Happy Holidays

Haven't really been motivated to post anything lately.  Still not motivated, but I will entertain you all with a recent video.

We call this the Gargoyle.  Enjoy...and hopefully it won't be too long before the next post.

The Mountains that Made the [Wo]Man

Minarets by Peter Essick

National Geographic Magazine had a feature in their latest issue - The Mountains that Made the Man.  Photographer Peter Essick ventured in to Ansel Adams Wilderness to pay tribute to the wilderness' namesake.  The NatGeo article includes black and whites photos from Peter Essick.  If you want to see some of Ansel Adam's photos, you can go here.

In 2006, I had the privilege of hiking along the John Muir Trail/Pacific Crest Trail from Florence Lake to Tuolumne Meadows.  Along the way we passed through Ansel Adams Wilderness.  This wilderness spans 230,000 acres of Sierra National Forest and Inyo National Forest.  The wilderness includes 14,000 foot peaks, crisp cool alpine lakes, and Devil's Postpile National Monument.

Me at Donohue Pass (below) and Peter Essick's creation at Donohue Pass (right).






















My trek past Garnet Lake (right)...beautiful day, beautiful colors.



(Below) Peter Essick's version of Garnet Lake.  AMAZING!  In my defense, Essick did have some incredible thunderheads rolling in.

There are more great photos by Peter Essick at NatGeo's website.  Check 'em out, or BETTER YET...explore Ansel Adams Wilderness first hand.  Especially you California folks; this is in your BACKYARD (metaphorically speaking).  Go see what the California wilderness is all about...without all the suburbs, RV parks, resorts, and litter.

Just A Photo

Back in high school when we had to take our team photos, we could never be happy with just posing for a photo.  Sure...there was the typical tall-people-in-the-back-short-people-in-the-front-arms-behind-your-back photo, but when we got the opportunity to take our individual or group photo, we spared no expense.

Here I am with Wendy, Dominque, and Jen.  This is our sophomore year at Carondelet High School.  Varsity Basketball 2000.  I think it's safe to say we were going for a beach theme.  I remember borrowing the surf board from my neighbor, and we still had life jackets left-over from our Sea-Doo phase.  But I think my favorite part about this photo is Jen applying sunscreen.

Go big or go home...right?

B & W Photos

I haven't forgotten about my blog. In fact, I think of it often. But when I have time to actually write something, my mind goes completely blank. Well, to solve this problem, I opened my closet and looked for inspiration. I found it in an old bin of black and white photos. One of my favorite classes at Cal was the 8 week summer class on Black and White Photography. I learned to develop my own film, enlarge negatives, "burning", "dodging", and processing prints. It was amazing! Creating my own darkroom and processing lab is on the top of my list of things to do when I'm a millionaire. ;)

Over the course of the class, I directed my lens towards many subjects, but I did my final project on animals at the SF Zoo. Some of the photos from this project can be seen on Facebook.

But perhaps the most meaningful photos were of the critters around the house - Bonnie, Rexy, and Molly. Lincoln was not in our lives...he wasn't even born yet!

Enjoy these negatives...I know I did when I dug them up. Click on the photo to make it bigger.

**Bonnie is the doggie in the pool. Rexy is the doggie lounging around (RIP Rexy). And there is 1 picture of Molly the cat (RIP Molly).**

Hot-lanta, Georgia

Just got back from Atlanta, Georgia - site of the 2011 Junior National Volleyball Championships. The team I coach qualified to participate (by the skin of our teeth). It wasn't a successful weekend volleyball-wise, but I was able to enjoy some of the sights of Atlanta. We explored the Coca-Cola Factory and the Georgia Aquarium. Both attractions were great. My supervisor from the Alaska SeaLife Center is now working at the Georgia Aquarium, and I was able to meet up with her and get a behind-the-scenes tour through parts of the aquarium. VERY COOL!

Tunnel vantage point of the Ocean View exhibit.

Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world, houses 4 Whale Sharks shipped over from Taiwan.

All the Whale Sharks are trained to eat from ladles. Each keeper floats along the top of the tank trailing chunks of fish bits. This allows the keepers to accurately record their daily food intake and do a brief visual exam of the animals.

Here are some of the girls (and team mom) posing above the gigantic Ocean View tank at the Georgia Aquarium. Shout out to Lynda Leppert for going out of her way to take us around.

This was the last volleyball tournament of the season. Now it's time to enjoy my summer...maybe start working out again after I recover from the cold that Atlanta gave me.

