Winter blues

Instead of resisting winter, I'm embracing it's quiet beauty. At least for today.

"Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice-
Both different blues."
- Robert Francis

Bisous

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery



Have a lovely and romantic weekend!

Escape fantasies

I went to the top of the city the other day and there was winter, spread out as far as the eye could see.



Won't someone take me away



to some faraway beach?

My mouth took a little trip to Nawlins

This weekend I celebrated my something-somethieth birthday. On Saturday morning I woke up to streamers and balloons and felt much younger than my something-something years. Thank you TB!



For the past 5 years or so, it's been a tradition for TB and I to round up a few friends and head over to my favorite restaurant, La Louisiane, to celebrate our pants off. We began the evening with an assortment of appetizers: crab cakes, hush puppies (spicy deep-fried cornmeal dumplings), and sweet potato fries with cajun mayonnaise. I ordered my usual paneed breast of chicken and shrimp (I can't resist the Creole green mustard peppercorn sauce). For desert I had the bread pudding, while others ordered delectable confections like the bananas foster (bananas and vanilla ice cream in a warm sauce of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, dark rum, and banana liqueur), and the chocolate pecan pie.



It makes for a bright spot in an otherwise bleak month. The other bright spot this February is ... ta da! ... larger photographs on my blog. Yay!

16 random facts (about me)

I was recently tagged to play the 16 random facts game by one of my contacts on flickr. So, here goes:

1. My first language was Polish.

2. The photograph above came from the first self-portrait session I’ve ever done.

3. I’m an only child.

4. When I was 9, my mother signed me up for modelling classes. I’m not sure why.

5. I hate the texture of cooked onions, which makes it difficult to eat in Italian restaurants.

6. Paris is my favorite city. I first went there when I was in high school as part of a French Club trip during March break. I’ve been there a total of four times.

7. I’ve had this really annoying ringing in my left ear (tinnitus) for about a year now. I learned that William Shatner, David Letterman, Bono, Sting, Barbra Streisand, among many others, also have it.

8. I became a certified yoga instructor 4 years ago, though it’s not my profession. I just loved yoga that much.

9. I studied psychology and French in university.

10. My favourite movie is Wings of Desire (the original German version).

11. Whenever I listen to the album Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros, there is a point at which I invariably start to tear up due to its extraordinary beauty.

12. Whenever I go camping, I can’t sleep the first night because I’m convinced that every sound I hear is a bear prowling around outside the tent.

13. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with the Beatles and I used to wish that I had been born early enough to have seen them in concert. I had to make due with stage show Beatlemania whenever it came to town.

14. Although I’m Canadian, I often use the American spellings of words by habit because I was a technical writer for many years and that’s the standard.

15. My favorite quotation is “follow your bliss” (Joseph Campbell).

16. If I’m flipping through TV channels and the movie Rosemary’s Baby is playing, I’ll often end up watching the rest of it. There’s just something about the look of that movie that I love.

The fortune teller

In December I had such a fun assignment. It was to do a photo shoot for a book cover. I've always thought that this kind of project would be right up my alley, as I love books and book covers (to the point that I'm often tempted to buy a book purely on the basis of the book cover). So the thought of shooting a cover was so exciting!

The photograph will be used on the cover of a collection of short stories by a local Montreal author. The stories are about relationships that are destined to fail, and the author came up with the concept of using the cootie-catcher (aka fortune teller) to illustrate how love can make children of us all. We did a series of photographs indoors. We were able to use a professor's office in the Faculty of Law at McGill University. It's a beautiful old building, and the office had a turret with lovely windows.

At the end of the shoot, we decided to do a few photographs outside since it wasn't that cold. The following photograph ended up being everyone's favorite.

However, the author decided to go with the one below. The reasoning was that the above photograph conveyed a little too much hope and the one below reflected the characters better.

The book will likely be published in the spring or early summer.

Looking for love in all the right places

A sudden spike in sales today had me scratching my head and wondering where in the World Wide Web had a photograph of mine been featured. Luckily, a few buyers left me clues, telling me that they had seen my photograph "Looking for love" on Ali Edward's blog.


One thing often leads to another, especially on the Internet, and the photograph also ended up on the Yahoo! online magazine Shine in the "at home" section.

Thank you Ali and Charlene for making my day ... wait for it ... shine.