Second costume hint

Feast your eyes upon my armbands and shudder in terror! Or at least keep your giggling to a minimum. Any of you slackers want to guess? KAES you are not allowed to guess since I told you what my costume is earlier.

Bazel, Not-Bazel, and A Thing that goes HISS in the Night

This is Bazel. I always think of him as Stuart Little in a cat body. He is sweet as sugar and white as snow.

This is Not Bazel. We call him Frog, as in Bullfrog, as in the horrible sound he makes that I think is supposed to be a meow. This guy kept getting brought to us when we put up posters for Bazel. Alex finally kept him inside when he got 60 phone calls and this same cat brought to our door twice in one hour. And he had a hard time convincing people that he wasn't trying to not give out the reward. He doesn't really know what to think of the dogs, but he has warmed up to Bear (though she still gives him a LOOK when he lays down too close). No one is looking for him.

This is Bazel. We miss him very much and are still looking for him at the shelter. We had hoped he was the kitty eating food off the porch for the last couple weeks. It started when I saw kitty paw prints in the snow on the porch one morning. We slept with the door open the next night and woke to kitty kibble eating, but made too much noise rolling over on the airbed to get a glimpse. The next night Alex put the food in a cup with a loop of duct tape inside to see if kitty had white fur. There was some white looking fur on the tape in the morning. I've locked the kids all up in the bedroom with me every night for nigh on two weeks in an attempt to lure the kitty further inside. I had kitty eating food almost two feet inside the door.

The scientist in me had deduced from nightime ramblings that if kitty was eating food at the same time every night, it was before 3am and after 1am (between 1:16 and 3:18 to be precise). At 1:21 this morning we awoke from a stuper to some horrendous noises in the living room. Alex vaulted out of bed and asked where the light switch was in the hallway. I told him, he ignored me, and he proceeded to run into a myriad of obstacles. By which point I too had exited the bedroom and deduced that it must be Frog singing because Bear was on the bed and the dogs weren't yelping in claw inflicted pain. Sure enough, Frog was singing to the porch kitty. Talk about an attack cat; he sure fits in with the dogs. Alas, kitty is a fluffy siamese looking thing, not my Beloved Bazel.

It's Friday, do you know where your coconut is?

It's Friday, kick back, relax, and put your feet up. '"Is that a coconut on your desk?" Well, as usual, that's a bit of a story. No one around here even really bats an eye at it. Most people sit in my extra chair next to the coconut and play with it. At one point we even took to calling it Wilson. Yes, we know the volleyball was named Wilson, but it somehow fit. You see, we have an office in Hawaii and everyone here just assumes I went there and brought it back with me. When this assumption is voiced I ususally respond with "Now what would our CAD operator be doing in Hawaii that she can't do from here?" usually followed up with "Never mind, let's send her and find out." So far this hasn't resulted in a Hawaii assignment.

One day a couple weeks ago I was in the office break room and I swear I smelled coconut. I should warn you here that I love coconut. Also, we have an espresso machine and a decent variety of bottled flavorings sitting on the counter. I've not yet bothered to make myself a drink as we don't have any coconut flavoring (or almond, but that's another story). Anywho, I was sniffing around and checking the bottles to see where that delicious smell was coming from when I was interupted by a co-worker (who I don't know well) coming into the room for some coffee. Upon being given a strange look I explained I was trying to find the source of the coconut smell. 'You do smell coconut in here, don't you?' He assured me he did, got his coffee and left.

The next morning I sat down at my desk and immediately smelled coconut. Oh no, it's finally happened, I'm losing my mind! Then I noticed one of my drawers was ajar. Huh, the room must not be quite level, that drawer's slid open a bit. It wouldn't close. So I opened it and found a coconut. THE coconut, aka Wilson. Since my officemate was not in yet, I went to said co-worker's office who met me in the break room the previous day and quieting sang 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts' as I slowly walked by his room. He burst out laughing. And replied with the next verse of the song later in the day as he passed my office. Which really confused my officemate.

Oh how I love office games. Enjoy your Friday. I have to work at my other job tonight, where costumes are mandatory. A preview of part of my costume:

Any guesses what my costume is? Stay tuned for more hints as I am bored at work.

Results of biking to work

I decided to ride my bike to work this morning, no easy feat considering the state of my apartment after the arrival of my shipment of stuff from Portland. In my efforts to extricate the bike from it's position against the kayaks, I unearthed this:


...my birthday present from a friend. I had been meaning to hang it on the wall, but that led to discovering where the heater vents existed and the realization that the kayaks were in the way of turning on the heat,......and somewhere in there the hanging of the painting got lost. But now it is found and I love it. That is exactly how I feel in the morning when I leave the warmth of the apartment and that first blast of cold air hits me and I can no longer think. It's beyond 'what was I thinking?' it's so numbing I can't think anything. Luckily I have new lenses for my sunglasses, so the cold air no longer takes away vision function. I love Alaska.

Schnazzy new top and someday skirt

My adventures and mis-adventures are not limited to outdoor pursuits. Sometimes they appear in my crafting attempts.




Here we have a recently completed (Yay!!) sleeveless top I knit for myself. It looks very angular here, but pretty flattering when worn. The mis-adventure part comes in at the color change approximately 1/3 down from the top. I ran out of yarn about two years ago and stubbornly refused to pull this apart and use the yarn for a different project. I first tried to fix this by unknitting part way and changing the pattern. When that didn't work I set it aside for a while. When I came back to it I brainstormed potential yarn/pattern solutions, and the hunt began.




Eventually I found not only a yarn combination that I liked, but also some fabric that I thought would make a lovely co-ordinating skirt. I am absolutely in love with the beaded trim on the bottom of the top and may have to buy some more for the skirt. I'll update you as the skirt progresses, but I'll warn you, it could be a long wait since I'm much more motivated to sew wool pants right now.

These shoes were made for running

These are my faithful Ryka running shoes. I ran my first marathon in them on the island last summer (2007) and they are all done. I also wore them for the first few months of waitressing at the sport's bar. Now they are going to hop in the box and be mailed down to Nike for recycling.

This is Frog (aka Not It, aka Christopher Robin), not Bazel, checking 0ut my shoes. he says they are stinky and he is glad to see them go. Doesn't he look a stupid amount like Bazel?

Talkeetna Dreamin'

Not long after landing in Anchorage I came across an opportunity that I couldn't decline. Some times this seems like it was a brilliant idea and other times it seems like a moment in which I took leave of my senses. Unencumbered by the thought process or not, I bought some land. Or, rather, I'm making payments on some land.




As you can see, the road is in and the puppies approve. The electricity is also in. I'm sure this isn't how it looks now, but it is how it looked this spring. There's probably snow there now and it's likely colder than our daytime high of 12 today.

Of course I remembered to only bring my camera on a cloudy day. Trust me, we walked the whole development and picked out the only lot with a view. This is the view across the gravel road; the Talkeetna mountains are behind those clouds across the wetland. Trust me.......I'll get more pictures next visit. Not that I have any idea when that will be since I work 7 days a week. Rest assured it will happen.

This is the north end of the lot. There's only a couple lots between here and the end of the road. All the other lots have many trees, but not mine. The slough bends to the east just beyond my lot.

And this is the middle of the lot. You know, where the cabin goes. This view is on my screensaver. As a reminder of why I go to work everyday. And don't leave at lunch.