Flowers and Flashlights

Two posts in two days! I'm getting out of control...or I'm just avoiding brushing my teeth before going to bed.

Rain today...on JUNE 28th! Isn't it suppose to be summer? Well, the rain was a nice change from the heat. It rained for a good chunk of the day, but then cleared up in the late afternoon to reveal some rainbows and dramatic clouds. I got home after volleyball practice and got my camera with hopes of getting pictures of the rainbow or clouds, but I didn't have a good vantage point from the house.

So instead, I looked around the yard and found some other inspiration. Raindrops on flowers! As I started losing daylight, I whipped out my little flashlight, and experimented with some alternative lighting. Here are a some of the photos. More photos on Facebook. Enjoy!

Little Successes

A short, quick post coming your way...

I've been working on some basic bird training at the Oakland Zoo for about a year and a half now. I only go one day a week, and I end up having to skip a fair number of weeks because of coaching commitments. For anyone who has dappled in animal training, you'll understand why progress has been slow and inconsistent. If I had been doing little training sessions with these birds 3 or 4 times a week, I would have seen results much quicker (a month or two), but I trained when I could and considered it a good day if any of the birds had similar behaviors as the week before.

What is my goal? Have each bird (there are currently 13 birds in the aviary) perch on a different "station". I could put a scale under the station to collect a weight. I could train the bird to stay on the station while a keeper does a visual assessment of the bird's physical health. I could train the bird to touch a target with it's wing. I could hypothetically teach the birds to do anything. The "station" behavior is just scratching the surface.

Before starting the training, most of these birds chose to fly to the highest, furthest perch in the aviary when people (keepers, volunteers, vets) entered. A year and a half after starting, about 8 of the 13 birds will come to the ground or a nearby perch after I've stood in the aviary for a couple minutes. I reinforce all of them with yummy little mealworms, and I encourage them towards various "stations" by using the mealworms as lures. This training process is much more complicated than I'm willing to go in to in this blog, but trust me when I say there are lots of little baby steps along the way.

In the last two weeks, one bird in particular has shown a lot of really great progress. The female Hadada Ibis will readily come to the ground, approach and stand on her designated "station" - a wicker basket top. I reward her for staying on top of the "station" and then I occasionally toss one of her rewards just far enough away so that she has to walk off the wicker basket top to get it and then make the decision to return to the "station" to get another reward. And she makes that decision...and she makes it quickly and, seemingly, without hesitation. Here's a picture of her standing on her "station" this last Sunday:

Hooray for her!!!

Now I'll be "proofing" this behavior of standing and staying on the station by slightly moving the station to different parts of the exhibit. Her buddy, the male Hadada Ibis, is also consistently approaching his "station", but as of Sunday, he hasn't progressed further than just pecking it with his beak.

While they aren't progressing in leaps and bounds, the process of doing training sessions is a useful and simple form of enrichment for these birds...and I am a huge advocate for enrichment.

Read more about Hadada Ibis here - not really a whole lot of info, but you'll get the general idea.

Or better yet...just come by the Oakland Zoo on one of these nice summer days and check out ALL their animals!

Mon Pow Graduated!!

I got my ticket to the main event...

Monica's got her cap all glamed up, so we can spot her in the crowd...

Alright...Where's Waldo?

MONICA ROSS POWERS, Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from UCLA!

So proud of my sister! She dealt with a good deal of adversity during her 4 years, and she came out a much different person...a stronger woman!

She's headed to Europe for 2 weeks to do some exploring. Then she goes back to LA to do some hard core job searching. Anyone know of a Public Relations firm that is hiring assistants?

Hooray for Monica!

UCLA 2011!!!

Tired Puppy

Man I haven't posted in FOREVER.

It might be because when I get home I feel like this:

and I definitely don't have the energy to blog.

But I have finally managed to find a couple minutes, so...What's the latest???

I did NOT get accepted to Humboldt State's graduate program. Bit of a bummer. They only had 3 spots available, so my chances were slim and I'm sure competition was fierce. I plan on following up to see if there is a spot for me in the future. Fingers crossed!

In the mean time, I'm preparing for True Blood season 4...June 26th! I know it's still a long way out, but with all the promos on TV, I can't help but get pumped. Looking forward to seeing what they do with Alcide...or to be more accurate...I'm looking forward to seeing Alcide with his shirt off. Exhibit A:

That's a good exhibit I'd say.

I'll leave you with a photo of Lincoln before his summer haircut. Next time you see him he'll be be a sexy, short-haired boy.

