Huzzah! The votes are in! Sincere thanks to everyone who participated! All of the pictures were great, and your penguins seem to be happy and well cared for. May you have many more fun adventures together! (The complete set of contest entries is available here.) The winner of the "Postcards From Penguins" Photo Contest is Ryan/Brendan's chillin' bachelor pad penguin!




Also, many thanks to our fabulous contest judges:

Sean is also known as Mr. Cheezleton and/or That Weird Guy Who Lives With Amanda. Sean is a Database Administrator by day and a harried husband, daddy and cat wrangler by night. In former lifetimes, Sean has been a long-haired raver, a hard-partying frat boy and a movie extra who bent the laws of time and space by walking through the same scene from the same direction TWICE. Also, Sean once rode his Honda Magna motorcycle cross-country and - due to sleep deprivation - hallucinated a Charlie the Tuna. If the natural ability to conjure up visions of large cartoon sea creatures doesn't say "fun in a can", I don't know what does.

Sean is mucho grateful to those of y'all who adopted our surplus inflatable penguins.

Allura is a self-proclaimed "freak magnet", and that pretty much sums up how we became friends. She has been a web celebrity since, oh, sometime before Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. When not webmastering for profit, Lurie can be found devouring books by the dozen, developing severe and persistent addictions to the video game du jour and carting around two buffalo-sized Bernese Mountain dogs. Rumor has it that she occasionally cooks, and makes a rockin' bean dip.

In addition to all of the above claims to fame, Allura was recently voted the "Sexiest Woman Alive" by my dog. She is, afterall, quite stunning in black cardigans.

Jeff a.k.a. Wiz is a new dad, which means that he sometimes parties late into the night, whether he wants to or not. Alternate forms of entertainment include playing poker, hiking and forming the occasional "buttamid" with fraternity brothers. Jeff has visited more states than anyone else I know, and camped his way across America twice while chaperoning high school students. He met my cousin Traci on the second camping trip (she too was a chaperone, NOT a high school student!), married her a few years later, and voila! he's now cheerfully part of the family insanity that includes inflatable penguins and such.

Another notable Jeff fact is that he received kudos from the author of Thingamablog. Super cool.