June 10, 2009

Ireland on a budget. What NOT to do.

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, amsterdam, ireland, netherlands, photography, writing
[6] Comments 

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Blending in

Last month I took a trip that some might call blow-your-mind-fantastical. It was quick (one week) and consisted of my greatest friend Megan The Gnome and I tooling the entire island of Ireland. “Whoa, fun!” you say, and I concur. It was also very very expensive.

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Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare, Ireland – New friends

It didn’t start that way. Gnome found tickets round trip from Boise, Idaho to Dublin, Ireland for $571.60. That’s pretty phenomenal – especially considering my ONE WAY flight from Sitka, Alaska to Boise cost $358.20. The return flight (Spokane, WA – Sitka) was an extravagent 20,000 airline miles (12,500 miles is normal).

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A session at Murty Rabbit’s in Galway

Don’t worry about busting out your calculator yet. I’ll sum the numbers for you in a minute.

Lodging costs were nominal as Megan paid for most of them with the agreement we would settle up later. I paid a reasonable $105.66 for the week.

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The superb Sandrock Holiday Hostel on Ireland’s northern shore.

In flight booze was free on the international flight, so my airborn booze costs were purely Alaska Airlines – $20.

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Gnomes drink airplane Heinekin from teacups.

Euro socket/wattage adapter – $39.99, and it did not work at all. Stupid airport salesman.

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Um. There was a Pan-Celtic festival in Donegal city.

Tour of the Guinness factory in Dublin – $17.16 which was completely worth it, especially considering a pint was included (and that the average cost of a pint equates to about $7 or $8 US.

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View from the bar atop the Guinness factory.

Foreign transaction fees weren’t bad for my credit card ($2.56), but two ATM withdrawals on my debit card cost $10 in fees.

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Beer on the riverside – Spanish Arch, Galway.

$10 in Skype credits to call home, and $26.81 in souveniers didn’t seem too outrageous, nor did $40.09 for food & booze.

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Crossroads Inn at Malin Head. Thank you, barman Paul.

My ATM withdrawals totalled $395.22 and probably split 60% drink, 30% food and 10% souveniers. A little steep, but all in all a pretty thrifty adventure at $1,597.29.

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Irish coffee is still called “Irish Coffee” in Ireland. It’s just more expensive.

But wait … there’s more.

Sooooo I tried to research how my iphone would work across the atlantic, but I couldn’t find much for straight answers. I knew better than to make phone calls, but I figured the wireless internet smart phone capabilities were created to make my life easier, and I thought of all the times travelling when a wee map or a Google search could have really improved a situation. They did, in fact, make life a little easier – until I got my monthly bill. $409.41. Awesome.

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Dancing on a dart board; The Reel Inn, Donegal town.

So for anyone out there wondering about using an AT&T iphone in Europe, yeah … just don’t. Unless the second you land, you go to: SETTINGS>GENERAL>NETWORK>DATA ROAMING (SLIDE TO OFF). It’s almost as buried as the international usage information on the AT&T website: http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/iphone-travel-tips.jsp. My phone automatically searched for emails and voicemails, running up a steady bill. The kilobytes I used to send one picture by email cost about $20. Imagine if they billed monthly Internet that way. Fucking robber barons.

But whatever – I learned something, and that brings my trip total to $2006.70.

Oh. And then this happened.

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Fuck you, Focus.

That is a Focus from a company we will call Hurts Car Rental. In a land of roundabouts, right-side steering wheels, left-side-of-the-road driving, fast ass driving and 2-lane highways the size of my front porch, this is not uncommon. Plus I needn’t have worried – one of the perks of renting with my Alaska Airlines/Bank of America Visa credit card was complimentary auto rental insurance. Right?

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Notice the yellow line is on the shoulder, white line in the middle.

Oh wait. Also buried on a website (http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/benefits/bft_dmg_waiver_personal.html) in small print in a section called “Who is NOT covered” was this little cat turd: “Losses from rental transactions which originated in Israel, Jamaica, the Republic of Ireland, or Northern Ireland.” So yeah, having declined coverage (since I thought it was covered with my card), I was fully responsible for the damage. But I mean, come on. It’s a fiberglass pop-together fender of a Ford Focus. How much could that really cost to replace?

