Off to a busy start in the new year

 The top two photos are downsized from the ones I used as the back and front covers for the 2014 calendar I made.  The photos are macro shots of the ice on the pation table, highly saturized.  The calendar turned out not too bad for my first attempt.  I learned a lot about my printer and how to size photos to print them.  Lots to learn yet.  The actual calendar pages are from a set of free templates that work with Microsoft Office program. (Lots to learn about that program too)  The photos for each month are primarily from our travels over the years, and from my garden.  I sent Momma Fran the best of the prints for her calendar and kept the duds ... which are not too bad... for my own. 

 Our friends from Port Angeles visited us for a few days at the beginning of January.  One of the things we did was spend a couple of hours at the Shaw Ocean Discovery center.  Love the jelly fish.  They are so photogenic. 

 Yesterday we took a drive, and ended up at the Esquimalt Gorge Park.  There are a flock of ducks in the area near the bridge.  I think people feed them.  It is an interesting little park.  There is a series of parks along the Gorge.  We saw that they are adding more to the Japanese Garden in one of the parks.  I must get back out there... perhaps in the autumn, as the colors should be good, with all the Japanese maples, etc.  I only had my little Sony camera with me, but it worked pretty good for this shot.

On December 12th we had a whole flock of robins in the back garden.  In a matter of a few hours they had cleaned all of the berries off the holly tree.  I wonder how they all knew it was time to feast on the berries. 
We have been having some very nice weather for the last few days.  We do need more rain, though, they tell us, or we will be on stringent water rationing this summer. 
I cleaned up my light garden a bit.  The orchids have been doing fine since I last cleaned them up.  I took the baby 'pixie' out of the parent pot and planted it up.  Hopefully, it too will be blooming in a couple more years.  A lovely miniature cattalya in pink with a slight fragrance. 
I have screwed up my mouse by adding an optional update from Windows for the mouse... ooopps ... wrong kind of mouse.  Now it freezes.  I have a few other optionals added too.  I also seem to have some sort of virus or something.  So, my machine is going in to my techies shop for its annual clean up.  Should clean up my bank account pretty good too.
I have a few more photos for the July album of my old web page tweaked... 18 more to go.  Hope to have them done by before Tuesday when I take the computer into the shop. 
I received my Nexus 5 phone from the google store on the 14th.  Telus told me that my old one was going to be obsolete by March 31st so we spent a bit of time learning a bit about the cell phones available and about the plans to sign up to.  Very nice people to deal with over the phone at Telus.  Now I have to learn how to run this new gadget.  So, I read on my ipad, play with photos on desktop, and have the phone only for the occasional use.  I am really not into this texting stuff.  I just want a phone.  The last one I had lasted for years, but I think I was paying way too much for how much I used it.  We will have to see how this new plan works out for us.