Thanks for everyone's comments while I was 'away.' We had a family wedding last weekend. Jody's brother tied the knot with his long time girlfriend. A joyous occasion and absolutely gorgeous day! I took the photos and actually had fun doing it once I was into it. But that's not to say weddings are something I want to be doing. Not at all. I was very nervous about it, and it's a lot of work getting all those photos processed. Slow going on that front so far. I just had to buy a new toy for shooting it--an external flash :-)

Sunday, exhausted and a little hungover from the wedding, Jody and I went to an all day animal disaster sheltering workshop. It was training to become a volunteer to work in emergency animal shelters in disaster zones. Pretty hardcore stuff that I'm not totally convinced I have what it takes to do, but I'm glad I went. I learned a lot and can at least begin to follow the volunteer mandate to educate others about animal disaster preparedness and response:

#1. Be prepared to evacuate with your animals--do not leave them behind!

They said they always need people with photography and Photoshop skills. That's added incentive for me to perhaps try to tough it out and work a disaster one day. I've got a big handbook to read, some vaccinations to get and three online courses to take in order to be up to speed to actually get 'deployed,' as they say. We've also got to get our own disaster plans in place before we start preaching disaster preparedness to everyone we know, ha! I'll probably be sharing more info about it here in the future. I'm taking the education of my community role very seriously.

As you can see, I'm still going to be busy for quite a while. Just so you know if you don't see me visiting or replying to comments much.