Gray day

It is 10:05 a.m. and according to the National Weather Service, the sun should be making its glorious appearance in the morning sky. But alas, I do not see the sun. It's cloudy out today and very dark and depressing. The cloud cover is currently halfway down the mountains. Anchorage will have a whopping 5 hours, 42 minutes of daylight today.

The good news is that on December 21st -- winter solstice -- we'll start gaining daylight again! Right now we are losing around 2-3 minutes per day, at other times during the year it's closer to 5 or 6 minutes. So in a month we could possibly lose (or gain) 2 hours of daylight.

People wonder why Alaskans play golf or bike and hike at midnight, or otherwise stay up so late in the summertime -- well, we're trying to soak up as much sun as possible! It's a neat experience to go camping and stay up all night, but only use a headlamp or flashlight for about 2 of those hours.

Look at that tongue!

Reminds me of the Humunga Tongue...


Then he got distracted by the tv...

Printer Problems

Personal chef

I like it when Risha comes to visit...she makes stuff, like these yum yummy cranberry and raspberry (from our yard) muffins with a crumble on top.

Here they are before baking:

And after!

I use silicone baking cups - less waste than the paper ones since they're reusable - and it's so easy to pop the muffin out of the silicone. Plus the cups are ok for the dishwasher.

3 Cool Things - 12/5/08

Free fonts - at dafont.com. It seems like a weird thing to pay for fonts when you get so many gratis on your computer, but there are graphic designers who do nothing but create cool new fonts and really, they should be compensated for their time and creativity. However, the fonts at dafont are TOTALLY FREE and easy to download. They just need to be put into the Fonts folder in your C: drive.

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Holiday gift tags in Word format. Easy to add your own text.

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To-Do List - from Patricia Zapata.

Fishy art

This woman in the UK picks up the fish from a market and then develops a scene around them. Her mom creates the costumes. Here's a slideshow:

Pop quiz

Quick, how much do you remember from Civics class? I remember nothing since technically I never took a program called Civics. All of that info was rolled into different social studies classes throughout junior high and high school. Regardless, I retained enough to score 81.8% on this Civics Quiz. Woo hoo! Yay for the Anchorage School District.

What's interesting is the results of the test:

"Seventy-one percent of Americans fail the test, with an overall average score of 49%.
Liberals score 49%; conservatives score 48%. Republicans score 52%; Democrats score 45%.
Fewer than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government, a minimal requirement for understanding America’s constitutional system."

This page is also eye-opening:

"Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions."

That doesn't inspire much faith in our elected politicians, but there's nothing new there I guess.

Help the economy...shop

Not too much going on here -- the weather is warmer, thank goodness, and my sister is town until the 15th. Santa Claus is coming to my workplace on Saturday so I've been tapped to serve as the photography elf. It's pretty funny to see the different reactions children have to Santa -- some will run up to him and say "do you remember me?" and others will totally FREAK OUT. These kids are happy and smiling as they walk through the door, and then the level of their meltdown is directly proportional to how close they are to Santa. Poor kiddos. :-)

As a holiday offering, I wanted to share a site that comes in handy for finding good deals: The Bargainist. It's painful for me to pay full price on anything, so I also check these sites for coupon codes: Current Codes, Coupon Mountain, and Slickdeals. Happy shopping!

Lip smackin' good

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We sure did - good food and some quality time for me and D. Our pets sure did eat well...Drift says yum!


Wow, I wasn't expecting to see 3 degrees as the temperature this morning...

More snow

Ask and ye shall receive - my wish was snow and I got it! Here we are at the beginning of this past weekend:

You can still see our little birdhouse cabin...

And here we are at the end of the weekend:

Someone needs to shovel out that birdhouse!

Looks like we received about a foot of snow. I ran some errands on Sunday afternoon and made it all over town just fine, thanks to my all-wheel drive. Then go figure, I got stuck...in the driveway. D had to dig me out when he came out to shovel.

