Fullness of Brain

This is what my brain feels like right now. Smokey is heading out for the start of a full season of guiding this week and my brain is full. Thankfully I have no finals to cram for, but I will admit to a need to write a 10 page paper this weekend and more stats than you can shake a stick at. I know, I tried. And the stick broke. Moral of story: I'm not dead, just have had a busy semester. It will be over in 2.5 short weeks. And I will get to breathe for 10 days and then dive into Summer session.

Growing Music

Smokey was gone again for a week or so earlier this month. And now we have another plant. Our plant accumulation rate has become rather high. I have a large collection at work and I'm starting a new job next week that does not have the same window exposure, so I think some may come home with me.

In other news, I was lucky enough to be offered a mandolin to borrow from a co-worker. While I have played many musical instruments in my life, I have never played a string instrument (except technically the piano). I printed off some free info from Folk of the Woods and found an intro book at Title Wave for three bucks. So I've been plucking away in the evenings for a few minutes, learning chords right and left. I'm calling it physical therapy because several of the chords I can't make happen without physical manipulation of my finger. And then I have to play fast before it moves.

Superbowl Sunday

Since I stopped working at the sports bar I don't get much exposure to sports events. I barely even knew the big day for football was upon us. I happened to be at the pet store and picked up a couple new toys for the dogs to celebrate the occasion. Percy got a new fluffy football...

...and the big dog got a yellow chick, both with squeakers.

Apparently Percy thought both toys should be hers, so she remedied the situation. Luckily she isn't too good at hoarding and Tatonka was able to commendere the football. I think there's a name for that move in football....maybe a fumble or a recovery?

I know there's no name for this move in football, unless you count it as a referee replay review?

Ultimately Bear found the whole activity not worthy of her attention and time. And Percy destroyed the chick. A good way to celebrate game day, just don't ask me who won.

Racing the Sunrise

Today I rode my bike to work for the first time in many months. It's taken a couple weeks of talking about it and a few more of thinking about it for this to come to fruition. As with the best laid plans, I got to bed late and slept in an extra half hour. Thank you Tatonka for deciding to chew up your food bin last night, which was discovered when Smokey went downstairs to feed you dinner and let you inside for the night. Because we felt sorry for you having not been outside enough in the past day or two.

After a slow start, I rapidly got in the groove. It may have been a while, but this idea of bike commuting is not foreign to my life. Smokey promised to bring me breakfast and lunch after exercising the dogs and getting just a little more sleep. He was not happy when I asked him to please get out of bed and locate his bike light for me. I refuse to dig through his tub of stuff to find anything. Murphy's law was tested and found to be operational. The light was easy enough to find....including the dead batteries. After he duct taped (in coordinating blue tape) the light to my bike he found the mounting bracket.

Despite having purchased quality tools when I started bike commuting last year, I could not find my pump, tools, tubes, or patch kit this morning. I am fairly fanatical about my gear being organized and putting things away, but somehow there was no sign of these items. Now I recognize I'm no Jill of Up in Alaska (http://arcticglass.blogspot.com) but I do manage to get out and put some miles on my bike. For instance, I have studded tires on my bike, but not on my truck. Nevermind the fact that Smokey switches my studs out for me in the spring and fall.

Seeing as how late it was getting I started to wonder if I would even need the light. We carefully scouted the route on the way home last night and discovered a few sections where I would need a light to see with (as opposed to the light I have, designed more for people to see me). And then the race was on. Sunrise today was at about 9:30.

The most uncertain part of the ride was at the beginning, in getting to the trail so I didn't have to ride along the busy road with no shoulders. This was fairly easy and after one stop to switch gloves and zip up my windstop top, I was cruising. The hills even seemed a little less steep. And that's when I discovered the art of peddling on the downhill. Because if you don't it's not the gleeful cruising expereinced in summer, it's just you sitting still in the cold with the wind blasting you and it's cold.

Later on I discovered the art of praying while flying. Because at times it was more like flying than biking; there was no stopping. This is really only a problem when you discover you are way too close to a curb with the dip for wheels full of chunky snow from the snowplow. That's where the praying comes in.

I arrived safely and plan on repeating this epic journey to get home tonight and hopefully every week. And I'll deffinately be going through all the possible hidden spots to find my missing gear. I suspect Smokey's truck because it has history of harboring all things that go missing.

Wolverine Winter Summit

The weekend before last Smokey decided to host a shindig. He has previously hosted such an event, mostly for his WFR clan, but decided to add an element, to kick it up a notch, if you will. This involved a dinner party morphing into a full day of hiking followed by a potluck style dinner. He even polled folks and selected a Sunday so everyone could make it.

While at first I was very excited about this socializing, it may have waned a little after hauling myself and my well supplied pack up a steep ridge. I may have said something along the lines of 'who's idea was this anyway?'

That's about when we saw this pile of metal. My guess was the remains of a weather station. Luckily, the one friend (that's right, I said one) who joined us for the hike knew it was the remnants of a very light aircraft that wrecked in bad weather many years ago.

My two-tailed dog summited with me in the glorious sunny day. Actually, I think they summited about seven times. Very little wind at the actual top, but plenty on the way up. We didn't hang out for too long as sitting still was cold. Even the dogs thought so and they expressed this by trying to crawl onto my lap. At the same time. Smokey was laughing too hard to get a picture of that.

But he did get plenty of other pics of the great view. Someday I'll know all those peaks by sight. I usually only remember the names after I've been up them.

Too bad everyone else missed this. Also too bad we only had an hour after this six hour hike to get the house cleaned for our guests. I told people that if they really liked us they wouldn't open any closed doors. Thank goodness for closed doors.

25 Minutes

Last night I had dog training after work. I finished at 7:17pm. I went home, changed clothes, waxed my skis, loaded them into the truck, and drove to the ski area. It was 7:42 when I got there. And the skiing was awesome. Except that one of Smokey's poles broke and I missed a turn so we ended up going an extra mile or so. Overall, a great reason to love Anchorage. I don't think I could even get from a dog training area to my house in 25 minutes in Portland, let alone to a ski area. Also, I'm proud of how long and hard Tatonka worked just to find an article. I'm looking forward to him progressing in this discipline and making it more obvious for me when he smells something. The learning curve is steep for both of us right now. But it's still fun.

Golden Heights Winter Hike

Smokey and I went for a nice hike the weekend before last on Sunday afternoon. No, this is not Mt. Redoubt, it's Illiamna blowing some steam. Smokey and I had a slight panic when we saw it until he and our friend, LauLau, figured out it was the wrong volcano.

This is LauLau's new puppy, Primer, who came along on the hike with us and Tatonka and Percy. He let his big brother, Goose, come along as well.

And this sweet puppy is getting a surprise on payday. But I don't mean surprise in a good way, except for the humans. She's getting a shock collar. I've had enough of her little reindeer games and I think her bad habits are wearing off on the good dog.