A blog about a girl who speaks her mind and talks about whatever she wants. So its a blog about everything, and absolutely nothing, all at the same time. . .
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Name: Kami
Alias: Risawn
Location: Washington State, United States
An avid Snowboarder, rabid NRA supporter, Starving Artist, Military Junkie, anti-fru-fru Glorified Private that basically posts incoherant ramblings and things better left unsaid.
So, I've come to the conclusion that I will be taking a lot more pictures with my camera. I love this thing, and you can take a picture of just about ANYTHING! And until I get something else of interest taking my time, I'll be posting a lot of pictures of whatever I find in my camera.
I think I'm going to start a blog just for pictures. They'll be pictures of interest for me of course, ones that have semi-artistic merit and not just a snap shot of people picking their noses.
Yesterday I watched the niece and nephew practice Soccer. They're four and five (well, Brinley's almost five, and Cody'll be six this summer) and watching a bunch of little kids play soccer is quite hilarious. They keep wanting to touch the ball with their hands and you have to use visual pictures to get them to understand the game. Like they have to pretend to be carrots, and carrots don't have hands.
They had practice in Manito Park, and I observed with my camera in hand. My sister Julie got recruited as the Soccer Coach kind of last minute, which is quite funny because I don't think she really knows a thing about soccer. Fortunately, these are little kids so the rules are extra simplified for them.
I must say that I'm really loving my camera.
Brinely can be such a ham sometimes. She just got recruited this week to play soccer with her cousin and she LOVES it.
Cody found a stick, and began to want to play hockey with the soccer balls. We had to put an end to that real quick.
He had to wear that hat.
I got this little girl in action, and I love how this shot turned out. She's quite the little Soccer Player. There's Cody running up behind her.
Playing with continuous shot on my camera, I got a series of shots of Brinley running. I had to play around so I merged them together into one photo.
Not a perfect merge by any means, but I love how clear the shot was.
I took advantage of being in Manato Park and saw some birds, so I took some bird shots as well.
I've always wanted to get shots of birds and animals in flight. Not all came out clear, because there was about fifty billion birds there and they were all over the place, so you kind of had to point the camera and try to take the pic, hoping it would turn out. Well this one did.
This poor duck is clearly mutated or something. But she's not so ugly that she doesn't have a mate, who appears to be right there protecting her. Ah, love is clearly blind.
More fun with those micro close up shots. I can see myself potentially doing a lot of these. I hope I don't burn other people out of them.
There's a green house in Manito Park which has all of these really pretty flowers, and even a banana tree. I took a lot of closeups while I was there.
I'm sure I'll be posting more pics in the near future.
In continuation of my previous post about my new 'toy', which is what I call anything that deals in electronics, whether it be cameras, laptops or Nintendo Wiis, they are my toys and I'm just a big gigantic sucker for them.
I've always loved taking pictures, and got a lot of grief for it when I was a young private in AIT. I took a ton of pictures, and it drove my class mates nuts. But they didn't seem to mind so much when I gave them duplicate pictures.
But when I got my digital camera, I was sold. As many pictures as I could take, and no need to worry about developing them? You know, I really haven't used the traditional 35 mm since then.
I thought maybe I should give you a brief history of my various Digital Cameras, since it's such a fantastically interesting topic I'm sure. I've included some examples of some photos each took, some of my favorites really, nothing cropped or altered except for size. Click to full view.
My First Camera - Sony DSC S50
This camera was my first digital camera, and I'm not sure why, but I was sold on it as soon as I saw it. I think the flip up view finder is what sold me now that I think about it. It's because of that flip up view finder that I still have this camera in my posession, because otherwise the poor thing is seriously outdated and obsolete.
It came with an 8 mb Memor Stick, and I think I upgraded to a 32 Mb for something around the neighborhood of $80. EIGHTY DOLLARS for a freaking 32 Meg MEMORY STICK!!!
I was told to get a camera with a minimum of 2.0 Megapixels as well, which was a good thing at the time, as I do believe this was 2001 when I made this purchase. I must have spent in the neighborhood of $600 on this gargantuan monster, but I still love this camera. It is a great little camera to just take shots of yourself, and I have great memories taken with it.
But only 15 second videos? I guess they thought your memory stick would get eaten alive if they expanded it anymore. And the videos never got bigger then 460 x 680. I think. Tiny.
I have a lot of great pictures taken with this camera, but this picture of me in Suriname continues to be one of my favorites.
These kids are so adorable. And when I flipped the viewfinder up and showed them I was taking their picture, they loved it! I wish I had a bigger memory stick, I would have taken more pictures.
My Second Camera - Sony DSC P93
Sony's are expensive. They are nice cameras and all, but you pay for that brand name for sure.
However, one of the reasons I went with a sony again for my second camera was not for the brand name, but for the memory stick. Yes, I'm a sucker, and I already had acquired a few memory sticks with my previous camera, and memory sticks were sill expensive! So I felt it necessary to cut the costs wherever I could and stick with what I already had. Besides, I love my other camera, I thought I would stick with a brand I liked.
