October 28, 2009
I was thumbing through some old digital photographs and ran across these ghosts of Boise Halloween past (2008):
With my cousins, Wonderwoman and Billy Ray Cyrus
This costume was fun, though my bottle top did frequently get clotheslined on doorways, and I eventually had to ditch my patchwork dress because of the shoddy construction. I can’t wait to see my costumes (Yes plural: one for Friday, one for Saturday) all pulled together this year. Happy Hallowiener everyone!
October 23, 2009
New hoopty, new digs, new published freelance piece, newfound talent for whipstitch. What the hell is going on?
Could it be a quaterlife crisis for our audacious protagonista? Nah – just a weird alignment of the stars that put everything into a tight-knit tailspin of a timeline. I have mentioned before, though, that I thrive on absurd schedules and abundant chaos, so I find myself quite entertained. Now let’s scrape the glitter off this brew-soaked past week and see what she really looks like.
New hoopty:
She’s a 1986 Honda Accord purchased for 500 beans and complete with child and pet mementos from the last owner. A little clean up, and she will be just what I need: a gas-efficient method of transport for groceries and visitors through the rainy Sitka streets. All she’s missing is a windshield wiper, a tailpipe/muffler and a name. I’m thinking El Tesoro de Oro (The Golden Treasure), but I am accepting suggestions.
New digs:
I was very happy in the cozy cabin with all its wood and loft and deck. My most long-term home in quite a while, it set the scene for some good memories: Bitches That Knit, after parties, football games, Thanksgiving, 2-dimensional Christmas trees. Despite its heinous wallpaper and its $300/month winter heat bills, I will remember the cabin fondly.
R.I.P. sweet cabin view
In fact, I will probably gaze nostalgically up the hill whilst sipping a sasparilla near the firepit at the new beachfront bungalow.
Hello new view (and pile of wood waiting to be burned)
It’s only a half mile away, but the sunlight is abundant, and there is so much more to see (like the Coast Guard helicopter drills currently in progress). I am planning a birthday party/housewarming for November 7th. I will expect your presence if you are in the Sitka metro region. It was intense moving everything on the 1.5 days it wasn’t raining, it was poorly timed with the Alaska Day festivities, and there were the overlapping rent payments on both places, but neener-neener views like these justify all the hassle:
New published freelance piece:
The Capital City Weekly in Juneau asked me to write a piece about Sitka’s unique and exuberant Alaska Day celebration. It came out yesterday with this headline: Sitkans don a kaleidoscope of costumes for Alaska Day (click to read the story), and they used three of the pictures I sent them.
One they didn’t use
To my reporter and editor friends who do this on the daily, I salute you. (Now plug your eyes, and don’t listen to me be a weenie). Writing on a deadline is hard! The biggest day of festivities is Sunday and though normal deadline is Friday, they gave me until Monday morning to get it all in.
I did it, and the pressure felt good. It felt really good to see my byline in print again. I very much appreciate the steady (non-writing) work that has been available to me in recent months, but nothing gives me quite the same satisfaction as writing. They offered me freelance work in their paper through November, so I will have even more reason to stay on a healthy wordage regimen.
Newfound talent for whipstitch:
Ok, that’s kind of a lie. I am slow and clumsy at sewing, but it is for the good of the Halloween costume group I found myself invited into. To make them proud and to complete 1/20 of the needed needlework, I am sewing like a sonofabitch. I don’t know how hush it all is, so I will leave you with just a small peek at my progress. Here is a hint: I will be dressed as my spirit animal.
…
October 14, 2009
In honor of Adventurer Day, I made my virgin voyage to two different places in Sitka town yesterday. One might think I had conquistered every location available with two off-n-on years in a town of 8,000 inhabitants, but there are still a fistful of places on my list to explore.
First off, I have to retire a whole category of bitching because I found Thai food. It’s not 5-star, and it’s not cheap, but it exists. I had never heard a good word about The Twin Dragon. It’s a Korean-owned Asian fusion explosion (Korean, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese…) hotel restaurant with aggressive Chinese decor. It boasts a million-dollar waterfront location but a poor reputation for service and consistency of food quality.
Yesterday’s lunch specials included Pad Thai, Bi Bim Bap and maybe a bento. Despite the multiple culturality disorder, oh – and the price (Pad Thai lunch special = $12; I miss Portland), the dish fulfilled my craving. I can’t complain. It was damn decent.
Our next stop was the patio of the Fly-In Fish Inn (I don’t understand the hyphen). A rare day of bright temperate sunshine is not to be ignored on the doorstep of Alaskan winter. We ingested some fine reasonably-priced cocktails, soaked it up with their complimentary cheesybeanymeat dip, watched some snorty old sea lions and generally had a fine time until sunset.
Fuck yeah! It kind of reminds me of The Reel Inn riverfront patio in Donegal town.
When I thought they day couldn’t get much sweeter, I got confirmation on the rental home (I think I’ll call it the beachfront bordello). The place is available in a couple days, and it’s only about 1/2 mile from the cozy cabin in which I currently reside. Here are a couple creeper shots I took of the view as I rode my bike past the new rental on my way home last night.
