A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

I finally bought a new camera a few weeks ago. I was in the market for a new one for some time, and while I was trying to make my decision Canon announced the EOS 7D. After reading over the specs I knew that this was pretty much the exact camera I was looking for in regards to features and price-point. I pre-ordered the camera the day it was announced and waited for the early demo model reviews to roll in. As I was expecting the reviews were very positive keeping me from having to cancel my pre-order.

The camera arrived a few days after the wedding so I haven’t had a lot of time to spend with it. That’s not to say that I haven’t fired off a bunch of shots with it. The amount I’ve played with it so far, I’m liking everything about it. I’m really looking forward to the next few months of really getting to know it.

Feel free to check out a few of the first test shots I’ve taken with it on my Flickr site.

This past weekend Michelle and I tied the knot. As my regular readers know we got engaged last year, and got to planning the event almost right away. Before we knew it the weekend of September 26th, 2009 arrived and the festivities were underway.

Friday night Michelle and I held a welcome event at our home. Since we had so many friends and family travelling from all over the world we thought it would be a good idea to have as many of them over as possible the night before just to catch up. We ended up having a very full house (and backyard) with over 100 people showing up. My mother and relatives were gracious enough to cook dinner for everyone, and I’m pretty sure no one left hungry. We wrapped things up at 11pm and I headed over to Curtis’s place to spend the night.

Saturday morning I woke up with a strange feeling in my gut. The funny thing was that I wasn’t sure if I was nervous or hungry. At around 11am I took my groomsmen out for breakfast. When we finished I deduced that I was in fact nervous since I was full, and still had the strange feeling in my gut. We headed back to Curtis’s condo to chill before the wedding ceremony.

We threw in the Goonies to help settle my nerves and at 2pm our photographer Kira Nelson showed up to take some shots of us getting ready. She didn’t spend too much time with us before heading back to our house to shoot the bridal party getting ready. Before we knew it, it was time to head over to the Broadway Theatre for the ceremony.

We ended up getting their a little early so the boys and I crossed the street for a drink at the Yard & Flagon. We figured it was a good way to kill some time, and to help take the edge off. After we finished up the time had arrived to get married. And married I got. The ceremony went perfectly.

Michelle and I decided a while ago that we didn’t want to take a big chunk of time to do photos. The plan was for the wedding party and Kira to walk from the Broadway Theatre to the Hilton and do photos along the way. Since the ceremony ended at around 4:30 and cocktails wrapped up 6:30, we would have plenty of time to get some great shots.

We arrived at the Hilton at around 6:15 to catch the tail end of cocktails. Dinner was served followed by the program. We kept it short with toasts to the groom and bride, as well as ‘welcome to the families’. I also prepared a slideshow (watch it below) which played just before Michelle and I addressed our guests.  The rest of the evening was spent dancing to a variety of great music.  I’ve always said that you can judge how good a wedding is based on how many people are dancing.  I’m happy to say that the dance floor was more-or-less full for the entire night.

It was great that the wedding went exactly as Michelle and I had envisioned. It meant a lot to have so many family and friends at our wedding. Some traveled from afar, and some from near, but one thing was for certain - the wedding would not have been the same without any of them.  Thank you to all.  Michelle and I will cherish this day for the rest of our lives.

Last Sunday I arrived in Chicago for a software development conference called Agile 2009. It was a week long event that myself and 3 other Point2′ers were attending. Our week was jam-packed with workshops and talks, filling our brains with all sorts of knowledge. I’m not going to get into the details of the conference here, but if you’re interested you can check out my posts at Point2’s Developing Code, Connecting Industry blog.

• Day 1 at Agile 2009
• Burying Agile, The FBI, Harmful ScrumMasters, and More
• Hyperproductivity, Performance Reviews, and Too Much Pizza
• Coaching, Leading, and the Experience Design

Friday morning myself and the Point2 crew took a walk to the John Hancock Center and traveled up to the observation deck. We then spent some time trying to figure out what gifts to take back to our significant others. I failed miserably so hopefully Michelle is not too disappointed. We then headed back to the hotel since the guys had to catch their flight back to Saskatoon. I was staying for the weekend so we said our farewells and I took a walk to Navy Pier.

