Rockin' around the Christmas Wii

Christmas Day in Daytona Beach

Pigeon!

Last night, my parents and Dad got in at 3am! We are sleepy and watching the Bears game. Before the game we walked up to the Daytona Pier and I got some bird target practice: 

Lighthouses have cool lenses

Ok, one more picture. Here is a view of the big lens at the lighthouse. The coolest thing about lighthouses are the lenses!
 

Alaskans in Heat

Florida is great! Frank appears to be handling the 60-degree change in temperature quite well :)

Today we went to St. Augustine after avoiding the timeshare vultures. St. Augustine has great Gelato and Lighthouses, like this one that Frank is standing on. There is no snow here, and there are dolphins.

More pictures to come! 

"It's like listening to cats fall off a roof..."

Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage is wonderful in many ways. The South Terminal is spacious, inspiring, and full of trendy little restaurants and shops which keep you entertained.

On the other hand, except for the free wireless internet access, the North terminal is truly hands down the core of airport music hell. It's dirty, beige and full of dead animals. To make it worse, they are selecting the absolute worst music that the season has to offer. Some examples: The "Magic Bus" version of the first Noel, the "Some nice lady and the tone-deaf choir" sing "Silver Bells", "Stevie Wonder underwater singing some song that sounds like "I'm your lady" by Celine Dion", "Little Drummer Boy" by Ray Charles channeling our dog Galileo, and, my favorite, "It's a marshmallow world outside your window". GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Even the stuffed caribou head is looking for earplugs. Every once in a while, we get a reprieve with the TSA announcements or the intercom system which keeps breaking up.

On the Frank and Lori vacation train, we are starting to feel a bit slappy. It's midnight, and we are having trouble holding it together, and are starting to talk back:
"The fire is slowly dying"...well, so are we!
"Noel, noel, noel, noel"...no-more! no-more! no-more!

Across from us is a guy who is suprised by his coughing. My guess is that "Ah-CHU?" will be seated right behind us for the zillion hour flight to Salt Lake City.

I am wide awake but slightly batty due to the multiple coffee beverages I have had today (6? 7?). Bad idea? Perhaps. Certainly my grammar tonight is suffering.

Anyhoo, here is a neat fact that I found in Make Magazine:
In 2003, 9 billion human hours were spent playing solitaire. 7 million (6.8 hours of solitaire) were all it took to build the Empire State Building. 20 million hours were needed to build the Panama canal.

Interesting, huh? Hope you all are having a great Thursday -- whoops-- Friday!

Teeth! Permanent ones!

Ta Da! Here are the new teeth...

Today it is snowing! A LOT! Isn't it just like Anchorage to create awesome skiing conditions right before we leave for vacation :). 

Hmm, maybe we shouldn't tell you what we are doing...

Christmas at the AK Moore's

"You don't write about what you are doing anymore"

...I got that feedback the other day on my blog.

It's probably right -- I have been so busy thinking about all sorts of other things that I have not been writing much about what is happening to the "Alaska Moore's".

The fact is, right now we are busy preparing for Christmas vacation. OK, revise -- Frank is preparing for Christmas vacation while I catch up o n christmas cardsand make a general mess.

Some of the things I have been working on include:
1) Cleaning my office I have been avoiding this for years. However, when the cable people were flipping us over to digital phone lines the other day, the bins that hold all my leftover crud fell over on the cable guy's head. Inspection showed that the entire Ikea bin contraption was being held together by wishes and dreams, so I decided it would be a good idea to take all the junk out and reconfigure it. I came up with two big trash bags of junk to throw out, and stuffed the rest of the stuff, in a nice way, back into the bins.
2) Teeth! I spend a lot of time going to the dentist, dealing with my teeth, breaking my fake teeth, eating soft food, avoiding fudge, learning not to lisp, etc. Luckily, this whole ordeal should be over on Tuesday (TWO MORE DAYS!).
3) Skiing! We ski, a lot! We are exploring new ski trails, like double bubble, which is kind of like doing a roller coaster on foot, except that you can fall off a cliff at any moment. I spend most of my time envisioning myself as the "Agony of Defeat" guy.
4) Wii! We Wii a lot, maybe too much. The problem is, Frank and I have no mad video gaming skills, so I require either a lot of time to do what I want, or, as a proper project manager, outsourcing of the difficult pieces to those with hand-eye coordination. The only game I appear to have a knack for is Trauma Center, where I am learning to be a great doctor, except when I accidentally kill patients. The nice thing about the game is you can try again if the patient dies the first time -- apparently this is not quite true in real life.

Anyways, that is our weekend, hope you all are having a great Advent!

Anyways, that is what we are doing lately :)

The dangers of eating Fudge with Temporary Teeth

Take a look at this:
 

"That's why you shouldn't eat fudge with your fake teeth", Frank informed me after the debacle. I found three of the teeth embedded in the fudge, but the fourth totally shattered into itty-bitty bits (that was some hard fudge!).

FIVE DAYS TO GO UNTIL I GET SOME REAL TEETH! 

Big Day!

Today I finally made enough money in Shutterstock to actually receive a payout!

Considering those that have a shutterstock subscription have millions of photos to choose from, the fact that some of mine got chosen is pretty darn awesome. It has been a long learning curve for me to figure out how to take pictures that someone would want, keyword them so that they are easy to find, and also to learn what pictures are good technically.

Anyways, you can see "the winning collection" at the bottom of the page. Thanks!

Needless to say, do not try this at home...

Sign this boy up for Cirque du Soleil!

In other seemingly impossible news, I actually made a Candy cane cake for dinner yesterday. It was my first tube cake as well as my first attempt at angel food cake ever!

Some tips I learned:
1) Egg whites from the carton are not good for angel food cake. You have to actually separate the egg whites yourself if you'd like good angel food cake.
2) Whipped cream topping...melts. When you make the cake, either wait to put the frosting on or put the cake into the fridge.
3) Don't turn the cake into a regular plate and then put the whipped topping on it. If you put the whipped cream topping on, then it settles down into the plate and you get soggy angel food cake.
4) My Kitchen Aid stand mixer is a LIFE SAVER.

Regardless of that, the cake tasted quite good! I totally recommend trying it just to say you have done it (angel food cake is a good thing to know how to do).

Here's the pictures:

Candy Cane Cake

All, hold on to your Wiimotes!

Apparently, some people cannot handle their wiimotes and are accidentally throwing them into their screens.

The Moore family has had a great time with our Wii, and so far there has been no issue with incidental video game damage, other than some sore shoulders from the Boxing game and a wee bit of "weak-game skills" frustration.

Let's just say that if you have a problem holding onto your TV remote, maybe a Wii is not for you :)

Happy Weekend!

Lori

35 appointments in the last hour on the job

Apparently, our ex-governor went on an appointment spree in the last hour of his administration, appointing cronies and family members before leaving the country. How Conveenient!

We're Number One...

...in first month revenue for a Golden Corral. This follows our astounding revenue-gobbling Chili's last year. It seems that Anchorage folks like to eat out, and are grateful for box restaurants.

Soon Anchorage will look like every other place in the US if we don't watch out!

How do you say Merry Christmas in Wookie?

I am so glad that if I watched this holiday special, I was too young to remember it. Good Lord.

Really? Another Rocky Film?

Gosh, do we really need another Rocky film? During Christmas?

If you want to see something scary, check out the faith-based resources encouraging pastors to use the movie as a basis for their sermons. Ick!