Actually, I really didn't need to get a new camera for the purposes of staying new, because I liked my old one just fine. The problem was, I was getting ready to mobilize and I wanted a camera that I could keep with me, easy enough to slip into my ammo pouch on a mission. Because believe me, we weren't putting ammo in them.
This camera turned out to be great. In fact, I beat the crap out of it. It traveled all over Europe with me and took some great pictures. A lot of incriminating photos probably. Though I was careful never to post those online. Whatever.
I purchased this camera at the end of 2004, and it lasted me into 2006.
Me and one of my battle buddies SGT V, hitchen' a ride on the back of a Kosovar tractor in Letnicia.
This may be one of my favorite pictures in regards to Kosovo life. I wonder if he minds that I took it? It's just a dynamic photo, and a lucky shot of me taking the shot as we passed him by in our Hummvee.
The camera however, has been on its last leg for a while now. I didn't want to take a beat up old thing with me to Yellowstone, so I picked up another one before I left and handed this one down to my brother.
My Third Camera - Sony DSC S600
Yes, we have a bit of a pattern going on here. I had luck with the first two Sonys, and keeping with tradition of wanting to cut costs on memory sticks, I picked up a third.
I've taken some decent pictures with this camera, but it has by no means been a happy experience for me. Actually, this camera has frustrated me to no end. From the battery case popping loose and losing some good batteries while horse back riding to its less then stellar pictures under certain weather conditions to its feisty behavior, I have not been fond of this camera at all. I think it might be because its a lower end of the Sony brackett, and my other two cameras were mid range or higher (the first camera is definitely a nice one for the time and technology) that I just couldn't get happy with this camera. But I do keep it around for certain occaissions. One of which is to help augment my current point and shoot, which I will get to in a minute.
Meanwhile, after this camera, I stopped taking as many pictures. Mostly because its strange desire to suck batteries of their life a little to quickly, and its outright refusal to work unless coaxed in a certain way. It's stubborn I tell you. But I still find myself having to use it instead of my new one from time to time.
A lot of my yellowstone pics were taken with this camera, but when you see the pics my family took, you can tell which ones were taken with the 'cheap' camera and which ones were taken with the nice one.
The picture quality has definitely deteriorated. But I still have some good pics.
Rawhide was a good little horse. Yellowstone was fun, probably one of the funnest jobs I've ever had, but I was still getting past my deployment and was not the easiest person to work with that summer. High strung was a good term to use, a lot of things were going on at that time and though I don't regret the experience, I wish things had ended differently then they had. But that's another long story. Doing a lot better now.
Yes, this camera was purchased in 2006.
My Fourth Camera - Sony DSC T10
This is the last Sony I will probably own. Don't get me wrong, I love this camera, but I'm kind of over the whole Sony bit. This camera also takes some pretty sweet pictures, but unfortunately, I've had some bad luck with it.
I purchased it for Drill Sergeant School, wanting something small and portable and NOT my third camera, and the memory stick was again a factor. However this camera has had its share of woes.
During DSS, something happened and it just stopped working. I don't know what I did (probably dropped it) but fortunately for me, it's still under warranty. I had to use my loathesome third camera for DSS instead, and ended up not taking a whole lot of pics because of this.
The other problem is charging the battery and downloading pictures onto my computer. Unlike my first camera, which can be plugged into charge and therefore you can always take pictures, this one tends to like to run out of juice, and I have a nasty habit of misplacing the charger. I also don't know what happened to my USB adaptor, which is a little different then your standard adaptor, and so I use my third camera to download pictures onto my computer. It gets a little tiresome. My picture taking has suffered because of it.
I did this photoshoot in December, you might recognize the picture a bit. Half were taken with this camera, half with my sisters when I ran out of memory card space. *sighs*. As mentioned, I haven't taken a whole lot of pictures with this camera. But I'm trying to change that. Its a great little point and shoot, as long as I keep the battery charged.
My Digital *Non* Camera - Vivitar Digital Camera Binocular
Don't tell me what made me take a momentary lapse in sanity and think this was a good idea. I should know better then to buy cheap crap electronics like this. But alas, last Christmas, I had more money then I knew what to do with and I thought with my Employee Discount it was worth checking out.
Well, it was cheap, thankfully, but that should have been my first clue. I just always liked the idea of being able to zoom in really close and take a picture. I can zoom with my other cameras, but I never could get as close as I wanted too. I've always wanted to get better pictures then I get, so I thought I would give this a try.
I could probably get them for false advertising, because this is not what the picture looks like. Not by a long shot. It makes it look like it takes crystal clear SLR quality photos. Hah!
I took a couple. They turned out a horrid blurry mess. I never tried again. But the camera was fortunately very cheap.
Very very cheap.
That should have been a warning.
They do work as a pair of binoculars though.
My Fifth Camera - Canon DSLR EOS 40D
It's very pretty.
It takes very pretty pictures too.
I'm still getting the hang of it and am trying to baby it and make sure it lasts for many years to come. I bought this thing to focus more on making photography more of a hobby of mine, and encourage me to get outdoors and go visit family more often. So there is extra incentive for me buying this gargantuan thing. It encourages me to get SOCIAL! And continue to be a camera happy person, yes, but there is nothing wrong with that. And I am encouraged to look around at things a little differently.