Neighbor docks
Volcano
Barring anything heartbreaking and unforeseen, I should live there by the end of the month. yayayayayayayayayyayayayayay.
My what a successful day. Here’s hoping you too discovered or adventured in some way yesterday, preferably without enslaving or killing anyone you encountered.
October 10, 2009
Putting off writing and poking around Etsy.com recently, I redirected to the web page of that day’s featured seller. There I found a recipe that tugged at my fall harvest baker delusions. I don’t know if this is common, but autumn gives me urges that I don’t fully trust or understand. Kitchen urges.
I know how to cook … some things: eggs, sandwiches, tortilla-based meals, veggie Thai curries, salads. But rare is the day I venture into the complex chemistry of baking. It’s easy to mess up, and it’s time consuming, meaning it’s best left to professionals (like my former housemates in Portland). Fall emboldens me. It makes me think about cupcakes, cookies and yes, even pies.
Ginger honey pears and mapley cinnamony apples
Some blame also may lie with the “Pushing Daisies” DVDs that keep showing up from Netflix. I was unsure of the show at first, but by the end of the first disc, I just wanted the big bright pictures to keep on coming. And I had more strange pie-baking desires.
Mini pies; beer bottle rolling pin
I don’t have a pie plate or a rolling pin or a very long attention span, but I persevered with this (easy) recipe and made a decidedly edible mini pie tart thing. The recipe lives here (Mini Fall Galettes) where it is beautifully explained and executed.
Ta-daaaah!
I succeeded with a couple of lessons learned: The cupcake pan needs liners or they’re a bitch to get out (also I just reread the original recipe, and it says to use a cookie sheet). Second, the TeeVee ain’t always wrong. Freestyling from an idea in the pretty shiny pie show mentioned above, I put some sharp cheddar crumbles on my mini pear pie, and hot damn, if it wasn’t a tasty little tart.
Perhaps this means the fall harvest baker is satisfied and will hibernate until next season, or perhaps I will go on a multi-day baking rampage which can only end in high fructose fruit cake. For now, I’ll just eat my tarty pie and hope someone in this house gets an uncontrollable urge to wash dishes.
October 7, 2009
It is fall, and snow is creeping down the mountains.
Fresh snow on Bear Mountain
I have once again skipped a summer, opting instead for 7-day-a-week fish biz work in Alaska and consequently a winter with enough money and time to do whatever the hell I want.
Usually that want is constant travel and stimulation. No – always, including now, that urge is pushing at the back of my brain, threatening to roar out in a fiery fit of spontaneous plane ticket buying. This year, however, I have decided to semi structure my time off.
Wait. Whaaa?! Lest ye worry my first and only winter of full-time real-world employment broke me down into a briefcase-carrying pantsuit warrior, I am still planning travel this winter. I will include my familiar haunts – N. Idaho, Boise, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and some place tropical; I’m thinking Panama and Colombia. But for now, my feet are planted spongily on the muskeg.
The trouble with writing, you see, is that it’s like fishing. It’s not always catching like it’s not always selling. Much of the trouble with writers not being succesful while alive owes to us being too busy questing after inspiration to actually take a piece, polish a pitch and sell the bastard – day after day. I’m learning that editors don’t really give an ass if you’re brilliant or mediocore. They want to know you’re going to be there to consistently fill pages.
I am learning that I’m not so great at hitting deadlines when I’m on the road – even if they’re self-imposed. My focus on squeezing as much possible enjoyment and learning out of every destination means that immediate reflection feels like cheating. I can’t status-n-twitter-update the very latest because I haven’t gleaned any meaning. I will always use my travel experiences to shape my writing, and I won’t stop pursuing either one. For now, though, I’m not attempting to mix the two professionally.
I will sit here at this computer as never before at this time of year. I will write daily and on a schedule. I will sell stories to a weekly out of Juneau (stay tuned for links). I will watch autumn turn to winter from a little cabin in the Alaska rainforest. I will work on a biography (non-auto) and another book about which I will share more at some point. I will maybe end up writing the same sentence in repitition on my typewriter until my psychosis leads me to terrorize everyone I know.
Most importantly, I will miss you all for now, but I will see you soon.
October 1, 2009
When I moved to Sitka, Sarah asked if I had seen the little old lady riding her bike.
The first time I saw Alice, she wore a bold combination of red and yellow with her grey hair blowing around in the wind and rain. I thought she was so cute, riding her cruiser every day back and forth between Sawmill Creek Road and downtown Sitka.
Then I saw her volunteering at a local thrift shop – flitting around asserting her presence, bargaining with customers and contradicting her co-volunteers.
Next I heard her weekly show on Sitka’s public radio station. She played an accordion, and she grew in my mind from cute to remarkable.
