Frank! Watch out for the snowplow!

Back to North to AK

I'm back in AK after my Toronto trip. I had a great but very hectic time in Toronto, as seen by my only picture that I took during the entire trip below!

It's always nice to fly back to Alaska, although this was a particularly interesting return. My first hint was when the following things were said over the intercom in Chicago:
1) "We have a broken auxillary heating unit, so it might be cold until we get into the air."
2) "We need to start the left engine at the gate, then we will start the right engine on the tarmac before takeoff."

Not so good a start to a long trip. Then, of course it took two hours to get the crews in Chicago to do anything, apparently because this was the last thing they had to do that night, so they were hiding. So this means it took me three extra hours to get home.

The cool thing was the Alaska Aces (our ECHL hockey team) were on the plane with us. I was only one row away from Scotty Gomez.

Anyways, the great thing about living here is knowing that you come home to a beautiful place. I honestly live in my vacation. To that point, I found the pictures below from a walk I took with Galileo last week that show how really neat it is here.

My only picture from Toronto :)

Another panoramic of our view

The sky over our house was really pretty. Notice the snow coming in over the mountains to the west...

Another fuzzy picture of puppy -- I need to learn to focus the camera faster!

The Moon's already out!

Here's a picture of the Chugach Mountains outside our house

News Roundup

--Mom uses the movie It's a Wonderful Life to discuss the Social Security issues of the day.

--In Homer, a state-funded rocket launch facility consistently outperforms the big guns in the Marshalls and Vandenberg on less money. However, being a little gun outperforming bigger guns, the bigger guns aren't so happy about the Homer folk. Wake up Pentagon, and give these guys some meatier stuff!

--Agh! Tragedy again strikes the Seawolves when Ales Parez broke his leg in Friday night's game.

--Another Note: North to AK is travelling south to Toronto this week. Blogging might be extremely limited!

Curling Rocks!

Fur Rondy is in full swing!

This afternoon, Frank and I participated in a Fur Rondy Learn-To-Curl class sponsored by the Anchorage Curling Club. It is MUCH harder than it looks! First of all, you have to figure out how to balance on one foot dragging the other foot behind you without falling...then somehow you must throw the rock towards the target (house) on the other side. We got a chance to learn to throw rocks and sweep, and it was a lot of fun. Next week, we entered the Wacky Spiel, where they will put us with other rookies to play a tournament.

We also saw the ice bowling world championships and barely missed the women's dogsled races.

In another suprise, all three of my photos were selected for display in the Fur Rondy photo contest, and my picture of fireweed won an honorable mention! Pretty neat, eh?

Lori Sweeps!

Frank throws a rock!

Out of focus (but interesting) picture of puppy

More on Buffy and Earthquakes

We had another earthquake yesterday. You could hear it before you could feel it...kind of a rumble like an extra large plane. All of the sudden, the house shimmied from side to side, and all the furniture was moving. Read more about it here.


Everyone is still on the lookout for Buffy the Buffalo in Fairbanks as well. Buffy doesn't like snow, so she's likely lurking along the trails. Maybe, like the elephants, she's hiding in the trees -- look for red nailpolish. If you do see her, she apparently likes bread (the food not the band)...

Also, for those of you looking for more information on Yukon Quest, here's a blog from Two Rivers

As if Moose was not enough to worry about...

You'll remember that a while ago I wrote about a Llama that was wandering around Fairbanks. Now it's Buffy the Buffalo who is wandering the trails. I wonder whether a bear will get Buffy as well?

Jury Selection Sale!

At the bottom of this page it says:

Jury Selection Sale - New & used Jury Selection Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com

Who wants a used jury? If you click on the link it takes you to jury selection books.

Alaska News Roundup UPDATED

Here's a Valentine for Anchorage.

Also, Maggie the elephant is still in the news. Apparently Jay Leno and Letterman both made jokes about it a few nights ago. Frank and I went to see Maggie, and I didn't think it was sad at all. She listens to ding-ding music and was definitely having fun interacting with us. It was kind of cool to have that sort of connection to an elephant.

Thank God we're going to extend Bragaw! This is the extension that we were worried about when looking at the Birch Run house, but now that we don't live on that street, I think it's great!

Up here, Canadian Border patrol has a nasty reputation for being unpleasant to Alaskans. Heck, even our boxes in the move were completely ripped open and rifled through. I've heard stories of people being held at the border for hours with no food/water while Customs berates them. In the case of David Enenshaw, the Canadian Border patrol won't allow him in suddenly (after years of travelling back and forth) due to a drunk driving conviction 13 years ago eventhough he's gone so far as to follow their own processes to get a deemed-rehabilitation status filed.

Yukon Quest starts today. Here's a guy who has made a team out of shelter dogs. Chena Hot Springs is a stop on Yukon Quest.

And...our beloved UAA Seawolves tied Minnesota last night! Take that, Big Ten!

UPDATE: I realize that this didn't make any sense, because I forgot a quote in my link about the Bragaw extension. Fixed this.

UAA beats Minnesota!

The Seawolves, our somewhat flaky hockey team, found a way to beat Minnesota last night! It was a night of serendipity, as two players who hardly play were stars of the show. DeCaro, our other goalie, was in since Lawson (14 starts) got a groin pull. Jimmy Dahl didn't even do pregame warmups and was putting on his until he was told he would play when another player started having back spasms in warmups.

DeCaro blocks a record 57 shots on goal (ok, one wonders how we get 57 shots on goal...perhaps Seawolves defense might want to step up a bit???), and Dahl gets the first goal of the game.

Who knew? Now UAA is fourth to last, overtaking Minnesota State Mankato and St. Cloud State.

Duct Tape Saves the Day!

On Thursday, we got 20 inches of snow. Although it was still snowing, it became increasingly apparent that the snow needed to be blown off the driveway before it got too deep. So, since Frank was not home yet, I decided to be handy and start the blower myself. I broke out the directions, and was impressed that I did actually get the snowblower to start on the first try. You can imagine, I was feeling very Alaskan and very handy. I am only done with two snowblower-widths of the driveway when Frank comes home. He was having trouble even getting into the driveway (snowplows won't come for another two days), and stopped the car to get out. I stopped the snowblower so we could start, and realized that the entire right contraption fell apart. I had not noticed, apparently, sometime when I was running the snowblower a "stopper" for the dowel rod that connects the two handles on the snowblower fell off (let's not talk about how amazing it is for an 800$ snowblower to lose any "thingy" and what that means for manufacturing). Of course, this made me and Frank mad -- Frank upset because I broke the snowblower, and I was upset that I could not find the silly little thingy. To make a long story short, Frank wound up (on my suggestion as well so I had a part in it also) using duct tape to make a stopper for the dowel rod so that we could make it through the driveway! Now we feel really Alaskan!

Here's a picture of Frank, a successful Alaskan snowblower:

Duct Tape Saves the DAY!

Puppy swimming in snow...