I'll probably save up for some different lenses later, but man how I wish I had this thing when I was in Yellowstone. It would have taken AWESOME pictures!
But this will go to Knox with me. I'm not sure how often I will get a chance to use it, because I can't take pictures and do the shark attack at the same time, and I don't trust another person that is not family with it yet. Well, except Julie, as she is as bad as me when it comes to breaking things.
I'm going to make an extra effort to take more pictures, maybe not fascinating ones and I'll likely not be in them, but hey, it is my blog. And i can take pictures of whatever the heck I want!
I'll be taking some action shots tomorrow. I've got to get fully realized on this camera before I take it on the trail with me, and make sure I'm comfortable enough with it that I don't run over it with a car or submerge it in water. Otherwise, well, it's covered under warranty.
Exciting stuff, eh? There's my multitude of Cameras.
I only have so many because I'm single and haven't found a responsible way of using my money yet.
I don't know what it is about being single, but being single means only answering for oneself, and when one wants to get a toy, one merely has to talk themselves in or out of it. So I talked myself into a special toy that I've been thinking about getting for some time now.
I picked up a DSLR camera. It is fancy shmancy and as soon as I took it home, I decided I wanted to test it out by taking it out and taking pictures of anything that could potentially be interesting.
I discovered that when one has a camera in hand, one focuses on what could be potentially be an interesting topic to photograph. And I've also discovered that anything could potentially be an interesting topic depending on how it is photographed.
Well, I still got a lot to learn, but I love the camera and how crisp and clear the pictures turned out. Though this is not the time of year to take a camera out to catch the sights. I think is previous years April should offer plenty of bloomage, but this April has started of a bit on the damper side.
And I need to further train my photographer's eye on things that could potentially be interesting to take pictures of.
Call me weird, but I want to take pictures of bugs.
It's still to early to get pictures of bugs however. Kentucky probably has a nice variety I wager.
One of the more interesting pics I took.
I bet I could talk my sister into heading over to river front park and taking some pics with me. Heck, either one in town would likely be game for it. One sister is quite the photographer, we could compare cameras!
So we went firing a couple rifles the other day, and video taped it. I can be somewhat amusing to watch, but, well, the video can be a little boring at times as you watch me flinch a bit while firing the rifle (but I'm hitting targets! Unlike when I fired the handgun in the previous post, where I couldn't hit ANYTHING!
I don't think anybody can truly take me seriously.
That is a pretty sweet weapon though!
I didn't pose with Chuck (as in Norris) but it is a pretty fun rifle to shoot. And that sucker NEVER jams up, even though the FS2000 did. They were both pretty fun.
I've wanted to sit down and do a photoshoot for some time, taking some fun pictures and just play around with them. Well, I did have better things to do but I decided to just go with it.
I wanted to take pictures of me outside my comfort zone, get all dressed up and funked out and do something with the hair and makeup and all that jazz. My sister has a talent for it so she asked if I wanted to get some pictures and I was all 'heck yeah!'
But half of the fun after the photoshoot is manipulating the pictures later. I decided to do something a little different with each one. All of these pictures are taken with a simple snap and shoot camera.
Photoshop is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
This was actually the last picture we took, but it's one of my favorites. I like the punk rocker feel to it. Manipulation was simple. Wiped out all color by desaturizing the pic, then messed with the levels to bring the whites and the blacks out.
For this pic, I made an exact replica of it over the original and gave that a soft light tag. Then between the two layers I placed another that was a dark purple to give it the purple hue cast to it.
This is the punk rocker chick with to much eye makeup look, but I really think this was the only picture to come out without me looking like a crack whore. Two layers, like the previous file, the top file is in cutout and put on Multiply so the bottom layer comes through to give it its color.
I really liked this image and just wanted it to look really bright. I auto-colored it to take the blue cast given by the camera out and then went to the Match Color windo and put everything at maxed out. It's helpful to have a lot of color in the picture to begin with to let this pop out.
I can't for the life of me remember what I did to get this affect. But it wasn't hard and with plenty of playing around in the gloriousness that is photoshop, it isn't that hard to produce. It had some filters involved though, this I know.
I just wanted to whitewash this one out to bring out my very angsty eyeballs that I'm quite known for. Two identicle layers, the top one is on Overlay and using the curve tool, I tweeked it until I got the look I wanted.
The punk rocker outfit, in an action pose that I really liked so I took it and played a bunch until I got it to look like this. There are actually four layers involved, the bottom layer is the original untouched picture, there is a grayscale pic in the layer on top of that that is set at 30% opacity, a color fill filtered in with color dodge at 70% opacity, and the top image is me messing with the selective color, and then putting it at a soft light filter at 80% opacity. It just sounds a lot more difficult then it really is.
I love those boots. That top isn't as flattering as I originally thought however, its actually to big for me.
Another visit to that punk rocker chick, I wanted the look that it was a black and white image with color added as an afterthought, or rather the color was really toned down. I took a double layer and made the top gray scale with a Multiply filter and took the bottom layer through the hue/saturation and desaturated the color a little bit. I also messed around with teh levels, to bring out the blacks and the whites.