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Can you find the highway direction signs?

Um – exactly $3,277.03 apparently. Fuckinggoddamncocksuckingsonofabitchassbastards. For that price, I’m pretty certain I could have flown back with the parts, completed the labor, then drove the fucker around for another week, and still had some money to spare. I will never rent from Hurts Car Rental again. Ever. Assholes.

So my one-week Ireland trip culminated at a grand total of:

$5,283.73!!!!!

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Cliffs of Moher

There are three ways I’ve come up with to justify the excessive money pillaged from me.

1. My job covers food and housing. If I had been renting and paying bills for the last 5 or 6 months, I wouldn’t have that money anyway.

2. This is the first winter I’ve worked full time/overtime fairly consistently, so that money wasn’t very accustomed to my bank account and was longing for escape.

3. It was worth it – the old pubs, the accents, the castles and beer. I learned a couple lessons, but given the choice, I’d do it again. I would not trade the good memories for the couple thousand I lost.

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Dunluce Castle, Giant’s Causeway, N Ireland

Sitting on the city walls of Derry, N Ireland

Near Amsterdam, Netherlands – flower fields from above

 

April 5, 2009

Her Ring

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, alaska, fishing, ireland, sitka, southeast, work, writing
[4] Comments 

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This is the real circle of life, Simba.

Her Ring = herring, and that’s but one of the joyous discoveries of the fish-addled mind.

Seriously – this herring shit has been popping off for two weeks, and it is time for it to be over. NOW! Over 200 40′ container vans have left my (and Cat’s) loading dock in the past two weeks, and I don’t have the energy to tell you about the energy it takes to make that happen.

Mostly I’m getting very tired of working when it’s dark and boring outside. Irish coffees help, but when it comes down to it – the bars aren’t open at 6 a.m. when I get off work. That should be criminal. That’s night shift discrimination.

Instead I just have to sit at home in my skivvies at 7 a.m., drinking beer and web logging. That’s what this discrimination has done to me – made me one degree from a chomo.

Listen up though – things are happening. Like a rushed drunkard at the urinal, herring season is having a hard time cutting it off, but I sense it may happen part way through my night shift tonight (maybe 10 p.m.?). I don’t exactly know how I’m going to readust to the daytime, but I think it might go like this: wake up, drink, pass out, wake up at a daylight hour.

Then I have some errands (hour massage, hour leg shaving, hour of long overdue rubber boot knockin’) and some work tasks to complete within a few days.

THEN………

I’m going back to IREEEELAND! Yes that’s right. Megan-the-Gnome-Jerome-Granny-Gasbag-Otto-MAO and I will be hitting the hinterlands with a furious thirst and jigging trousers soundly fastened. We will be circumnavigating the isle in a proven pimpousine – the VW Fox:

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Not only is The Fox fine, she is also equipped with a wonky-side steering wheel meaning the stick shift will be operated with my left hand while I’m driving on the wrong side of the road in the wrong side of the car.

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Yikes.

Tonight whilst shipping fish, I booked The Fox and a night’s accomodations in Dublin. After that we’re thinking Donegal, Galway, Dingle Peninsula and Kilkenny. It’ll be a quickie – 7 days with much beer and little sleep, but I am excited. Mostly when I see pictures like this:

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After that joyride, it’s cousin’s birthday (observed) in Boise town, and I am looking forward to some unseasonable warmness, drunken bike rides, slumber parties and general debauchery with Anito, Mainard and anyone else who feels lively.

That means night shift to day shift switch; +9 hour zone swing to Ireland; -8 hour zone return to Boise; then back to work processing the herring frozen samples at the beginning of May. See you there!

 

March 17, 2009

Combat Cowboys of the Sitka Sac Roe Sea

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, alaska, belfast, fishing, ireland, sitka, southeast, work, writing
1 Comment 

I think that’s what they called that National Geographic show I watched last night. Or maybe it was something equally ridiculous like: “Cowboys of the Sea: Combat Fishing.”