I decided to do the Skyline Boat Tour since I had already done the Architectural Tour with Michelle. This one took us a few kilometres out into Lake Michigan and described the high profile building making up the Chicago skyline. This was OK, but didn’t even compare to the architectural tour that takes you down the Chicago River into downtown. If you’re ever trying to decide between the two, please take my advice. It also didn’t help that it was pretty cloudy out. You could only see about halfway up some of the really tall buildings.

After grabbing lunch at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company I caught the train out to my sister’s place in St. Charles. Since I was in Chicago I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to hang out with my nephew and two nieces. I spent the weekend visiting with my sister and her family.

I just wanted to take it easy so the most eventful thing we did was take the kids out to Odyssey Fun World, a giant Ruckers type place. For lunch we went to Sonic. I cannot stress how badly I’ve wanted to hit this place up. I always see the commercials on the American stations, taunting me. I’m happy to say the burger was great, plus it was pretty cool because they are set up like the old A&W drive-ins.

My flight leaves just before 4pm today so I’m just getting the last of my visiting in. Fortunately I will see them all again in less than a month when they come out to Saskatoon for the wedding. Holy smokes! Did I just say less than a month?

Our friends Kris and Lindsay got married this past weekend in their hometown of Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada. Michelle and I headed out to wedding Saturday morning. The weather was awesome - real sunny and not super-hot. The ceremony was at a nice park on the edge of town, and was a great place for a wedding. This was one of the nicest ceremonies I’ve had the pleasure of attending.

Following the ceremony a few of us went out for a cocktail at the Hollywood Bistro in town. Unfortunately there were no celebrities there. Before we knew it, it was time to head to the Melfort Curling Rink for the reception. Dinner was delicious and the program was well done. All of the speeches and toasts were very entertaining.

The dance was next on the agenda and fortunately the majority of the attendees had the dancing bug. The dance floor was filled for the majority of the evening, and remained that way until the end of the night. These are always the greatest weddings in my opinion. And with all of these weddings I’ve attended this summer I’m starting to get really excited for my own. And as it happens, it’s the next one on the calendar.

You can check out photos from the day on my Flickr site by following the links below. Just a note. I noticed tonight that if you choose to watch the slideshow, the pictures are enlarged to fill the screen. This causes the photos to lose clarity since I don’t upload them at full resolution. To fix this, click “Options” near the top right of the slideshow screen and ensure that “Embiggen small things to fill screen” is NOT checked off.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Michelle and I had our wedding engagement shoot with Kira Nelson on July 28th at various locations in Saskatoon. We spent some time at the River Landing, and a few other unique downtown locations, and had a glass of wine in the downtown lounge Flint.

Kira recently made a short blog post talking about our shoot showcasing some of the great shots she took during the evening. You can read her post here and see a slideshow of all of our pictures here. I hope you enjoy them as much as we had getting them taken.

One of Michelle’s good friends Sara who is currently living in France was back in Regina to get married to her main Frenchman Alex. I had met Sara only a couple of times, and had never met Alex so I was looking forward to getting to know them. I also had the pleasure of photographing their wedding.

The celebration was quite intimate with around fifty people and was held at an old country church in the Qu’Appelle Valley by Craven, Saskatchewan. The day turned out to be a scorcher, hitting temperatures in the mid-thirties (celsius). Let’s just say there were a lot of sweaty people. After the ceremony we had some refreshments and snacks while guests tried to fly kites. A few people managed to get their kites to take flight, but unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of wind that day.

The laid back reception was held at the Delta with the program intermingled with the meal. The food was delicious and the event was very classy. And as I had hoped, I managed to get to know Sara and Alex much better.

You can check out photos from the day on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

About five months ago Michelle and I were visiting the Fenrichs up at their cottage at Turtle Lake. I wasn’t feeling well so I just lazed around, mostly laying on the couch. Zoey and Molly, the Fenrich’s two dogs, must have thought I looked pretty comfortable sleeping there, so they jumped up on me and joined me.

Up until this point I had no real interest in getting a dog, but having those two dogs cuddle with me set something off. I knew Michelle was more of a cat person so I started bugging her that we should get a dog - specifically a Chihuahua. It actually started off as a joke, but a few weeks later I found out that Michelle had been talking with breeders. It seemed my joke actually gained some traction. The next thing I knew we were at a dog show in Saskatoon to meet some Chihuahuas from a breeder in Regina.

We officially made the decision to bring a dog into our house and started dealing with Rosalie Juravle-Clark of Happy Paws Dog Care in Regina. We really liked the integrity and philosophy of her breeding practices and knew that we would get a quality puppy from her.

