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Ice on the tailgate this morning... The clouds cleared last evening and the temperatures dropped. It was below freezing when we awoke.

The mountains around Anchorage are heavily covered with snow. It won't be long now!

Life is too important to take seriously.

-- Oscar Wilde

That quote was offered up this morning at our monthly Section Meeting. We also watched a video of Loretta LaRoche called "Life is Too Short, Wear Your Party Pants". She's a psychologist who uses comedy to teach stress management. It was a great presentation.

I'd highly recommend it to those of you who may be working in less than stress-free environments as a morale booster. You know who you are! Watch it in a group setting with your co-workers.

And have fun!

I hesitate to post something because I don't want the lovely yellow pictures to move down out of view. But such is the world. We all know those yellow leaves are transient by their very definition!

On my desk sits a lovely basket full of freshly baked (ok, last night) Butter Pecan Banana Muffins. They are draped with a country quilt style cloth napkin Mom gave me for Christmas a few years back. I brought them in for the bi-weekly GIS Technical Group meeting this morning for which I am the facilitator. Oh, did I mention the muffins are dusted with confectioner's sugar? I know how some of you enjoy my food talk. ;o)

This is the first time I've baked these particular muffins. While in Virginia, I picked up two new lovely cookbooks, one is all about cupcakes (and muffins) and the other is all about cookies. Fun, fun... something to do on those loooooonnnnnnggggg winter nights.

Speaking of winter nights, I found a website which lists the times of sunrises and sunsets for any given location. http://www.sunrisesunset.com/ According to this, our shortest daylight hours will be (of course) around the winter solstice in December with sunrise at about 10:30 and sunset about 3:15. Not sure exactly what that means. Because according to the site, our sun should already have risen this morning (it's almost 8:30am) but it's still pretty darn dark out there. Maybe it's the clouds... Yeah, that's probably it. Hmmmm.

As luck would have it, I'm in charge of the Section Meeting for December. I'm hoping to do something with the concept of the Messenger Feast. This is a celebration held by native alaskans in the dead of winter to keep things festive amongst the villages. If you're interested, you might look it up. I find that sort of thing fascinating, but I realize I may be just odd.

This is our Alaskan autumn...

... from the banks of Eagle River.

... to beside the Glenn Highway.

... from the snowcapped Chugach Mountains.

... to glacial rounded river rocks.

... from our doorstep to yours...

I've been attempting to take some photos of Fall these past few days. Lord knows, Fall is about over around here. But when the sun is out and the light is good, I inevitably do not have my camera with me... I see lots of great yellow vistas when I'm buzzing up the Glenn Highway towards home, but therein lies the problem... I'm generally buzzing up the Glenn Highway. Stephen tends to scold me for stopping on the side of main highways for silly things like photography. He was with me in the van yesterday and refused to let me stop on the bridge over Eagle River. (Not that I'd be dumb enough to stop on a bridge over a river gorge on a main highway...)

Anyway, I have the camera with me today. And since Stephen won't be with me in body during my homeward commute, I might pull over if the light is good and snap some pics!

In other news, we've made great progress on box removal this weekend. I decided to call into play my old inspiration for getting things done.... I told the kids they could invite friends over next weekend. Nothing like impending company to spawn frantic cleaning!

I've had the sneaking suspicion that Tess was getting taller. Seems like when I'm standing next to her holding a conversation, I have a better view of her mouth than I've had in the past.

So this morning I backed her up to the wall and marked a spot then broke out the tape measure. Yep, sure enough, she's just over 5'6". She's 1/4" shorter than me and closing fast. Sigh.

At least the Pooker's still shorter than me. Stephen says she'll be 2-foot-nothing for the next 10 years if he has anything to do with it. Not sure how that'll play out in elementary school. Hmmm.

Who'd have thought 5 years ago when we first set foot in Alaska on our honeymoon that we'd be living here with our family a few years down the road?

It always amazes me how much can happen in 5 short years. Things you don't even imagine... People you meet. People you marry. People you procreate... It's truly a wonder. And it's exciting to think that the next five years are equally full of amazing surprises we can't begin to imagine.

The Permanent Fund amount has been announced. $1106.92. Every resident of Alaska who lived here the full calendar year of 2005 will be getting this amount next month. For those who don't know, the Permanent Fund is the dividend from oil production in the State of Alaska which is divided amongst its inhabitants on an annual basis. We won't be eligible to receive it until October 2008 because we won't have lived in AK for a full calendar year until 2007. But in 2008, if the PF is similar to this year, we'll get over $5000 for our family of 5 to spend however we wish. :o)

Good News!

