Some Changes, But Still Lots of Excitement

Howdy everyone!  I hope this week has been good to all of you.  I've got some good news for this week: Euphemia has got a job at BMO!  That's really exciting for her and should be a great opportunity for her to start building a career.  On the travel side of things though it has a real potential to derail our plans for a trip to China next year.  Obviously the start of any new job is a time of uncertainty, and we can't really say right now that she'll be able to just take off for 3 weeks in the Spring.  A career is more important than a vacation right now though, so we're basically assuming that China is off the books for the time being and we'll be playing 2012 by ear.  I just wanted to get that out there since I've already been talking-up this proposed trip.  There's no question that we'll get there eventually, but the timing is uncertain for now.  I'm not terribly worried... I'm sure China will still be there when we get our vacation schedule sorted out.

The remained of 2011 still has some great opportunities for travelling fun though, starting with our adventure to Killarney this coming weekend.  I don't have much to say this week outside of the job news, but starting on Friday I should be back in Travel Blogging Mode.  Friday will just be a transit day, and I'm not expecting that I'll have any wild stories to tell, but check-in sometime in the evening and I should have a post up just to kick the vacation off.  From that point on I'll try to get regular daily posts out for the duration of the weekend.  With any luck I'll get lots of pictures uploaded too, but the Internet connection up there can be a bit spotty, so picture quantity will be entirely dependent on my ability to quickly upload them.

On that note, I've actually got a new camera that will be coming with me on this trip.  I decided a few weeks back that it was time to retire the old Olympus point-and-shoot and upgrade it.  I opted for a Fujifilm offering that's similar in specs to what I was using before; it's waterproof and shock proof, and is a compact point-and-shoot.  The big upgrades are that I've gone from 3x optical zoom to 5x, and 7.1 megapixels to 14.  So far I've only had the opportunity to take a few photos with it, so I haven't really put it through it's paces yet, but I'm finding that the old warning of "more megapixels does not equal more better" is holding true.  (Yes, the appalling grammar was intentional.)  Despite having double the megapixels I'm not thrilled with any of the pictures I've taken yet.  I'm really hoping that it's just a question of less-than-ideal lighting conditions and that I'll still get some decent pics while I'm up in Killarney.  The weather forecast is VERY promising for the time that we'll be up there, and there could be an unprecedented opportunity to get some truly fantastic pictures of the Fall foliage.  If they turn out sub-standard because of my camera I'll be greatly disappointed.  We'll just have to wait and see.

To demonstrate why I'm making a fuss about the new camera here's a shot I took yesterday of Euphemia on my back deck, trying to get a bit of Fall colour in the background:

That photo has been shrunk to 25% of its original size for easy blogification (now I'm making up words) but if you view even this smaller offering at it's full size you'll see a lot of graininess.  Look around the inner edge of her glasses frames and it's pretty rough.  Like I said, I'm hoping that it's just that I was shooting into the sun, but my initial impression is that I'm not getting as good an image as I would have on the old Olympus.  Time will tell.

Well folks, that's all for now.  I hope you all have an excellent week, and I'll touch base again on Friday!