Book Club - a look back

Last night was book club with the ladies from work. I've been jonesing for pizza so I suggested Moose's Tooth as our meeting place. Their pizza is divine and the beer is even better! I brought along our growler and filled it up with the Tooth's hard apple ale - $10.50 for a 1/2 gallon, not too bad.

I can't believe it, but next month will be the one year anniversary of the formation of our group. We have read some great - and not so good - books over the last 12 months (with time off for summer and Christmas):

Belinda - Ann Rampling
I could not get into this book. Please don't read it, the plot is disturbing to say the least.

The Postman Always Rings Twice - James Cain
My first book pick for the group. James Cain is a noir fiction writer - definitely some dark themes running through this novel. The movie with Jack Nicholson follows the book very closely. "Double Indemnity" is another good one by the same author.

The Shack - William Young
Even if you're not super religious, the book sparks good conversation and thought about choice, judgement and forgiveness. Although I had to skip some parts because it was just too preachy.

Metro Girl - Janet Evanovich
Eh. A mindless read, not bad but not great. I've heard that the author's other series are addicting though.

Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
I loved this book so much that I ended up downloading the second in the series on my Kindle recently. Basic premise is that a woman from the 1940's time travels, ends up in 1700's Scotland, falls in love and finds adventure. Overall it is not science-fiction-y at all and really goes into some great Scottish history.

What is the What - Dave Eggers
Sad but true story of the "Lost Boys" of the Sudan. A good read but it was hard for all of us to get through this one.

Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
I pride myself on reading a wide variety of books and keeping an open mind, but this one didn't grab me. It was difficult to even find any themes to discuss.

A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines
Segregation, race issues and relationships in 1940's Louisiana. I shed a few tears at the end of the book.

Naked - David Sedaris
My second book pick. We had three depressing books in a row so the girls asked that I pick an upbeat selection! Sedaris is a very funny essayist with a particular brand of humor (which I love). He mostly writes about his life and that of his family. One of his sisters is Amy Sedaris (from the show "Strangers With Candy") and she also reads his essays on the audiobooks.

The Prestige - Christopher Priest
After a slow start, I couldn't put this book down. I had seen the excellent movie (with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) and knew the basic premise, but while the book shares basic plot points with the movie it takes a different turn overall. Good twists to keep you entertained.

Committed - Elizabeth Gilbert
We've just started this one. Elizabeth Gilbert also wrote "Eat, Pray, Love" which is a fabulous book about her journey after a divorce to eat in Italy, pray in India and find love in Indonesia.

Any good books you want to suggest? My turn is coming around again!

The dress

A friend of my mom's is a talented seamstress and alterations guru, and has agreed to tackle the huge project that is my wedding dress. She came over on Saturday morning to take some measurements and see if my vision of this dress jibes with what we have to work with. Good news, she seems confident it does! It will take a few rounds (or more) of alterations to go from original to final, but we have 5 months to work it out.

These are all inspiration photos -- based on the Jim Hjelm #8663 lace dress that I am absolutely gaga over. Not so inspiring? The original's price tag -- a whopping $6,000!

Love the lace, love the v-neck (although mine will be slightly less revealing!) and love the slim silhouette.

This dress is by another designer, but you get the idea...

New addition

No, we don't have a new addition to our household here, but my cousin Angie and her husband Jay do. They had a beautiful little baby girl in California last week! Congrats to them -- sounds like everyone is healthy and happy.

Bring on the booze

This Saturday night a group of friends and I are volunteering at the annual Beer and BarleyWine Festival downtown. I've been to this event quite a few times...and even remember most of them! Turns out volunteers get free admission ($30 value) to another one of the festival's weekend sessions, so I'll be drinking for free on Friday evening. D is going snowmachining again so no delicious beers for him. Basically volunteers bring out water jugs, make sure the bread bowls are full and help set-up/clean-up.