I just got an email from the Move Insurance Claim Department... Our check for our full damage claim will be in the mail this Friday!

That was probably the easiest part of the entire move. Thank goodness! I can't tell you what a relief it is to have that entire process finally finished! Triple Yay!

Clearly the person who invented our home computer with the ON/OFF switch displayed as a brightly lit blue square did not have a toddler. As I post this, I’m hurrying to finish before Alicia hits the pretty blue light square again and shuts me down.



Lots of these wood carvings around. These are created using a chainsaw, of course. I suspect they mostly target tourists... But I really like these. I may have to get one some day. I think a guy in our neighborhood knows someone who makes them... We met this fella at a yard sale. I may have to look him up again and get me a carved bear.


Both Stephen and I are in classes this week in Anchorage. His is a 5-day course having to do with asbestos inspection and mine is 3 days on GIS (Building Geodatabases). I think we’d both be enjoying the experience more if we weren’t both sick as dogs. Okay, maybe not “as dogs”, but certainly sicker than the average cat. Although, come to think of it, our kitty has been sneezing lately. Hmmmm.

Stuffy nose, sore throat, ear issues, overall yuck feeling. Drat.

Stephen and I went for a walk with the dog around the "block" this evening. This is one of the views we encountered. I brought my camera in case we came across a moose. This wetland type area is a great environment for moose. They like this setting just like willow trees, which are also among my favorites.

Fall colors, or I should say, the fall color (yellow) is rapidly upon us. It seems like the leaves have changed from green to yellow overnight. It's lovely really. Not the autumn quilt of foliage we viewed in NY or New England, but coupled with the crispness of the air, it still exudes the essence of fall.


Both kids apparently enjoyed the Homecoming Dance. Neither has spoken much about it today. I generally get most of the feedback during the ride home from such an event. But I could hardly keep my eyes open last night, so Stephen was kind enough to pick them up at 11pm. This, however, eliminated my ability to absorb the post-event chatter while the evening's activities were still fresh in their minds. Ah well. C'est la vie.

It's 8pm. Saturday night. The Homecoming Dance is starting. Tess was dropped off at her girlfriend's house to get ready together. She's meeting her escort, Wayne, at the dance. Hopefully, she remembers to carry the red boutonniere she got for him. I left my camera with the girl's parents.

Kori's dad said he'd try to get a photo of Tess and Wayne together when he dropped her off at the high school. Kori, Tess, and Becky all went dress shopping yesterday afternoon. Kori's mom and baby sister joined me and Alicia as we drove the girls to the 5th Avenue Mall in Anchorage.

Donald wasn't planning on going to the dance. But then he changed his mind today. Before work, he and a buddy from school went bowling in Eagle River. They apparently talked one another into going to the dance stag. John's mom is dropping Donald and John off at the dance.

We'll be going out at 11pm to pick up both of our kids. If I end up with any good shots, I'll post some.

Ah, the ides of September....

It's back to being drippy here in Anchorage. Last night Tess cheered at a football game in the cold rain. Thankfully, their fleeces (monogrammed and all!) and their cheer sweats arrived just in time for the game. So they were at least mostly warm and dry. On top of that, the team was victorious! They pulled off a last-second, one-point lead for a 7-6 win! Yay!

It was also Back to School night at the high school last night. So I sat in the rain for half the game... just long enough for cold water to seep through my stadium seat and completely saturate my pants.... Then I tossed the wet stadium seat in the back of the van and met Stephen, Donald, and Alicia inside the school for the meet & greet sessions with the kids' teachers...

As is to be expected, some of the teachers are better than others. But overall, the kids are enjoying their classes and the school as a whole. It seems to be a good environment through which to suffer the perils of high school. I'm not sure I could say the same if we had moved to the City of Anchorage proper and enrolled the kids in one of the more urban high schools. Some of them seem to be plagued with gangs and troublemakers. So we are very happy with our choice of Chugiak High School.

It’s after 7am, but it appears to be the middle of the night outside my work window. Of course, the convention center construction continues in full swing. I can’t see them, but they’re making lots of good construction racket. Metal pounding on metal and big truck motors with the occasional “backing up” beeping. I don’t think they’re even wearing night vision glasses. Lord knows what this building will look like when it’s finished!

