Masked bandit

Hammered jewelry

Attending college in San Antonio was a great time in my life for a number of reasons: fabulous education, beautiful year-round weather (for the most part), finding lifelong friends (yay Slee and Em!) and of course, the abundant shopping opportunities not found in AK.

One of my favorite jewelry stores originated from the Texas Hill Country -- James Avery. This stuff is handcrafted and so classy -- really timeless stuff. My sorority provided me with my first piece. And I still wear it today, along with matching earrings and a necklace that my parents purchased for me.

I'm really liking these hammered pieces:

Identity crisis

Most times I forget that our nation's -- and North America's -- highest peak is not officially called Denali, but Mt. McKinley (for President McKinley from Ohio). Alaskans usually prefer Denali, which means "the high one" in Athabascan. You can differentiate the Lower 48-ers and cheechakos from Alaskans by how they refer to the mountain.

I'm all for the effort underway to change the name to reflect Alaska and our cultural heritage, even if it is a long shot. Apparently Ohio senators (since 1975!) have felt the need to block any and all name-change legislation on OUR MOUNTAIN. Which is made even more crazy when you find out that President McKinley had absolutely nothing to do with the mountain, and never once stepped foot in Alaska.

Label me

When I first started here at the medical place of my employment, the admin assistant let me know where she kept the label maker in case I needed to use it. IN CASE? Of course I needed to use it...it's a label maker! I love those things -- they are to organizing freaks what crack is to addicts. I labeled the bejeezus out of my office.

I'm not sure why we haven't purchased one for the house yet, but this label maker is on my wishlist.

Assimilate or else

Geez, I feel like the only PR person in Alaska without a freaking iPhone. All of my "in the business" friends and acquaintances are constantly pulling out their iPhones and tap, tap, tapping away at those screens. Or else they are using their devices to Twitter. I have no time to Twitter and have successfully resisted all attempts by others to get me to do so -- but I feel that day may come in the future.



I do feel the pull of the iPhone though! I still have a little over a year left on my current phone contract -- but after that it's very likely that I'll jump on the bandwagon. Ooh, I can't wait.

Pick and choose

If you can't buy organic every single time, this handy dandy site helps you figure out when you really should go the organic route due to pesticides on the food we eat. Did you know that washing produce does not fully get rid of the pesticides present?

According to Food News: "The best option is to eat a varied diet, wash all produce, and choose organic when possible to reduce exposure to potentially harmful chemicals."

The full list is at Food News, but peaches and apples (oh no, I love apples!) have the highest pesticide load, so you should go organic on these if you have the opportunity.

Organic, shmorganic

For a while now I've been trying to figure out how to start doing the organic food thing. It's easy enough to pick up items at the grocery store that say "organic," but are they really? We are just taking the store's word for it. And the definition of organic is pretty wide -- people are applying it to things they shouldn't.

In a weird case of coincidence, D called me this morning to say that he's heard some guys talking about an organic food delivery system from a place called Full Circle Farm in Washington state. So I checked it out and discovered that they have a delivery site to my workplace! Then I noticed a story that my boss had posted on our internal employee website about this very same thing. Spooky how things just come together like that.




One of coworkers has been utilizing the service for a while now and sings it's praises. So long story short we signed up for a small box every two weeks -- which comes right to my workplace -- and that is supposed to be plenty for two people. I'm really excited to check out the produce quality and support real organic produce farms.


From the Full Circle Farm website:


Full Circle Farm is a 300-acre certified organic produce farm in Carnation, Washington. Full Circle Farm cultivates over 125 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, utilizing sustainable farming practices which focus on soil health as the foundation for nutritious organic produce.


Our top quality produce is available through our year-round CSA Program, and found in local Farmers Markets, restaurants and grocery stores. Members of the CSA Program have the ability to customize box contents and have the option of ordering from Full Circle's Green Grocer which offers a variety of products that can be delivered with their box. Choose from organic fair-trade chocolate and coffee, fresh eggs from free-roaming organic chickens, and other seasonally available fruits and vegetables.

Endless winter

Anchorage received a mini-blizzard last night around rush hour -- how appropriate, right? Just when everyone is racing to get home we experience the worst driving conditions.

Here I am stuck in traffic at the worst intersection in town: Lake Otis & Tudor. If you like webcams, here's the one for LO&T.

It's hard to tell but there is a slight hill on this side of Lake Otis and cars without 4-wheel or all-wheel drive just spin, spin and spin their wheels some more. It's quite frustrating to be right behind a spinner and see the light change from red to green and then red again!


