Christmas 2009 and oddities

Merry Christmas!! To help pass my time on Christmas while Scott is at work, I thought it would be good for me to update my blog again. I'm really trying to be more consistent.

Well, last Sunday we finally got around to purchasing a Christmas tree. It's a very cute tree... Just took these pictures today, so there are no more presents under the tree. Speaking of presents, thank you to my family, and to Scott's family for so many nice, nice gifts. They were all very thoughtful, which made for a very nice Christmas morning. Thank you! :)











I'm missing being with my family during the holidays for the second straight year. Kind of a bummah. I'll be chatting with them in a little bit, to see how their day is going.

This is Scott's Christmas gift to me:




It is a map of the village of Whitman in 1903. When we were visiting Massachusetts in October, we went to Plymouth and were in an antique store looking at all of the wares. We came across all of these old, old maps of towns on the South Shore. Unfortunately, there was no Whitman. However, Scott (unbeknown to me) took the business card of the woman who sells the maps. So for my Christmas gift, Scott contacted the woman for a map of Whitman, who shipped it here and then Scott had it professionally framed. It is an AMAZING map - SO COOL!! Suzy's house is on the map, and the Schofield's house is on the map, and Spivak's, but not my parents...because their house wasn't built until 1912. The houses on the map are all labeled by their street number, and the lots of land are labeled the owner name of that time. It also has an index. It is such a fascinating map!! We are going to hang it tonight.

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Here are a couple of pictures of our new home. We are still missing pieces of furniture, and our artwork isn't hanging yet, as a result.

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And now back to our roadtrip. We took just a small number of pictures, having the video camera and all, but here are a couple that I just came across.

I believe those pictures were from our second full day of the trip(??). Somewhere in the northern part of Canada's Yukon Territory.

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More videos: I'm behind on getting these up - it's pretty time consuming to get them uploaded. Nothing too special in this batch, but the last one is pretty interesting.

The Northern Lights. Not visible with this camera (I believe you must have a film camera in order to capture them), but you can hear Scott and I talking about them. This was shot around 4am-ish on the second full day of our trip.

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A Yukon Territory morning, on our way to Whitehorse.



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Elk, I believe, in the Yukon Territory



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The scenery after leaving Whitehorse, YT.

(I shot a little bit of footage while we were in Whitehorse, but it appears that the files are corrupt and not viewable.)

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The beautiful scenery on our way to Watson Lake.



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The Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake

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Scott heads North tomorrow to see his daughter. He is really excited to be with her again, and I'm very happy for him :) Not too much new here outside of our acclimation to the new environment. I'll write more about life in Seattle once I catch up with all of the videos from the roadtrip. Maybe by then I'll have something thoughtful to write down that will better reflect and fairly represent life here. My current stream of consciousness won't do, I don't think.

Hope everyone is having a very Merry Christmas and soon to have a safe and happy New Year!!

It begins...

The beginnings of five long days...

We decided to drive to Seattle from Anchorage. We had a couple of garage/moving sales, Scott sold his truck, we packed up our things on a barge, prepared the Volvo for all "worst case scenarios" and off we went.

Louie was pretty darn well behaved. I was impressed! Although I think he was dissatisfied with me by the end...his home was the car for about a week because once we got to Seattle, we had to look for an apartment, and we weren't about to have Louie running around wreaking havoc at Scott's Dad's home, where we stayed upon first arrival.

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2360.48 miles.

The Al-Can Highway.

Views, snow, darkness, a hellava lot of time together in a car.

We had a successful trip, with the biggest issues being the odometer/tripometer stopped working and the trunk froze shut one night (we were able to pry it open). Scott and I got along great, we had a lot of fun together! We are hoping to do the drive again some time - but in the summer, so we can enjoy the scenery a bit more.

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We left Anchorage on the night of Friday, November 13th. We made it as far as Glenallen, where we stayed at a motel and then took off early the next morning with the hopes of making it as far as Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. We didn't quite make it that far so we stayed the night in Destruction Bay.

This group of videos are mostly from the first full day of driving. Peruse as you like. And let me preface this by saying that the audio is not spectacular -- over-modulated in fact. So please bear with on the consumer quality of these videos... These videos have no bearing whatsoever on our professional abilities.

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The Hub of Alaska - our first stop of the first full day of driving.



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The drive to Tok




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Too soupy for scenery



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Scott tells a short story about his experience near the Chistochina River



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First wildlife encounter

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The sun makes an appearance

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Evidence of a forest fire - 70 miles to the Canadian border

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"Sun Dogs"

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"Sun Dogs" 2

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Goodbye Alaska, crossing the Canadian border

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Second wildlife encounter - first encounter in Canada

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Scott calls his Mom from Destruction Bay, YT

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Ted and Jason's Knob Creek puts us to bed in Destruction Bay, YT.