After walking in the door, attendees are handed a wad of drink tickets, 6 oz. glass and program outlining the beverage vendors and their offerings. I like to take 5-10 minutes beforehand to sit down with the program and mark down my top picks and plan of attack. Lindemans is number one on my list for their framboise and pomme, and Celestial Meads (an Alaskan company) has some tasty and very strong meads. I've learned to generally stay away from the barleywines and anything with an alcohol content of higher than 9%, although I make an exception for Ring of Fire Meadery out of Homer and their amazing fruit beverages. The breweries from England make good ciders as well. Can you see a pattern emerging here? I like the sweet stuff!

Will try to remember and take some photos, but don't hold it against me if I get distracted. :-)

Seriously, tgif

Busy, busy week. I am going to enjoy the weekend immensely! My workplace holiday party is tonight, so I'll put in an appearance, nosh on some tasty food and hope to win a big door prize. D is off in the wilderness again, so my best gal pal from work will be my date.

Lately, all I want to do is curl up in some warm blankets with a hot cup of tea and read my new KINDLE! I ordered it off of Amazon last week and it arrived on Tuesday. So very fabulous. Even D likes it. In an average month I burn through 3-4 books. Most of that reading is done in bed and inevitably my hand gets cramped from holding the book a certain way or my neck gets a crick in it. The Kindle is so light and thin that I can read for hours comfortably. Books are downloaded wirelessly through the 3G network.

Birthday wishes

My wonderful and lovely mother is celebrating her birthday today. Happy birthday Mom! I hope I can look as good as she does as I age. Must be those Asian genes.

In other news, I'm helping out my production-company friend by appearing in a tv commercial tomorrow afternoon. I've done this before but have never had actual spoken lines -- so I'm a little nervous. The shoot is at the airport and I get to be an airline customer service person. Wish me luck!

Toasty beverages

My throat started to hurt this past weekend and I was afraid that whatever D had a couple weeks ago had made its way on to me. I popped some pills and Emergen-C, and managed to drown that cold bug with lots of fluids -- including this yummy tea that Risha brought up with her in 2008. I do love the coconuts!

Heating up some water with the adorable kettle my mom sent me last year - I also have a big silver tea kettle but it takes a while to warm up. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate our gas oven and stovetop? Cooks everything faster than the electric one (from the 80's) I had at the condo.

A friend gave me this great Primula glass tea cup and infuser for Christmas.

Pop in the loose tea or bag...

Add hot water...

Put the top on and wait a few minutes...

Viola! Yummy tea is ready -- and the infuser sits nicely in the top, which doubles as a coaster/dish.

Hrumph, cats don't like tea. They get a little milk instead.

Eastside skiing 3

Last set of photos from our day of skiing last weekend. The view is from roughly the halfway point of our route...I love stopping here to look out over the city. Downtown Anchorage is visible off in the distance, beyond that is Cook Inlet and Mt. Susitna (Sleeping Lady).

Plenty of exercise + interesting smells = good time for the dog.

A slightly pink sky to the east as we finished up our circuit.

Somebody is tired. He almost knocked me off balance when slipping between my skis.

Let's go home!

It's hard to believe that 2010 is just around the corner. So many wonderful things to look forward to in the new year...our wedding, seeing family and friends this summer, having D meet the Korean side of my family (hopefully sometime this spring!), and lots of adventures in the Alaskan wilderness.

Happy new year everyone!

Eastside skiing 2

Expert hunter D spotted this majestic eagle perched in a tree as we skiied up to a little bridge overlooking a creek. I was able to take quite a few photos before he unfurled his wings and flew away.

Holiday cheer

Well, I hope you all had a very merry Christmas! D and I decided to go low-key for the holiday this year due to busy schedules at work and the whole saving-for-a-wedding situation. We got up late, had a leisurely breakfast, opened a few gifts from family and then basically took it easy all day.

My workplace gives away pre-cooked hams to all employees as a holiday gift and I picked up a very nice one, which we ate on Christmas day. I LOVE baked ham and was really quite excited about enjoying it. So far we've used the meat in jambalya, a ham and eggs breakfast and eggs benedict. D has caught me a few times sneaking cold pieces out of the fridge. What can I say, this girl loves her ham.

