Author Archives: Marci

Murder Mystery Dinner!

Posted in Entertainment, Friends and Family, Me Me Me! by

Oh my!  A wedding is interrupted by the death of the best man, and everyone present is a suspect!  Who did it?  You’ll just have to attend a Murder Mystery Co. dinner to find out!

Me, Chris, Johnny V and Jen dressed up in our fanciest duds for “Til Death Do Us Part”, a murder mystery dinner!  My outfit resembled something that Peggy Bundy would wear, although Chris looked dashing in his wedding suit.
The bride (Summer) and groom (Neil) during their wedding ceremony.  The hangers in the background give it a nice touch of class, don’t you think?
Oh no!  Bob, the best man, is dead!  Washed-up 80’s rocker Dick Johnson was on the scene to call Doctor Candy, who wasn’t really a doctor after all, but a stripper (get it?  Candy Stripper?)! Don’t worry, it was a wholesome show and there was no actual stripping involved (at that point, anyway).
Looks like Johnny V made a friend!
Incredible coincidence, but the “volunteer” actor at our table was a crazy cat lady.  I was asked to dress up as a cat to make her feel more comfortable.

It was a really fun evening with friends!  The cheesy reception hall, the over-the-top acting, and the humor of everything was fantastic – we all had a great time!

Crafty Weekend

Posted in Entertainment, Hobbies by

It had been a while since I’d gotten out my sewing machine, and since I had a few project ideas and some extra time I figured this weekend would be as good a time as any to relearn how to load a bobbin (and it was easy).  I just bought a new laptop so I picked out a set of coordinating fat quarters and sewed up a little laptop lid cozy, which you slip over the screen part of your laptop before closing it to prevent the keys from scraping up against the screen.  This is useful for when things land on your laptop, like a leaping overweight cat, for example (in our house, this scenario is extremely likely to happen).  Anyway, the laptop lid cozy is fully lined and reversible so you can have four different fabrics on the top.


See?  Now my screen won’t get scratched from flying cats landing on my laptop.

Additionally, I saw an article about repurposing old belts and scarves into camera straps so that you can look all stylie while you’re annoying your friends and family by taking pictures of them all the time.  You just cut off the ends of the scarf or belt, sew in some hardware, and voila! Super cute camera straps that are interchangeable with your outfit and the weather!  You can take a look here for some ideas.


I took a couple of old belts and some of my Granny’s scarves (they still smell like her perfume) and attached different hardware to them so they can clip right onto my camera.

 

It’s Launch Time!

Posted in Career, Feminism, Me Me Me!, Women by

Good day, gentle readers.  For the past 15 years I’ve had the idea of doing a magazine, aimed at girls between the ages of 11 and 17 or so, that focuses on subject matter that doesn’t reduce our girls and young women to sexual objects who only need to look cute and pick the right shade of lipstick to be successful in life.  I wanted a magazine that would foster a love of creativity, intellect, and curiosity in girls and young women so that they might someday have the confidence to achieve any dream they have.  Why do boys have magazines geared towards adventure, the outdoors, technology and science, while girls have so few, if any, equivalents?

Well, starting a magazine was going to be pretty difficult for someone who has a background 180 degrees from what she should have to do so.  Someone suggested I do a blog, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense – it’s up to date, I have complete control of the content and format, it’s free to everyone, and more and more people are getting away from print media and looking towards electronic sources for their news and entertainment.  So, hello Brainy Girls blog – it’s VERY nice to finally meet you!

Please take a few minutes to read my new blog, Brainy Girls, by clicking here.  It will change monthly, and I’ll add things throughout the month, too.  The main message of this blog is to let our girls and young women know that it’s ok, and even awesome, to use their brains.  Don’t be scared of being smart – embrace it!  And you don’t have to choose between being brainy and anything else.  You can be everything you want to be all at once, as long as it is truly you.  Be who you are – the world WILL benefit!

Additionally, the Brainy Girls facebook page is complimentary to the Brainy Girls blog.  I hope it will be a forum where women and girls of ALL ages can interact to ask questions, give advice, serve as role models and mentors to others, and offer opinions and feedback on this blog.  So take a look and “like” our Brainy Girls facebook page, too!  And if you’re so willing, please share our Brainy Girls blog and facebook page with your friends, daughters, and daughters’ friends.

And don’t worry, I’ll still sporadically update this blog with all things Marcilicious, just as I’ve been doing since 2005.  Enjoy my new side project!  Toodles!

Do you know what this is?

Posted in Animals, Day Trips, Non-cats, Travel by

Hi!  Do you know what this is?

I’ll give you a hint.  It’s not an eel, and I took these pictures at the viewing windows at Bonneville Dam this past weekend.  Still don’t know?

Here I am doing some guerrilla aquatic education at the public viewing windows in the dam.  And stop looking at my butt.  You can take a closer look at what I’m doing, however.
 
 
Those are Pacific lamprey!  You can learn all about Pacific lamprey by following Luna the Lamprey on Facebook, or do a google search.  Their population numbers are dwindling, and they’re an important part of the aquatic ecosystem as well as native American culture.  The Fish and Wildlife Service, and our office especially, is going lamprey-crazy right now with a lot of research and outreach efforts.  So check them out – they are a very cool fish!  And kind of cute in a way.
 
