Alaska is a pretty clean place. The air is almost always excellent here in south central Alaska(though Fairbanks has large amounts of particulates in winter -- though not for the reasons most people would guess) and when you head off to fish, ride, hike, or camp you will mostly likely find beautiful, clean wilderness. Sadly, there is sometimes a random piece of litter to let you know that humanity made it to this little piece of heaven before you did. It stinks, but that's life. In general, Alaska is very clean. A great deal cleaner than Chicago, and a fair amount cleaner than Wisconsin (and Wisconsin is a pretty clean place). I'm beginning to split hairs here, but suffice to say -- Alaska is just about as clean and beautiful as you would expect.

However, as the snow melts each April we are confronted with our annual, dirty task -- cleaning up the trash. All along the roads a brutal amount of trash collects, waiting for volunteers to attack it within a few weeks in preparation for summer and the visitors it brings. It's kind of nasty to glance at, but it does make a cruel bit of sense. Think about it. All winter long random pieces of little trash find their way onto the roads, only to be plowed into the snow back . Our winter has no freeze/thaw cycles -- it only all melts once, and that is after about 5-6 months of snow. So you find a plethora of junk neatly assembled on the sides of the road, all ready for picking. It's kind of like getting the majority of the city's annual litter in a 2 week window.

Everyone is now starting to get in good mood as the snow melts a little more each day. The parking lots everywhere are turning into gravel and the trash is preening itself for the light of day. Soon trucks will come around and pick up all of the gravel and we'll get that litter taken care of. It's the annual eyesore before life explodes into green and seemingly endless daylight and we are all reminded yet again of why we all live here. Just a few more weeks...

This is the kind of thing that made the girls fawn in high school.

Great game.

The Warhammer Fantasy Battle tournament on Sunday was a blast. Honestly, as long as the sportsmanship is good, any game is fun. I missed the first game but played the last two, which is plenty. 2250 point WHFB games take a few hours just to get going.

I played the empire first and our artillery just pounded each other as we ever so slowly inched towards close combat. I got lucky as his cannon misfired and the crew was killed in the first round. In the end I won by a few hundred points and ended up with a draw. If we had another hour to play I suspect the game would have broke much stronger in a given direction -- a direction I am unsure of.

The second game was my umpteenth match against Andrew. Always fun and always good gameplay. His wood elves zipped left and right across the board and were always out of line of sight of my dwarfs and out of a flank shot from my bolt thrower. I made a few tactical mistakes early, but my Hammerers caused some Glade Guard to panic and I found some breathing room. After 2.5 hours he had taken 1800 points off my side of the table, but our differential was only 500 points, giving him a Marginal Victory. That's a lot of spilled blood just to get a MV.

So much fun.

...

After visiting Pearl Harbor I really want to build a USS Arizona plastic model kit. Revell makes one for around 20 bucks. I've built plenty of model cars and planes (and am building a Revell Fighting Falcon right now), but never a ship. Sign me up.

...

Though I play mostly table top wargames, I have a soft spot for old Dungeons and Dragons. I've played plenty of it throughout my life and have a pretty sizeable collection of the stuff. Lately I've had the bug to reread some of the older modules and rulebooks and have been having a lot of fun with Hackmaster stuff. I've been noodling through the Ghost of Lion Castle lately and then found myself standing in a games store in Honolulu, looking down on pile of Hackmaster stuff at 40% off. Done deal. I just get so much enjoyment out of reading older styled modules. It's such a cultural touchstone for me.

...

Facebook is nothing if not a grade school reunion generator, and good for that. While I have connected with a fair amount of St Nick's '89 Tigers over the last year or so, the reunion has only been mentioned as a good idea someday. It looks like an '88 reunion happened in Mt. Greenwood the other day. I recognized a lot of the people in those pictures. An '89 reunion would be a blast, and I mean that beyond the initial bald/fat checklist it would secretly be. I'd win the travel distance award for sure.

...

I took my cross bike into the shop for a new handbuilt rear wheel and a tune up. It needs some love after being shoved into a dirty corner soon after Cyclocross racing season ended. Spring is just around the corner!

