Souvenir Photo Studio, by Al Bourassa: Saturday May 30, 2015 Visiting

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Saturday May 30, 2015

In yesterday’s Blog I am not sure if I mentioned that I was up very early and caught the C-Train downtown. My first order of business was to pick up my Divorce Decree (International) then go to a Post Office to send an original Express Post to the Ecuadorian Consulate in Burnaby, BC. They have promised turn-around service so that I can register myself as a single person when I return to Ecuador. Then it was a stop at Tim Horton’s on the next corner to access wi-fi. I caught the train back to the car, zipped into Wal-Mart for passport photos (about $26 for 2 tiny photos within 10 minutes…) then went to the nearby Passport Office to apply for a 10-year renewal. Then I still had enough time to get back to get Yvette and go for Mom’s 99^th Birthday.

That night we slept the sleep of the exhausted, almost around the clock, and didn’t get up until10:20 this morning. I processed all the previous day’s photos then we headed out to Tim Horton’s for lunch and wi-fi access to upload the Blog and check emails, Facebook, etc.

We made it to see Mom at 3pm and tried to get her to go for a drive in the car but, while she complains about not getting out at all, she is adamant that she is in no shape to go out. While our dear Mom is shrinking and losing her memory at times, she is still very sharp. We managed to play 2 games of Tile Rummy which requires a lot of concentration and Mom kicked our cans around the block on one of them, and was one tile away from winning the other.

Then when she needed to get something across the room before supper she quickly zipped by us with her walker without any visible effort. Considering that she had a fall just weeks ago, this was heartening to see.

Next I had to go visit my daughter’s nieces-in-law who were kind enough to mule all my accumulated mail and my recent eBay purchases from Edmonton. Maddie and Taylor are always a delight to see because of their tall statures and ready smiles and I had not seen them for maybe 5 years… I was shocked to hear that they are already 22 and 19 years old respectively… Time waits for no man…

Next we picked up our hosts Bob & Anne Winter, who used to work in the High River Lions campground years ago with my sister Yvette. They have been so gracious to us that Yvette was taking them to dinner and she wouldn’t let me share the bill. I had suggested the Cheesecake Café and we all had interesting choices of meals and then we split Cheesecake Banana Splits for dessert (one of life’s little delicacies for sure).

We went back to Bob & Anne’s condo and they wanted to see my photos from the Galapagos. My laptop had been having quite the workout all day but we managed to see them all before the power was giving me warnings.

Included in the package from Edmonton was my new Tamron 18-270 lens so I put it on my Canon T3i and took a couple of shots to try it out. I must say that I am absolutely thrilled with this purchase and the shots are completely crisp and without annoying noise, even better than my Canon lens… I am a happy camper again.

Bob & Anne are also keen photographers so we got to see some of the excellent shots that they have taken too. They have really been so very nice to us.

So far, the days are very full of things to do, which is good…. No time to be bored.

I hope you enjoy the photos. That was the day's excitement, Cheers, Al