’ve mentioned, I’ve picked up a couple of projects that I’ve been working on around the net, including a first customer for my WordPress upgrades, though that appears to be more of a troubleshooting call now, as the upgrade seems to have gone well. One good thing about having this stuff to do is that I am finally getting my sleeping patterns straightened out, and I’ve been getting to bed around 1AM, which is definitely an improvement over the past few weeks. I’ve also been getting up at 8 or 9 now, compared to 10 or 11, which really sucked, I gotta say…

Wow, number 40 already…amazing!

Anyway, a better week for the walking, but admittedly, I should have been out more on Wednesday and Thursday when the temperatures were upwards of 20°C+ outside, but my old friend vampire was around again.

Also, a bit of an experiment - I’m going to use smaller images, just because the first one was (at my default) over 300k, so I resized it by half once more. I might switch to full size images in the future, but for now, I’ll stick to thumbnails..

Sunday, 20th April

First up, some of the trees that are starting to grow their leaves (and drop stuff on the road - the stuff on this tree was white and lengthy; you’ll see some more later). I gotta say that it does give you some hope that the winter is finally over.

I have to say that this is an amazing shot - I don’t know exactly what kind of bird this is, but it was one of those shots that, using the sports mode, actually came out properly and not all blurry.

Distance - 7270 steps, 5.81km

Monday, 21st April

This picture should serve as a lesson to me: don’t try to do anything south of the freeway before work. You won’t get anywhere. All of those cars are lined up to go onto the freeway, but of course, you have to sit with them on the road…for some reason all of the traffic doesn’t start to back up until you get past the turn off for my work…I almost freaked out, but made it in time. I decided to do what needed to get done (buy gas…) after work.

Distance - 1502 steps, 1.20km

Tuesday, 22nd April

This is looking out to one direction at a stoplight I sit at every single day. Sometimes I get lucky and land at the front of the queue, generating this kind of shot. And, honest! Those signs are blank.

Distance - 1667 steps, 1.33km

Wednesday, 23rd April

Yet another lesson learnt about vehicles - don’t leave them under a maple tree! See that clear spot? That’s where one of the cars sat for a couple of days and all the buds fell off of the tree, along with a ton of bird crap, landed on the car. Luckily all of that washes off in rain.

Distance - 2477 steps, 1.98km

Thursday, 24th April

No picture, mostly because it was raining during a good bit of the day, the beginning of some nice spring storms which make you wonder what nature has against us at times…

Distance - 1505 steps, 1.20km

Friday, 25th April

Ahh, early morning. A time when if I’m heading in to volunteer, I get to sit on the passenger side and take shots of the fog that accumulated from the temperatures not going too low overnight…

Distance - 4142 steps, 3.31km

Saturday, 26th April

This is another of those purely “cool” shots - of the sunset over a Saturday evening. At the left is the horse paddock. I think it’s safe to say that they won’t be there anytime soon, as the amount of water has just increased and increased. The other picture is from the train at the right…

This grain car is one that was quite interesting. Actually, it looks like a grain car, but it’s something to do with chemicals. The message on the side says that “Sumex Chemicals Exports”. I’m not totally surprised though that this kind of car would go through, considering I’ve seen some interesting foreign cars go through lately.

Distance - 2123 steps, 1.69km

In other news… An interesting thing happened this week - I ran out of pages in my to do booklet. Never fear, though, because I knew it was coming and got myself two notebooks as they were available at Wal-Mart for $1.50 each (a savings of 34¢ over the original price). It’s interesting to look back at what was on my to-do lists some 200 days or so ago, when I was kinda closing out one phase of my life and moving into the one that I’m in now - the first day was October 1st, before I’d even gone driving again for the first time, and before I had a job again.

Looking forward, this week the weather doesn’t look the greatest, but I’m going to give it a go to walk during the week, and more than just at work. Also, I am kinda hoping that I can take a Friday off from volunteering, but if they’ve got something, I’m willing to go in for the day - it keeps me out of trouble and builds my connections in another location.

The week started out with not so great a bang with now walk on Sunday, but things did pick up with pictures being taken, albeit of some of the less interesting things in the world Let’s start with Monday, shall we?

Monday, 14th April

This has become a bit of a pain in my pocketbook as of late - while it may not be the most visible detail, the brakes on the car need replacing. In particular, the right front’s brakes are grinding, and whenever you step on the brakes, you have to be very careful, and even then you still get the grind. For that reason, I’ve started to use the other car (not to mention that that car gets slightly better gas mileage anyway…).

Distance - 3110 steps, 2.48km

Tuesday, 15th April

This is one of the trees that I go past on a regular basis on my walks - right now, since we’re just getting into spring, it doesn’t have any leaves on it just yet. Eventually, there will be leaves, flowers, and even fruit growing off of the tree.

Distance - 2663 steps, 2.13km

Wednesday, 16th April

This is another shot similar to the one that was posted last week, but on a different angle, and with a different focus. As I was walking along, I noticed this particular tree in the paddock area (still quite full with water as you can see here), and decided that it would make good fodder for a photo. I love the contrasting color of that tree.

Distance - 3946 steps, 3.15km

Thursday, 17th April

And, normal service has been restored. The face in the tree, often a portent of the way things are going (for what reason, I’m not sure, but it sounds cool, alright ), has been restored from its nadir a couple of weeks ago, with the disappearance of all of the snow that was surrounding it. Now, it can sit there and wait for the next snow to dislodge more of the pieces, I guess.