This morning I have a Manager Meeting with my supervisor. This meeting is scheduled on my online calendar for every couple weeks or so. And she has these same meetings with the other managers in our Section. Then we all meet together (once a month) as Managers. Then that same day, we meet with all the other subordinates in the Section as a whole. In the meantime, I try to meet with my own personal subordinates once a month also. There are only 2 of them, so it generally isn’t hard to schedule.

I told Stephen when I first started working here that I rarely do anything except run from one meeting to the next. And often the meeting topic seems to be nothing more than what we might discuss in the next bunch of meetings… or maybe the development of a new group which should meet to discuss how to best organize meetings… You get the picture. Stephen’s reply was something like, “Welcome to Management.” Hmmm.

We bought this car for $4.00 at a yard sale in NY before Alicia was even born. We’ve been lugging it around ever since from NY to VA and from VA to AK. She now uses it to tool around our back deck in the shade of Bear Mountain. She hasn’t yet figured out how to use the pedals that are in there. Her driving technique is more on par with Fred Flintstone at this point.

I discovered recently that we are at longitude 150 degrees west (in addition to our 61 degrees north latitude). This means we are just 30 degrees in front of tomorrow! How about that?!

I remember when we lived in Guam when I was seven. For those who aren't aware, Guam is on the other side of the International Date Line which runs down the middle of the Pacific. Anyway, back to my cool story...

I distinctly remember contemplating how I might finagle a double Christmas. I figured Santa could visit me in Guam and then we could fly to Hawaii where it was still yesterday and Santa could visit me there all over again! Somehow it didn't work out as I planned. As a matter of fact, I can't say as I remember a single thing I got from Santa that year. Hmmm. I do however, recall the popular Christmas tune of the day: "Jingle Bells, Cockle Shells, Pricker Burrs all the way..." Still unsure what a cockle shell is.

Okay, back to Alaska.

We took Tess out to dinner last night at a nice Mexican restaurant in Eagle River. [A side note, the fact that Anchorage's population is so diverse means there are lots of good "foreign food" restaurants.] The food at Chepo's was great! Plus they had a TV on showing Monday night football. The game starts at 4pm here in AK... So it's more like Monday afternoon football. Oh well.

I paid Tess her traditional birthday greetings at the exact minute of her birth... 29 minutes past midnight. ;o) As usual, she had no interest in celebrating at that hour... so I went back to bed.

Today is Tess's 14th birthday. We had her party at the bowling alley yesterday. She shared the party with her friend Becky who turned 15 last Thursday. The party went well... no bickering, no drama, no tears... A Great Success by teen girl standards!

It was a co-ed party. About 12-15 girls and guys showed up. We ran a tab at the soda fountain. So from a practical standpoint, there was sufficient drink, cake, ice cream, and M&M's for all. Teen heaven.

Stephen, Donald and I bowled about 6 lanes down from the party so as not to intervene. The baby divided her time between inadvertently drinking my Diet Pepsi (ack!) instead of her lemonade, and being passed around from one teen girl to another at the birthday party. She preferred the swooning attention of the partygoers to our repeated admonitions about her trying to run down the alley after the ball....

The Cheer Bowl on Saturday night was a lot of fun. They divided all the cheerleaders into 2 random teams. Tess was on the White Team. She actually got a lot of playing time considering she's a freshman. She's wearing blue knee length sweats.


The cheerleaders were a big hit. They "cheered" with a lot of attitude and gusto. Notwithstanding the occasional cheerleader brawls that broke out, they did a great job. The "brawls" were in jest. Each of the football teams had their own squad of cheerleaders.


As you can see, they were playing flag football. A couple of the girls didn't seem to realize this. One in particular was continuously tackling her opposition. Tess said some of the girls were beginning to get peeved with her! I'll bet!


Part of the half-time dance....


Hey Joe... you want a Coke?

It’s September in Alaska. To be here now is like I’ve hidden in the restroom stall at a department store until it’s closed and the employees have all gone home. Now I can sneak out and have everything to myself.

It’s like living in a magical wonderland. Someplace so big and so diverse and so relatively empty of humans… Yes, we live near Anchorage. And there are lots of people here. But it takes no time at all to find your way to the wilds of Alaska. The Great Land.

The fish are still swimming in the streams and lakes. The berries are still ripening on the hillsides. The restaurants are still serving salmon, halibut, and king crab legs. But now, we don’t have to share it with hordes of tourists. The summer season has largely ended. Kids are back in school and we prepare for winter’s darkness. It’s a beautiful time to be here in Alaska. But don’t tell anyone I said so.