As it so happens, my last three residences have forced me to use this intersection in order to get to work. It is THE WORST PLACE TO BE at rush hour. Just looking out my window, rocking out to my mp3 player and waiting....

Half and hour later, I made it home in one piece and Drift was excited to finally be out of the house!

Here he is sniffing around our neighbors tree. No matter how much I try to get him away from that darn tree he keeps going back.

Happy 1/2 birthday...to me

Today is my half birthday! I only remember it because my friend Karen celebrates her full birthday on February 5th -- so her half birthday is my full birthday. Clear as mud?

Seat 29E

Have you seen this airline-related funny making it's way around the internets? It was forwarded to me a year or so ago and I recently got it again. Apparently Snopes.com has verified the letter is genuine.

Click on the image to read the whole letter:

Sneaking around

Rib update: much improvement has been observed (and felt). I was getting quite worried that the pain would still be there into March, which is when I'm going to BOW winter session. Shooting guns and dog sledding would probably be a bad idea. But the prognosis is looking good, peoples. We can all let out a collective sigh of relief.

D and I attended a boat show a couple days ago in the new convention center (which D worked on) and while the show was so-so -- not the selection we were expecting -- D did get to give me a private tour around the facility. He pointed out lots of little interesting things that I wouldn't have noticed on my own. The industrial-sized kitchen is supposed to be amazing, but I was too chicken (kitchen-related food pun!) to venture in further than the staging hallway.

Brain dead...call back later

Half of the calls that I receive at work would be eliminated if people would just read and pay attention to what is in FRONT OF THEM.

Just look over the flier or email or letter and read it in its entirety before picking up the phone and calling me.

Please.

Pretty please.

Want to know a secret? Sometimes I don't answer my direct line and let calls slip off to voicemail-land because I just cannot take one more painfully obvious question. Where is this event? What time? How much? READ THE AD that you have already mentioned is in your hot little hands!

I am so frustrated today.

Mooses

It seems like we see more moose in town than we do in the woods. Case in point: this morning I drove into work and circled the employee parking lot looking for a spot...and there was a mama moose having breakfast with her kiddo. I didn't dare get any closer because when I first walked up mama looked straight at me. Nobody wants to start the day off with a moose stomping!

Can you tell that it's snowing today?

Are you going to eat that?

I actually made dinner last night (yeah, D couldn't believe his luck either) and it turned out pretty good. King salmon fillets baked in the oven with steamed broccoli and potatoes. After the salmon came out of the oven I added cream cheese to the top -- it was pretty darn good peoples. And we had apples and strawberries for dessert because I'm not buying ice cream regularly anymore (diet and all that). Poor D.

We don't buy seafood anymore, or meat for that matter. Sometimes I'll pick up chicken from the grocery store, but it's nice to not worry about the additives and growth hormones in the meat and seafood we eat since we catch our own fish and D goes hunting for bear and caribou every year. Some people ask me if it's odd to eat that sort of meat and I say no, because when you grow up thinking squid and fish eyeballs are regular food, bear and caribou are not going to freak you out.

Calgon take me away

I have vacation on the brain -- I cannot stop thinking about the beach! It's probably because two coworkers just came back from Hawaii and two of our friends are departing for Hawaii this week. D has never been to the islands before and we've discussed going there but it's just more expensive than Mexico. On Maui you cannot find a 6.5 peso bus that runs everywhere you need to go! I do love Hawaii though -- I've been lucky to be able to visit all the major islands.

In weather news, we have hit another cold snap -- it was something like -10 degrees at the house this morning. And no volcano eruption yet, although it's likely to happen any day. In the ADN story I linked to there is a quote from one of the volcanologists at Alaska Volcano Observatory. I'm so embarrassed for these people that have no common sense and call the AVO with stupid questions -- what a waste of time for the staffers!:

' "It comes in all flavors," McNutt said. "When something like this happens, you get this wide variety of stuff. You get a real clear sense of the incredible variety of views and educational backgrounds in the public."

One recent caller had a ticket to Hawaii and wanted to ensure the volcano wouldn't disrupt the flight, he said.

"They said please do everything I can to make sure the volcano doesn't erupt until after 8 o'clock," said McNutt, adding that the observatory tries to respond to all inquiries. "I gave it the attention it deserved." '

D'oh!

My ribs are feeling better and sometimes I even forget about the soreness, so that makes me mucho happy. I hope to be fully healed by next week!