I don’t know what is up with me. I think I’m pretty chilled out — I’ve been enjoying a nice week off (aside from the two meetings I had to go to at work on Tuesday and Wednesday, which were for a very good reason). But I’ve also been incredibly lazy and unmotivated, which is pretty unusual for me. Chris keeps reminding me that’s not a bad thing (and he’s right), that I should be able to be lazy and not beat myself up over not making good use of time. I have after all been burning the candle at both ends at work for far too long. But for some reason I’ve been a total failure in the kitchen this week. Last night I tried to make coconut rice to go with some Thai chicken and a Savoy cabbage slaw, and the rice was sickly sweet (like eating rice pudding with chicken — ick!), while the cabbage was tough and coarse. Tonight I tried to use a frozen pizza dough to make calzones, something I’ve been doing for a while with extra pizza dough made in my bread machine, and it didn’t rise at all — essentially becoming pizza fillings surrounded by uncooked bread dough. We ended up going out to get a meal. What is up? Did I do something to offend the gods of home cooking?

Hopefully things start to look up soon. I do however have a new toy at my disposal. We got a new camera on the weekend; a Canon 7D. We’ve been shopping for a new camera for the last year or so, and when the 7D came out it seemed to have everything we were looking for. I haven’t used a Canon DSLR before so it is entirely uncharted territory for me. And I take quite a while to get comfortable with a camera. Reading user manuals hurts my brain. I’ve found some nifty training videos online that I can watch on my iPhone so that ought to help with the learning curve. To deal with the extraordinarily large photos and HD video I’m also going to need to revisit how I’m organizing my photos on my (nearly full) computer, and wait for some updates to Aperture (the 7D’s RAW files are not supported yet). That’s a little frustrating but I’ll get over it. Anyway, I look forward to lots of excellent photography in the months (and probably years) to come. Especially with the 50mm f/1.8 lens!

Tomorrow I head off to New Hamburg to hang with my buddy Leanne, and go shopping in St. Jacobs. Then off to the farm for a long overdue visit with my family.