Laundry Demons

Meet my enemy. A tower of clean laundry.

I don’t know why, but organizing and putting away my clean laundry is a MAJOR problem of mine. I usually don’t even take it out of the dryer. If I was living by myself, it probably would stay in the dryer until I either picked out everything that was in that load in order to wear it or I had to rotate another load from the washer into the dryer.

The fact that I wear the same thing almost everyday, probably doesn’t help with this problem. When getting dressed, I just grab whatever clean pants and shirt are towards the top of the pile.

In order to put away this pile, I need to pump myself up. I need to make sure I have at least an hour to devote to the task, and I need the right playlist of music playing in the background. I mean...why put it away if I’m just going to wear it in the next couple days??

It’s not uncommon for me to start putting away clothes and then get distracted. For example...right now. I had been folding laundry for about 30 minutes, and I still had about a third of the pile left to go. But I found it absolutely necessary to enter this blog post before finishing. If it’s not a blog post that distracts me, it’s usually Lincoln and Bonnie giving me THAT stare; THE stare which means “why in the world would you rather do this than come play outside with us??” Naturally, I give in to THE stare, and join them outside.

But after I finally get to the bottom of my pile of clean clothes, I feel like I just won a gold medal. I feel like everyone should acknowledge my accomplishment and that I deserve a nap...or at leash, 2 hours of not having to do anything.

Ok...enough of a break...I’m going to finish this pile! (I’ll be accepting high fives later for a job well done).

What did you do last weekend?

What's next on my plate?

Volleyball, volleyball, volleyball....and maybe some more volleyball.

Maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but if you were to take a guess at what I am doing for any given weekend, the answer "volleyball" would have a 75% chance of being right.

This coming weekend (President's Day weekend) is a 3 day volleyball tournament for the club team that I help coach. We are headed to Las Vegas. I tell people Las Vegas, and they think "Awesome! You are getting paid to go to Vegas." In actuality, if I can muster the strength at the end of the day to make it to any casino tables, I would be very surprised. Not to mention that I am totally clueless when it comes to gambling...and that it's a risky business. I like my money where it is right now...in my bank account.

In other news...I finally sent in an application for a graduate program. I've been itching to go back to school for years, and I kept procrastinating/avoiding the ordeal of putting together the application materials. I probably would have kept procrastinating if it hadn't been for a job opening at the Oakland Zoo. I loved working there, and I still look forward to the days that I can volunteer. I was seriously considering applying, but when I asked myself the question "do I want to settle in to another job before I go back to school?" and "would it be fair to the zoo if they went through the hassle of training me if I were to go back to school in less than a year?", I discovered that now was the best time to get back in to school.

Since I made this decision at the beginning of January and the application deadlines for next fall were February 1st for most programs, I focused all my efforts in to applying to one school - Humboldt State. HSU has lots of great features that I won't go in to detail about here; all you need to know is that I would be over-the-moon to earn my Master's at HSU. I applied to the Wildlife track in their Natural Resources department. Everyone keep your fingers crossed!

I'll leave you with this...an interview that my brother did. Enjoy!

http://www.calbears.com/allaccess/?media=229236

The Futa

Got back from South America about a week ago. Spent 6 days on the Futaleufu River in Chile. Traveled from San Fran to Dallas to Buenos Aires, Argentina to Esquel, Argentina to Trevelin, Argentina and, finally, to Futaleufu, Chile. Almost two days sucked up by traveling. Not my favorite part of the trip, but necessary to get to a place that is so isolated. Necessary and definitely worth it!

Dramatic landscapes threaded with beautiful, blue rivers. Simple, self-sustaining farmers. Powerful, demanding river rafting. Charismatic, friendly guides and staff.

The one unfortunate factor was the rain. It was suppose to be summer in South America, but for the 6 days that I was in the mountains it was raining. Everyone mentioned how unusual this was, and how it was sunny and hot only a week before. I tried not to let it bother me too much. I was getting wet in the river most days any way. The rain also meant that the water level in the river was very high. In some spots, the water level was too high to safely raft, so I wasn't able to raft the entire river.

I got to try some sea kayaking and river kayaking in an inflatable kayak. It was enough to make me interested in trying some more river kayaking. Maybe in a couple years, I may have enough experience to return to The Futa in a kayak.

As always, I wish I could have stayed longer. It felt like I was packing up to leave just as I was finding a good routine and establishing relationships with the guides and other guests.