last year

It's hard to believe that a year ago today this happened.

Looking back at the large and small gestures offered by friends and our community I am still in awe of the support we were given. Aside from the huge blessing of our close friends opening their home to us and having the Husband's Mom arrive to help with the move and cleaning; it was the small things that were done for us that I will always remember. The little things that brought tears of gratitude.

A year later, we still talk about fire trucks and alarms (although not so frequently). We have added fire extinguishers and smoke detectors to our home. We have an escape plan in case we need it again and in light of what has happened in Haiti we are getting an emergency kit together in case of something larger and more catastrophic happening.

All in all I'm thankful, thankful for so very much and I only wish I was in a position to do more.

My weekend

was a little more stressful than I'd like. Not that I didn't enjoy it. Anxiety crept in early Friday with the realization that I am going to need a new camera body soon. My beloved Canon 10D is starting to wear down. I get random error99 messages and the shutter release is slowing down so I get over exposed images or images that just aren't registering at all. Luckily the photography supplier I deal with, Beau Photo has a great used section, they have a Canon 20D body that I'm going to go look at today. Fingers crossed that the older lenses I'm taking in can be used towards the body.

Our car is sitting in it's parking spot and hasn't moved since Wednesday when it refused to move any further after a nice loud clunking sound. Fortunately there is a garage 4 blocks up from us and the problem is a simple one.

Since the fire in our building last month we've been gushing money in all directions. From replacing groceries, dry-cleaning and laundry service and the mountain of laundry detergent that we used ourselves it's been a little tight here. The camera and the car are just adding to that drain.

So with these things in mind I decided that we could forgo tickets to the Seattle Depeche Mode show this summer. This is a little disappointing for me, I love Depeche Mode and their live shows are always phenomenal. They haven't added a show in Vancouver this time around which means that if I want to see them I have to travel. TicketMaster's legalized scalping website makes going to see them insanely expensive and nearly impossible so I'm sucking it up and waiting for the box set for the new album to come out and possible the DVD of the concert from somewhere far far away from here say Berlin or somewhere in South America.

the first shots from my new camera body