New toy

Living in Alaska affords so many unique opportunities, including outdoor pursuits, but eventually you start to hear the siren call for more "toys." It's starts with the small stuff -- ski or snowboard gear, outdoor clothing -- then jumps to the big boy toys -- boats, atv's, snowmachines, rv's. Well, we're living the Alaskan dream here with D's brand new snowmachine...it's gorgeous and fast!

This past Friday D loaded up the truck and we drove a couple hours up to Willow for some lake and trail riding. What a rush! I'm very, very tempted to get my own sled now...


Saw a couple dog sled teams during the day -- trail etiquette dictates that snowmachines pull over so the teams can pass. I thought maybe the dogs would get spooked by the loud engines but they didn't seem to notice.


Lots of other riders out -- this photo is from the little parking lot near Crystal Lake.

Rolly Creek Trail

Even out in the wilderness we couldn't get away from advertising! This flyer was nailed into a tree...

Yummy hot chocolate during one of our breaks.

D spotted these two moose off the trail. We watched them for a while and I considered posting the video here that I took, but it was so boring -- they just stood looking around for about 3 minutes before walking into the trees.

The little speck in the middle of the trees is a plane we saw throughout the day. It landed right next to us as we sped across a lake - that was exciting.

3 Cool Things - 11/28/08

Hi everybody! I'm out and about with the rest of the crazies looking for Black Friday deals. This is only the second time EVER that I have dragged my sleepy self out of bed at 0-dark thirty and shopped on the day after Thanksgiving. And no, I'm not aimlessly shopping - I have a very short list. Then I'm coming home for more sleepy time.

And now back to your regularly scheduled cool things...

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About once a week I check out WikiHow, a site that explains how to do anything.



Topics range from making mulled beer, stopping a "friend" from putting you down, avoiding overdraft fees and save a wet cell phone.

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Stuff is expensive - you know this, peoples. Extend the life of your electronic gadgets!

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NotMartha is all-around awesome - here are some of her tiny pies in little canning jars. I must makes these posthaste. If we have sent you canned salmon in the past, reuse those jars!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am so very thankful for many things -- the close relationship I have with my family, D and his wonderful family, my health, a fulfilling job, amazing friends and a happy home. Life is truly good right now and I have many blessings to count. Happy turkey day everyone!

Snowfall

The skies opened up yesterday and let loose some much-needed snow! We received just a few inches but it's the light, fluffy stuff -- not snowman-making snow, which is sticky and wet. You peoples from wintry areas know what I'm talking about here. The light stuff is SO much easier to shovel -- like cotton balls. Wheeee!


Earlier this fall, D built a swanky new shed in the backyard for storage.

I think our bikes, among other things, are locked safely inside the shed. Which is a good thing since D's previous bike was stolen from under the deck RIGHT AFTER we moved in to the house. We know that the kid across the street did it but can't prove it -- although we're super stoked to find out that a police officer has moved into the house next door to the thief. He parks his cop car outside. You cannot ask for a better neighbor than that!

Hardhats and chow

Drift will eat and eat if we let him. He's always hungry. I've heard that about the lab breed, but I imagine that most dogs are like that too? D told me that one time he came home and discovered that Drift had somehow gotten into the dog food bag and pretty much eaten himself silly. The dog's belly was so distended it looked like he was pregnant! Drift didn't eat for at least a day I think.

Sooooo needless to say, Drift is not trusted to self feed. At about 6 am and 5 pm he gets a little antsy and carries around a hard hat to let us know that HELLO HE IS HUNGRIES! One of these days I'll get around to posting a video of the whole pre-feeding event. It's pretty entertaining.

Pepper likes his food too - the only one of my cats that will eat dog chow. It's probably not great for her so she only gets a few pieces here and there. Here is her little portion and Drift's dog-sized amount. Not pictured: Drift drooling and almost trembling as he waits for the signal to eat.

NOM NOM NOM, yum yum yum.

Also not pictured: Drift finishing his meal in under 35 seconds (possibly a new record) and eyeing Pepper's hardhat. Generally he is wary of the cats, but in this case I think the pull of extra food trumped his fear of cat hissing/claws and he went for the white hardhat.