This effect is actually quite simple. Take it through gradient map and pick your colors. Viola, this is what comes out. It helps to have very pronounced lights, darks, and minimum midrange for this to really be effective with the pic.
I really like working with multiple levels, the top level is done with an artistic filter of sketch pencil and put on color burn over an untouched picture. It helps to auto color both before you begin.
This picture looked zen to me, and I wanted to put it to some nice bright cheerful colors. Yes, I took the picture, desaturated teh color out of it so it was in grayscale, messed with the levels to bring out the blacks and whites, and then put a gradient under it. You could have done a hundred and one things with the image under it, but this was a default gradient and if I wanted to, I could have messed with it a little more to get a better color combination. Hmm, maybe I'll try something else another time.
I've got a gob more pictures, and I think I'll try some different things with them. But the one thing I've discovered about Photoshop is that you just have to mess with it, try things and see if they work or if they don't. Sometimes they do, sometimes its a disaster, but that's why you back up your files and just go to town. I loveloveloveloveLOVE this software because there is so much you can do with it. I hope you enjoyed my loony pictures, and if you don't understand what I said to get the affects, I guess ignore my little commentary. I'll probably put up some more later.
I've got a bunch of cousins and family members that blog now, telling others about their lives and their families, and here I am, single, in school, and right now probably the most boring person on the planet.
It's bizarre to think that I've been blogging for six years now, and when I started this thing was not that big of a deal. In fact, it will take me a while to get all of my archives up but that is one of my goals before I hit the Trail (the trail being Drill Sergeantese for training soldiers).
Well, anyway, like I mentioned before, right now I'm feeling a little under the weather, and one thing I've noticed is how little I post pictures of anything these days. But I don't really have the camera I want (my sister Arah has a great camera and its along the lines of something I would like to eventually get for myself.)
But whatever the case, here is some pics of me, in all of my glory, taking pictures of myself with my first digital camera, which is awesome for these kinds of shots because it has a flip up viewfinder so you can position yourself exactly in the frame as you want to see it. However, it doesn't zoom out as nicely as I would like, but it does take great (although relatively small by today's standards) pictures.
I admit, i do love the winter, and the snowboarding greatness it allows me to take part in, but the thing I do not love about the winter is what it does to my skin. I have the world's worst skin, and I never help matters with it. When I get regular son, it seems to do alright, but when I'm indoors a lot, like I have been, and not being able to exercise and run like I want to on account of all the snow outside, I look pasty and pale and 'bleh', gross.
But the camera does snap pretty good pics of you being all vain and taking pictures of yourself.
I took this right as the phone rang, and I glanced over. So it's a semi candid shot. Hmm. . .
"Hi, uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, don't mind me, I'm just snapping shots of how pale and sickly I look right now while I'm talking to you. I'm listening. . ."
Actually, these pictures kind of betray how I feel. Other then the fact that I look like I have no blood circulating in my face, it white washes the redness under my nose and the fact that my face is peck marked to no end.
In my family we've acquired this tradition on Thanksgiving. We find a range or suitable public ground, we round up our assortment of fire arms, and we go plinking.
After this round, we're wondering if we're going to find another warmer holiday to associate our plinking tradition.
My dad who's a welder made these targets that go *ping* when they're struck, so we don't necessarily have to see if we hit them or not. Whatever the case may be, I took my trust rifle Chuck, along with the other asortment of firearms at our disposal. Because my niece went with me, I spent a good portion of the time actually trying to talk her into firing Chuck instead of shooting myself. She promised she would do it, NEXT year. We did get her to fire a Ruger 5 Mil and a 22. Revolver.
EDIT: Ok, I meant to say Ruger 9 Mil, either that is a typo or I'm just the world's largest poser when it comes to guns. . .
I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing here. Either I was caught in one of those priceless kodak moments where my face is contorted to display my worst possible features, or I just took a whiff of something pretty foul.
Grimace or not, Chuck is still a lot of fun to shoot! And although I'm not as accurate with the Ak as my military issued M16, I still get a pleasant feeling every time one of those targets goes *ping!*
I have to get some support with this thing, and then I'm lethal!
Whatever the case, one of the highlights of the trip was one of the newest additions to the gun family. A chinese SKS! Dropped once, never been fired. . .
And a bayonet. . . *drools*
I love the bayonet. I thought the fact that this rifle had a bayonet attached to it was so freakin cool that I started remembering weapons drills from basic and started screaming war chants.
*WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE BAYONET!?!* *TO KILLKILLKILL with the COLDBLUESTEEL!*
*WHAT MAKES THE GREEN GRASS GROW?!?* *BLOODBLOOD BRIGHTREDBLOOD!*
Thrust to the groin, buttstroke to the face, you know, the CLASSICS! *LET ME SEE YOUR WARFACE!*
Sometimes I help my sister out when she sells things on ebay, and ever so often we get into a goofy mood and start being dorks. Like when we were posing in the park and saw the leaves everywhere, it was a giant invitation to kick them around.
I REALLY like this jacket. I'm thinking about asking my sister if I can have it. She says that if I just outbid them on eBay that it can be all mine. (I can make it payment for helping her take pictures)
I'll wait until the auction is close to the end to see how well its being bid on before I just outbid everyone. Its also fun to kick leaves in. Which she was doing too. . .