Minus the moniker, I’ve gotta admit, that show was received with Super Bowl-like festivity in this little fishing village. While a chunk of the featured fishing fleet took it in at the Pioneer (P)Bar, the smoky vortex into which our paychecks are too often sucked (also featured in all its bell-ringing glory), others in the fleet gathered to watch at the Silver Bay office.

A chunk of us, prepping to freeze all those silvery little scale balls, cuddled up in my HD hermitage – yelling, swearing, reminiscing about last year’s record sets and generally becoming prematurely anxious about the impending tons of herring.

It’s really fun to see people and places you’re so close to featured on a national broadcast. My very loading dock made the footage cut, and that’s pretty fucking cool!

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Shown here with my shipping shack

My very favorite forker, Kibby, was shown forklift loading our containers, but there was no sign of us night shift working beasts. Here’s a picture you can just think about when you watch the reairing next weekend.

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“Oh hell yes I’m shipping fish to Japan. I am very cold.”

So that was a jolly little chilllaxtivity after one hell of a Saturday night. At a certain point Saturday, I looked around the bar and about half of us were SBS fish workers and very few of had any sheets out of the wind. It’s good to get a big ole bonding drink night under your belts before the herring start to explode, and you can’t do much but make them benjamins and think of your next tropical vacation.

Or not so tropical – I strongly believe I may end up back in Ireland next month. How could I resist when it was so fun last go round? I blame this current urge on a cocktail of Jerome the Gnome Otto and St. Bloody Paddy’s Day (which has the audacity to fall on a Tuesday Busy Tuesday).

Now go to sleep so St. Paddy can come by and leave some beer in your fridge.

Sla’inte!

 

March 2, 2009

starboardpow!

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, amsterdam, netherlands, photography
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POW!

Sure I love to tell you all about my global roguery, but wouldn’t you rather see it for yourself in a manageable photo o’ de week format?

It’s Sunday – lucky for you (and your hungover ass), there are straight up crap loads of unposted pictures rumbling around the annals of starboardport.com. Sundays seem as good a day as any to air them out.

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Mummy v. Soldier: Unidentified Shack: Amsterdam

 

February 25, 2009

Pee Lattes

Posted by Jessie under Uncategorized
[4] Comments 

I never thought I’d write these words non-fictionally, but tomorrow is my last class in an 8-week session of pilates. It’s time to decide if I want to sign up for another round at $18 per class.

Pilates is one of those things I never completely wrote off but never really expected to try – like sex with a transvestite or glo-stick rave dancing on E.

At a young and nimble age, I remember reading a yoga book from my mom’s bookshelf. The author was a dark-haired bearded fellow who would have blended easily into a crowd of Bee-Gees if not for his propensity to full-body Spandex leotards.

In the early chapters, a series of captioned photos outlined the proper procedure for inserting a thick cotton string into one’s nostril, snorting the string through the sinuses and into the throat, then hocking it into the mouth. The goal was to hold on to both sides of the string and move it back and forth in a sawing sort of motion. I thought this might make sense when I was older, but it doesn’t. What could be accomplished by flossing one’s sinuses. Are there bits of food that would break loose that are otherwise trapped and causing me throat decay?

The leotarded BeeGee proceeded to contort himself into positions ranging from those that looked vaguely relaxing to those I wasn’t sure a child my age should see (the latter usually including his Spandex bulger very near his face). Cat poses – performed on hands and knees with back hunching and dropping between Angry Cat and Peaceful Cat – were considered beginner while the poses near the end of the book were alarming. Flip book style, the author performed an impossible seizing sort of yoga dance.

I tried some things I saw in the book, but when I couldn’t perform any Cirque du Soleil stretches, I lost interest. I would occasionally bring the book off the shelf to educate a friend on the basics of sinus cleansing, but I figured my yoga days were over.

Last fall, I spent two weeks sleeping on the ground on the island of Kaua’i. In the six months prior, I’d had my first introduction to debilitating back pain in the form of recurring muscle spasms and, consequently, my first trip to a chiropractor and my first electrode pulser treatment.

What’s really shitty about that grade of back pain is that all you can do is lie there perpetually uncomfortable. It’s hard to believe that just yesterday you were doing such rigorous activities as standing, walking, crossing your legs or sitting down on the toilet (and without crying even!).