 

This is one side of Bonneville Dam – it’s a pretty incredible structure and it supplies much of the Pacific Northwest with power.  And this is apparently what a fishery biologist looks like (although it doesn’t much resemble what I look like, even when I’m at work).  Ha!

Olympic Peninsula Vacation

Posted in Travel, Vacations by

At the beginning of August, Chris and I took a long weekend to drive around the Olympic Peninsula.  We stopped at the Hoh Rainforest and Hurricane Ridge, the Olympic Game Farm, took the ferry over to Whidbey Island and drove over Deception Pass, then landed at Tulalip Casino where we lost a bunch of cash (aside from my winnings at a slot machine called Siberian Storm, featuring lots of tigers).  It was a great break from work and it felt like an actual vacation!  Check out my photo album HERE to see some of the places we stopped.

Me and Chris in the Hoh Rain Forest, part of Olympic National Park.

Me and Chris in the Hoh Rain Forest, part of Olympic National Park.

Finally done! And it’s not 2019!

Posted in Entertainment, Hobbies by

Hurray!  I’ve finished my 2011 scrapbook!  I’ve been putting together 12×12 scrapbooks for each year (and additional books for various trips, cruises, etc.) since about 2001, and switched over to digital scrapbooking for my 2005-to-present books.  I hate calling it scrapbooking, because it brings up images that don’t quite describe me.  But that’s ok – my move to digital rectified most of my issues there.  I simply GAVE AWAY most of my scrapbooking supplies, tools, totes and everything else; I think I sold my largest tote packed with supplies for only $90.  I’d probably spent over $1000 on all that crap, too.

But doing digital layouts is much better – you don’t have to lug supplies around, get everything out, clean everything up, deal with paper, stickers, glue, and things that don’t quite match.  I use Photoshop Elements to create all of my pages, and EVERYTHING can be resized, recolored, reshaped and replaced just the way you want it.  It’s still time-consuming, but all you need is a laptop and your digital pictures!  Yay!

Anyway, I did finish 2011.  I’ve even started on 2012.  I used to try to catch up on the oldest years, but I decided to just work backwards instead.  So, I still have to do 2007 – 2010, but that’s not so bad, right?  Right???  Riiiiiiiight. 

So I’m happy to share my 2011 book – feel free to check it out on my share site!  You can look at it full-screen (keep in mind that it’s not full resolution, but it still looks pretty good).  Click here http://marcikoski.shutterfly.com/27 to see!

A Grand Polka Party

Posted in Friends and Family, Me Me Me! by

 

I am so thankful that I was able to attend my Gramma’s 90th birthday in May, and talk with her again just a few days prior to her passing.  I hope that she and my Grampa are together at last, enjoying a grand polka party where the music never stops and the dancing never ends.

A Fish Ladder, Finally!

Posted in Animals, Day Trips, Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Non-cats, Travel by

Chris’ Grandma Lois turned 80 on July 19th, but since he was on tour with his army band, I took the train up to Seattle to represent.  I met up with Chris’ Aunt Carol, Uncle Bruce and cousin Terra before our big family lunch and they took me to the Chittenden Locks and fish ladder on Lake Washington.  I think this was actually the first time I’ve really seen a functioning fish ladder up close, which seems kind of silly to me at this point in my career.  But it was pretty cool – they had the ladder that you could walk along side of, and then you could go inside to see the fish in the ladder through a viewing window.  As it was in the middle of July, it was the height of the sockeye upstream migration, and that’s what most of these fish were.  But it was the beginning of the Chinook migration, and we saw a big old Chinook hanging out in the fish ladder too.

Here are some boats going through the Chittenden Locks into Lake Washington.


This is the upstream end of the fish ladder, looking towards Lake Washington.


Sockeye salmon, for the most part.


Hey you fish, you’d better hurry up or you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to get to the lake!


There were also seals lurking very close to the entrance of the fish ladder,
filling up on breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The mini Gyger family reunion was a great time – I think everyone had fun at Ray’s Boathouse, and I know I had a good time chatting and drinking with Aunt Kim, Uncle Bruce and Bumper later that evening.  Here’s a link to the photos I took if you’d like to check them out!

Grandma Lois’ 80th Birthday

Unchained from my desk for a day!

Posted in Accomplishments, Animals, Career, Me Me Me!, Non-cats by

A couple of weeks ago I got to head outside to help release translocated subadult and adult bull trout into the Clackamas River for a reintroduction project that I’ve been involved with for nearly three years.  These bull trout were taken from the Metolius basin, implanted with radio tags so they can be tracked, and trucked over to the Clackamas River, where they will hopefully reproduce and re-establish a population in a part of their historic range.  It was an amazingly beautiful day out, and I hope the bull trout like their new home!

You can read more about the day at the Columbia River Fisheries Program Office’s Dish on Fish blog, here.

Fungus Among Us!

Posted in Home Life, Me Me Me! by

For those of you who do not have access to Facebook, here is a glimpse of some yellow parasol  mushrooms (also known as flower pot parasols) growing in one of our indoor pots.  They are common inside when it’s humid out, and they are poisonous if eaten.  As much as I hate mushrooms, these were really interesting to watch – you could see growth by the hour.  They grew to about 4 inches in height.  The entire phase happened over the course of about three days!