I mutilated a Pumpkin this week. Its been a while since I carved a pumpkin.
I had to plan out the pumpkin of course. My sister's pumpkin is the 'cute' one.
Once I got the idea of what I wanted to do, I grabbed the knife and dove right in. If you put anything that can be used as a weapon in my hand, I guess I get this happy look in my face.
This is the final product. Um, nothing too fancy. I've never been an artist at carving pumpkins.
The two pumpkins in the front were done by my niece and nephew. They are 3 and 4, and we thought maybe they were a bit young to be handling knives, so we gave paint brushes instead. There were faces on those pumpkins for a minute. . .
I am often in a sluggish mode, in that I don't like to do a whole lot with my appearance on any given day. Especially if I don't make it out of the house (mind you, I'm going to school online and am searching for a job currently so I don't get a whole lot of opportunities to get out. I hope to rectify this).
Well, I actually put make up on today. It is Saturday afterall.
Just because, I took some self portrait pictures. You know the lamo digital picture you take of yourself? Yep, those. They are so handy because you can take as many as you want.
My brother saw one of the pictures and asked "What's with the Kami face?"
Indeed, what is with the Kami face? Except for the fact that it made me semi-famous? It's like my own version of 'Blue Steel' off of Zoolander. The slight tilt of the head, the arch of the eyebrows, the angsty look of 'who's ass can I kick now?'.
Why do I make this face? I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever know.
I got woke up early yesterday morning by my mother asking me if I wanted to go with her to the Airforce Base to attend an Airshow. At first I was still part asleep and didn't think much about going anywhere, but after I gained consciousness I decided that going to an Airshow sounded pretty cool after all.
Driving out to Fairchild through road construction and what not, we weren't sure how easy it would be to get on or what not, only to discover that they had it specifically set for the public. Easiest time I've ever had getting on an Airforce base truthfully.
First thing they had for the walkthrough was a C5. I also found the F117 to be pretty flippen' sweet as well. They actually did three overhead passes with the F117. I know they didn't even go near what this jet is capable of. Stealth bombers are pretty sweet. . . We also got to see Tim Weber in action. Didn't get a lot of good action shots of Tim Weber (check out his website for those) but I did get a photo opportunity plus a signed autograph. Autographs were something I started collecting in Kosovo.
Meanwhile, there were these old school pre world war II airplanes that they had flying in formations. They were pretty cool. Getting ready for take-off. And of course, the action shots. . .
They had the Canadian Skyhawks parachuting as well (dang, didn't get pictures) which was pretty cool. I have seen the Golden Knights before in San Antonio, some amazing stuff they do, makes me want to go airborne myself. *sighs*
The highlight of the show was of course the Thunderbirds. Precision flying is sweet, and what was also pretty cool is the fact that one of the pilots is a woman. That's pretty hoorah in my opinion, especially after you see what these people do. Getting out of the Airforce base however, well, that was another adventure. They say that there were 30,000 people there or something insane like that. Meaning that traffic exiting the airforce base? Outragious.
Apparently one of my blog readers saw me there. I got an email from him after I got home asking me if perchance I had gone there, he thought he may have recognized me.
Small world. Still, an eventful day. Glad I decided to get up and go to it.
That's what I was thinking. What are these things?
Well, they're rocks. Big massive piled up rocks. Just sitting a few miles south of Mammoth Hotsprings strewn about the hillside. Watch for that turn off the loop coming from the North or your bound to miss it.
The thing about the Hoodoos though is that they scream exploration. I mean, you can't help but climb them, and me being a climber type person that climbs anything that is climbable, I couldn't resist.
Hoodoos, strown about everywhere. You can spend as little as ten minutes or as much as two hours here, depending on your available time, they are everywhere and there is much to explore.
I could spend an entire day here. A recommended place to check out on your way through Yellowstone.
I just realized I haven't posted many pictures since, well, since I was ordered not to. Then I got that order revoked and didn't really follow up on posting a lot of pictures afterward.
Well, I've been boarding twice this season, and will be hitting the mountain at least a couple more times this season to make up for lost time and take advantage of excellent conditions. Unless another kid pushes me on purpose and I'm imprisoned for child abuse because I kicked the crap out of a minor.
If he didn't get lost in the crowd, I would gotten that little fart too.
That, right there, is one of my primary motivations for boarding. Just, check out that view! It's incredible!
Different day, different mountain, same basic effect. Its snowed a bit here recently, as is evident by the pile on that ski lodge. . .
. . . and those trees. . .
I've decided I need more action poses. The problem is, getting people to take them.
I'll be riding at least a couple more times these season, as previously mentioned.
Yay for me! Now I have to find victims to ride with.
So, we're busy finalizing the yearbook. And because I got finnagled onto the yearbook staff at the last minute, the Yearbook people get to have pictures in the yearbook of ourselves, kind of like our own page, you know!
I was trying to debate what to put in there to represent me, and I was looking at some of the silly pictures I took during this deployment. Because I never take myself seriously, and people would be good to know not to take me seriously either.
So, I was originally going to post this picture.