Two weeks ago Michelle and I made a trip to Regina to meet the puppies. Even though they were only nine weeks along, neither of us could believe how small they were. We spent about an hour playing with the dogs before heading out. After some discussion we decided on a little male from the litter. Rosalie told us we could pick in two weeks.

And today we made a quick trip to Regina to pick up our new puppy. We were a little worried as to how he would behave in the two-and-a-half hour car ride to Saskatoon, but he had a grand ole’ time playing with Michelle the whole way back. He’s been with us for about eight hours now and has been a blast as he awkwardly runs and jumps around the house . So may I take this time to officially introduce you to Dragomir Chirpy Tiberius. That’s actually his registered name, so you can just call him Darwin.

You can see a few more shots of Darwin at my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

For those who have known me for a long time, it’s no secret that I used to be pretty engrossed in amateur astronomy. Back in 1990 I got a job specifically so I could buy a telescope, and after working full time for the entire summer I was able to purchase my dream scope. I used it pretty religiously for the remainder of high school, but once I got to university its usage dropped. And once I started my professional career it became non-existent.

Recently I started getting the itch to get back under the night sky and my telescope was sitting in the garage tempting me. I vowed a few weeks ago to start getting active in amateur astronomy once again. Luckily telescopes aren’t like computers that become obsolete after six months. My quality scope I bought almost twenty years ago may not have computer guided controls of today’s models, but its optics are still top notch.

Last night Michelle and I were out for a walk and I couldn’t help noticing the half moon in the clear night sky. I knew that Michelle had never viewed anything through a telescope before so I decided tonight was the night to fire it up. After cleaning a thick coat of dust off of the telescope I hauled it out to the backyard and aimed it at the moon. I fumbled a bit finding the controls, but it didn’t take long to get back into the groove. I centred the field of view on the bright moon, pulled it into focus and immediately remembered why I loved the night sky.

You can see more photos of Michelle and I under the night sky on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Michelle’s brother Christopher Parker married the love of his life Dazawray Landrie on Saturday, May 16th, 2009. The wedding ceremony was held at the Forestry Farm in Saskatoon. Things were looking pretty scary weather wise leading up to the wedding. The ceremony was being held outside and it was snowing regularly right up to the big day. As it turned out, the Saturday of the wedding turned out to be a great day.  Whew.

The wedding was short and sweet, followed by some mingling while a few key family photos were fired off. There was a few hours to kill before the reception which was being held out at Langham, SK - about 30 minutes outside of the city. Michelle was co-emcee for the reception so we grabbed a quick lunch and made our way out to Langham to get a few things organized.

The community hall where the reception was held was decorated beautifully. The wedding party, friends, and family did a great job of getting everything in order. Dinner was lasagna and Caesar salad, which was a little unprecedented, but delicious. I seriously believe that may have been the best lasagna I’ve ever had.

The dance followed the reception and a good portion of people stuck around until the end. Michelle and I are happy to say that we shut the thing down…as we do at most wedding we attend.  I didn’t bust out the moonwalk or worm this time around, but we did make use of our recently acquired ballroom dancing skills. We were waltzing like nobody’s business.

I fired off quite a few shots at the ceremony and a handful at the reception. You can check them out at my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

The final step of the kitchen renovation was installing the tile backsplash. This was a job that I was pretty sure I could tackle by myself. I did a lot of research on the subject and nothing really seemed beyond my capabilities. It would be the first home renovation (involving cutting things) I would take on completely by myself (note: Michelle helped with the grouting).

Michelle and I liked the look of travertine (a type of stone) the best after shopping around many different stores. Surprisingly enough the stuff we liked the most was from The Home Depot. The only problem was that there were stocking issues with the stone and it was not available through a special order. Annoyingly we had to check back at the store regularly to see if they had received any (or found some that they had lost). We ended up having to buy the 42 square feet we needed over two separate occasions as they received shipments. This put our plans of getting the tile installed right away a little out of whack.

We borrowed a wet saw from one of Michelle’s colleagues and I was underway. My plan was to get the tile on the wall over a Saturday and Sunday, and then grout one night during the week. I was calling this my best case scenario which I was sure was not going to hold.

As expected, my Saturday wasn’t as productive as I was hoping since Michelle’s dad and uncle stopped by to start work on putting in a cabinet outlet for the microwave. This chewed up a good chunk of my afternoon. Sunday however went quite well and I probably could have finished, but I thought it would be safer if I stopped. I was super tired and figured I would start making stupid mistakes….like cutting off my fingers.

