Friday, January 9, 2009
BOW
It's a blast - basically women of all ages can come and learn outdoorsy skills through four three-hour sessions. Last year I took archery, firearm safety, fly fishing, and intro to shotgun. By now everyone has heard me rave about the shotgun session -- I loved it! We got to actually shoot at moving clay targets. This year I signed up for snowmachining, dog sledding, smoking/pickling fish, and rifle markswoman. BOW isn't until mid-March, so it's a long wait until then.
My profile pic for Blogger is from last year's BOW -- here I am posing with one of Lance Mackey's old sled dogs (he won the Iditarod last year).
We stopped on the way home from Chickaloon to take some photos -- so pretty. 
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Cold, cont'd
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Cork trivet - DIY
I hope everyone had a wonderful start to the new year. We played Rock Band on our friend's Wii -- it was fun, although I won't be asked to play drums in a real band anytime soon.
This past weekend I also had a chance to start on a project I've been wanting to tackle for a while now: wine cork trivets! One of the physicians I work with drinks a LOT of wine so he brings me a bag full of corks every couple of weeks.
My fancy collection center is a wicker basket in the kitchen...

I dug through to make sure the lengths and widths of each cork would match up to my design. Then it's basically like putting together a puzzle. D cut a wood backing and some nice mitered-edge trim for me and after some minor glue incidents, viola! I present a cork trivet -- ready for use as a hot plate holder.
Monday, January 5, 2009
TV star
As promised, here are the two tv commercials that Drift has been a part of. There is talk of another spot, but Drift hasn't been booked yet...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Happy New Year
Happy New Year peoples!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
AK to MEX
This 10 degree below zero weather is just fueling my Mexico frenzy. Last night I spent 45 minutes going through my (meager) stash of hot-weather clothes - and I'm still not even close to being packed. Meanwhile, D will grab some t-shirts and shorts the day before we leave and call it good.
Let's see, what else is nice around here -- we're gaining daylight again now that the winter solstice (December 21st) has come and gone. That means we've officially started winter, which is interesting because I could have sworn that we've had 3 months of it already. Now we've got another 4 months to go! Then comes one month of spring and finally our 3 glorious months of summer.
The cold weather comes with blue skies -- last week I pulled out my sunglasses for the first time since, oh, about October. That may seem weird but when you go to work in the dark and come home the same way, there is no use for sunglasses.
I wanted to share the bad photo below because you can see the sun starting its decline in the sky. We're looking due south -- can you guess what time it is?? 
The time is 12:25 pm!
Man, everytime I get the chance to look out my office window it hits me that I am so lucky to have such an amazing view.
Monday, December 29, 2008
The aftermath
Apparently the cats went out and bought me a big bottle of wine - they even signed the package...Little Dude has very bad handwriting. And Drift got me a fishing vest -- what a nice puppy.
Drift received a candycane-shaped bone from D's parents - he LOVES IT. D gave it to him and Drift threw it up in the air, chased it around and ripped off the plastic casing. He was ecstatic! He hasn't been that happy since Em and Randy gave him the birdie.
Santa also brought him an extra large birdie. It's about 3 times the size of the original. All that ripped up wrapping paper in the photo was from Drift's present-opening frenzy. He likes to open his own gifts.
Below zero
Pulling your weight
Ah, that's better -- this is his "please take harness off NOW!" face...

Go Drift Go!
If he gets good, Drift may be able to enter the Fur Rondy dog weight pull someday!
Friday, December 26, 2008
One Cool Thing - 12/26/08
Via Hostess with the Mostess...

Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
More Discovery Channel
I blogged about DC's visit to my workplace this fall, but here's some more gossip about a not-so-reality show to be part of "Alaska Week."
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Fallin' thru the ice

This is the best part of the article:
"The ice road is not a road in the eyes of the Department of Transportation.
'It’s not a DOT responsibility,' Howard Thies, maintenance and operations director for the northern region of DOT, said when contacted Monday. 'We are the Department of Highways, Aviation and Public Facilities; there’s no rivers in there. It’s not our problem.' "
Take THAT, stupid reporter!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Unhappy holidays
I feel sorry for all those people in Seattle and Portland but I've been there too -- running to customer service to get re-booked with the other 200 people from my flight or frantically dialing the 800 number and praying to get a real live person. But as far as airports go, the SeaTac is a pretty nice one to be stranded in. Lots of good food and shopping...