Because it shows me at work doing Preventive Medicine type thingies. And it's kind of a funny picture where I'm not really acting serious, you know, just a way to laugh at myself.
But then I came to realize that I have a perfect picture to put in there. One that makes made me slightly infamous.
Unfortunately, I don't have access to any of the photoshopped versions, I only have the original, Air Hose and all. But you know? That's ok.
This tells it all. And immortalized in a yearbook. Yeah, what am I thinking?
The yearbook staff got a kick out of it. And further kicks out of the Merchandising link. NOw their asking me why I haven't capitalized on the image more? I think Murray is working on helping me with that issue.
So, in other news, I've been given some new tasks. One is, well, the yearbook. I have to put together some pictures and post four pages worth for our section of the yearbook.
Well, since I'm already doing the yearbook, I've acquired a couple other taskings related as well.
No, this is a good thing! I get to use my skills to put together a slide show following our deployment and surf through old clippings of the Guardian for information about our task force. This is different then the website, but somewhat related because of how many pictures i've collected from that, so I'm going through all of these pictures of the task force over the course of the year and I'm thinking 'hmm, this is cool!'
So to even out the fact that I can't POST pictures, I get to have GOBS of pictures of what soldiers do in a deployment to Kosovo. Its like an excuse to GIVE ME PICTURES!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!! And no, you can't see them.
You know that magazine ad for the Guardian(KFOR MNB-E Publication) I told you about? The one I posed for?
Well, I knew the repurcussions of posing in it, and sure enough, I've been getting a lot of comments.
Fortunately, I can just laugh with them. As I can blame nobody but myself. Er, and maybe SPC H for talking me into posing for her.
We must have taken a few dozen pictures of him assaulting me and me assaulting him. Of course, it had to be tame enough to publish in a government publication. What's Nate's unit going to probably say?
We had a full bunker drill recently, and during the drill I had my camera ready. So me and my battle buddy took pictures of each other across the room hunkered under our 'bunkers' *when you are in the hospital, getting under the table counts as a bunker*
Later, we then played drills and got into position with MasCal excercises.
I'm fairly good friends with one of the Photojournalists here on Bondsteel, and she asked me if I could pose for an ad they put in the guardian every week.
I thought it would be fun, so I said sure thing.
We'll discover when it comes out whether or not this was a good idea. In the meantime, I guess I'll leave you questioning as to what it was about.
Wrong! Fortunately for me, I had a back up plan. It was an unintentional back up plan to boot. See, there is this mountain in Kosovo that overlooks our sector. Its official name is Lubojan, but the soldiers seem to prefer to call it Big Duke. Anyway, when we first got here, we were told that they might give us an opportunity to climb the Dukedom, just for bragging rights if nothing else.
This is Duke, back when there was snow on top. . .
I was bent on climbing duke ever since. And the first opportunity we got conflicted directly with my Pass to Bulgaria! GAAAHHH!!!
Well, since Bulgaria has since been blown out of the water, for this weekend at least, I fell back on plan number 2.
I found out what I needed to do so that I could climb Big Duke. Because we don't take rifles to Bulgaria, I found out I had to get my weapon out of the safe because I would need it for this climb up the mountain. Then I had to make sure there was a slot for me to go in as this is rather last minute.
Fortunately for me, two people in my task force had to drop out. So I slid into one of their places instead.
Which meant, I had to be prepared to leave Bondsteel at 6 in the morning. So I was up and eating breakfast, ready to go by six. Then I headed for the TOC. And ran into a snag.
I wasn't on the Mission Request. Enter Explative here. For a moment I didn't think I would get to go and was gettin prepared to back to my room and sulk about how rotten this weekend was going to be when the Sergeant in the TOC fixes it for me. Now I'm in the Clear! WooHOO!
Time to head over to the busses. Where we wait for an extra fifteen minutes. . .
. . . and when the busses do come, they take us to Brezovica. . .
Which is a Ski Resort, not the start point for Lubojan. But oh well. Kodak Moment!
We were supposed to be up on the mountain ready to ascend by 0800, or something like that. After getting the location squared away and everything in order, we were at the Sawmill at 1000.
Then came the ride up, which is in a POLUKR Deuce and a Half, as this is a POLUKR sponsored event (for you civilians, POLUKR is Polish Ukrainian, and a Deuce and a half is a really big truck) and so we load up into the back of one of these things and head up the mountain.
That road is not meant to be driven on. Especially in the back of a Deuce and a Half. Its this really beaten dirt road with ruts and turns every which direction and I think some people were asking for some Preperation H by the time the 30 minute ride was all said and done. I just laughed, I thought it was a riot.
So we get to the top of Lubojan, to our start point, and I'm looking at this at first and thinking "hmm, this isn't bad."
The following picture is me at the start point, the end point is the tall point in the background. It is further then it looks. . . and it's steep!
So off we go! Loaded down with food, water, and an Amber M16 (magazine loaded, no round in chamber). Along with a video camera and a digital camera. This is a kodak moment through and through folks! From start to finish!
Well, we started our ascent at about 1115 or so, give or take a few minutes. The first little uphill battle already had me breathing hard but I was determined to finish this! I've wanted to claim Duke since I got here. So as you can see, the pathway behind me is laid out, I just need to head up.
