Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent 2009

I saw this on CanadaAM this morning and had to immediately go online to check out this YouTube clip of her week 1 performance. Susan Boyle is absolutely amazing! Clicking on the title should take you to the YouTube link. All I can say is "WOW"! Go Susan go!

Playing for Change - Stand By Me

Chris sent me this vimeo clip this afternoon and I thought it should be passed on here. Definitely a feel good kind of song with excellent video and sound editing. Clicking on the title should do the trick. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Budweiser Super Bowl Commercials

Cancer Fundraiser

Yesterday was a fabulous day, as it started to warm up again with temps in the low 70sF. Lots of people playing pickleball again in the morning. I opted out today and instead took a few more pictures. Many of those pictures have been posted to my Tanglewood gallery on Smugmug already, so please check them out. I also took a little sample HD video with my Canon 5D2 which you should see below. Certainly not academy award material but it gives a good idea of my camera's video capability. I'm happy with it.

Many of us joined in a bike ride around lake Jackson as part of a cancer fundraiser for Tanglewood. We left around 11 am. Most of the group followed the sidewalk around the lake counter clockwise, a distance of about 12 miles. I decided to try and hang with Leonard Wright as we toured the lake on the roadway going clockwise. Now Leonard is 63 years old. He rides a nice Trek 5200 road bike and had already done 32 miles with the Highland Peddlers before we even left Tanglewood. He sprinted off the front of the group and I stayed with him. We chatted all the way around the lake passing the rest of the group twice. We did 2.25 loops of the lake to the main group's one loop. We turned around and joined the group once we had passed them 3 times. I had a blast. We averaged 20 mph for the ride. Leonard claims I pushed him the while way but I think he was just being polite. I was happy with my performance given my lack of distance riding since last summer. There was a fabulous lunch waiting for us on the pool deck upon our return. Most importantly, we raised $1400!

Provinces in Peril - Indecision Oh-Eh?

Today, it was back to snowy Ottawa for Chris. We headed for Orlando around 9:30 am in sunny weather but knew that Ottawa was under a weather warning for most of today. They got lots today and more is expected tonight. Gotta love satellite TV.

We watched Canada AM this morning as usual and saw a funny video from The Daily Show. Jon Stewart does a great job of mocking the present parliamentary fiasco in Canada. Please click on the title of this entry if you want to see the video. Ba-Boom!

Road Trip to Niagara Falls

We took a little road trip from Ottawa to Niagara Falls this week. Instead of following Hwy 401 as we usually do, we took the scenic tour through Brockville, Gananoque, Picton, Scarborough and St Catharines. We enjoyed the drive along the St Lawrence River and especially liked taking the Quinte ferry. The weather was great. Unfortunately for us though, we were caught up in traffic pandemonium in Toronto because of a commercial propane tank that caught fire and exploded on the the north side of Toronto. Hwy 401 was closed in both directions, so we weren't the only ones who thought taking the Gardner Expressway would be quicker way through Toronto. We left Ottawa around 9:30 am and pulled into our hotel in St Catharines around 6:30 pm, so that wasn't too bad all things considered.

Monday was spent strolling around Niagara Falls trying out my new camera. I`ve included a few pictures in the Photo Story board. Some pictures are better than others. Please let me know what you think of them by adding a few comments or by clicking on the rating stars under this entry.

Parliament Hill - The Movie

I have compiled a short narrated slide show of our day out on Parliament Hill using Photo Story 3 for Windows. PS 3 is extremely versatile, easy to use and best of all entirely free. I have added voice over to some of the slides. Your favourite music can also be dubbed in as well, although I skipped that part this time.

What do you think?

Funny Bud Commercial

Raining off and on today so we only managed to play pickleball this morning. Looking forward to playing cards with Bruce and Jeana, our new friends from Sarasota. Bruce is recently retired for the Sarasota PD Forensics Unit.

For those interested, pickleball is played with a paddle similar to a ping pong paddle, but thicker and longer, and a 3" diameter wiffleball. Service is underhanded and done diagonally to the opposite side of the net. Volleying is then much as in tennis or badminton. The ball must bounce once after the serve. It can bounce only once or not at at all before it is returned across the net. Overhand smashes and lobs are permitted. Many schools also have it as an indoor game which uses a slightly larger diameter wiffleball with more holes in it than the outside ball. Inside ball is slower than outside ball. The outside game also takes the wind into consideration which at times can be quite challenging. This game is fast and lots of fun.

I watched many of the Super Bowl commercials down here. This one is an older Bud commercial that is hilarious. My thanks to Kawal for sending it to me.

Sea World

We had a fabulous day at Sea World. The weather warmed up considerably from yesterday. We arrived just before 11 am and checked Buddy into the kennel. Our first stop was the Kraken rollercoaster which we found out did not open until 1 pm. So we had a bit of time to tour the park while waiting. Chris and Sarah had been raving about how good this ride was. We eventually made it onto the ride and even managed to sit in the front row again, like we had done on Shei-Kra at Busch Gardens. The ride was awesome. Lots of loops, with a few half twists thrown in for good measure as well.

The rest of the day was spent viewing all the different animals. The dolphon and killer whale shows were fabulous. We sat in the "soak zone" at both shows but were not to get drenched. Shamu was fantastic to see. There were many of our neighbours in the "soak zone" who left sopping wet. For some reason we lucked out and stayed relatively dry.

I've added some assorted pictures here for you to see.

The seals and walruses were very entertaining. We could walk around their whole habitat and watched many of them acting out for anyone willing to feed them a fish or three. Any fish that weren't scooped by the seals were quickly picked up by any of the water birds, who always seemed to be close by too.

We managed to find a turkey leg for lunch. We had tried them before and figured they offered the best value for money at any of the theme parks.

We started filing out of the park around 5:30 pm and just had to hit the bakery on the way out for coffee and a piece of cake. We walked over 6 km in the park. It was Dr. Martin Luther King Day today so the park was quite busy.

Buddy was anxious to see us and apparently kept most of the other dogs and kennel staff entertained for the entire day.

Tomorrow is rest day at the park. Swim in the morning and we shall introduce Matt and Sarah to pickleball in the afternoon. They are threatening to kick our butts.....we shall just have to wait and see.