Distances - Before going to work (after walking) - 5612 steps, 4.48km; After work - 6569 steps, 5.25km

Friday, 18th April

I didn’t take any pictures - not that the inside of a mailroom would be that interesting (or that they’d appreciate me taking pictures of the inside of the building - something that I wouldn’t do anyway), but I did get a chance to do a bit of walking, including doing a little bit of a walk around the parking lot when I had my lunch outside on a nice grassy bank, though there were quite a few pine needles in in the way…

Distance - 3486 steps, 2.78km

Saturday, 19th April

I gotta fess up - it was a nice day, but I spent a lot of it sleeping…I’m still a bit of a vampire. The walking was held, for the most part, in the store where I went to buy groceries and other stuff that we needed for the house. The picture is of an area along the road I drive along to get to just about anywhere. Behind the trees is about a 10-meter (30-foot+) drop down into that grassy area. I’m not sure if a car’s gone off there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone had a problem at the road that ends just up the hill and ran through the trees!

Distance - 3368 steps, 2.69km

In other news…outside of my issues with being the vampire once again, it’s remaining to be a good time for me. I’m still liking my job (and I definitely think that I’ve been accepted into the fray, since the folks I sit next to and I hold some banter while we’re working). As far as my confidence goes, I was involved in an interesting activity where a group of folks (from all age ranges, though I was the only person from my age range) discussing where the organization was headed. One of the strangest things is that I went into it thinking that I’d be bored out of my mind, but in the end, I think I was one of the most talkative people in the whole of the group.

And, one funny story before I hit publish on the post - on Saturday, as I was driving back from the store, I was approaching the turn off for the side road I need to take from the main highway. For some reason, the state didn’t put in a turn lane for the direction I was going in, so I had to signal and slow down while still in the main lanes of the road. As I was slowing down and getting ready to turn, I could see the driver in the car behind me get visibly aggravated at me for slowing down for the turn. So, I continue my action as I don’t want to fly around a 90° corner. As I go into the corner, the bright sparks in the car behind me finally realize that there is a second lane to use there, and they take advantage of it. Then, as they were passing me, the passenger made a punching like gesture (not the finger, but just kind of a shaken fist). How did I respond? I just waved and said hi, then turned off of the road.

Admittedly, it was the most lazy week I’ve had in terms of the walking for a while - in fact, I only took pictures on Sunday; and the rest of the walking that was counted was for work/volunteering steps.

Sunday, 6th April

First up is this picture of an old truck that was part of a group of 3 older vehicles on the road above; I don’t know where they were going or where they came from, but it was a cool sight nonetheless.

However, the piece de resistance in terms of pictures has to be this one. Sure the trees still have no leaves on them, but this is just some of the awesome scenery that you can have, especially when the temperature gets nice and warm in the springtime. Unfortunately, the weather for the rest of the week wouldn’t give this same kind of scenery - it was more of the winter grays that, quite frankly, are boring to take photos of.

Distance - 5776 steps, 4.62km

Monday, 7th April

This was a workday for me, however, I did some walking around during the time and actually remembered to put the pedometer on when doing it - usually I take it off in order to avoid it resetting on me accidentally.

Distance - 2620 steps, 2.09km

Tuesday, 8th April

More walking at work, but this time I didn’t put the pedometer on to count the steps.

Wednesday, 9th April

More work and some more walking; this time it was just normal walking - to and from the car, to the lunchroom, etc.

Distance - 1428 steps, 1.14km

Thursday, 10th April

The walking for today included some walking around in the grocery store to get lunch for Friday’s volunteering; not the most exciting thing I know, but it’s different to the normal work walking

Distance - 2112 steps, 1.68km

Friday, 11th April

It was another day of volunteering for me, and it was another day where I did a bit of upper body workout - with stuffing envelopes (another 1000 done, still a few more thousand to go!), along with a bit of a walk outside between rain showers which had been persisting since Tuesday.

Distance - 1331 steps, 1.06km (it got reset after walking outside, and I didn’t take note of what it was at beforehand)

Saturday, 12th April

The weather persisted for yet another day, with snow being the main attraction of the day. I also did quite a bit of walking around in the stores, but didn’t put on the pedometer for the walking.

In other news, this week marked the end of weekly visits to the therapist; now it’s time for me to continue on doing all that I have been doing and making more success happen for me. And you know something? I can see myself succeeding; at what exactly, I don’t know yet, however I am learning quite a bit about building themes for WordPress, and I want to look at what kind of classes are out there to learn stuff. One thing that was mentioned by my therapist is that I’d probably be someone who, because I have such a vast array of knowledge in my head - conversion factors, and all kinds of stuff like that - there has to be something that I can make tons of money with my brain.

I should also throw in an update on my WordPress theme here, as it is part of my personal development - learning a new technique (or three or four) - I’ve gotten it to the point where I now have a comment form on the single post page, but I still need to figure out how to get it so that the box where you leave the comment doesn’t start at the left side of the post and go all the way to the end of the window (it’s probably just a simple CSS thing that I haven’t set out yet ). Also, in the next couple of days, I’ll have an announcement about a new service that I will be offering to everyone out there who has a WordPress blog - it all stemmed from helping someone out who asked for the help, and realizing that (and this is something she said herself) there are tons of people out there who probably would love to have something like that for them.