Looks like we’re in for an awesome long weekend!

Yay weather!

/sarcasm

Long weekends always seem so short.

Here it is, just the second day of the long weekend, and already it’s over and gone and some way into the next work week.

Too short… far too short.

Happy pagan fertility festival weekend!

As with every weekend, long or otherwise, I start out by making a list of things I need to accomplish. Long weekends are nice because that extra day really helps, it maens there’s more nap-time in between the chores.

This morning as I’m writing out my list, I find myself looking at it… Clean this, wash that, tidy this, clean that…

Chores. Just boring chores. I thought, I should add something fun to the list. You know, make sure I remember to do something fun this weekend. What fun thing would I like to do?

…

I sit here, thinking for a while. I can’t think of anything.

Ok, now I think, well just for the heck of it, what if I didn’t have any chores to do? What if I hired a maid or something, had someone else to take care of every last little ‘necessary’ thing. What if I could do absolutely anything at all this weekend? What would I do? What do I want to do?

…

I can’t think of anything. Big or small, I can’t think of anything I want to do for fun.

That must mean something. What, though?

What does it mean?

Having the statutory holidays falling on a Friday, then a Monday, then a Friday, led to some wonderfully long weekends. I’m pretty sure we’re in for the almost same thing again next year, with a Friday, Monday, Monday arrangement.

While I know that retail was probably crazy-busy last week, it was rather quiet and peaceful at my office last week – we all came in but not much happened, so it was like half-days. Yeah – four day weekend, three quiet days, then a three day weekend.

I could get used to that. Sigh.

Then pow, today it’s back to normal. Full days, full weeks, things going on, busy busy. Month-end, year-end, stuff to do, the fun never ends.

I was just trying to figure out when the November long weekend was – I mean, the month is half over and there hasn’t been a long weekend yet.

That’s when it hit me – there is no November long weekend.

To me, this seems like some terrible oversight on someone’s part. I had to dig up a calendar and start searching, to find out what was going on.

• In January, we kick off with New Years’ day – so the month and the year opens with a day off. I approve.
• In February, we have ‘Family Day’ which it seems to me was just started recently, and sounds like the sort of phoney-baloney holiday that we need every month.
• In March and/or April we get a day off to celebrate Eostre, or if you’re into that Christianity thing, they call it Easter. Still, one long-weekend between two months seems like a bit of a ripoff to me.
• Then in May we celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. (Technically it’s to celebrate the birthday of the reigning queen, we just call it Victoria day.)
• June is appearantly overlooked, but I move that we institute a long-weekend to celebrate the Solstace. June 21 weekend anyone?
• July is good, we kick off the month with Canada Day.
• August is also good, we kick off the month with Simcoe Day. (I won’t refer to it as a generic ‘civic holiday’. When I grew up it was Simcoe Day. So there. Nyah.)
• September too starts off good with Labour Day.
• October is all set, with Thanksgiving.
• November…. nothing. I move that we open November with a holiday. November 1st is All Hallows day, or All Saints Day if you prefer. It’d be nice to have a day to recover and sober up from the Samhain festivities on Oct. 31st.
• And December, we get two days off to celebrate the Yule Solstace, though for some reason they always put the holiday on the wrong date.

I’m seeing the need here for 3 additional long weekends. All Hallows day in November, Summer Solstace in June, and then in March/April we should peg Eostre down in one month (how about march, for the vernal equinox?) and add another holiday in April.

Every month needs a long weekend! Right?

I didn’t even know such a beast existed, until I saw the review over at the Wild Nature Photography blog.

Appearantly Canon makes a 1200mm f5.6L telephoto lens. Rumour has it that it’s entirely hand-made, takes a year to build, and costs about $90,000.00 — but hey, if you want to photograph sports without having to go into the stadium, or need to do portraits from the next county over… this is the lens for you! 🙂

Ooh – and you can stick a 2x teleconverter on it for a focal length of 2.4 meters, then put it on a crop-sensor body for an overall appearant length of 3840mm… yikes. And at only 38 pounds it’s light enough to be portable…lol.

Seriously though, it’s an impressive lens and the internet review is about as close as I expect to ever get to one of these monsters. I mean, I figured 250mm was a long lens, and on my old Minolta, I thought I was all that with my 200mm lens and a 3x teleconverter: 600mm was the bomb, I reckoned.

Anyhow, go and see the review. It’s pretty neat, and it’s an awesome lens to behold.