Thus it was with some trepidation I faced my third day on Kaua’i after my third night on a thin sleeping pad on rooty terrain. I felt some ominous muscle twinges above my right butt cheek and commented on them over morning coffee on the beach. One of the girls in our camp asked if I’d ever tried pilates.

“What kind of organic tofu granola fruit do you take me for?” I asked pushing aside my breakfast of organic granola with starfruit and scrambled pesto tofu and eyeing her over my mug of fair trade coffee, flavored with raw unbleached sugar.

A fellow Alaska fish worker, she’d also had bouts with back seizures – hers debilitating her every three months or so – until she began pilates. Pilates exercises focus on strengthening your lower abdominal and lower back muscles. Unfortunately – the very severe German Josef Pilates bestowed upon it a kind of weenie name more suited to an Italian dessert than the sweaty nature of muscle building using one’s own body weight.

With a constant supply off booze and beach lying, my back hardly noticed the root wad sleeping conditions past day 3. A month later, and two days before flying from Sitka to Idaho, however, my back muscles angrily asserted their power. If lying on the floor uncomfortably is shitty, sitting in airplane and airport seats for 12 collective hours makes it look like a hot oil massage from a legion of sexy masseurs.

That spasm was at the end of December, and I started pilates in January. I’m not completely convinced, but I haven’t had a floor-bound episode to date and my flexibility is returning. Some moves are awkward; some make it really difficult not to accidental fart and some I don’t have the strength for yet, so I shake like a palsy case to complete one repetition.

I’m still a little uncomfortable when people find out I can’t meet them at the bar at 7 because I have pilates class. I’d much rather call it physical therapy or even strength stretching.

Oh well. The classes are popular and fill up fast. As for my street cred, I guess I shouldn’t worry what my peers think of my new age stretchercise as long as I still have ample time for sinus flossing in my Spandex bodysuit on the weekends.

 

February 18, 2009

Laughing out loud

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, alaska, southeast, writing
[2] Comments 

The general misuse of lol is rampant. It doesn’t get under my skin as much as the whole business of confusing lose/loose/loser/looser, but it is bothersome.

Here’s a chat from work:

Me: Man – Northern Tool sells such shitty shit. I wish we would just stop buying it.

Other: lol. i know what u mean.

Other is not laughing. He may be cracking a smile, but my statement was not very funny at all. I sometimes try to generate my own accunyms (or accurate acronyms) like sswpml, but they aren’t well received. A sswpml being, of course, a slight smile without parting my lips. It’s honest but not very catchy.

The closest I usually come to an authentic lol is a sboatmn or small burst of air through my nostrils. This is most likely paired with the sswpml but in extreme cases, I will pull an honest-to-god lol.

This weekend I had one of the better laughs I’d had in a while, and I was most certainly not typing at the time.

Saturday I left bed not because I wanted to but because I’d promised Stevie the night before that if she didn’t drive home I would chauffeur her downtown to retrieve her car the next morn. This was an easy promise on Friday, but as Saturday dawned … then proceeded noonward, I wondered if I might have misjudged my capabilities.

One quick shower n’ a puke later, I was driving – quiet, pale and shaky – to fulfill my commitment. I pictured the rest of my day spent fetaled up in bed, swearing off the sauce and hoping for appetite enough to stomach some toast and ibu. That was the ideal situation I could imagine. At some point in the delirium, it kicked in that I had purchased a big, comfy-ass couch earlier in the week which I’d agreed to move at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The couch, had it been moved by magical genies, would have been the perfect stage for my haggard suffering. Long enough for me to stretch out, wide enough for two and located right in front of the big shiny HD box of hangover-distracting wonders. As it was, the moving task seemed impossible, and I walked around the cabin shaking, swearing and generally fretting about how to get out of the responsibility.

Amid my swearing and shirking, Holden and our good friend A-Craw actually went and retrieved the couch. Down the steep flight of stairs, into the short bed of the pickup, down the snowy steps to the cabin and then came the hard part.

