"New Dog"

Well, that's what we are calling him until he gets a name. We dropped by the Anchorage pound, I mean "Animal Shelter" today, and were planning just to take a look around. Yeah right. As soon as Jeremy and "New Dog" saw each other there was an instant connection. He is extremely calm and well mannered, especially for a picked up stray who has spent the past two weeks at the shelter. He has been playful with Lady and gentle with Emmy and Ravenna, despite all the chaos of them playing here at Alberta's. We are trying to come up with a name. I posed the question over on Facebook, and the current leader is "Junior." I had also suggested "Conan" "Vlad" and "Musky" but did not get much excitement on those. We are open to suggestions....

Emmy's Tutu

Emmy's friend Nora gave her a tutu a few days ago.  We thought it was adorable, but Emmy was only mildly interested.  She liked the skirt, but did not like the fact that she could not access her belly button.  For some kids, twirling their hair or holding a blankie is their comfort mechanism, but for Emmy it has always been scratching on her bellybutton.

Tomorrow we take off on the Kennikot for Homer.  We'll be arriving in Homer at about 2 am, and then driving up to Anchorage to stay for a few nights.  Then we drive on to Fairbanks, where I will be doing a month of intensive schoolwork on my dissertation.  I am excited to go up there for a change, but also reluctant, as we are just really getting settled here in our house.  My garden is picking up and it may be past its prime by the time we get back.  Oh Well, it's for a good cause.  And we have Mike to watch the house for us while we are gone.

Miss Congeniality

My niece Melody won "Miss Ccongeniality" in the American Legion 4th of July Baby Contest held in Kodiak today.  She wore the cutest sailor girl dress and some fur trimmed moccasins that were once Ravenna's, then Emmy's and got passed down to her.  Emmy was a bit too old to be in the contest, but she enjoyed looking at all of the babies.

Michael Jackson Tribute

I realized after today's sad news that Emmy has probably never even heard Michael Jackson.  So we decided to remedy that right away. After we watched a few of his videos on Youtube, she kept saying "I wanna dance! I wanna dance."

I do not know whose messy laundry room this is.

Radio Show

Tonight...7-9 pm Kodiak time. Join me for Spruce Tip Brew on 100.1 FM Public Radio KMXT. Available by streaming audio via the KMXT website, if you don't have one of those old fashioned things called a radio.

I did it.

I joined Facebook.  I had been resisting for so long, but today I was looking at the Alutiiq Museum's new Facebook profile, and thought, why not?  I am intentionally trying to be semi-incognito about it, though Facebook doesn't make it very easy.  It definitely creeped me out when immediately after signing me up, it had a whole page of suggested friends.  Some of them I know I had in my email address book...  Was that in the fine print or something? That was a joke.

You do give something up when you join these sites.  I figure if I keep my footprint light, like limiting my photos (since they technically can do what they want with them once they are uploaded, right?) and my personal info.  But software is so high-tech nowadays it is hard to keep too much private.  But who am I kidding?  I have a fully public blog!

North Star playground

Yesterday Kelly and Kori invited Emmy and I to come play at the North Star Elementary playground.  It was Emmy's first time there, and I am pretty sure she will want to go back. Kori was already a pro on the slides.  Emmy for some reason always went down the tunnel slide face first, and we had to tell her only to do that when there is someone there to catch her at the bottom!  Towards the end Emmy had to potty, but never fear! her mom was prepared, with the Subaru traveling potty station! Let's just say I have learned the hard way.

Jeremy wasn't able to go because he, Mike & Tony were doing some volunteer work on someone's house whose roof was caving in. Way to go guys, doing something just for the sake of lending a helping hand. And Happy Father's Day to the best Daddy Emmy could ever wish for.

midsummer...already?

Solstice will be on Sunday.  Do we have any special plans? No. This is the first weekend I haven't had to do something for work in almost a month, so relaxation is high on the list. Followed by working on my literature review for The Dissertation. Followed by unpacking some of the totes we've yet to get to since moving in 6 weeks ago.  Let's not think of those things for now. Maybe we'll just sit on our upper deck, which has been getting a lot of use since we moved back.  Here is a picture of the view, from just a few moments ago - the Three Sisters Mountains.  Sometimes I can almost forget about the telephone pole...

Anniversary

Yesterday was Jeremy and my 7th anniversary. He took me out to dinner, and got me a CD and a romance novel ("Return of the Warrior")! that was so cute, since sometimes he gives me grief about my compulsive reading. He actually read the backs of the books at the bookstore in order to choose me a "quality" one with a plot. After we went out to dinner we drove to Abercrombie to walk out to the cliffs for a few minutes. It was lovely. And many thanks to our friend Mike who babysat Emmy so we could get some alone time.

Abercrombie today

Today we went hiking around the lake at Abercrombie. We don't go there too often, always assuming that there will be a lot of people there. But we only ran into a few groups, and they either had dogs or kids, which was exciting for Emmy. Good to get out and actually hike, since I hardly ever do that anymore. I remember a time when we would go for a hike every day. I would like to get back to that. Could there be a better stress reliever than these mossy green woods, fresh air and beautiful beaches?
Last night we grilled out and had a few people over. Kelly brought Kori and Emmy and Kori had a lot of laughs. They are only about a month apart in age.
Melody is a little over 8 months now. What a cuuuuuuutte niece I have! She is starting to crawl and babble a lot.

Black Bean and Red Pepper Dip

I got this recipe from the back of a bag of chips, but if you don't tell, I won't. Actually, I never make it exactly the same as the recipe says, so here is how I did it:

Ingredients:
1 can seasoned black beans, drained
half of a 16 oz jar of roasted red peppers, drained
1 - 8 oz brick of low fat cream/neuchatel cheese
a bag of taco seasoning
a few pinches of fresh cilantro (to taste)
about 2 tablespoons of lime juice

Garnish:
1 small chopped tomato
a few pinches of chopped cilantro

I mixed all of the main ingredients until smooth in a blender. I scraped it into a bowl and garnished with the chopped tomatoes. I am chilling it for about an hour, and then serving with chips. I think next time I make this I will make my own "taco seasoning" mixture or use a more obscure packaged mix, so that nobody thinks "taco seasoning" when they eat it. However, when I tasted it earlier it didn't taste much like taco seasoning, so I am surely just being paranoid. You could definitely tell it was black bean and roasted red pepper.

So, If the US Disintegrates...

...We would go back to Russia?

(This isn't exactly new news by now, but that's not a real high priority for me.) I remember hearing in the media about Russian Professor, Igor Panarin's prediction that the US would break up in 2010, but never realized that he predicted six autonomous regions for the lower 48, while Alaska will "go to Russia" like a territory that can't take care of itself. Hmmmm...I kind of feel insulted that he thinks we can't take care of ourselves. But if such a well known scholar says it is going to happen, he must be right. Maybe I better dust off my fur hat. At least it's better than being under the control of China like all you folks in the "California Republic!"

Emmy's favorite phrases

Emmy has really been cracking us up lately. Today in the car she found Jeremy's old cell phone, flipped it open like a pro, and started chatting away. "Hi Eggy (Peggy). Yeah. Yeah! We go beach! Yeah! Spider! yeah, Patty's. Have juice! Yeah, yeah! Dude..."  So here are the current top ten favorite phrases of our little chatterbox:

1. Do it again.

2. I want juice.

3. Cikmia Cikmia (from "Twinkle twinkle little star" in Alutiiq)

4. I go pee.

5. I want see Grandpa/Grandma/Daddy...

6. I want candy/gummies/guy-em (vitamin)/walkie-cheese (mac & cheese)

7. Read it.

8. By myself!

9. No!

10. Why?

Summer's Beginnings

Here is a photo of the fam out at Sargeant Creek this past week. Jeremy and Mike were preparing for a second run down before the water dropped any further and Emmy and I set shuttle for them.  Emmy enjoyed throwing rocks into the river, which is what she was doing when this photo was taken.

Blogsaustion.

I have been having trouble lately deciding what to write about on this blog. This may reflect my general stressful life right now with work and school, but there is more. It is hard to write when you don't have defined audience. I know I have friends and family looking at this blog. then there are those who follow my links off of other peoples' blogs. And then there are those who stumble across it randomly, either through a web search or some other means. By the way, the most common way people find my blog through a web search are the following terms: "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" "Fluffy lamb cake" and "Baked Brie recipe."

So I don't think there is really a solution to this audience issue with my blog. I am not going to make it into a "family only" blog, and am not going to pick one of my interests and avoid putting up all the adorable pictures of Emmy. We'll just have to settle for an uneasy truce for now between all of my interests and the different parts of my life I feel like talking about from day to day.

Can't Wait!