The grouting didn’t go exactly as we were hoping. A day after applying the grout I noticed some problem areas that had cracks and small pinholes. I wasn’t sure what to do about these and started to get quite worried. After some reading and talking to some friends I just decided to repair the problem areas with the help of a grout saw and fresh grout. It appears to have worked.

After letting the grout cure for a few days I moved on to the final step of sealing the travertine and applying a silicone caulk around the backspash perimeter. Even though I finished this up late on a Thursday night I decided to clean the kitchen and put it back together. I was tired of it being out of commission for the last week and a half. Plus I wanted to wake up to something nice.

Here’s what I learned about installing the tile:

• Wet saws are extremely messy and spray water in your face.
• My knowledge of the Imperial System is terrible, making measuring my cuts go slowly.
• Cutting the stone around 7 electrical outlets/switches, 6 cabinet overhangs, and a window takes very precise measuring.
• Pre-mixed mastic adhesive should actually be sticky. The first stuff I bought was dried out, but I wasn’t quite sure since I had never seen the stuff before.
• Installing 40 square feet of backsplash is a lot, and is hard on your back.
• The mixing instructions on the grout package are not even close to correct.
• Using your fingers to smooth grout lines between travertine tears your skin apart.
• Packing grout between porous and ragged edges of the tiles is extremely difficult.
• Applying silicone caulk sucks.
• The feeling of accomplishment after the job is pretty cool.

You can see more shots of the tile install, and the “after” pictures on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Backsplash Install Thumbnails
• Backsplash Install Slideshow
• The “After” Thumbnails
• The “After” Slideshow

Being proud new parents, Jason and Cheryl wanted some nice photos of their new daughter. They invited Michelle and I over one Friday evening for dinner, which would be followed by a photo shoot that would hopefully produce some nice shots of Jorja.

Cheryl really wanted some shots of her daughter in her “birthday suit”, but this proved to be a bit challenging since Jorja didn’t like the chills that came with being naked. While Jorja was wrapped up in a blanket, we practiced shots of Jason holding a Cabbage Patch Kid.   Adding to the hilarity, I didn’t have proper lighting so we had to be a little creative with some common household items. With Michelle acting as my assistant we did manage to get some good shots.

You can see more of the photos on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

On Thursday, March 12 of 2009 my good friends Jason and Cheryl Fenrich became the proud parents of a new daughter, Jorja Ann. Later that day Jason gave me a call to announce the arrival, letting me know that everything went well, and that mother and daughter were both healthy.  I asked him to let me know when they were accepting visitors so Michelle and I could meet Jorja.

The following Monday I got a text from Jason (you heard me right - Jason now text messages regularly) inviting us over to see the new baby. Michelle was at school late that night so after I picked her up we headed over to Jason and Cheryl’s.

It had been a while since I held such a new baby, but I think I did alright. She mostly slept while I held her which was alright by me. The less squirming meant the smaller chance of me dropping her. It was Michelle’s turn next and she looked like a natural holding Jorja. I think her motherly instincts kicked in.

I look forward to taking pictures of this cutie in the years to come.  You can see my first shots of Jorja on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Even though our cabinets had been installed our kitchen was still in an unusable state since we were now waiting on the countertops to be built and installed. Because the dimensions can change during the cabinet install, the counters cannot be built until a final measurement is made.

Pristine Countertops showed up a couple days after the cabinet install to take measurements. We were under the understanding that it would be a couple days for them to build and come to install the counters. Michelle decided to call J&H Builders to find out when the install would actually happen and it seemed that we couldn’t get a straight answer. After being redirected to Pristine, we were told it would be late the following week.

By the time we reached the middle of next week we still hadn’t heard from Pristine so Michelle decided to find out what was up. After getting bounced around a bit we were told that it likely wouldn’t be until the following week. Michelle found this unacceptable and convinced them to reconsider. They agreed to install Friday morning.

The guys showed up early Friday morning and had the counters installed within three hours. We were ecstatic to clean the kitchen and get everything moved out of the living room and back to where it belonged. We could now start putting the final touches on the kitchen.

My first task was to install the over the range microwave. I looked over a installation video on the Panasonic website on how to do this. It made it sound really complicated so I was a little worried as to my ability to do it. I decided to dive in anyway.