So ends our first full day on the road....

A New "Home"

It's been several weeks now since we've arrived at our new "home". Still adjusting on my part - believe I've had culture shock...and continue to have it.

The Emerald State is nice. That's about all I can say about it right now. I haven't experienced enough good things to go on a rave, and I'm not about to talk about how I don't like it, because we haven't been here long enough for me to give it a fair chance.

I'm going to post some videos of our road trip here. There's a lot of them and they are, in a way, meaningless. I've titled them so you can decide if they might be worth your time to watch.

I don't expect everyone to know about our move, so here is a little synopsis:
Scott got a job at KING-TV in Seattle, so we moved.

More to come later - mostly videos I think. I don't really feel like writing. It's probably going to take quite awhile for me to get them all up here, so as always, please be patient - heck it's only been three months since my last post...

So I've been lazy...

...and not posting "real" content.

I'll go through the usual excuses:

1. too busy
2. work keeps me preoccupied
3. Scott keeps me preoccupied
4. too busy

...one NEW excuse that I've been thinking about lately is that if I'm happy, I don't feel/have the need to write. Kinda like writing in a journal when you're stressed out or trying to work out feelings/thoughts.

I've been thinking about me not having the desire to write much when things are working out on my end here in Alaska.

Things now are going really well! I appreciate the state of Alaska incredibly, and that appreciation grows daily.

Why am I writing now?

Because I can't sleep. Not that it's that late, but I just got off work, don't have to wake up too early tomorrow, I'm by myself, and just feel like sharing my little thoughts with whomever may decide to sit down and read them.

I have a TON of pictures to post. Even dating back to when Marianne, Alyssa & Tim visited over the July 4th holiday. What an EXPERIENCE.

I learned a lot about myself and where I came from during their visit. Scott just recently mentioned to me how he hasn't heard me talk about home or being homesick since they left....ha!! It's true!! I don't know what it is, but it's true...

I think what I experienced was eye-opening in the fact that I feel much lighter about my life here. Things are....rosier?? I feel like life here suits me really well. I'm happier. Trying things I've never done before. Been going out on a limb with my thoughts and comforts. There are several examples I'll go into later on.

I think another little part of what I was going through while my family visited was that the people in Alaska, mostly, are very true. And people live here because they WANT to live here. It's such a unique place in America to be, that it's not for everyone. And those people leave. So what we're left with in Alaska is just a bunch of oddly distinct demographic of persons.

Pretty cool.

Having family around, and frankly, just someone from home here in my new element was pretty freakin' cool. Weird, like two worlds colliding, but very cool. It was SO nice to be able to share my excitement for this land with people that I truly love, and know me. I received a very nice email from Tim telling me about his joys of the trip. I still wish that there were more fisheries open for him to really experience Alaska fishing. We'll have to better coordinate their next visit during the running of the reds on the Russian.

All in all, I really appreciate their visit. It was awesome. And I think the pictures show that:



The trip started off with a drive down the Kenai, to Seward, home of the annual Mt. Marathon race. From there we tried our hand at fishing at a couple of local lakes (with minimal success - sorry Tim). My family went on a glacier cruise out of Whittier, via the Alaska Railroad. I know that was a highlight of their trip. And we also managed to fit in horseback riding, a trip to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, kayaking through Passage Canal, and a flight seeing tour of Anchorage's local favorite: the Chugach Mountains. We also found time to go shopping at the downtown shops and market.

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A couple of weeks ago, I went on a local hike with an Alaska newbie. It was a nice hike, with nothing major of consequence.



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This past weekend, Scott, Jilene and I went on a short backpacking trip out of the Eagle River Nature Center. It was Jilene's first overnight backpacking trip. Experiences like this are really good for her to be getting out in nature and to get some exercise.




That's about all I got right now. Pretty tired at the moment and need to head to bed.

Temperature update: 67 degrees with a moon in Whitman, 57 degrees and cloudy in Anchorage
Sunrise/set: 6:03a/7:27p in Whitman, 6:38a/9:24p in Anchorage

"Anchorage's Flower Picture"

Another natpack. This one is about a flower picture that is planted every year at the intersection of L St. and 15th. Once the flowers grow into the beds and fill it out, the picture is seen clear. It is almost always Alaska themed.

"Fire Mitigation"

Fire mitigation in Alaska helps in many ways. Forest fires consume millions of acres in Alaska every year. It is part of mother nature's regeneration. Unless the fires threaten structures or communities, they are allowed to burn. After a small midtown forest fire last year, it was decided to take care of some mitigation efforts in that area to make it easier for firefighters to contain.