Snow snow snow

Third day of snow flurries. It's like our own watered-down version of snowpocalypse! Temp is around 10 degrees, which is not unbearable by any means but something in the low 20's would be perfect.

For your viewing pleasure -- a photo of a small-ish moose helping itself to a branch snack a few blocks from our house...

Hazards of winter

Is it spring yet where you live? If so, lucky you...because it sure ain't anything close to spring here in the AK. Blizzards, avalanches, power outages -- we've got it all!

Storm dumps more than foot of snow in parts of Anchorage - Anchorage Daily News

I woke up yesterday and discovered that the clock was blinking "12:42", which meant that the power had gone out exactly 42 minutes prior. Snow was blowing every which way and my car was covered, but one nice surprise was that D had shoveled a perfect little walkway to my car door. What a guy!

It's still snowing lightly today but we can at least see the mountains. The temperature has dropped though -- it was 10 degrees on my way to work.

Monday already

Did you watch the Academy Awards last night? I didn't, but was very happy to hear that "The Hurt Locker" won a couple awards. D and I watched that movie on Saturday night (thanks Netflix!) and thought it was really good. I can't speak to the level of realism because, uh, I've never been part of an EOD unit that responds to bomb threats in Iraq, but it was a powerful movie.

I realized this weekend that our wedding invites need to go out sometime this month. They are halfway finished (I'm designing them myself) but there are a couple things that I can't decide on -- the font being one of them. I go back and forth between a coupled different options.

D worked all weekend on the laundry room. Walls are painted, shelving is up, new electical outlets are in. I picked this bright yellow color for the walls and it's so bright and cheery. D is not convinced, but I think once everything is placed in the room the color will be toned down.

And here is what happens when I get bored and the dog is too tired to run away...

Housekeeping

Please bear with me as I make some upgrades to the blog. I found a great template that will allow for publishing of photos in a larger format, but it always takes a while to ensure all of my widgets make the conversion.

Made it to Friday

Still here, still alive -- just trying to keep my head above water. I thought that once Heart Month concluded my time would free up a bit, but I forgot that my boss had a 10 day vacation planned. So here we are at the start of March and it's busy once again.

D and I visited Home Depot last night and picked out a happy yellow color for the laundry room walls. It's looking great down there -- new drywall is up and D laid down a coat of primer. We'll also have new flooring and storage options on the two opposing walls. Can't wait!

Oh and after sitting through two days of jury selection, I managed to not get picked for a criminal case. The attorneys found a pool of 15 potentials and the rest of us were sent off to thank our lucky stars. It was a rape case and would have gone on for about 2 weeks, according to the judge. Not pleasant.

Best buddies

I wasn't able to save this and post it to my blog, but if you click on the link below it will take you to a page where you can view the short video. Trust me, it's way cute and super sweet.

The Orangutan and the Hound
--From the National Geographic Channel

"When Surya, the orangutan, meets a hound dog by the river, the two carry on like long lost friends. We humans often cannot get along with other humans because the tone of their skin differs from ours. How much can we learn from these two species, whose love for each other spans across species lines?"

Jury duty

My petit jury duty stint began this morning. I got up early, drove downtown and made my way to one of the courthouses. Security only took a few minutes and then I waited in the jury room with over 100 other people. Roll call was called a couple different times and then after an hour or so we were all ushered into a very small courtroom. After 4 hours they had only decided on about 8 jurors, which means the majority of us have to return tomorrow morning and continue the process.

I brought my Kindle along to read before and after our time in the courtroom. It was nice to not have a heavy book weighing down my purse! We were all released at 1:30 today so I was able to come into work and get some things done. My boss is going on vacation starting Wednesday and I really hope I'm not selected for the case or else we have no coverage here at the office.

Taxes & snow

This morning was my annual visit to our family accountant. He's done our taxes for very many years now and it's always a pleasant meeting. What's great is that he recently moved from a midtown building to a new lower hillside office less than 2 miles from our house AND this place is above a yummy coffee shop. Score! Needless to say I enjoyed a coconut mocha after the appointment.

Overall everything looks good and I told Mr. Tax Man that D would be coming with me next February because by that time we'll be filing taxes together. Cuz we'll be married! Yay!

Here are a few random photos from the week. Since we're gaining daylight, I actually get to see the sun set after work. This photo was taken around 6 p.m...

Lots of snow fell upon us this week! Good news for skiing. But it has made the roads treacherous -- I slid through an intersection this morning. Full on SLID THROUGH, brakes screeching, white knuckles on the steering wheel, swearing through my teeth...the whole deal. Thank goodness no one was waiting at the other light. The people at the bus stop got a good show.

Snow fall - photos from the confines of our warm, dry dining room...

And one last one from my office window...notice the cloud cover obscuring the Chugach Range...

A coworker gifted me a flower bulb and it's taken about 6 weeks to get to this point, but I finally see flowers peeking through! I think it's a crocus?

Wedding update

For her wedding, a friend of mine recently looked into renting the grounds and lodge of a small local ski resort (Arctic Valley), located in the Chugach Mountains above Anchorage. For a 24-hour period, it costs $2,900 all-inclusive (grounds, lodge, equipment rental). I think my eyes bugged out a bit when she said that.

I am so thankful that our facility rental for the Tern Lake Inn is much less than that. We have the whole Inn reserved for 3 full days (not just 24-hours) and are able to use their tables/chairs/glassware as part of the rental. Plus the owners will set-up/take-down and clean up everything afterwards. Yes!

I'm happy to report that my wedding shoes have arrived! After tearing into the box and nervously trying them on, I was relieved to discover that they fit and are beautiful. I know green is an unconventional choice for wedding shoes, but I don't want to look back on our day and have it resemble all of the other cookie-cutter weddings out there. D and I are unique and our wedding should reflect that.

