I thought the photo montage was kindof clever when I came up with it. I printed off a bunch of pictures I thought were cool (like 12 cents each at the grocery store photo booth) and then used some sewing pins to mount them up on the wall. Easy and cheap, and people seem to dig the rocket-cars and sea creatures. (They’re also excellent for giving me colour ideas)

The blue bowl on my desk is a bit of pottery I picked up at a Winnipeg art sale by the artist Wanda Koop, who I recently discovered is having her work shown at the National Gallery in Ottawa. Apparently she’s a big deal! I liked the colours of the bowl and have a couple more like it at home.

The big plastic rectangle in front of my keyboard is my tablet – I can use the grey pen next to it to paint and scribble on the screen – it’s a must-have for doing any kind of advanced photoshop work. I have a little tiny one at home – but the big one at work has spoiled me. On that same note – the monitor on the left is almost exclusively used for managing all my photoshop and dreamweaver tabs. I like having them all open when I’m working, and they don’t fit on one screen, so I have that one to clutter up with little option boxes.

Hmm… What else is notable? I have a couple of cool bobbleheads from work and friends, my job title plate is kindof incorrect (I’m really a design generalist, not just a web designer), and my ratio of pink to aqua books is about even. Oh – and my desk is almost always completely devoid of pens! People keep having little hallway meetings behind my desk and I think they take off with my pens when they need to take notes. Lame!

All of our charities are deserving, but it was so awesome to have been involved in such a fun, tangible project, right in our own backyard.

They key I’ve discovered to fund-raising successfully at bitHeads is to always have bacon nearby. Natasha and I fried like 8 pounds of the stuff for a charity breakfast, and there were no leftovers. We charge double if people want to use the defibrillator.

In total, I walked 1,100+km in 3 months. I came in second in the office to a hardcore treadmill walker, so I feel pretty accomplished.

So – yay! I’m really proud! bitHeads is a great place for me to be.

Okay, this is akward. On to other subjects…

It was weird seeing an NHL game for the first time so soon after watching the World Cup games – the younger kids definitely had more fire in their bellies and zeal for the game. The NHL guys are really technically competent, but they just don’t seem to have as much at stake – the effort level was really low all night, except for a bit in the second period where they were really picking up steam after a penalty call.

I got a good laugh before the game – I’m a big fan of Daniel Alfredsson and don’t fault him for accepting a probably really handsome sum of money for doing a Nike commercial, but what the Sparq guys got him to say is so pretentious it’s hilarious. I think I’m going to use “My better is better than your better.” at work on Monday.

I’ve left MTS and am in the process of leaving Manitoba to head back east, with Natasha uprooting herself to come along! I’ve accepted a fantastic new position at Bitheads in Ottawa, doing design for video games and websites. We’re about 95% packed at this point, with the movers coming on the 12th to pick it all up.

We’re hitting the open road the same day to drive across Northern Ontario, which is something I’ve always wanted to do, so we’ve scheduled ourselves a little extra time to do some exploring while we’re out there. We’ll be in Ottawa sometime around the 15th, depending on weather and how many interesting rocks I want to pull over to take a picture of.  (Did you know there’s a giant amethyst mine in Thunder Bay?)

It’s both exciting and sad. The opportunity is fantastic and it makes a lot of sense for us to be in Ottawa as we start planning to have a family (no news there yet – don’t have a heart attack), but I’ve had so many crazy experiences here in Manitoba, and met so many awesome people, that it’s been hard to leave. I’ve really fallen in love with the place, and it’s starting to feel as much like “home” to me as anyplace else. I’ve spent nearly a third of my life here!

Now that my blog’s eaten a bunch of my old entries, I’ll have to figure out some way to reconstruct some of the articles before my memory of Manitoban summers starts to fade. Here comes an Ottawa autumn! We’re so excited to start over in Ontario!