I'm in Cali!

For those of you in the Bay Area... I'm home for a day! I'm in Pleasanton for tonight and then off to SF for the day tomorrow and cruisin the Mission tomorrow night into the wee hours. Come hang out!!

Someone remind me to submit photos for the student quarterly clip contest. My computer is packed away with the rest of my life in my car, so this could be tricky. Don't let me forget...

Miss Ariel Zambelich is a dear for joining me for my last few days in the Northwest. And a big thank you to Tom Patterson for letting us crash at his pad last night in Portland. Countdown to Idaho begins.. and then off to Ohio!! I can't wait!

Why is my 16-35 not working??

Katie Katie bo batie

My mom Katie needed some photos for her hs reunion that's coming up. I ended up spending a few hours sifting through all the photos on my computer to find some of my favorites of her that I've taken over the past few years. She looks so beautiful in all of them! I love my mom <3

My mom and her friend Tammy at a wedding in Portland this summer.

Coming back from one of our hikes in Sedona, Ariz.

Saguaro National Park this past Spring Break.

A super cool bench at the Shady Dell in Bisbee, Ariz... also from Spring Break. Bisbee is one of the coolest places I've ever been!!

My mom and Greg at Mission San Diego.

On Henry's Lake during my trip to our cabin this summer. I'll be in Idaho again in a few days.. I can't wait!!

Grand Canyon this past Spring Break.

Katie loves mules. Like, LOVES mules.

Mesa Falls with my brother Greg last summer.

Grand Canyon again.

THE funniest memory I have from this past spring break. This is the shuttle that takes you around the Grand Canyon. It was deffinitely the bumpiest bus ride I've ever been on in my entire life. It was hysterical.

Off to Ohio

I'm exhausted.. update later. I'm off to Ohio in about two weeks. Here's a little of what I've been up to since the last post. A little fair, a little figs and some outtakes for Monday's paper. Give 'em a looksie!

Jubilee and Portland and a lot of Dry Creek wine

Pretty slow weekend compared to recent weeks. My friend Joe headed up here Friday so I had some much needed company on all the driving I did this weekend. Having someone else in the car with me made me realize how much driving I do for work. Not too much happening this weekend at The Chronicle. Spent Sunday at Tolmie State Park up near Olympia playing in the tide pools/mud flats picking up tiny, feisty crabs. Played lots of cards and ate a lot of really good food. Hung out all day today in Portland. Bought Inferno and Girl Culture at Powell's and ate too much sushi at Sushi Land. Fun weekend but now it's back to work...

Went to the fairgrounds today to make a picture of the set-up. Fair this week!! I can't wait.. I love the fair! I missed the Alameda County Fair (P-town pride), so I'm really excited for this one. I wish I had my Minolta.

This goat was totally smiling for the camera. And making really, really strange noises.

Another photo of dogs that I wanted to steal while on assignment. And my six dollar shoes.

I had never heard of elephant ears. Fry bread is still better!

This kid put some Bisquick mix on a stick and cooked it over the fire. I need to remember that for camping.

An exhilarating assignment.. a house being moved across I-5. I was waiting around for an hour and half before they even got the truck rolling. I was up the hill in front of it pulled off in someone's driveway waiting for it to come up and then cruise past me, but it didn't really make that great of a picture. So i got up on the overpass and got a shot of it going up the hill with the traffic backing up behind it.

A shot from a story on real estate prices in the area. This guy's asking price is $297,000. I looked at him like "OH MAN, that's a bargain!" Then I realized that I was in Washington and not the Bay Area. There is hope yet that I can one day afford to buy a house in an area that I love.. it may just mean not living in California.

This is Adam chimping! I always take photos of the reporters when they are on assignment with me and so at the jubilee I snapped some pictures of Adam and Nick while they were shooting. But a photog chimping.. what's better than that?

I really needed to be at this jubilee for two days to make some good photos. I was trying so hard to keep up with the events and figure out what was going on that it was hard to make decent pictures. After the first heats of all the events, I was able to figure out where I could stand for a better shot and also the stronger athletes to hang out by.