So we started heading up, everyone at their own pace. And I was drinking LOT'S of water.
It still had me smoked very quickly, but not smoked enough to take away from the photo whoring. . . Man I was already hurting at this stage, as is evident by my posture. But no, I wasn't going to quit, see the little black dots to the right of my head? Those are the start points, which is the vehicles that bussed us up this insane mountain. Are you getting an idea of how steep this thing was? Yeah, it was steep. . .
But don't worry, I reached the pinacle, I mean, it felt so close, I felt like I had gone so far, and I could see out into the horizon of Kosovo smog. . . . . . only to discover, um, not quite!
Yes, I hadn't reached the top yet, but I was through the tough part, now I had a bit of an easier walk going to the next hill as we were gifted with a ledge to walk along. But this did not make the last leg of our trip that much easier. This thing was uphill the entire way. And my feet were seeking revenge by producing blisters. . .
But I did make it to the top! It was my goal, and I swore to succeed! They even had nifty little certificates of achievements to hand to us upon completion! Only thing is, um, it doesn't have my name on it. Somebody told me to pose with it anyway, as nobody can read it *true* but because this was a last minute thing, I didn't have one made for me. The Pols said they would make me one and send it to me, so cool Beans! After all, I did make it to the top!
This is a ridgeline of mountains (obviously), and Brezovica is somewhere to my rear. I don't think you can see it.
I was so freakin' dirty. And sweaty. And altogether smelly.
I had an orange for a snack. I reached the summit a little before 1400 (2pm for you civilians)
And just to reiterate the Kosovo Smog. Yes, that is smog behind me, not landscape. I think that's Bondsteel on my Left Shoulder, but I might be wrong.
And to make it known that I indeed conquered this mountain and it didn't conquer me!
I was the champion! I had climbed its summit! This mountain was now mine!
Oh wait, we still have to go down, don't we?
Um, my feet are soar and I'm tired. And I have to now hike DOWN this thing to the little area to the right of the screen. Oh well, its all down hill from here, right?
I learned the hard way that going down hill can be just as painful as going up. I acquired more blisters, on other parts of my feet, and my former blisters were getting worse.
And because we were going down, I took advantage of my battle buddy's photography skillz. . .
But anyway, I made it all the way down in just under two hours. I had stayed on the mountaintop itself for a little over an hour (and proceeded to be eaten by bugs, which had me wondering what bugs were doing all the way on top of this mountain.
And then, when we got to the bottom, we were bussed back, soar and tired, in the back of a Deuce and a Half, on a rickety road, for the next 30 minutes.
My feet got even with me in the shower by letting my blisters all pop. But honestly, it was worth it. For bragging rights and whatever else, (plus I got a T-shirt!), I can now say I climbed to the top of Mt Lubojan.
Being here in Kosovo, one of the toughest things I've had to endure is being away from my family, as I am privileged with having a very close one. I'm the youngest of six kids in a tight nit group, my oldest sister is only 8 and a half years older then I, so we have a special bond in being so close. Really, we are a family that enjoys being together and it is one of my greatest blessings that I have realised since I've been here.
This is the last picture taken of my entire family, it was taken two days before I shipped out to Fort Lewis on this deployment, back in November. Since our entire family was there, we decided to take advantage of having one of those rare family portraits done, as now that every one is an adult, sometimes its hard to round us all up.
Of course, I'm the only one with a major presence on the internet, but still, I don't want to give my siblings or my parents any unwanted attention, that and they have expressed worry in the past (before my fifteen minutes of fame) of having pictures of myself on the internet. Well, that's come and gone for me, unfortunately, so I don't see any problem in showing other pictures to interested passerbys. However, because I don't have the immediate approval of my family to post their mugs on the internet, I had to do a little alteration to the picture.
Busy at work a couple of days ago, and one of our jobs is to check out the outposts located in the MultiNational camps where we have soldiers stationed.
Its nothing much, we just go in and check in on them once a month, but while we were at one of the camps, I was smitten with absolute cuteness!
PUPPIES!
Fat furry rolly polly puppies. Eek! Adorable! I want to hold it and squeeze! And they are at that stage where they make cute little puppy noises and whimper.
Of course, these puppies will grow up to become Kosovo Mutts, and they will be big. I can already tell that they will likely dwarf their momma, but they are still so friggen cute!
I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist posting pictures about puppies. Four fat and furry puppies.
I wanna puppy. But I will resist, as I know they don't stay cute and cuddly for long. No, they become big and smelly.
Just another name for the thing that made me famous previously.
You know, the M203 with the hose attached?
Well, they have Simulation type things here at Bondsteel too, and I saw something that looked totally bad ass that I wanted to pose with. You know, its just sitting there, looking at you saying "play with me!"
There, on the floor, sat an M2 50 Cal Machine Gun. Drool.
But note my complete and utter ignorance, I have never fired a 50 Cal and I don't know the first thing about positioning and what to do with one if one were to come across such a marvelous piece of war machinery.
Well, I ran into one problem, these things are usually mounted to the top of something, like a HMMW-V, not a piece of wood, so I was already looking kind of weird trying to position myself behind this thing.
