Cliff Spicer Photographer

I know the updates on my site have been slow but with the new baby and the Christmas rush I wanted to make sure I took care of being a good dad and making sure all the orders got out in time first. As well, I have had all sorts of problems with my site going down and I have found out it is being caused by hackers and spammers. I use a piece of software that drives my site called WordPress and as you know on my blog you can post comments on the various topics. Well, spammers have some how found out I have a WordPress blog and have been bombarding my site with sometimes hundreds of messages a day causing my host to shut down my site a few times to investigate. The problem is still not resolved but I hope the interruptions are fewer and further between but we are working on finding a patch to prevent this problem. My goal in the new year when the dust settles is to focus on my site and get it back up to date as I know people love looking at the new images and I have a lot of fun reading the comments and posting my work. Stay tuned.

Hello,

Just wanted to let everyone know that Gavin Spicer came into the world today (October 26th) at 5pm. He and Mum are doing well and Owen and I couldn’t be happier. Check out a few photos and as you can imagine there will be more to come.

Our second day in Boston got off to a bit of a rocky start. I booked our hotel online and let’s just say that one can lie with photos. This place was rough and I’ll leave it at that. The funny thing is, I know to always stay with the large chain hotels but there is a huge conference in town and I took the first thing I found after an hour of searching. I then went back online and found a really nice room at the Sheraton for the next night so we are all good. However I will now need to raise my prices (kidding). Yesterday, we did some looking around but it is really hot for Angela so we took a ride on the duck boat which is a really cool WWII boat that works on land and water. Owen was so happy because the tour guide let him drive the boat in the water for almost 10 minutes and he couldn’t be any more proud of himself. Today we are off to the New England Aquarium and the flyer makes it sound and look amazing. I will reserve judgment till after the visit since I am now jaded from the pretty hotel photos I saw online…

Today was the big day we went to see Tarzan and man oh man was it great. Owen loved it and can’t stop singing the songs and I am almost at the “no matter what, I can’t get that song out of my head” stage. Tomorrow we are off to Boston and I am really looking forward to it. I have never been and I love history so I hear I should really enjoy it.

Today was a really HOT day in the city but any day in nyc is a good day. We began on the upper west side as I haven’t spent too much time there but it was too hot to do much exploring. We then headed to Central Park for some shade and we came upon Strawberry Fields and it was really nice sitting under the large oaks and relaxing. We then took a cab to midtown to see the movie Ant Bully which Owen loved. He is now at the age that he gets excited to see a movie on opening day and the movies he wants to see are now fun for us to see as well. It was then off to dinner in Little Italy. It’s really nice there in the summer because they block the roads so you can walk on them and have dinner on the outdoor patios while people watching. Tomorrow just Owen and I will be doing more city stuff while Angela and Margaret head to do some girl shopping so I will now go and lock up the credit cards.

We are on our holidays now and starting at Angela’s cousin’s place in Kingston. We had a great time yesterday taking a cruise on the 1000 Islands and Owen was loving the pool in Bill and Deb’s backyard. Today we get in the Element and head to my cousin Margaret’s place in NYC where we have a great time every time we are there. This time we are really excited about seeing Tarzan on Broadway which we are seeing on Sunday at 3 and we have the CD for the drive so we can learn all the songs on the way. Stay tuned and we will be responding to e-mails tonight when we have a better internet connection.

Tonight Owen, Angela and I went to go see the kids’ movie Monster House and Owen loved it. It was about this creepy old man who yells at kids who go onto his lawn and he has a house that comes alive and eats people. Owen really got a kick out of this old guy’s face when he yelled at the kids and Owen asked me if we could make him look creepy like the old man. He wanted to pretend our house was the Monster house. Most kids wouldn’t ask their father to do this but Owen sees me working in Photoshop all the time and sees what can be done, so it was a great time for both of us to create some interesting art. Enjoy the picture and thanks for looking.

This is a computer geek thing but I am really excited about 2 new monitors I just bought. The main reason is there are 2 which is way cool because when I use Photoshop I can have all my tools open on one screen (smaller one on the right) and the image I am working on open full screen on the left. This way the tools are not all over the place and I don’t have to move them around to see the image. Ok, Angela was not as excited as I am but she thinks this tech excitement must be a guy thing and keeps hiding the Best Buy flyers on me.