Wade Stewart was the guy to watch at the jubilee. He's world-famous and a tremendous athlete. Makes you confident enough to stand in the direction of the axe throwing competition.

Adam has a picture of me in front of this tree. It was HUGE! It was so fun to watch the guy driving the machine that came over and picked up these logs to move them. He made it look so easy. Anyways, this is Adam having enough of the sun and finding some shade in between events at the jubilee.

I'd love to learn how to climb a tree like these guys can. They scrambled up there so fast. This is Wade Stewart again. In a later event, the speed climb, Stewart came down a little too fast on the decent and ended up wrecking his knee. It was terrible. Anyways, I liked this because the sun was bouncing off his saw and catching on his face. Would have been better without the rope cutting his face in half...

Morton has the most beautiful setting for this event. It's in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains, not all of which are logged.. which is the case in most parts of the area.

Competitors came from all over.. this guy is from New Zealand.

Assisted living care center

Spent a little while this afternoon with Carrina in a wing of a boarding-house style living facility for seniors. We met a few of the assisted-living folks and then also took a tour through the rest of the area. It was so quiet in the Alzheimer's/dementia wing. We were concentrating on the assisted living care ombudsmen that provide patients with the information necessary to protect themselves against abuse and financial exploitation. This man Chuck was our main focus as far as talking with patients went. He was so sweet. He doesn't have any family to come visit him. He said his son "dumped" him there and then died not too long after that. He feels stuck there. It was so sad. I could have just started bawling right then and there when I started thinking about all of the people living in places like this around the country that must feel so lonely and abandoned. It's terrible. I don't know if I would ever want to get stuck in one of these places. I mean.. I understand that it is important for them to get the care that they are provided and that they do for the most part appreciate it... but I would feel like my independence was ripped away from me. It's sad to see how modern medicine and technology has advanced the lives of people whose bodies have already started to shut down on them. It's just strange to see how we are working so hard to keep people alive that have no idea what is going on around them and they don't even have anyone to come visit them. Chuck was 90 but he was sharp as a whip. He was hilarious! It was sad to see this guy who had so much personality and so much spunk and charm and such a great sense of humor with no one to share his time with. It was so sweet to see Trudy (one of the volunteers) visiting with him like they were old friends.

Then went out to Onalaska this evening to hang out with a family that cooked us elephant ears. I had never heard of those. Tasted like fry bread though. It was so much fun hanging out with the family. They had the MOST beautiful garden I have ever seen. This lady had hundreds of different kinds of flowers. Julia and I sat outside around a fire pit with a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandkids. It was a lot of fun. I'll post pictures after the weekend.

4-H Fashion Revue

Spent the evening with the kids from 4-H at their fashion show. These are some photos of the girls getting ready. This one is my favorite. Cool thing about being a female in a female-dominated event... I'm allowed backstage where a bunch of girls are changing. I don't think Adam and Nick would necessarily be granted the same privilege. And I was happy with how early I showed up because that was where the picture was to be made. I didn't make much of a picture during the actual event, but I really liked the stuff going on beforehand and back-stage.





I'm sad that August is already here. I'll be sad to leave Washington. I hope I come back to the Northwest. I'd love to end up here eventually...

I can't wait for the loggers jubilee!!

I've been waiting all summer for the loggers jubilee and it's almost here! I'll be in Morton Saturday for those events and around most of Lewis County for the rest of the weekend showing off the area to my friend Joe from San Francisco.