On the home front

A run of unusually warm weather started last week and managed to melt most of the snow off of the main roadways.We still have snow in the yard and a buildup of ice in the driveway, but it's totally gone from the back deck!

This is what I call "fake-out spring weather." With the balmy, 40 degree temperatures we get lulled into a false sense of spring, and them BAM! All of a sudden the weather turns cold and it's 20 degrees again. And on top of that we still have at least 2 months of winter left. At least it's sunny outside...

The sun is really rejuvenating. We're gaining more than 5 minutes per day, and it's still light outside when I leave my office, anywhere between 5:30 and 6 pm. I even wore my sunglasses yesterday when driving out to meet a friend for lunch.

At home D has begun demo on the basement laundry room!!! I'm super stoked to have a clean and finished area in which to do laundry. The room wasn't horrible to begin with, but it wasn't the most pleasant place to spend a lot of time in. As you can see, D has removed all of the drywall and last night he started re-insulating the walls. This room is very cold in the winter and I may very well have set the speed record for laundry folding last month due to a lack of consistent heat in this space.

Here it is right after we moved in. We plan on adding a toilet and new sink/base to increase our bathroom tally from 2 to 2.5 (and bump up our home's worth!) The washer and dryer on the right side.

If you click on the photo below to enlarge it, you'll see the Nutty Professor is keeping D company while he works. He says he found the photo stuck in the wall. :-)

This room is adjacent to our home's crawl space.

Will update with more photos as carpenter D makes additional progress!

Dinner, Symphony & Porcupine

This month is just kicking my butt -- I feel so behind on a number of things, one of them being this blog! I thought about blogging last night but then I ended up spending 3 hours in the kitchen, making garlic bread, caribou lasagna from scratch and a very yummy batch of chocolate tarts in coconut bowls. So dinner was tres' delicious, if I do say so myself. I just about passed out from the heat though, with two burners on the stove going strong and the oven working overtime.

The Symphony on Saturday evening was really great. I haven't been for quite a while now and forgot how much I enjoy listening to live music. It was a lovely evening. And my workplace got some great PR exposure! 

I had a request to post some porcupine photos, so Mim, these are for you!

Last month I blogged about D and I having dinner with friends, with an unusual meat as the main course. D shot this porcupine out at the cabin and our friends cooked it up, using a cookbook we also have at home, Cooking Alaskan. What's funny is that I've looked through that book and don't recall ever seeing the section on porcupines!

Both Jay and Sara work for Fish & Game, so they are no strangers to cooking up Alaskan-type meals. However, porcupine was a first for them. Jay says he laid the animal on its back and then started to clean it by going in by the belly (no quills there). After butchering it, Sara let it cook overnight in a crockpot with lots of veggies and bacon. The four of us thought it was good, but really the meat didn't have a strong taste one way or another. The bacon helped to give it a good flavor.

Jay says he'll boil down the skull and use it for education purposes at work. The teeth really fascinate me, look at how yellow and long they are...yikes!

Long claws too...good for digging and climbing trees.

A closer look at the quills, nestled close to the skin.

D kept the frozen porcupine outside until I could take it over to Jay & Sara's for cleaning. As he brought it in, somehow a quill stuck him and you can see how tenacious the thing is.

A break

Sorry peeps, life is just too busy right now...will try to blog sometime next week!

Paper fetching

Our local paper has been steadily shrinking over the last few years. Weekday editions are no more than 2-3 sections and the Sunday paper is depressingly thin. This all means the Anch. Daily News is really pushing subscriptions via neighborhood solicitations.

We signed up last month for a 10-week stint and guess who LOVES going out to fetch the paper every morning? It may help that it is usually wrapped in an orange plastic sleeve and looks remarkably like Drift's orange retreiving dummies...

Back to blogging

February is always a busy month at work and I'm up to my eyeballs in Heart Month events. Three seminars and a health fair are out of the way, but we still have 4 remaining seminars plus a symphony concert sponsorship/marketing tie-in. So I'll be volunteering at the symphony this Saturday night, which is not so bad because we also get to enjoy the concert for free.

This week is also girls' craft night (Wednesday) and book club (Thursday). Sometime this week I will continue my search for the right shade of green tissue paper. I need to start on a wedding craft that will go along with the ceramic guest favors that my sister and her boyfriend have so generously begun creating for the big day.

D has found two of these dog booties out on the trails somewhere, so we drive Drift crazy by making him wear them around the house. The dog acts like we wrapped his feet in styrofoam! It's pretty entertaining for us to see him high-stepping around the house like a Lippezaner pony!

Bachelorette party

My friend Sandra's bachelorette party was a rocking good time: burlesque lessons (complete with feather boas and elbow-length gloves), an "exotic dancer" at Bernie's and a party bus that shuffled 18 of us from bar to bar on Saturday night for a scavenger hunt of sorts.

Our bachelorette - she weighs all of 115 pounds so I'm not surprised she got buzzed pretty fast.

There was another bachelorette party upstairs at Bernie's so we were able to see this "cop" put on a show for the other bride-to-be. I'm not going to post any of the other photos of him!

Our party bus was pretty great -- drove us all around town and there was no waiting in line outside at any bar or cover charge for us.

Me, Carrie and Cindy. This may have been at the Anchor downtown. Those feather boas gave us all pink necks -- the dye rubbed off on our skin!

Sadly, Sandra did not make it to the end of the night -- she imbibed one too many cocktails and went home at 1 a.m.! She was fine the next afternoon though, and has landed in Hawaii by now for her destination wedding. D and I had talked about attending but we have too many things going on right now and are trying to save for our own wedding. I'm trying not to think of sandy beaches and warm weather right now!