The cabin was built with a narrow deck in front of both doors. One door opens into a narrow corridor with no room for turns and the other opens into a spacious living room. To get to the spacious living room door, however, one must navigate winding and unshoveled pathways. As Holden and A-Craw guided the massive couch through the labyrinth of snowy path and Hemlock trees, I realized I was being completely useless and started furiously shoveling snow.

At the corner of the deck, they navigated a turn onto the narrow strip of deck. Holden pushed and A-Craw walked backward, neither able to see the other. Holden, hungover and in a hurry to test the healing powers of the new couch, pushed forward. A-Craw, relatively blind and walking backward, found the edge of the walkway then promptly found the edge of a small hill cliff as Holden pushed on. One moment he was holding a couch with arms bent at 90-degree angles, then he was down the hill holding the couch above his head and struggling to maintain balance.

I couldn’t help them, so I laughed out loud. I laughed, and that made A-Craw laugh. He struggled up the hill, laughing and holding the couch, and the whole group rammed into an adolescent Cedar tree which dumped its entire snow load onto the suede couch and onto both of them. I was ill and on the verge of critical nausea, but at this point, I also bordered on incontinent.

This visual came back to me in flashes through the day, and I lol-ed in the shower; I lol-ed as I dried the suede with a hair dryer; later I lol-ed while lying on the fantastic bastard that caused the incident in the first place. But this was no sswpml. This was the authentic laugh of the pre-lol 90s.

 

January 27, 2009

Taxes and fucked up coworkers

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, alaska, fishing, photography, salmon, sitka, southeast, work, writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Those two things are certain.

Because my level of poverty means I still get most of my money back after the government borrows it for the year: tax time usually isn’t too excruciating. Lately, however, I have spent more quality time in front of my computer at work – purchasing, freight coordinating, watching Gunther on YouTube and generally tiring of its supreme data availability.

But I got my W-2s (the fewest amount ever with a mere two different official employers), and I was ready to  slip on my sexiest green copy editor visor and assess my refund. Yes – I spent all day researching Muffin Monsters, nipples and butt weld accesories, but I felt prepared, even eager, to return to my computer post, enter my tax data and watch my sweet little cents work their way back to my bank account.

Here’s the problem: I forgot about my unemployment earnings, my student loan payments and my out of pocket medical expenses. Was I a resident of Alaska or Idaho last year? And what about Oregon? How many of my illegitimate children can I claim as dependents? Can I write off my booze budget if it directly influences my writing prowess? Ugh. So many goddamned questions and documents. How could anyone ever do grown up taxes with itemizing deductions and whatnots?

I’m no quitter. I forged on through the tough questions and imagined what numbers those documents might contain. I made some progress. I clicked ‘Continue,’ and then it was all gone. Flung out the TurboTax saloon doors, I landed in a dusty horse pile of non-connectivity. When I picked up, brushed off and logged in again – they acted as if they’d never heard of me. All those “saving your data” sweet nothings were faked.

So I’ve decided to put off my taxes for a while.

And really who could think about taxes when the uber religious, loudly operatic theater major quit today after one week of employment, claiming our foul mouths made for an uncomfortable workplace? This is the fishing industry of southeast Alaska. I’m not quite sure what she expected.

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Photo: Joel Fisher

Lucky for me, most of my coworkers are pretty rooting tooting enjoyable (pardon my strong descriptors). Tomorrow is the founding meeting of Bitches that Knit wherein my friends and co-ws Stevie Wonder (the girl) and Stif Fanny will gently end my knitginity. I hope I learn how to make a coaster because I really needed one the other day. I also hope it’s easier than determining my state of residence for 2008.

 

January 21, 2009

Green Frog Chronicles

Posted by Jessie under What, writing | Tags: , , , , , |
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I was on “Wonder Showzen” – more specifically a segment called Meat/Not Meat. Determining the nutriment status involved rubbing raw red meat along my jawbone in front of an audience.

This segued into a show I was watching at home but did not participate in: “The Green Frog Chronicles.” Unfortunately the show had nothing to do with Hopkin Green Frog. It was, instead, a very porny/artistic film about an orgy.