Friday night Sharyn called me about a possible drowning on the Cowlitz. Headed out towards Toledo with Sharyn on the phone directing me to some boat ramps. Sharyn's first guess proved to be lucky because I showed up before most of the hoopla. Turned out that it was just some drunk teenagers and one of them wandered to shore. When she got to shore, her raft floated away, and she decided that it would be a good idea to hike through the woods back to the car. Her four friends, who were each in their own small rafts, called her in missing because as they floated down river they didn't see her. She was later found out on a sandbar in the middle of the river. She was picked up by boat and reunited with one of her friends and they were both brought down river for questioning. The girl who was lost was SO drunk that she couldn't even stand up to get out of the boat. Her friend had to carry her out of the boat and up the ramp to the group of troopers waiting for them. And oh man did this girl hate me and my camera. I've never been sworn at so much while photographing. Drunk girl was crazy!


Spent the evening at a picnic hosted by the Lewis County Republicans. The picnic was a kick-off for the campaign season and also served and a venue for a lot of swollen egos and hot air. I am so sick of being shmoozed. Apparently my camera and affiliation with the newspaper is like wearing a sandwich board that says, "Come talk to me! Take up all my time while I am here and make it super awkward for me to get out of the conversation!" It's awful. Even if they were Democrats I think I'd still feel this way. I mean, don't get me wrong, they were a super nice bunch of Republicans.


Spent the morning/afternoon at the same place I spent my entire Sunday. I had googled a place to go get some clasps for a few broken necklaces and I found a place called Shipwreck Beads. The name alone was reason to check it out. As I headed back to the freeway I saw a sign that said state park so I followed it. The road took me to Tolmie State Park. Free parking! It was a totally awesome beach. When I was there yesterday the tide was really high. When I went back this morning, there were about 300 more yards of beach. It was incredible. I love exploring tide pools and shorelines so this was totally up my ally. I spent most of the morning walking around exposed beach poking at craps and chasing fish. I got a call from Nick at the office while I was there and he said to make a picture.


Nothing too exciting.


Saturday was the Yard Birds reunion/paint the big bird. Everyone in town knows that that bird looks like, so I tried to do something different than photos we've run in the past. I forget how I ended up inside the bird, because all this time I never even thought it was hollow.. I don't know why. Nothing that huge could be solid. It's gigantic! Anyways, the bird is made out of paper mache and it was in desperate need of a face lift. The store has been closed a little over 10 years, but the bird still stands. A few employees came out and a bunch of local families showed up to help paint. This woman worked there when she was 15. She had a good story about how she broke a fellow employee's arm during one of her shifts. I didn't help paint, but I bought an awesome Yard Birds shirt. Be on the lookout of a picture of me wearing that shirt standing in front of the bird.


Another photo from inside the bird.


This is the guy that let me fly his plane. What was he thinking?? No really.. he was very trusting. And said that I did really well! I had a lot of fun on this assignment. Stuff like this reminds me how lucky I am to be doing what I do.


He flew me over the steam plant since I hadn't gotten to see that yet. I always see the big plume over the city, but that's about it. It was hard to imagine just how huge of an operation it is. There are huuuuuge trucks that look so tiny from the sky. All those yellow dump trucks have wheels that are 10 feet high. These photos don't even begin to show how much area is being used. I would have loved to have made more photos from this.. but honestly, I was trying so hard not to puke in this guys' plane. Looking down while the plane was bumping up and down all over the place was like the worst car ride of my life. Needless to say I wasn't as ambitious about getting file photos as I should have been. But not I know what to expect next time I climb into a little place. And now I also know to bring some dramamine.






I got a somewhat scary demonstration on what to do in the event that the engine fails. We were suuuuper high up and then he let the engine idle. We slowed down pretty good. To further the demonstration, we floated down towards the ground and then landed in a farmer's field. (A legitimate place to land because he knows the guy who owns it.) This image is from the take off in the field.


I think I called/texted all of you about this.. but I flew the plane! I thought this guy was joking when I showed up and he was like, "You'll be getting a lesson just wait and see." Not too long into the flight was like okay you're turn. I've never been so scared. It was so much fun though! You don't even have to look out the window. Everything is on the dash in front of you. It was totally like playing a video game.


Spotted this not too long after take-off. It's Adam's house! And that big store next to us won't sell me beer because I don't have a Washington state ID. What's with that?