Take this, KMXT!

Ok, that's a little harsh for a post title, I guess. I was going to go with "I love it when the camera's ready," but I guess I'm feeling a little more bitter than I thought! I'll get to that in a minute, though...

Usually, when something good happens that would be an amazing picture, the camera is either at home, or in the car, or the battery is dead, or I have the wrong lens on, or whatever. That's changing, though, because I'm starting to just grab the bag (ginormous as it is) almost every time I head out the door. And, then, of course, I'm also bringing it on purpose every once in a while, too, as was the case on Friday afternoon.

Our priest, Father Paul, who had been here in Kodiak for nearly 15 years, resigned from our parish right after Christmas, effective the week after Easter. So his last service with us was last Sunday (a Celtic Service - very neat!), and then he was on the ferry out of here on Friday. Though we've only been at St. James for a short time, we really like Fr. Paul, and he was a big part of the reason I got over my sobbing tears the first week (missing our old church!), and went back for the second week. We're sad to see him go, but happy that he's taking this time for himself to figure out what's best for him, which in turn helps the church figure it out a little, too! But, I digress...

Since Fr. Paul was on the ferry on Friday, we headed down to the "terminal" (that's giving it a little more credit than it's due, I think) to see him off. Sadly, we were late (I actually had to work on a Friday afternoon!!), so we went down to the gazebo in the harbor to at least wave to him from there. We had some time to kill while we waited for the ferry to make its way by for it's u-turn, so we hopped out of the car, hoods up against the light rain, to let Fred wander and to let ourselves get ready so we wouldn't miss him. Of course, for this occasion, I was armed with the camera on purpose, but caught some amazing shots sort of by accident.

As we stood there, a sea lion swam by. This is not that unheard of, and I've gotten a few pictures of them before, but I pulled the camera out anyway, hoping to get a better shot (meaning, in focus, not too far away, and with identifiable features above the water... all things I've been lacking before!) Imagine my excitement when my new friend started thrashing around in the water, showing off a little for us! He wasn't actually showing off, he was playing with his food, but still... holy cow! So, here's what I saw!

Yeah, I'm going to leave it with just the pictures. That probably ranks up at the top of the list of "coolest things I've seen in Kodiak."

Back to the title of the post... Our local public radio station put an ad in the paper, looking for photos of Kodiak scenery to put in their 2009 calendar. I diligently and carefully combed through my hundreds (probably close to 1000!) of pictures of Kodiak scenery from the past 9 months, and selected six that I thought would look great hanging on a wall or refridgerator. I packaged them up, complete with explanation of what each was, and hand-delivered them to the radio station's offices. The day after dropping them off, I came across the 2008 calendar, and, flipping through it, thought, "Hey, I might have a shot of getting one of my pictures in there!" It's now a week past the deadline, and one of the pilots Jason works with got a call asking for his picture in a digital format, and I've heard nothing. It appears as though KMXT has passed me over this year, which is kind of bothering me. I think I've done a pretty good job of capturing Kodiak, so I'm a little let-down on not making it to the calendar.

Sigh... I guess I'll console myself by looking at the absolutely incredible shots of a sea lion playing with a skate....