Family Members Update:

Stephen is doing well. He has been working hard to learn the ins and outs of his new job. This week he has gone to two sites in Anchorage to inspect for various health hazards. The person accompanying him (a Project Mgr, I think) seems to know all the best lunch spots. He said they had the absolute best burgers on Tuesday and yesterday they had some great Thai food. Now if he can only remember the names of these restaurants... maybe the rest of us will get to try them!

Donald is his same old self. He's trying to balance his job with his homework, etc. Of course his priority of those two varies from ours. He has stated that he'd like to join the Bowling Club. I'm not sure when that starts. He's been making some friends, but we haven't met any of them or heard of any particular one. He's happy about our new cable TV capabilities.

Tess is busy planning her joint birthday party with her friend Becky. Becky's birthday is today, and of course Tess's birthday is Monday. They're having a co-ed bowling party on Sunday afternoon. Both are on the cheer squad. Becky lives around the corner from us. She is also a freshman. This Saturday night is the Cheer Bowl. During this the cheerleaders play football and the football players cheer. So this week both teams have been practicing the other's sport.... It should be a hoot!

Alicia May is ducky as usual. She's learning new words. Her vocabulary in part consists of: Bit Bit, "where'd it go?", bay-beee, Sissy, Mommy, Daddy, Bubba, and "chop chop". That last one is a recent acquisition... we say that when we want the kids to hurry up and do something.

I'm fine... except my buttermilk biscuit just disintegrated from around my sausage patty. Sigh. Serves me right for rushing out without breakfast and buying something quick at the restaurant downstairs in my work building...

We now have cable TV and DSL internet service at home! Yay! We haven't been able to watch TV at home for over a year now. Our house in Virginia was situated so that we could not hit a satellite and cable didn't reach that far. We had to move to the wilds of Alaska to be able to watch reruns of MASH and discernible reality TV.

There appears to be more snow on the mountains I can see from my work cubicle. They are across the Knik Arm, an extension of Cook Inlet. They look beautiful with the snow glistening in the sunlight.

Speaking of neat sights, we came across three moose butts driving down Northern Lights Blvd the other day. Presumably the moose butts were attached to moose fronts. But we caught their hind ends as they "dashed" into the trees by the road. A mommy and her fairly large twins. The mommy was huge if the size of her rear end was any indication. Makes me think of that song about "Big Butts"... :o) I know some of you know what I'm talking about, and the song is probably running through your head right now.

By the way, Northern Lights Blvd is a strip-mall-laden street in Anchorage. But there are lots of wooded patches throughout the city. So far, all the moose we've ever seen in Alaska have been in the city of Anchorage...

We had our first out of town visitors this weekend! Yay! We went to dinner with Kristine & Mark after they disembarked their Alaskan cruise and before they had to catch their flight back to SC. Thanks for visiting y'all!


In other news... we had a busy, productive weekend. Stephen finally got a functional vehicle which he adores! We spent a lot of time at the numerous truck dealers in Anchorage and Eagle River. It's amazing how much retail there is in Anchorage. I heard somewhere that we have one of the highest levels of retail per capita of any US city... I believe it too. We went to at least 7 car lots to browse before we finally bought this Dodge Ram 1500. We wanted something that might pull a trailer of ATV's or snowmachines, but that would also fit in the garage! This one is a 2004 with 17,000 miles on it. We got it for $20,300 (thanks to some hard-hitting bargaining, I like to think). It's in great shape with some nice perks.

In addition to truck picking, we also went berry picking a couple time up in Arctic Valley. This is between Anchorage and our home in Peters Creek and it is adjacent to the army base, Fort Richardson. Less trail hiking, better vistas, more berries. A great spot! We got enough berries to make a couple more batches of my spectacular blueberry muffins and also to freeze some. I've stopped offering muffins to the baby. She gets her fill of berries while we're still on the hillside.

The kids are out of school today for a Teacher's Work Day. I think it may be just an excuse to get a 4-day weekend, given that Monday is Labor Day.

We have lots of plans for the weekend. Most of them involve the expenditure of effort. Sigh. We want to make big progress toward de-boxing the house. Then we want to go vehicle hunting for Stephen. His truck is going through death throes I think...

I would also like to acquire some more blueberries. We'll try to do this someplace that doesn't involve an incredibly long hike because Stephen's knee bothers him after extended walking.
Of course, easily accessible wild blueberries are most likely already inhabiting someone else's muffins!

My workplace is sparsely populated today... lots of folks extending their holiday weekend. Probably gone snowmachining or something... Just kidding. No snow yet. And here it is, already September!