And it had sights. Now that I look at it, why does a 50 cal need sights? Trying to position myself behind this thing as if to use the sight post to aim at my target, the recoil on this bad ass would knock me straight in the eye.
So I'm hunched over this thing, trying to figure out where to put my feet and how to aim this thing, and its not working to well. I'm hunched over like Quasimodo and can't get a good feel for this thing.
Maybe if I tried to sit up straight, it would have worked better?
Doesn't make me look like any less of a freak however.
My personal favorite pose was the one with me and my demonic grin, directly in back of the modified M2 (hence, its completely safe to stand in front of this thing to take a picture). If I could learn to actually fire something like this, I could blow up the whole freakin' world with this thing.
But your definitely dealing with Hospital Types when you start posing with weapons. Its a medical thing.
I got a letter from a seventh grader and I finally got around to returning it. But in the meantime, I realized I should probably give her a picture of myself so she can put a face to my name and words. So I dug through my archives and took various pictures of myself to give her an idea of my surroundings.
Then I realized how different I look now then I did when I first deployed. And how short my hair is. And how much wearing nothing but camouflage effects my appearance.
Well, I found a few pictures, including my official military picture taken here at Bondsteel and sent those, and then realized, well, maybe I should send one of me before I got deployed as well as ones of me now.
Well, this is one I particularly liked where I don't look like I'm out to kill somebody, because this is a seventh grade girl who describes herself as a shopaholic who's favorite color is pink. I wanted to find a picture to connect with her, and I didn't think Not Sorry was appropriate.
And then, I had to offer proof that once upon a time I was in fact a bonafide woman. At one time at least.
This picture was taken the week before I deployed. Back when I had long hair. Back when I was getting hit on like crazy, and yes, during the time when I was enduring swarms of emails.
Actually, I'll take that back. I'm still getting hit on. The male female ratio is after all something like 10:1, or perhaps even greater considering the fact that some female soldiers don't swing that way, and the fact that I'm young, and doubly single.
Now I look like a deployed soldier, with a hair cut that offers a different style every freakin' day whether I want a new style or not (and of course, the occaisional slept on a wet head next morning hair do, which have proven to be quite entertaining.)
Oh well, my goal is to grow my hair back to a length where I can pull it back. Into what I don't care, just so long as it pulls back.
But meanwhile, well, I've got about 40 emails in my inbox and 10 letters to return. Can I actually return these by the end of this week?
Everyone seems to think I look really sad in that picture. I'm not sad, just bloody tired, and I could not sleep.
Well, I guess I was sad because I was trying to doodle something earlier and it ended in miserable failure. Again. *sighs*
Meanwhile, without nothing much to say in regards to that, here's a dorky picture of me being, well, a dork at the Letnica trip. . . because i have nothing better to say or do at the moment.
I can't sleep. . . and my creative juices are all but absent at present. Which is evident by the fact that I haven't been able to draw a single thing since I got here.
Somethings wrong on the artistic front. I vow to work on that.
I think I should look up the history of April 1st and why it was chosen to be known as all Fool's day. Maybe its the fact that the weather will tempt you with all this beautiful March "in like a lion, out like a lamb" Springiness and then on April First it goes "Gotcha!" and the weather turns to near freezing.
Well, at least it was pretty this morning.
Anyway, I have no joke today. Usually I do something mischievious, and I had something planned but it didn't work. *sigh* Maybe next year.
Meanwhile, I updated some pictures in Dogtags.
I took a few pictures of the outlying areas via HUMM-V, so not all of them came out. The ones that didn't I didn't post. I also got some good pictures of some vehicles, I think those will wait until tomorrow. But I was particularly pleased with this one.
I haven't seen one person ride a horse since I've been here. They are all cart horses used to pull these log things that I think they use to prop up the cement when they build houses. Becuase there are no wooden houses here.
Meanwhile, I did a double whammy yesterday, the computer I was trying to post from was having technical difficulties and suddenly it posted twice and I didn't realize it. And I can't edit it until I get to a computer that allows me to read comments. I don't want to delete the one post that has all the comments and leave the other one barren.
In other news, I woke up looking like a rooster yesterday. Proof attached in a particularly hidious looking photograph.
I wonder what kind of grief I will recieve for posting that online.
One of these days, I will have the capabilities to upload pictures onto Exposure Manager and let people leaf through them at their leasure. However, such is unfortunately not the case.
*sighs*
Meanwhile, you can get a couple glimpses at me working hard.
Washing the HMMWV.
During the MASCAL, looking grumpy as usual (my flak vest and LBV are now more compatible I would like you to know, but I still look bloated whenever they call the MASCALs. This is me pulling QRF duty, and basically freezing.
This was doing water samples, back at Lewis actually. We do water samples so much simpler here at Bondsteel, instead of the BAC-T set, we use Collilert, which is presense absence and a hell of a lot simpler.
And at Hohenfels, waiting on the laundry usually meant I took my laptop out and listened to music and sorted through things. I tucked myself in a corner and went to town.
I just wanted to reiterate that it does indeed snow here. This was the first freakin' day in Bondsteel.
