All condolences to the family at the news of J.D. Salinger's passing.

Is it wrong that an almost immediate impulse in my mind was to wonder how soon we would finally see a handful of finished, yet unreleased works?

It's 36 in Juneau at 10:30 pm, which is a lot warmer than Anchorage was at noon earlier today (It was about 10 degrees in the blaring sun). Everything is dark here, but I'm told it will be very picturesque when the sun comes out tomorrow.

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I never could stand Leno. I believe I tuned in once or twice a year if the guest was somebody I couldn't say no to, though all it did in the end was remind me how vanilla and unfunny he is. I can't stand him even more now and hope nobody tunes into the Tonight Show in March, though I'm sure enough people will.

I've always been much more fond of Letterman, even though in the last few years he's gotten a little too cranky. Still, he makes me laugh and he is the king of late night tv. So what of Conan? I figure the best plan is to find a place for him to do his show for 3-5 years before taking Letterman's spot. He deserves it and they certainly have a similar style of humor. That's how I'll lay it out when I'm king.

Looks like I'll be heading to Juneau for work the first part of next week. I've never been there so I'm very interested to check it out, although most of my time will be taken up chatting about J2EE, Flex, and LiveCycle.

Attack From a Forgotten World

I didn't see any of this, but we do live in the Muldoon area, which means we are the front lines of the Chugach alien assault.

Having grown up in Chicago, it seems I can always realize anew that I was plugged into yet another shared cultural experience. I love rambling on about the minutiae that fueled growing up in the midwest, Chicago, the south side, west lawn, marquette park, Brother Rice, etc. It's the charming cultural glue that transcends politics and jobs and responsibilities and all the other things that distract us endlessly into our own homes and lives. We need stories of the 63rd street Indian to crack a smile and forget the looming question marks of our future. Let's drift into the past.

When I think back to birthdays, I always hear either my grandmother or mother teasing that "Pretty soon you'll get to have Dressel's cake!" I had a whipped chocolate one every year, as did my mother, father, and grandmother for that matter. I just thought they were good cakes and hey, we like tasty chocolate cakes in my house. They were not terribly expensive or hard to find, so why didn't we just buy one every month or so for a treat? I wasn't smart enough to ask that question back then. They were Dressel's cakes and there would always be Dressel's cakes -- available and tasty. Well, sadly that is not true. I don't remember when they stopped appearing in our home, but I know they did stop. Here is the story.

The more I dwell on these Chicago experiences and institutions, the more I wonder if all of us little Chicago southsiders were just wooden soldiers marching along to beef sandwiches and vienna red hots.

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Cross off another step on my path to true Alaskan status. No cabin or food cache yet, but I did sign up to receive my first (2009) PFD. Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Goals

We booked our 7 day trip for Kauai last week and we will on the plane the Monday after the Iditarod (March 8th) and home the following Monday.

The Warhammer Tournament at Brimfrost will be the weekend after we return and there will actually be some degree of points for a painted army. My strength is in painting rather than being a good general, so I now have my goal. 2 months, 2K worth of dwarfs. It's doable. Sprint through painting an army in the next 8 weeks and then run off to a tropical honeymoon. Go!

I'm getting a little more local everyday, thanks to buying some Bunny Boots on Saturday. They had my feet sweating at -16 while ice fishing.