First Dance, First Chance

This afternoon I attended a sixth grade dance at Ocean Park School and had a great time while the kids had their first taste of a "formal."

Snow Day - This time its for real

So it snowed for real today, if you call under two inches for real, which we do around here. Wyse has been Jonesing to make snowballs all winter and finally got his chance.

Wrapping up district

So the district tourney wrapped up this week with both Ilwaco teams advancing to state, while both Naselle teams were eliminated.

Snow Boy

We got a good 10 minutes worth of snow this morning and Wyse was transfixed. Good oportunity to try out the new Vignette camera app on my Droid. Still trying to figure out the settings.

-DKM

Or on the other hand...maybe I will light the game

Yeah, I guess it was tempting fate to write all about how I hadn't lit a game all season in my last post. Needless to say it took me all of about 10 seconds upon walking into the cave of a gym at WF West last Friday — for the IHS girls district game with a rough and tumble Elma — to realize I would be requiring some additional illumination. And while I was a little too proud of myself for going without, I was particularly proud of how the pix from the game came out with it.

Free(ze) throws — District Tourney Day 1

District tourney got underway Tuesday night and the Ilwaco boys had to win to stay in. They did, and now advance to the double-elimination portion. Shooting so much basketball during the season, and over the next two weeks, keeps me trying to get different stuff from the games. This time around it was free throw shooting.

Big hoops week begins ... NOW

Well, actually started last week, but it gets bigger this week. Last week the IHS girls won their league title in dramatic fashion as Elleigh Kaino (above, center) hit the winning shot in the finals seconds to wrap up a share of the Trico League title. The NHS girls won their league outright.
Despite finishing third in their league, the IHS boys have a do or die game tonight at home. If they win they're in and advance to district. They lose and its all over. I'm scheduled to shoot each team (including the NHS boys who made it as the third seed in their league) once this week including three away games. This is always a pretty busy time each year with the tournaments going on. But at least I won't be shooting multiple games on my B-day like I usually do, as it falls on a Sunday this year.
Here's one from two weeks ago that never ended up anywhere, though I liked it a lot. This season has been the first in like 12 years that I have shot the whole hoops season without on-camera or remote flash lighting (thank the gods they finally updated the frakkin' lights at IHS). And while it was a little touch and go at times in the Naselle gym, I feel totally confident about how it went at IHS. I don't remember the ambient light values at these away gyms I'll be at this week (Montesano, WF West) but I hope it works out there too, as I really have a hit and miss record lighting gyms.

-DKM

Forests of Memories

On Saturday I attended a reunion of old-time loggers from the Naselle area.
The gathering was in part to bring these old-timers together in order to take down some of their memories and stories for a book that the Appelo Archive Center is working on. This is a diptych of Lyle Haataja now and then, with a photo of him from probably the '70s when he was logging up in the Grays River Valley.
Someone at the event was commenting on how the work defined them as people throughout their lives — much the same way with veterans. And this was easy to see. In fact, the work they did 30-40 years ago still defines how they dress today as many of them continue to wear the common logging attire of jeans, striped work shirt and suspenders, as seen in this triptych photo.




-DKM