As it turned it was way easier than I was anticipating. We hadn’t installed an electrical outlet in the above cabinet yet so we were hoping to just be able to run the cord to an outlet just below. This plan didn’t pan out so we will have to install the outlet sooner rather than later. An extension cord will have to make do for the time being.

Michelle’s uncle Ray showed up at the tail end of the microwave install to see what would be required for the sink install. He put together a shopping list for me so I could make a trip to Home Depot before tackling the plumbing the following morning.

Ray arrived late Saturday morning and we immediately got to work. He mentioned earlier that he was having some painful back issues so he was going to have me do the work as he coached me. I wasn’t sure if he was serious about this, but as it turned out he was. He directed me through 9/10ths of the plumbing work and installation of the sink and faucet. I had no idea how any of this stuff worked prior to this, but with his instruction I now have a pretty solid foundation for future work in this down this path. As the old saying goes,

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.

The work took a little longer than I was expecting, but that can likely be chalked up to me going slowly as I was taught Kitchen Plumbing 101. We managed to have a working faucet and sink by the end of the day with minimal glitches encountered along the way.  (Hey…that was like a poem).

The kitchen was pretty messy after the day’s work, and even though I was totally wiped I wanted to get everything cleaned up so we could have an actual working kitchen. Under all of the sawdust and ABS pipe shavings Michelle presents what was hiding.

Following admiring our new kitchen, the three weeks of renovations finally overcame me and I made my way to the nearest couch and collapsed. I could cherish the next few weeks of a normal household until we tackled the final step of tiling the backsplash, and fixing the completely out of place light fixture.

You can check out more pictures on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Microwave Install Thumbnails on Flickr
• Microwave Install Slideshow on Flickr
• Plumbing Thumbnails on Flickr
• Plumbing Slideshow on Flickr
• Final Product Thumbnails on Flickr
• Final Product Install Slideshow on Flickr

After seeing our kitchen in a near finished state, Michelle and I decided that we would prefer to buy new appliances sooner, rather than later. We were planning on holding off buying a new refrigerator for at least a year, but once we saw how ours looked in the new kitchen, that plan went out the window. We had the fridge area built with a counter-depth fridge in mind, and we really didn’t like how far our current one stuck out past the counter. Plus we left an opening for a 36″ fridge, so our 28″ one looked a little ridiculous.

So the plan for the weekend quickly switched gears as we found ourselves running around to the many appliance stores in Saskatoon. The plan was to purchase a fridge, a dishwasher, and an over-the-range microwave. We left the stove upgrade until a future date since we want to make the switch to gas. This just didn’t seem like the time for that.

We focused our attention on the fridges, and narrowed our search down to three models. As it turned out, counter-depth fridges are a premium, and are few and far between. They are typically only made by some of the higher-end manufactures so that sucked. I still find it weird that they are more expensive than standard depth fridges even though their capacity is typically five cubic feet smaller.

I was kind of hung up on keeping the three appliances to be the same manufacturer. Michelle was not. We came down to two setups and got the salesman at Coast Wholesale Appliance to price out the two options. Our plan was to pick the cheaper of the two. As it turned out they worked out to be within $30 of each other. No help there.

We decided to leave and sleep on it. As we were leaving we remembered that Saskatoon Appliance had another location in the area so we decided to head over there. We had the saleslady their price out our two options just to see if there would be a difference. I kind of felt bad because the guy at Coast spent a lot of time with us. I figured if the quotes were only a little cheaper at Saskatoon Appliance we would still by from Coast.

Well as it turned out Saskatoon Appliance beat Coast by almost $1000 dollars on both setups. My loyalty to the Coast salesman faded pretty quickly and we ordered our appliances. We really liked a fridge from Fisher & Paykel. I also really liked one of their dishwashers. It is a two drawer system that lets you run two loads separately. Michelle wasn’t as impressed as me, but I managed to convince her. The company doesn’t make microwaves so we went with a Panasonic that seemed to match alright.

If you’re interested, you can read more about what we went with.

• Fisher & Paykel French Door Refrigerator
• Fisher & Paykel Double DishDrawer
• Panasonic Over the Range Microwave

Who would have thought that shopping for appliances could eat away an entire day. We spent nearly 10 hours flying from one end of the city to the other in search of the perfect fit for our kitchen. Now hopefully our new toys arrive soon so we can get our new kitchen completed. I’m also looking forward to the “new” beer fridge we get to put down in the basement.