I suppose it’s about time for my biannual update of the blog. Hope those of you on the Northern Hemisphere are  staying cool this summer. It has been pretty rainy and muggy here…not great for picnics, but great for my allergies.

You many have noticed a new link for Photos. For the past few months, I have been trying my hand at photography, which has emerged from my newfound birding hobby.

Last spring, I started to get very interested in birds when I noticed that a sweet mourning dove used to come to my window and coo at me each morning. I live on the second floor of an apartment building, surrounded by lots of trees. I also noticed that I had occasional visits from a robin. Since I don’t have a window (just a window ledge), I decided to just put some peanuts and a suet block out to see if I could attract a blue jay. I love blue jays, and I read that they like peanuts. Well, I still have not had a blue jay come visit, but I noticed I had a large variety of other birds….chickadees, cardinals, sparrows, and titmice are the main visitors. Have also gotten some grackles, starlings, robins, and doves of course.

Soon, I started getting really into this, trying to see how many birds I could identify. I love going to Cornell’s bird database to try and find as many birds as possible. Of course, I wanted to document my findings, so I started taking pictures. I realized to get some good shots of birds, I needed a better camera than my point & shoot, so I got a new camera with much better zoom and control over the camera settings, and have gotten some crisp shots that I wanted to share with you (and also make available for sale). CLICK HERE to view the photo gallery.

In other news, I just attended the Video Games Live concert at Wolf Trap last night. Having a life and all has been really cutting into my gaming schedule, so I downloaded a couple of games on my PS3…Mass Effect and Journey. I beat the main storylines of Skyrim not too long ago, but have gotten a bit burnt out on doing so many quests.

I was so happy to see the first Mass Effect available for download, since I never got around to playing that game…now my decisions I make can be cumulative. I have some hard work ahead of me to get caught up and finish all the games. I hope to get some relaxation out of Journey. I have played Flower (another game by the same company), which I find I lose hours playing (well, that goes for any addictive video game).

On the professional front, I am still working and getting new projects at work. One project has the potential to turn into a speaking engagement at next year’s SLA Annual Conference. Last year, we adopted learning management software last year to organize and promote database training at my firm. I’ve also been working on creating e-learning courses from our recorded webinars. I have taken over a lot of this project, and in talking with some colleagues, was encouraged to share this at SLA.