I'm moving to another site

Blogger is making me crazy so it's off to another flying fish blog, please come find me!

Chickens are fun to paint!

This is one of the little paintings I sold at the first Christmas crafts fair here.  It is amazing how quickly a chicken picture sells, and they're fun to paint.  I think it's the eyes.

Acrylic paints on a little wood block... small art for small spaces is how I describe them, but this chicken and her buddy were bought by a woman that lives in a big old house. Chickens are egalitarian.

Blogger is giving me fits again, I started this post yesterday and was surprised to see it in draft form waiting here after Blogger froze.  Hard to be a part time blogger when Blogger won't let me blog.  Blog is such a bloggy word. blog.

I have new neighbors

The folks with Mellie the lovely lab/collie went further south to Port Alexander, Ak.  Pretty much the rainiest part of the rainiest part of Alaska, but she has family there and the clique that is Haines was making her sad.

The new neighbors are pretty cool so far and I base my entire judgement on their tuxedo cat, their lack of children (I know, I'm such a snob) and the fact that he put up Christmas lights today.  Oh and they are nice.

I was sicker than the proverbial dog for the week of (and including) Thanksgiving.  Not  your average "stomach flu" but something more violent and longer lasting... makes me really happy to look out at scenery and enjoy a good cup of coffee.  Yeah, that bad.  Who ever brought that to town, to the crafts fair at the school, is a serious vector.  Lots of people say "oh yeah, I had that too" in a fairly grave voice.  Of course the next part of the conversation is a bit of competitive suffering, but the details are disgusting so there are lots of head nods and 'oh yeahs'.

I am going to get some photos up here soon, I promise.  I have some good crafts fair product photos and am thinking I have the new computer tamed enough.  Old dog, new tricks.

Today was spent replenishing the wood shed.  Norman (aka Stormin' Norman of the f/v Chilkat) gave me more than a cord of wood from his property and we split and hauled about half a cord to the house where he's house sitting.  Sudden burst of wood related activity because he's off to Seattle tomorrow for Fish Expo.  The annual fishing industry trade show.  He sells gillnets and is heavily involved in the industry whether it's Dipac hatchery in Juneau or the Takshanuk watershed council here in Haines. I am envious of the trip to Seattle in spite of the work related reason...I haven't been out of town enough this  year!

4 more years!

Whew.

Memories

It's snowing and  slushing and nasty out so I thought I'd load up some of my favorite photos from last winter's adventure in Hawaii.  This one is called " A woman's work is never done" an arduous day of doing laundry.  I needed to put my beer somewhere to take the photo.

 

OOh, too bad about my head, there's a big pixel goober cutting my head off in the pre published version of this photo.  

This one is my attempt at one of those arms length self portraits... while trying to not look like I'm taking one of those arms length self portraits so I look all serious and... arms length self portrait-y. Heh.

 Me discovering the little camera is waterproof... last day on Maui.  

Just realized there's a cool pixel goober in the laundry photo too, but at least Blogger let me upload the photos.  I mean really... I could be in hurricane ravaged New York or something.  Being pixel ravaged isn't so bad!!

 

oh my.

Just back from a month of no interwebs!  You may not have noticed I was gone since I've become a some time part time blogger (sorry 'bout that, I just don't think of blogging when my life is interesting, ya know).  Aaany way...

I was being a deckhand on the F/V Chilkat for the sea cucumber dive fishery in Tenakee Inlet.  Tenakee is south of Juneau on Chichagof island.  Sea cucumbers are spineless critters related to starfish that are plucked off of the bottom of the ocean by divers and then stabbed to death by deckhands and then sent to processing plants to be sent away to the far east.  Apparently they cure everything a rhino horn doesn't.  ..and taste good?  After stabbing thousands of them and realizing it's a fishery based on something that deflates to look like a used condom, I'm not going to eat one.

I'm having a hell of a time with the newest Firefox and google based web stuff like Blogger and Aim mail.  Might just abandon blogger... but we'll see.

It took nearly a month!

