Where you at?

D will soon be off doing outdoorsy stuff - putting food on the table, Alaska-style. If all goes well we'll either have some fresh caribou or moose meat. Drift will stay with me while he is gone since dogs are generally a hinderance when hunting big game. Speaking of the damn dog, he had a nice little walkabout last night. Apparently the back gate was open when we left Drift outside for the night. It ended well though -- he was waiting at the front door for his hardhat special. Food is such a powerful motivator!

We ran a few errands last night and saw an interesting sight...a woman appeared to be walking her kayak down the street. It was a mini whitewater kayak mounted on a two-wheeled carrier, so it looked pretty easy to cart around. I'm pretty sure she was headed to some lake for some evening kayaking, but we couldn't figure out where the nearest body of water would be! Maybe she really was just taking the thing for a walk.

Tennessee 1: home and garden

I took over 300 photos during my trip back east, but don't worry, you won't be subjected to all of them...

Dad took me on a tour of mom's garden (which has completely taken over their front yard) and apparently the mixture of natural soil and the right amounts of sun and rain this year have produced some impressive veggies.

Monster Korean zucchini! They really do look like mini-watermelons. Oh so tasty.

Some sort of melon or pumpkin.

And tomatoes -- we had fresh vegetables for dinner every night, so yummy.

Mom's flowers were gorgeous...

Dad's shop -- where custom, handmade knives are born!

View from the back of the house. A nice covered porch runs the length of the second level (which is really the first floor of the house -- the basement is the first level).

Work-induced fog

I just realized that I titled my post from yesterday (which was Wednesday) as "Monday Update." Hellooo, McFly! And I still have not had a chance to put up any photos from my TN trip as of yet. My load at work is heavy so I am a bit swamped and and obviously my brain is not 100% focused on certain things!

Monday Update

How in the world did September get here so fast? It cannot possibly be fall already, right? Our little maple tree in the front yard has twinges of red and orange on the leaves. The weather is definitely cooler in the mornings, although the evenings are still pleasant. I need to stop by the store and pick up some bulbs to plant for happy little flowers in the spring.

We went ring shopping last night -- woohoo! I have definite ideas about the type of ring that will end up on my finger so in some ways that makes the process easier. D was a real trooper and very patient. It might have helped that I bought him dinner beforehand and that we managed to visit three jewelry stores in a span of 40 minutes.

Still no firm ideas of the date and location of the wedding. There are some complicating factors so we're looking at all of our options. Nobody said planning would be easy!

Back in AK

I returned to Anchorage on Saturday evening, after quite the eventful flight from Atlanta to Anchorage. A women on board the plane, a few rows up from my seat, had a medical emergency which forced us to land in St. Louis. We spent almost two hours (!) on the ground before getting clearance to take off again. They wouldn't let us off the plane and we ended up being close to two hours late into Anchorage. We never did hear what illness the lady had -- but two physicians on the plane put her on oxygen and talked with her for almost 30 minutes before deciding to recommend an emergency landing.

After being out for almost two weeks, close to 300 emails have accumulated in my work account (only about 12 phone messages, thank goodness) so I'll have a nice long post sometime tomorrow with photos from the Tennesssee trip. Until then I'll be slogging through the muck that is my inbox!