Won't You Join Me?

This year I'll one again compete in the Spokane Interstate Fair's photography competition.
Nothing can really compare to 2008, when I was honored to receive the People's Choice Award, as well as Grand Champion for color print...for this:

it was the highlight to an otherwise terribly bleak year.


This year, the entries are:

Come to the Fair, see alllll of the entries from talented Spokane photographers, and cast your vote for your fave.

Oh...Hello!

It's time for my semi-no-where-near-annual update!

What is annual is the springtime volcanic eruption of poppies down the street.
I adore poppies...I love the alien fuzzy pods, and the papery petals which explode in a wild hot fuss.

Here, let me show you...













Welcome back spring...
I promise not to stay away so long...

No Escaping the Cuteness...

This is Zooey. She is 5lbs of puppy love.

Ace and Sumi hope you had a Merry Christmas filled with many rawhide bones and table scraps. Woof.

Back Again after a very, very, very long time.

I began posting here over a year ago, when my blog at Xanga (and the community there) began to disintegrate. Also disintegrating, was my father's health and mental state.
What I had hoped would be the start on the path to recovery for him...was not to be.

Five days after I posted 'Daddio', he died.
Though he was (mentally) miserable and in poor health (part of my 'coaxing', was to encourage him to continue seeking medical treatment, and to help him realize how much he was hurting himself by not taking the medications he was on more seriously.) , his death was a very sudden thing for me and my family.

I found him, collapsed in my parent's bathroom, one afternoon when he didn't answer the door.
Though it was horrifying, it wasn't surprising to me...he'd given up. I could see it. It was simply heartbreaking, knowing someone you love and idolize, someone so funny and smart, and so tough and loved, had nothing 'good' in their life to live for.

So.

That gives me new perspective. I'm taking nothing for granted, and I'm finding the good things in my life and I'm truly enjoying them, and appreciating them, and even when terrible things happen, I'm going to be ok...and love the hell out of what I've got.

I'm not going to be afraid, or sad, and I'm going to get out there and see, and do, and be.
It's a good planet, and I just wish my Dad could have appreciated it a bit more before he left it.

Before the unplanned hiatus, I'd planned to use this blog to post images I've taken, preferably on a daily to semi daily basis.

I now return you to our previously scheduled program:



Horsetail Falls, Oregon


Photo by Samantha Kam 2009

Saturn, Regulus and The Moon

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." Buddha












Photo: Samantha Kam

Poppies...Poppies...

"And now, my beauties, something with poison in it, I think. Something with poison in it, but attractive to the eye, and soothing to the smell. Poppies... Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Sleep. Now they'll sleep!"
The Wicked Witch of the West

I'm ready to nap beneath the poppies...I swear that Witch has drugged me!









Photo by Samantha Kam