I started August 30 trying to switch from the local "DSL" to ACS's mifi system for my internet access.  I spoke to nearly every CSR Alaska Communications employs in Anchorage...I talked to Mike, Michael, Whitney, Melissa, Chris, Ashley and John.  The first one sent the first modem to the wrong location so when I called back a week or so after the initial call, they sent another one.  Then I received the first one and... it didn't work.  So I waited for the promised call from Isaac the supervisor.  Of course he didn't call! I persisted for some unknown reason... so one of the CSR's (it all blurs) had tech send me another little unit.  It didn't work.  It even caused a blue screen of death on the poor computer. 

I gave up Sept 24.  Done.  No more time to mess around with this...  I called one last time to ask how to send it back since lithium batteries are hazardous and have to be packaged with big scary 'how to put out a chemical fire' labels. (which one was it... ) Ashley connected me directly with tech... I whined at the tech guy that I was done, all I wanted was to send it back.  He said ok, but just try this: I told him the numbers on the back of the little machines and he had me turn them on one at a time then yank the battery out just after the lights came on.  That way he could look at the mainframe and know which one caused any reaction. 

He had me download the CURRENT software.  Now I can actually download books from Listen Alaska, I can watch a short youtube video with out waiting 10 minutes.  I have modern internet. 

Thank you tech guy.

Cold Yoga!

Everyone's heard of hot yoga, but we here in Haines have been practicing cold yoga.  The dance studio where we practice is in the dilapidated, aging Chilkat center.  There is no boiler in the building and according to the radio station manager (they have their studio in the building) the guys who were coming to replace the boiler hit a moose on the way down from Anchorage.  Oh and the guys that were coming to fix the rotting roof... they went moose hunting instead.  It must be September.

Cold yoga's not so bad, actually.  Layers, as in any Alaskan endeavor, are key.  Socks until you do your first down-dog and want your feet to stick, a hat until you're warmer, 3 layers on top until you can feel the heat coming out of your chest.  Leg warmers, that 80s staple, until the end of class when you put all those other clothes back on for shavasana.  Bikram has nothing on the community building of cold yoga.

time's fun when you're having flies...

I'm pretty sure that's a Ray Troll shirt but I still like a good pun.  Fall is here, we had a serious amount of termination dust after a storm last week.  Not the usual little sprinkle of snow on the peaks that is a warning of winter, this was snow 1/4 of the way down the mountains, even Ripinsky had snow!  It's melted back but it was the talk of the town for a couple of days!

 Late in the summer the sunflowers realize it's time to make flowers

 The only cosmos flower that made it to flower...then it got battered by rain, poor thing!

 Sometimes the weather gets better in the fall.  As a kid I swore the first day of school was warmer than all of August!  This is the view out across the Chilkat river near a famous local author's house.  I'm not writing her name here because last time I did she commented, in person, on something I wrote. 

If you're a northern tomato grower get these seeds!  Seriously delicious and fast enough to make lots of fruit even in a record cold and wet summer.  They are Territorial seeds (good company, not Monsanto or other giant conglomerate) TM877 "Gold Nugget".  After a frost warning, I brought this plant and 2 others inside, am harvesting little gold yummies daily. 

I wish I had someone to talk to about the neighbor's storage solution.  The female half of the couple came over looking for my forgiveness, I guess.  She explained to me that although it's an eyesore now, it will be better when they put siding on it, it will look just like any other structure.  Just like their mobile home with the particle board siding. 

I let her explain that and told her the problem is not the structure but the location, that they have all sorts of other places to put it instead of right in front of the only window her husband sees me in every day.  She continued talking but I was done listening and put my ipod ear phones back in as I said I'm sure it will look great all ginger-breaded up.  Seriously, I don't give a shit what it looks like, I care where it is. 

I have no legal grounds to have it moved.  I just wish they had been a little more, ok, a lot more, neighborly about it.  It's right in the middle of my view, in the middle of their yard.

Most of all, these are the people I thought were the good neighbors.  They are self centered children apparently.