The first half hour of the film was hot steamy orgy-havin’ with sweaty skin and limbs akimbo everywhere. After the character introductions were complete, the angle switched to isolate one couple (or triple) at a time only. You could tell it had been filmed simultaneously, but these new camera angles completely blocked the rest of the roomful of orgiers. One was left with the impression that this would not only complexify the film’s style lending it more to the art film world, but it also would allow the creators to diversify their marketing into two films – one for fans of copulating individuals or threesomes and one for orgy fans. (I guess that could actually be three films – very smart.) Spliced into the action were “making of” vignettes, giving the viewer a glimpse of life on the set and short biographies of each actor.

So get to psychoanalyzing. What does my sleeping subconscious say about me? Why would an artsy porn be named “The Green Frog Chronicles?” That’s just nonsensical.

In other news, it was a very historic day for the United States of America.

Lastly, hmmm…I wonder what new search terms will bring readers to my blog.

 

January 14, 2009

‘Tisn’t the season anymore

Posted by Jessie under Where, alaska, boise, idaho, seattle, sitka, southeast
[4] Comments 

Like prune juice through the digestive tract, the holidays passed too quickly.

I made a Christmas shrub.

I made some semi-craftique photo gifts.

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I made elaborate Christmas cookies with my friends.

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I froze my beans off watching some sort of twinkle-lighted trucks on parade.

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D, T, N, V n me

I made a mess and got presents!

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I got drunk at Seatac. Special deals on top shelf tequila with an upgraded beer size. Oh yes.

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I did not lose my luggage in Spokane.

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I stole my first smooch of 2009.

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I pugsat Lola and Langston.

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And I remembered the hardest part of living in Alaska is that my cousin/best friend doesn’t. :(

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To everyone else who made my trip to the lower 48 so frenetic but fantastic – thank you. I miss living near enough to road trip visit. Thus I propose a resolution for all you: visit majestic Alaska in the year 2009 (specifically SE AK, Baranof Island, Burough of Sitka).

Cheers and happy damn 2009!

 

December 17, 2008

Delightful Frightful

Posted by Jessie under What, Where, alaska, photography, sitka, southeast, work, writing | Tags: , , , , , |
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Delightful

The weather here has been stunning – clear and cold bright blue skies behind jagged peaks capped with severly white snow. This means every time I drive anywhere in the daylight (8:30 a.m. – 3:15 p.m.), I’m transfixed by the Alaskan majestitude and am compelled to shoot a bunch of non-aimed pictures through the windshield with my new birthday Canon (also delightful).

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Accross the bridge toward hangover breakfast at The Nugget; Japonski Island, Mt. Edgecumbe in the background.

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Full of eggs and hashbrowns; Return to Baranof Island. View of Sitka with annoyed motorists in my mirror.

The cell phone pictures don’t come out quite as well:

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Tsunami Evacuation Route: Go toward those big mountains.

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Bear Mountain in the background; My garage at the bottom left.

And, as always, the views from the dock at work never ever get old. I probably have 50 pictures of this same bay.

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But all is not quite as it seems in sunny Sitka by the sea. No, even in the isolated hinterlands, domestic terrorists plague the streets.

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Ravens.

They are massive birds. Sometimes when I’m out walking and I see one, I have to stop and watch it because I’m just like, “Wow. That bird is so huge.”

Take, for instance, this past Sunday. I pulled into the parking lot of the grocery mart and was yet again struck with the Ravian magnitude. Canon at the ready, I tried for a shot to capture its scale.

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Not so great. But before the car owner came and told the Raven, ” You need to get on out of here,” I optical zoomed and caught some more furry-headed detail.

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Pictures recorded, I purchased my goods and put them in the back of the truck, only then remembering my dire need for eyeliner. (A girl’s gotta look fine no matter if she does work in the fish biz).

Five minutes later, I return to a battle zone in the parking lot. L is reaching through the back slider window of the pickup cab, waving away the same incredibly bold Raven. Upon unpacking the loot, I see the bread bag has been compromised, and probably breathed full of toxic bird germs. Sick! But I am hungry for eggs and bread.

In conclusion, enjoy the pleasins of the season: take pictures while driving and don’t eat bird bread unless you’re really hungry.

And, if you’re in the Idaho metro region December 24 – Jan. 6, we have something in common.

Cheers!