Here's Drift helping to "unwrap" presents. Basically he rips up the paper until he feels like enough damage has been done. What's funny is he doesn't do this with other items in the house, like fabric or furniture or toys. I've been trying to upload a video of him doing this, but Blogger isn't cooperating.

Eastside skiing 1

Saturday was a balmy 30 degrees and we decided to take advantage of the mild weather with a cross-country skiing jaunt into the woods. We covered a lot of ground (5 miles maybe?) and were outdoors for about 3 hours. It was around 12:30 in the afternoon when we set out and the sun was already pretty low in the sky!

Some of the trails we skiied on are owned by the military, so there are lots of signs warning people to stay on trails and out of the deep woods:

For the record, I've never seen or heard of anyone setting off unexploded ammunition in this area and sometimes I wonder if they put up these signs to discourage people from trespassing on military land. 

The military also allows Alaska residents to moose hunt (archery only) in certain parts of this area through a lottery drawing. D won a permit a few years ago and brought me along for the hike. Let's just say that I was a good sport about tromping through the low-lying brush and thick forest in snowshoes!

During Saturday's skiing excursion we came upon two dead moose that had been harvested by hunters. It was interesting to check out, but I didn't take any photos because I'm not sure how you all feel about seeing moosie parts all over the forest floor!

And finally, a moose track:

#1

This is exciting: TripAdvisor (an amazing travel info site -- I don't book anything without checking TripAdvisor first) has selected Seward, Alaska, as the #1 United States travel destination for 2010!

Seward is the closest city/town to our wedding and is a great little place to visit. In terms of activities, there's fishing, wildlife cruises, hiking to Exit Glacier, the SeaLifeCenter, dog sled rides, kayaking, photos ops and TONS more.

Lighter days ahead

Winter solstice was December 21st, which brought us our shortest amount of daylight for the year: 5 hours and 27 minutes. From here on out the days will get longer by about 2 minutes right now and 5 minutes at some point in the spring. Currently the sun rises at about 10:15 a.m. and sets around 3:45 p.m. People wonder how we deal with the dark days -- honestly, you just get used to it. And look forward to summer!

Our wedding is scheduled a few days after the summer solstice and we'll have oodles of daylight for all of you to enjoy: 19 hours and 20 minutes. Which is basically 24 hours of functional daylight -- the sun may set but there is enough light to see and do things by. Most towns have summer solstice celebrations, including Moose Pass, so if you're in town the weekend prior (June 19) be sure to check them out.

Weekend roundup

I can't belive I'm posting this photo, but Risha made me promise that I would. We spent about 90 minutes at a local bridal shop on Saturday and in that time period I was in and out of no less than 15 dresses - that has got to be a record or something.

The following dress is about 4 sizes to big for me and came with a set of detachable sleeves. Soooo not my style! It was also a big poofy ball gown, also not my style. Although I do love the look of a big bustled train.

Yeah, yikes...I know.

This next one was pretty and more streamlined, which is what I'm looking for, but too pageant-like. The beading and crystals were amazing.

The bridal shop discourages photos (they don't want you to take pictures and then have a seamstress recreate a dress) so we had to be pretty sly in the dressing room. We ended up finding a dress that is similar to the style I want and now feel pretty confident that the alterations to my mom's dress will work out for me. Yay!

On Friday, D and I attended his union holiday party at one of the local hotels. It was a good time -- the food was really yummy, but the prices at the bar were ridiculous. $8 for a little cocktail! Afterwards we headed up to the Crow's Nest, a restaurant and bar on the 20th floor. That place is very swank and I would definitely go again, if for nothing else than the views of Anchorage from the big windows.

In the lobby we found a gingerbread village -- created by the hotel pastry chefs. That's A LOT of gingerbread and icing.

Winter blues

Mother Nature has thrown up snow all over us. It just kept coming. The dog can barely get down from the back deck because he can't see where the snow-covered stairs begin and end. I went to girls' craft night at a friend's house on Wednesday and saw 2 cars being towed out from ditches during my 5-mile drive home. It's way slick and the other morning we drove through blizzard conditions to get to work.

Risha leaves tonight -- I think the pets are going to miss her.