Koski Reunion at Lake Tahoe

A couple of weeks ago I took a few days off from work and flew to Lake Tahoe to meet up with most of the Koski clan. It was the first time I got to use my new camera (woo hoo!) and I'm sad to report that it appears that I, too, have been inflicted with a genetic disposition to take vast quantities of photos. This sickness has been further enabled by the fact that my new camera has a 2 GB storage card - you can only imagine how easy it was to snap off a few hundred pictures. At any rate, click here or on the picture below to see the top 50 photographs from this mini-holiday; just remember, there are plenty more where these came from, and if you don't see a photo you were expecting to see, there may be good reason (i.e., future blackmail material, so stay on my good side, please). Enjoy!

D'oh! I've been Simpsonized!

Look at me - I've been Simpsonized! If you go to http://www.simpsonizeme.com/, you can upload a picture of yourself and undergo a yellowing process that will transform you into the newest Springfield citizen. Once the initial yellowing is complete, you can tweek things like your eyes, hairstyle, clothes, colors, and backgrounds. Here is the photo I uploaded and my final Simpsonized result:

After two days of reading...

I just finished. Wow.

Cuteness

I recently purchased Photoshop Elements 5.0 so that I could start digitally scrapbooking. I'm kind of behind in my scrapbooking and part of the problem is that I'm so perfectionistic and making pages using paper and adhesives and cutting stuff out and all that takes so long to do - I haven't started any pages recently because it's just too much of an undertaking. So I decided to go digital and have my pages professionally printed - it's actually quite cost effective, and is fast and easy to do. Plus, since I've been using my digital camera exclusively, I don't have to print photos out and cut them up - one more step I can skip.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write about. I purchased Elements and have been trying to learn how to use it. And the best pictures to start practicing on, I've found, have been pet pictures! So here are pictures of Zoe, Jesse, and Teddy - I've lightened and warmed them up, increased the contrast, and used a glow filter. Cute, huh?

Whirlwind trip to Portland and Back

Well, it finally happened. Mom sold her house in Escondido and moved up to Portland. What an endeavor! Packing up her home took several weeks and it was very strange seeing the house completely empty. We started out on Friday and drove for about ten hours, stopping overnight just north of Sacramento. From there we drove about eleven hours all the way up to Portland. The second day was much prettier - we drove past Mount Shasta, and the landscape became rolling and green. I'm actually kind of jealous - I want to move up there now! Michael (the parrot) was very good the entire trip - she sat next to me the entire time and happily clucked throughout the drive. I think she rather enjoyed sitting in the car! Mom drove the white Durango (pictured below) with Leo and Bailey, and overall, the trip went very well. I flew back home on Sunday and called in sick on Monday to rest. It will be very weird being here without my mom, but things change, and I think she'll be very happy in Portland. Here are some pictures of our adventure:

My trip to ... West Virginia?!?

Yes, back in May I traveled to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for a week of government training at NCTC, the National Conservation Training Center. We flew into Baltimore and drove out into the country - Shepherdstown is right across the Potomac River from the historic Antietam battlefield, if that gives you any idea of where I was. The weather was warm and everything was so GREEN, compared to the dry landscape of SoCal. There were deer and cardinals and bluebirds and so many other critters - it made me miss living on the east coast, and reminded me very much of where I grew up in Northern Virginia. NCTC is a fairly isolated campus just for the Fish and Wildlife Service - I took a course titled "Habitat Conservation Planning" which probably sounds more interesting than it actually was. But really, the course was pretty good and I learned a lot that will be helpful to me in my work. Anyway, here are some of the pretty pretty pictures that I took before my camera batteries died and held all my pictures hostage for the past month: