Visitors

So it's looking like we're going postpone our Seattle getaway until later in 2011––probably summer, when the weather will be nicer and we'll have the Perreault scion in tow to introduce to everyone.

I am already nostalgic for the theoretical January itinerary I had planned out in my head: endless meals at La Carta de Oaxaca and the Tamarind Tree, a stroll in the rain at Golden Gardens, a horror movie marathon at Kathy and Heather's (I never told them they were hosting movie night, but showing up at their place unannounced would probably have been fun), one last sail around Lake Union on Lisa B's Shady Lady, a shopping extravaganza at Big John's PFI (the cheese, oh, THE CHEESE!), crashing Laura and Ed's housewarming party (how could I crash a party I was actually invited to? oh, there are ways), winter storm watching on the coast, catching the Picasso exhibit at SAM ...

I was really looking forward to stepping off the plane at Seatac and inhaling a big lungful of thick, wet air.  Oh, moisture, how I miss you.  And I was really looking forward to seeing Seattle friends again.  I miss you all (even more than I miss the moisture).  But hopefully I'll see you in June or July when we do make it down.

Or maybe we'll see you when you come up to Alaska to visit us!  You should totally visit.  But I'm nervous about what I'm going to do with you while you're up here.  I want you to have an awesome time, because after seeing Fairbanks once, you may feel like there's no need for a second visit.  As my recent social activities have trended toward the homebody and teetotaler variety (e.g. rereading the entire Harry Potter series over a stimulating cup of decaf tea), and not the wild and crazy times of my misspent Seattle youth (e.g. drinking schmancy cocktails and the general raising of hell), I'm feeling a little insecure about being able to properly host you in the manner to which you've become accustomed.

If you came up during winter or while there was still snow on the ground (you know, until April or May or so) maybe I would encourage you to sign up for a lot of Alaskan adventure-y activities, like dogsledding, or flightseeing, or snowshoeing on area trails.  None of which I'm really familiar with, so you'd have to figure those details out for yourself.  I've heard that people have a great time charter fishing in Valdez, a mere six hours south on the Richardson Highway, but not having a clue what time of year fishing seasons begin and end, I'd also leave those arrangements to you.  Same goes for any kind of hunting season, but since I'm preaching to a Seattle choir, I doubt if that will really come up as an adventure option.

If it was still hockey season, I would take you to a Nanooks game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8THGqrjUDGI), or if you're feeling super classy, an Ice Dogs game.  And if you were really jonesing for some hot winter sports action, we would hit the Curling Club to see John curl (it's like shuffleboard on ice!).  Then we'd stop by the Marlin for a post-curling drink, but I'd want to leave after just one club soda, because I'd be sick of experiencing bluegrass and cigarette smoke while sober.  Don't worry, there would be lots of other Alaskan bars for you to experience, all of which would still involve hippies and smoke.

After a dip in the pool at Chena Hot Springs (during which I would encourage you to run outside and jump in a snowbank to really get the full experience), maybe we would encounter (hopefully from a great distance) a moose or two on the way back to town, so you could fulfill your wild animal quota.  Failing that, I would try to run over one of the numerous winter ptarmigan (the chickens of the north!) that hang out in the middle of the road as a souvenir for you to take back home.  Of course, I'd probably also be talking non-stop about the beauty of the aurora borealis and your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it while visiting Fairbanks in winter, but the fickle weather may not cooperate, so I'd end up taking you to the airport and pretending that the landing lights were actually the aurora.  You'd think it was amazing.

After all this winter excitement, I'm hoping you'd be too exhausted to care about the fact that instead of running around all over town with you, I'd probably prefer spending a quiet and monotonous evening at home sipping decaf tea, sitting under a blanket in front of the stove, rereading children's books, and maybe if I was feeling really frisky, putting together a 1000-piece Thomas Kincaid puzzle (don't worry, you could help).

I haven't even thought ahead to visitor activities for summer or fall.  Unless prearrangements are made, I suggest that for 2011, blackout dates might be in order for late April until early June.  But then, maybe you'd like to experience first-hand the miracle of life and a lack of sleep with a newborn?  It's up to you!  Besides, with all the incessant, throbbing, harsh daylight of summer pouring through the guest room window, you may not get to sleep at all.

I really do have some ideas for helping you have a bonafide good time on your visit, though in my limited pregnancy-brain creativity, I'm having difficulty imagining Fairbanks summer entertainment as anything other than activities falling under one of two categories: 1) Wholesome Good Fun or 2) Hedonistic Daylight Hallucination.  Examples:

Wholesome Good Fun
A nature walk at Creamer's Field or Birch Hill, canoeing down the Chena, hiking along the Pinnell Trail, shopping at the Farmer's Market, picking blueberries (only in August, and I'd probably have to blindfold you for the grueling 3-mile, uphill both ways, back-country trek to the super secret berry-picking spot, but it'd be worth it, I swear), grilling a fresh-caught salmon on our deck (I don't know where you caught it, but after making all those arrangements yourself for a ridiculously expensive fishing charter, I know you'd want to share your bounty with us), going to bed early (because the baby will probably be waking me––and everyone else in the house––up every two hours).

Hedonistic Daylight Hallucination
You've been drinking for hours inside the dark, cramped and smoky back room at the Marlin.  Your body has begun to reject Alaskan Summer Ale on tap and you've started to twitch in time to the incessant mandolin strains emanating from the stage.  You walk towards the back door, wanting to clear your head in the cool night air, but as you step outside, you are hit with a shock of smoke and light.  It should be dark, but the sky is still bright as day.  And you've accidentally entered into some kind of circle where people are smoking from a pipe and playing hacky sack.  You take a hit from the pipe from the hippie on your left.  Confused by the THC coursing through your bloodstream and blinded by the midnight sun, you ask someone for the time.  It's 3 AM?!  But that's impossible.  You are not tired.  And there is still a whole night ahead of you.  If you hurry, you can make last call at the Boatel Sleazy Waterfront Bar, and even if you don't hurry, the bars in Ester outside of Fairbanks city limits don't close until five, and even if you miss those, head off in any direction into the woods, and you'll probably find some kind of party.  Other than nodding off for a few seconds in the shower (you attempt in vain to wash way the pervading odor of patchouli and marijuana you've picked up during your nights out), you manage to avoid any real sleep during your visit, and you return to Seattle wondering if your entire trip up north wasn't some kind of surreal waking dream.


Call today to make your reservations!

House

I've been hibernating at the house for the last four days.  Fairbanks has been hit with freezing rain (in November, seriously?) that made the icy roads beyond treacherous.  Actually, it was slicker than just "icy" – so what's slicker than ice?  John says a frictionless surface created in a physics lab.  Okay, so every time I say "ice," imagine that I'm actually talking about a frictionless surface slick as snot created in a lab.

On Monday morning, John ventured out bright (more foggy and dark, really) and early, braving roads of ice and abandoned vehicles perched like land mines in his path, only to discover that classes were canceled!  But that didn't stop his clueless Differential Equations professor from lecturing that morning.  So, after attending a non-class and then stopping at ye olde Fred Meyer for provisions, John eventually made his way back home, taking two and half hours to travel ten miles.  Drivers were going 15mph on Sheep Creek.  There was a line up of cars on Murphy Dome because no one could make it up the gentle rise past Ivan's Alley.  People were ditching their vehicles ... in ditches.  John put chains on the Subaru and rescued a woman whose car couldn't make it up to Moose Mountain.  She had been on her cell with Allstate, trying to arrange for roadside assistance, but the outsourced customer service agent in India couldn't comprehend the words "ice storm", "Fairbanks, Alaska" or "Moose Mountain Road".

Once my intrepid explorer made it back, we made dinner and hunkered down with some mediocre netflix.  Washing our dishes that night (I imply that "we" washed dishes, but to be honest, I'm not the dishwasher in the family), we noticed that our water had mysteriously turned orange.  It had nothing to do with the ice storm (or did it?).  Ken Brownlow suggested that the water table might have been disturbed by a minor earthquake, or maybe we needed a new filter, or we needed to add more salt to our pump thingy (my words, not his) to soften the water.  We investigated the pump under the stairs, but couldn't figure out where the filter or the place to add water softener would be.  We've got a steep learning curve as new homeowners.

The power went off intermittently throughout the night.  We eventually figured out what was happening because each time the power died, the carbon monoxide detector would emit a terrifyingly loud chirp, waking us up.  Lots of things went bump in the night.  I thought I heard what sounded like a helicopter land in our back yard around five in the morning.  My mind automatically jumps to the most obvious and sane reasons for mysterious house noises: murderous intruders, alien invaders wanting to suck out my brain, apocalyptic nuclear attack.  The helicopter sound was probably just the echo of a small plane or the train traveling through the valley.

With the power outages, John's alarm didn't go off, so we overslept and woke up around ten.  It didn't matter since we discovered that classes were also canceled for Tuesday.  We spent the day puttering around the house and being useful and productive.  Our water eventually turned from dirty orange to more of a pale, off-color beige, so that was a relief.  I can't wait for future visitors to sample our delicious mineral water.  Actually, occasional water table disruption aside, our water is pretty good.  And it's a cool feeling to know the actual source of the water we drink (a couple hundred feet below our house) and that unlike the water in other areas outside of town, there's no arsenic in ours.  Another plus.

At long last, here are some photos of our new place:

We painted the dining room orange.  The previous owner had left it a light shade of purple.  Because nothing says dinner like lavender and fluorescent light.

The orange color also comes in handy for camouflage.  Look carefully and you might be able to find John (he's wearing an ORANGE sweater).

Maybe we painted the dining room to match the view from outside - BAM!

The kitchen.

It's not all sunsets and sweet cheeks from our deck - here's the view of the fog this morning.

Looking at the dining room and beyond into the living room from the kitchen.  Note authentic Kathy Hite SCCA Facilities yellow tape measure on the counter.

Until we moved, I had no idea how many books we really owned.  This shot includes maybe half of them.  If we're hoarders, at least we're literary hoarders.

Future nursery.  Replete with built-in bookshelves that will fall on baby.  Should probably replace those.

This is the guest bathroom.  We call it "El Baño Diablo" for reasons you'll just have to see in person to understand.

Master bedroom.  Too small and weirdly laid out to fit our dressers, except in the closet.

View into the master bath.  I include this shot just because it looks like there's a hairy boob in the lower left corner.

Sans hairy boob.  (Or is it?)

Our house!

Exciting!

John's in the kitchen preparing a roast chicken dinner, and it sounds like he and Johnson are going to play a quick game of cribbage.  I'm looking up Fairbanks/Seattle fares on alaskaair.com for a potential visit post-Christmas.  What could be more rejuvenating than a visit to balmy, sunny Seattle in January?  I feel like I've made that joke before.  John's totally like, "Mexico!  Hawaii!  Sand!  Surf!"  And I'm like, "Sand and surf, sure!  But 40 degrees!  Drizzle!"  I'm also looking up (ridiculously expensive for a grad student salary) vacation rentals on the coast and near Mt. Rainier.  John would probably ask, "Why stay in a mountain cabin near Mt. Rainier when we've got all the woodsy, snowy awesomeness up here for free?"  Touché, Mr. Perreault.  Touché.  But that still leaves the coast.  Being landlocked for a mere three months really leaves me missing the water.  And vacation rentals often come with hot tubs!  Maybe something could work out.  Anyone in Seattle interested in joining us for a night or two of Scrabble, cribbage and hot chocolate guaranteed to lift your post-holiday spirits?  Heck, we could do that at your house instead.  Ahem.  Offers to host us for a few days gratefully accepted.  Krista, I'll even let you win at Scrabble.

Lots of newsy news to share.  We bought a 2001 Subaru Outback and finally put winter tires on it last week so we can actually drive through town without fishtailing around corners.  We are closing on a house this Friday.  That's pretty exciting.  More on that after we close––I still feel like talking about how happy I am will somehow jinx things.  I made a recent excursion to Jo Ann Fabrics (the cashier was also named Jo Ann – I don't think I can properly relate how hysterically funny that seemed at the time) so I'm starting to make felt-y doo-dads and stuff (just in time for the holidays!) ... Crafts are pretty exciting.  John's hanging in there with his Differential Equations class.  Man, even I'm have nightmares about that class.  What else, what else ... it's my birthday soon and I'm trying to come up with slightly more exciting ways to celebrate than the hermit-like activities (sleeping, reading, procrastinating on copy editing, avoiding leaving the house) I've been enjoying lately.  A friend is opening up a new café in Fairbanks soon (one that I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about for fear of spoiling the grand opening surprise) featuring great coffee and lots of raw and veggie food yumminess.  That's exciting.

And then there's the whole pregnancy thing.  Which is definitely exciting but more surreal than anything.  Car!  House!  Baby!  That should keep us occupied for awhile.

Bam.

First Snowfall

I started this entry yesterday using my mother's ancient eMac.  Her computer (nay–her glorified abacus) suffers from epically-long load times, a terminally-fragmented hard drive, and a lack of Flash for my facebook Scrabble addiction.  If I pull more than two tabs up in Firefox, the puny CPU goes into seizures and I'm stuck in an infinite wait-time loop with Apple's hatefully hypnotic color-wheel cursor.   I have never wanted to cause physical pain to an inanimate object before, but I do now.  Excuse me while I have a Michael Bolton revenge moment with the machine.  I know of an abandoned field where no one will ever find it.

The reason why I was using the eMac yesterday was because John had taken his laptop to school for his First Graduate Class Presentation.  I can't accurately describe the topic of his report, but it was on rift valleys and deposition and erosion and all sorts of neat-o science-y stuff.  He was a little nervous about it, but apparently he hit it right on the mark, receiving kudos from his prof, applause from his peers, and a ticker tape parade from UAF administration.  In fact, I'm pretty sure the school is just going to confer an immediate degree on him and save us this rigmarole of a prolonged education.


So at least we have John's awesomeness going for us.  We had hoped to have big and exciting news about our house-hunting adventures, but there's no happy ending in sight yet.  Last Thursday, we toured a house on Waldheim (two miles northwest of Ivory Jack's in the hills off Goldstream) that mostly matched what we were looking for (energy efficiency, a little bit of acreage, lots of light, a heated garage, good well water).  The house also came with an adorable (and heated!) one-room cabin.  Visions of a fairy-tale guest cottage or art studio danced through my head; I was smitten.  We made an offer late Thursday night; I think our realtor was still wrapping up paperwork that midnight (thanks, Joel!).  Then on Friday afternoon, minutes before the sellers were supposed to meet with their realtor to make a decision on our offer, a counter-offer from another potential buyer came in.  Hearts were broken, then unbroken when we were informed on Monday morning that we were still in the running after all.  The saga continued to play out until yesterday afternoon, when we were told that the sellers went with the other buyer, and it became apparent to us that our involvement in the whole affair was mainly as leverage by the seller's agent against the other couple so they would offer more money.  Bah.

You know you might be a little fragile when not getting the house you made an offer on causes such an emotional blow.  Other telltale signs: when catching a scene from the 2002 Seattle episode of Rachael Ray's "$40 a Day" travel show, you start to weep uncontrollably. 

In all my sadness about the end of summer and fall (yes, I know that technically the season of fall just started, but believe me, it's already winding down at this latitude), leaving Seattle, and our interminable search for a house, I had forgotten about the magic of Fairbanks in winter.  And winter is definitely on its way.  This morning, my father announced that the temperature outside was 14º F.  My mother has taken her two rose bushes inside, hoping to cajole them into a few more blooms before they die (what she's mainly accomplishing is offering the cats a round-the-clock buffet of rose leaves to chew and then vomit up).

The birches have shed most of their leaves, and there's a grayness in the hills instead of fall's bright orange.  John and I spent last weekend on a couple walkabouts on local nature trails, which are actually local ski trails–us mere mortal pedestrians get to use the trails until the snow flies and the nordic skiers take over as rightful kings of the mountain.

Saturday, we discovered one of many hidden (and frozen) lakes on the trails behind UAF.  I was really tempted to jump in the shallows and break through the ice.  (Breaking puddle ice, like Amélie's breaking of the crème brûlée crust, is of course one of the supreme pleasures in life.)  But I was worried about my feet getting wet.  We then spent the remainder of our hike tramping through half-frozen and muddy muskeg, after which, I had to throw away my shoes anyway.

We drove out to Two Rivers Ski Trails on Sunday and walked one of the loops.  Apart from a group of horseback riders who were on their way out, we were the only ones in the forest.  (Okay, at one point, a guy zoomed up the neighboring road on an ATV and the engine roared like a sputtering chainsaw, but really, other than that, nature afforded us a Thoreauean silence.)

As we shuffled through the thick pile of leaves on the trail, we heard the wind crackling through the treetops.  Chickadees flitted by.  The sky was overcast.  The northern horizon was a deep, portentous gray, stifling and heavy, the color of steel.  Definitely not a summer sky.  We unearthed the shattered shell of an abandoned wasp's nest and cleared the trail of dead logs and debris.   It seemed like we were looking at the world through one of the camera's color tricks; everything was a shade of gray except for the faded orange leaves carpeting the trail and the bright red high-bush cranberries still clinging to their branches.

It's at this point in the narrative that something exciting should happen, like, we saw a bear!  (As we left the house earlier, announcing our intentions to hike around a bit, my mother called out to us, "Make sure you make a lot of noise to scare the bears away!"  Boy, nothing inspires me to relax like the mere possibility of running into a bear.)  But there were no bears and no other wild thing, except for the aforementioned ATV man and the chickadees.  In this moment of stillness and anticipation, it started to snow.  Or at least, I think it did.  We can't really be sure, it was over so quickly.  Small white crystals–not even real flakes, just tiny bits of ice–fell against the backdrop of a steel gray sky and onto our fleeces then quickly melted away.  When we looked again, it had stopped.  Our first snowfall, or hallucination of snowfall.

So just like that, with the season's first cold spell and the hint of snow yet to come, my brain has shifted gears.  I'm not thinking about missing the green and wet of Seattle, or the lemonade (or gin and tonics) of summer.  I'm thinking of red winter berries on white snow, and steaming cups of hot chocolate after a brisk walk.  Of perpetual twilight and then darkness and the aurora at midnight and finally being able to see whole star constellations again.  I'm thinking that it's less than three months away until Christmas (Kaleb, I like to give you early enough warning so you can start your shopping list for me), and that means less than three months away until solstice and we start gaining light again.  Bread–I must bake you!  Sweaters–I must knit you! (Naomi, I'm going to need your mother's help with that one.)  Spices–I must inhale your festive, sweet scent!  I'd go try to burn cinnamon and clove as holy incense if I weren't afraid of burning the house down (now I know what kind of olfactory magic those pumpkin-spice lattes have over people).  Bring on the scratchy wool mittens and the ugly Sorel boots I bought in 8th grade, because, winter, I embrace you!

Or at least I will until round about January, when I'm depressed to death of your cold and darkness and will use all my Alaska Air miles to escape your evil clutches.

There is no Yo-Yo, there is only Zuill ...

We just returned from a concert at Davis where we heard Zuill Bailey perform the entirety of the Bach Cello Suites (sans repeats).  It was pretty amazing.  John's introduction to the music first came via the West Wing episode when Yo-Yo Ma performed the Cello Suite in G and Josh was having flashbacks about getting shot.  Mr. Bailey (I'm just going to slip into reviewer mode now) provided the audience with an espressive tour de force of passion and charm ... and he's not so bad on the eyes, either (my seat mates Darcy and Donna Olsen would agree).

Zuill Bailey, cellist and international man of mystery

I get the sense that he's not discouraging fans from appreciating his swoon-factor.  Oh well, whatever fills the seats, and the concert hall was amazingly full for a Thursday night.  The only thing that possibly marred the performance was some intermittent banging coming from backstage that we could hear during quieter moments ... Darcy and John speculated that it was either a vent or the pottery wheel from the nearby art department.  To me, it sounded like my dad ritualistically beating his coffee grinder with a spoon (he tends to do this every morning at 5 unless we're lucky and he remembers to do it the night before).  Arrhythmic banging aside, it was an awesome concert, and Zuill is a rockstar in the classical music world.  And he apparently had a recurring role on HBO's Oz?  See, this is why you need to get into classical music.  Celebrity Cellists – They're Just Like Us!

I'm trying to figure out how to start a conversation about this without making my blog devolve into a whiny rant about how much I miss Seattle, but I'll just go for it.  The food kind of sucks in Fairbanks.  Not, obviously, the food coming out of the Johnson kitchen (Arroz con Pollo for dinner tonight!) but the Fairbanks restaurant scene, in general, is lackluster and nothing to write home about.  We did have a great (and free!) buffet dinner at Bobby's last weekend (prime rib, dolmades and more) and I enjoyed my steak from Silver Gulch a couple of weeks ago.  And I always like Lemongrass (still haven't made it to the Thai House) ... but nothing here compares to the food in Seattle.  Sure, Fairbanks can do steak and halibut nuggets, but if you require anything more subtle than deep fried or grilled proteins, you're SOL.

I miss La Carta de Oaxaca.  Oh, for just one bite of their beefy (and crack-laced?) tostadas!  I miss Serafina – brunch, lunch, dinner and cocktails (really, how can any meal go wrong when it starts with a tall, cool flute of prosecco laced with elderflower or parfait d'amour liqueur?).  I miss the vietnamese sandwiches from the Seattle Deli.  Hell, I even miss the phở from Than Brothers (enough so that I go to great lengths to copy and paste those little squiggly accent marks on the "o" in phở).  Oh gosh, I just remembered the signature fresh rolls from the Tamarind Tree and started to tear up a little.

My food envy is not helped by my recent spate of watching Top Chef DC reruns (sigh, there's just no place in town to get a decent parmesan foam) ... I'm fighting the urge to attempt a spring risotto with wheat berries that I sampled off Andy's plate at SAM's Taste Cafe a few months ago.  It was served with some kind of sweet/savory reduction sauce and for the life of me, I want to duplicate it by simmering Knudsen's Razzleberry fruit juice and chicken stock ... what is wrong with me?

In an attempt to recreate the wood-fired, thin-crust pizza I'm used to in Seattle, I bought a baking stone (or rather, my mother bought it) and I tried my hand at throwing a pie with homemade dough.  Whoops that the baking stone wasn't rated oven-safe to 550, but the pizza actually turned out pretty good.  Not Serious Pie good, but adequate ... oh, who am I kidding ... I'm just going to chop down the few remaining birch trees in the condo complex yard and stuff some wood into the oven to really get the kind of intense fire I need for a good crust.  Or ... someone needs to send us a box of Tom Douglas crisp doughy goodness via Alaska Airlines Goldstreak.  I swear I'll make it worth your while.

In actuality, my next food challenge will be to create a cake sans sugar and butter that's worth its salt weight in gold.  A couple months ago I made an olive oil and orange cake (I swear, *not* the one listed on Orangette, but something inspired by The Improvisational Cook cookbook that Naomi lent me).  Basically, it involved blending a whole orange (peel and all) in a food processor with olive oil to make a kind of jam, then I added sugar, flour, eggs and baking powder, and presto – a dense (but not too dense), rich and citrus-y cake.  I want to make this same cake for a friend with diabetes, so I'm going to have to play around with xylitol as a substitute for sugar ... and maybe I'll try to investigate some non-wheat flours to boot.  Any baking advice for sugar- and wheat-free adventures would be greatly appreciated.

Fall Photos

Looking northwest-ish off Murphy Dome

John was playing around with the color feature on the camera – look! It's Mars!

John can't breathe on Mars!

Meanwhile, back on Earth ...

I've always felt that Interior Alaska could totally vie for the "Big Sky Country" moniker.

The flowers that bloom in the fall, Tra-la!

Birch trees on John's parents' property near Lincoln Creek.

I'm sensing some birch tree prints in my future.

Cranes leaving for warmer climes. 
I love their call – it's kind of like a soft chortle rather than the sometimes obnoxious honking of geese.

Fall

Instead of going to the Labor Day parade with my dad, John and I are going to celebrate the American worker (sadly, I can no longer claim membership in that category of people) by going to a matinee.  Inception starts at 1pm.  Then at 4:30pm, John's fantasy football draft begins.  So while he's commishing it up with the other leagues in the online draft (I already pre-selected my draft picks), I'm going grocery shopping with my mom at–you guessed it–Fred Meyer!  Hopefully, this time she won't be accosted by a man in a yellow star costume in the middle of the road.  We eventually figured out that it was an overly eager Carl's Jr. fast food chain mascot who jumped in front of her car while she was driving away from her last shopping expedition.  She was more confused than anything.  It's so hard keeping up with these modern times.

I feel like there's something more important and fall-centric that I should be doing, like berry-picking or hiking Angel Rocks, or canoeing down the Chena.  Oh well, I can always accomplish those things in the next few days before winter sets in.  My dad likes to begin each morning by taunting my mother that it smells like snow.  Earlier today, she was sitting at the dining room table looking out the window at the yellowing birch leaves, announcing each leaf as it fell to the earth.  There's definitely a sense of, not resignation, not anticipation, but a kind of resolve in the air.  People are nesting, preparing, buckling down ... friends ask each other what their plans are for the winter, like there's this tangible thing looming just over the horizon that we all need to be ready for.  It's difficult to adjust to a world of welcoming winter when it's been 80 degrees and still summer in Seattle.

Notes from Bizarro World

My parents (most likely my dad) used to have a pewter plate displayed near the dining room that read, "A Dinner Without Wine Is Like a Day Without Sunshine".  I kind of feel the same way about this blog.  A post without photos suffers the same bland fate.  John took the camera with him on his field trip to the Brooks Range, so I didn't get to take any pictures on my trip to Anchorage.  No stunning fall colors near Denali, no Onnie and Christa's wedding in Palmer, no capturing the cuteness that is Henry Kendall, or the physics-defying Sophie "Perpetual Motion Machine" Kendall.

Last week, we did a handful of house walk-throughs with our awesome realtor Joel Johnson (brother of Jeremy Johnson, whom I hope very much is reading this post and decides to invite me over to his place soon), and I brought the camera along.  But somehow, the only photo I managed to take on these tours was of some delphinium in a garden near a house that wasn't for sale.

I've seen Kaleb "Le Coq Sportif" and Sonja "Cherry" Kawasaki twice since my arrival, but no photos were snapped.  I think Kaleb is ashamed of our relationship and wants a divorce (we were married in French class in high school).  I'm fine with that, but Kaleb, please note that I expect a healthy alimony check coming my way if that's the legal direction you wish to proceed.

So, to make up for the lack of photographic evidence of the past two weeks of my life, here is a picture of my cat, Henry.

The vacuous look he's giving us, if you couldn't tell, is a cross between "Blue Steel" and cat apathy.

John returns tonight from the Brooks.  I'm making salmon for dinner.  I'm not sure where it was caught, but it's fresh and was given to my dad by one of his friends.  I hope it's as tasty as the Copper River red salmon that Elyse shared at last Thursday's BBQ.  (New goal for new Alaskan life: make dip-netting at Chitna a priority next summer.)

Last night, Le Coq Sportif, Cherry and I had dinner at a well-known, undisclosed restaurant on Goldstream, where we witnessed the spectacle of a drunk patron becoming a drunk driver.  The man was visibly swaying on his feet, but had the ability to string semi-coherent sentences together.  The bartender suggested he call a cab; the drunk was adamant about being fine to drive.  He left the restaurant, taking his (even drunker) companion with him.  We watched through the windows as he backed his red pickup truck out of his spot and straight into the ditch.  Incredulous laughter quickly turned into nervous titters and apprehension.  The driver managed to pull out of the ditch (trailing lots of grass, dirt and shrubs on his chassis) and head towards the road.  The hostess ran outside.  We could see her knocking on the window, asking for the keys.  But the truck soon pulled out onto Goldstream and they were gone.  I was thinking of Gene Bottcher the whole time, the restaurant's liability if something happened, and our responsibility as witnesses.  We stayed inside for another fifteen minutes, hoping to avoid them on the road.  As I drove Kaleb home, we noticed a ton of debris on the road, remnants of the truck's adventure in the ditch.  As I approached Spinach Creek, we saw the red truck pulled over near the rock/gravel pit past Jennifer Drive.  Driver and passenger were getting out.  When I passed by again on my way back, the truck was gone.  I related the story to my mom when I got home.  She said someone should have called the cops.  Maybe the restaurant didn't want to narc on a loyal patron.  Maybe we should have done something after the truck drove off.  I found out it was the same place that Bottcher had been at before his deadly DUI.

The big news (that I'm of course almost a week late in reporting) is that Lisa Murkowski trails tea-bagger Joe Miller (described as "Sarah Palin with a beard") in the Republican primary results for US Senator.  All of Alaska is atwitter about this news.  I spent the last six days listening in on discussions about the election results among the Guttenburg/Hopkins/Kendall clan (a family that lives and breathes politics).  I never thought I'd be pulling for a Murkowski, but my fingers are crossed for Lisa to overtake Miller when the absentee ballots are counted.  Despite the fact that the front-runner for the Democrats, Scott McAdams, is a reasonable, smart, and likable guy, if there were a three-way race, my vote would have to go to Murkowski, in order to prevent the disaster of Miller as Senator.  What kind of bizarro world has Genevieve voting Republican?  Welcome to Alaskan politics.

Arrival, a Departure from the Norm

We made it to Fairbanks last night around 7 o'clock.  I don't have the exact count, but the total trip was around 2300 odd miles ... some of them very odd indeed and riven with frost heaves, especially on the highway between Beaver Creek and the AK/Yukon border.  But we survived, thanks to John's superior driving (and my navigatrix) skills.


As of this morning, the contents of the trailer have been emptied into a storage unit (most of our stuff seems to have survived relatively intact) and we're in the process of cleaning out the RV to give to John's parents, the official owners of the behemoth.  I've actually grown quite fond of the old girl – apart from that voltage regulator business, she performed impeccably.

It's raining in Fairbanks.  Where is this 90 degree weather people have been raving about?  My dad says winter is on its way in ... and he's really not kidding.  There might be another two months (if that) before the snow flies and sticks.  I have to get in all the fall activities while I can.  Anyone in Fairbanks willing to take me along to their secret blueberry picking spot?

John is currently meeting with his faculty advisor, my dad is reading the paper (e.g. napping) and my mom is writing up a grocery list.  The cats are acclimating to their temporary home in the guest bedroom at my parents' condo.  My parents' cat Harley (Hellion of the North) has been banished to the garage until we can determine if the group (all four of them - it's a cattery!) can get along (signs point to no).  As soon as I'm done uploading photos, I'm off to do a very particular Fairbanksan activity: stand around at Fred Meyer (west siiide) and see if I can bump into anyone I know. 


Photos from our last days of travel:

Hazy, smoky skies courtesy of fires raging along the Cassiar

An airstream parked outside the visitor center in Whitehorse.  Isn't it pretty and shiny?  I think I want one.

I regret this was our only photo from Takhini Hot Springs. John and I decided to capture the moment of yellowjacket cannibalism in action.

Coming into Kluane.  That's no smudge on the lens, just bug guts on the windshield.

Our first glimpse of Kluane Lake.

Kluane Lake is so blue!

Sheep Mountain.  We forgot to stop and try to find sheep through the binoculars at the park center.

The view from our campsite.

Our campsite.  I'm not going to lie.  It was pretty much the most beautiful spot ever.

John decided to go for a dip in the lake.  He tells me it was brisk.  I'm just glad his heart didn't stop.

Despite the fact that the promised wifi didn't materialize, the campsite was still awesome (Cottonwood RV Park and Campsite on Kluane – cash only).  Also: note the awesome Rainier beer koozies.

Kluane River in the background.

I took this one for my dad. 

Bam!  Before we knew it, we were across the border and on our way to Fairbanks.  We debated having another night in the RV, but because of the lack of cash for a campsight and our excitement of being so close, we decided to press on.

As if to remind us of home and the beautiful weather in Seattle we had left behind, it started to rain.

And that was that.  "Fairbanks Welcomes You".  We had arrived.

So, we're here!  I admit I'm feeling a little unsettled and aimless.  I'm planning on unpacking (and then repacking/unpacking again once we find a house) ... and maybe making some pickles and jams/jellies with the last of the Fairbanks summer harvest.  Selena lent me a great cookbook with a pretty killer ginger/green tomato jam recipe.  There's a farmer's market happening this afternoon and my dad and his friends are getting together at 4pm for their usual Wednesday coffee hour.  I'm fighting the urge to go do both things.  Usually when I'm up here, I've got to cram in as much activity as possible or miss out.  But heck, I'm going to be here for years, I don't need to feel rushed.  I've got all the time in the world.  Alllll the time ...

I made an on-the-go playlist for our final two hours on the road in honor of our impending arrival.  John was impressed with my (mostly) thematic selections.

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National
The Distance - Cake
60 Miles an Hour - New Order
Our Lady of the Highway - John Wesley Harding
Sympathique - Pink Martini (we've been listening to "Behind the Wheel French" so I had to get in some French lyrics)
Graduation Day - Chris Isaak
Low - Cracker (they play here in Fairbanks a lot, in case you're interested)
A Place Called Home - PJ Harvey
Into The White - Pixies
Back In The U.S.S.R. - The Beatles
such great heights - The Postal Service
End of the World as We Know It - R.E.M.
So Easy - Röyksopp
How Soon is Now - The Smiths
There's No Home For You Here - White Stripes
Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below) - Johnny Cash
Over and Over - Hot Chip
Strict Machine - Goldfrapp (in honor of our behemoth, a very strict machine indeed)
Dry the Rain - Beta Band
Home - Edward Sharpe And the Magnetic Zeroes


This is how much time on my hands I have now – I'm writing out a playlist on my blog.

Stone Sheep and Bison and Bears, Oh My!

August 15th, 8:45pm


Fun fact: Liquor (and that includes beer) stores are closed on Sundays in the Yukon.  But the kindly Englishman-cum-Australian from the RV spot next to us gave us a Kokanee to share (this one's for you, Jeremy Webb!).

We left Liard at 10am and made it to Whitehorse by evening.  For us, that's a pretty long haul.  Some folks apparently told John that this trip would be like a second honeymoon.  I'd say that except for the constant bickering and stress, they were right!  Actually, we're getting along swimmingly.  And here's proof:

John made it to the hottest part of the pool using the secret magic of SCIENCE

I'm in the medium hot part of the pool

Post-soak

Along the way, we've seen lots of wildlife:

Stone sheep

Crazy roadkill-loving ravens

Bison

I'm most thankful for the wildlife we haven't seen: bears.  John saw one on the side of the road a couple hundred miles ago, but that was from the safety of the motorhome.  I'm super relieved we didn't run into any at Liard Hot Springs.  They closed the Beta Pool (just a few hundred meters away from the main pool) because of bears.

Problem bear!

That makes for serious soaking excitement.  After listening to Bowie in the RV, I made up some new songs to sing on the boardwalk out to the pool, to ward off any bears (This is Ma-juh Beahr to Grround Control) ... One of the members of the staff was using the boardwalk as his personal go-cart track, searching for his two dogs that took off after a bear this morning.  Not sure if he found them.

This reminded me of that bog with the dead people from Lord of the Rings, except with a golf cart

Cat update (because I know that's what you're really here for, Laura and Ed): all is well.  Henry is still freaked out and spends most of the day hiding (preferably underneath a sleeping bag):

Zaida likes to hang out under the table:

And Clancy is pretty cool with everything.

We're spending the night in Whitehorse and will head to Kluane Lake tomorrow, perhaps stopping at Tahkini Hot Springs along the way.  Until next time!

This shot was actually taken an hour or so before our voltage regulator malfunction, but I'm pretending it's a happy-trails-all-is-well-driving-into-the-rainbow-mood-setter for the end of this post.  You can pretend along with me.