This spring, some friends moved into a house facing Jamestown Bay, and I learned where Alice parked her bike. At a dock near the highway, she switched vehicles and rowed a small boat across the bay to her home on an island. Rare was a day too rough, too iced over or too rainy for her to make her round trip from home to town.
I heard her bike was stolen this past year. Concerned citizens pooled their resources and replaced her bike to which Alice replied, “I don’t want a new bike; I want my bike.” Word spread through town, and her bike soon reappeared in its rightful location.
Saturday afternoon I saw Alice near her dock. I waved hello, and she gave me a grin and a double thumbs up.
Saturday evening Alice Machesney died playing her accordion for residents of the local retirement home. She was 83.
I did not know Alice well, but I loved knowing she was here, bucking limitations and doing whatever the hell she wanted. I could say, “Rest in peace,” but seeing the energy and vigor she poured into every day, I doubt there will be much resting. I can say Sitka won’t feel the same without Alice. She will be missed.
(Photo: Adam Crawford)
September 16, 2009
HELP!
My little wooden cabin is wicked fantastic; my bedroom wallpaper is not.
The wallpaper will stay because it’s a rental, but these terrible curtains are beginning to drive me insane.
I will replace the weird mullety curtain style with a one-piece, but I need a color to downplay the circus tent style.
Can anyone close one eye, squint at that picture and foresee something that may make me more happy?
August 26, 2009
Today started off as any other day – a treasure hunt for my undies, a groggy walk home and a trip to Planned Parenthood. Wait … I’m not in college anymore.
I made it to work, injected some coffee, checked some shipping documents and ran some production numbers. I was all juiced up on Longliner Blend beans and thinking of busting out of there when Ms. Ashley came to me with a proposition.
“Hey – you want to go jerk off some fish?” she wondered. I checked my day planner and seeing nothing written in blue, black or even red ink on either of my hands, I told her, “Weeeeeell. I don’t know. I have some important things lined up today.”
I thought about the floofy couch, rain falling on the metal roof of the cabin and the giant HD TeeVee. “Yeah. Pretty booked up,” I thought.
But Ashley has a way with squeezing neck muscles and reducing you to a primal sea cucumber who will agree to anything as long as the positive stimulation continues. (Don’t worry if that analogy doesn’t make sense – just let it flow with the marine theme). Also she said there was a work-logo sweatshirt and hat in it for anyone who volunteered. Hmmm. Could make for blog fodder. Free merchandise? Ok. Goddammit. Where are my rain pants?
I found my rain gear stuffed away on El Gato Negro and headed down town in the heavy rain and many-mile-per-hour winds with five other brave salmon saviours. Here then is the process of making salmon babies – a study in pictures.
(Setting: SJ Hatchery / Aquarium in Sitka (such a cool place – go there!). Scene: A dark and stormy afternoon):
Ash, Frannie, Jian and Cherylanne ready to make babies. SJ worker in yellow. Tourists with umbrellas.
These pink salmon (10 female: 6 male per net take … Hooratios!) are lifted from the raceways and dunked into this grey tote of clove oil mixture to sleep with the fishes. Well – mostly to suffocate and die quickly. But don’t worry, nature folk; dying is part of the natural mating routine of salmon.
Any dead fish yet? We’re bored; Oh damn you guys and your icredible speed; Finally – a full table ready to become a bucket of pink salmon babies.
With the female salmon, you take this hook/razor, plug the anus with the hook (if not, eggs will drop out all over the floor when you lift her) then slit from anus to collar to the right of the pelvic fins. Most of the eggs will drop out down the chute. The others you gently massage out of the body cavity.
Frannie and I milt milking. The white on the front of the bucket is milt (salmon sperm).
The males are a little less complicated. You hold them with the anus pointing toward the bucket then stroke a few times back and forth until you expend the supply of white milky milt.
It then looks like this:
Load on eggs
A few moments of hand mixing, and it looks like this:
A bit of brine is added and swished around, then the eggs are rinsed twice to clear blood and debris. Finally they are dumped out of the bucket and into an incubator tank which will maintain consistent temperature, water flow and salinity until the little baby fishies hatch up.
I believe in you, Tank 7 Babies. Don’t let your parents’ death be in vain.
Our hatchery friend Dan told us we were the fastest fish fertilizers he’d ever seen, which I suppose shouldn’t be surprising from an elite processing super team.
What we didn’t expect, however, when we set out in the rain to do fish work for free was that we’d have a lot of fun. No joke. Roe-n-Milt ‘09 was off the hook. If you are in Sitka or plan to visit any late summer, you too can play salmon god. The next egg take is this Saturday August 29 with a midday barbecue. All volunteers are welcome; raingear is advised.
Happy Roe-n-Milt friends Jessie and Ashley;
Pizza tastes waaaaay better after you’ve been gutting and milking salmon all afternoon.
June 10, 2009
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.
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).
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.
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.
Gnomes drink airplane Heinekin from teacups.
Euro socket/wattage adapter – $39.99, and it did not work at all. Stupid airport salesman.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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!!!!!
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.
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
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:
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.
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:
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!
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