Random Kauai

We had a condo, so our first day was a trip to Costco to load up for a handful of breakfasts and lunches cooked in our condo. It's a good approach to save money and time. We stocked up on snacks as well -- plenty of macadamian nuts, a locally grown pineapple, and oranges. I like oranges a lot and the warm, tropical atmosphere had me in the mood to eat a pile of them. So I quickly grabbed the 10 lb box, slid it in the cart, and watched Becky blink and smile, "That's all you. I don't really like them."

"No problem. I love them."

Well, it turns out 10lbs is a lot of oranges. We lost one to mold, and Becky ate a few. Otherwise, I at many oranges each day. Many.

At the airport we were told that any produce whatsoever cannot head back to lower 48, so there I sat slamming down 3 oranges before heading to our gate. There was nothing else was in my stomach.

Do the math. Even in the 30 minutes before boarding you can't go to the bathroom enough to diffuse those oranges. I inconvenienced the guy seated next to me more than a few times during the first half of that flight.

I will be hard pressed to not think of oranges when I think of Kauai. I still love oranges and need to buy some soon.

...

There are chickens everywhere on Kauai. I cannot overstate this. They have no predators and along with the wild pigs number around 300,000. There are 60,000 people on the island and as you can imagine these chickens start screaming every morning around 5 am. After a few days it became kind of charming in the way a unique quirk about a foreign place is to the visitor. I suspect the moose have this effect on Alaskan visitors.

...

Kalua Pork is ridiculously delicious. I think I ate it at least 4 times. We purchased some of the red Hawaiin sea salt and will be trying to make it at home very soon. It seems easy enough.

...

I don't remember exactly what my expectations were regarding the perceived high points of the trip, but after leaving I cannot forget the Na Pali coast. It was beautiful and unique almost beyond words. Our dinner cruise brought us close to the shoreline and it was magnificent. I still think cruising down Turnagain arm is prettier, but this was stellar.

...

Hawaiian prices are pretty close to Alaskan prices, so we missed out on the sticker shock most people feel when they visit the islands. You do get hit with sales tax though, which is always an annoyance to us tax free Alaskans.

...

The USS Arizona memorial is extremely impressive. While waiting for our time to shuttle over to the memorial itself we watched the 15 minute film setting the stage for December 7th. Halfway through that flick I was ready to bomb Japan again, today. Within a few minutes the context and history of things crept back in and I was fine, but for a 20 second window I was ready to go.

...

It is now light to almost 9 pm here! It's time to get my bike to the shop for a tune up and get ready for the snow to melt next month. With any luck we won't get an early May snow dump.

And the trip to Kauai ends in the Anchorage parking lot on Monday night. I'll have more to chat about later, but for now I am left to readjust to snow and mountains. It is nice to be home, but maybe a little nicer to still be in Hawaii.

Loads of pictures here.

The Iditarod starts on Sunday and we'll be in Willow tailgating on a frozen lake at the official start. It's a beautiful event. You stand around a fire, whistle down a few reindeer dogs, glance at Denali (it was out last year), and listen to the state song of Alaska as mushers zip by every 5 - 10 minutes. Aside from hoping Lance Mackey pulls it off again (even though he won't smoking weed this time), I've tried to pick out a few underdogs to cheer for. They won't be winning the race, but they certainly can make a good run. I'm a fan of Zoya thanks to her interesting journey from Madison, WI to Alaska. Also, how can I not be a fan of the first Jamaican musher? Awesome. This has Cool Runnings 2 written all over it.

...

It's really hard to think of anything but Kauai. We leave on Monday.

...

As I get older I have to embrace being an adult more and more, which means getting excited about purchases that are not exciting. A Colnago road bike is exciting. So is a new Warhammer army. A new front loading washer and dryer should not be, though it is. Our dryer went the way of the dodo a few weeks ago and since it was part of a stacked washer and dryer combo, it was time to shop for both. We settled on independent units that stack quite nicely, sing songs when they are finished, and have controls more akin to a cd player than a churning old machine. It's all very exciting and we still get a big kick out of using it. We're silly about it.

What to give up for Lent? Religious implications aside, it's a good exercise to put yourself through. I'm not sure. It really crept up on me this year.

...

There is a Mordheim tournament in a few weeks. Man, I love that game, though I have historically been pretty bad/unlucky at it. From the beginning I played the Sisters of Sigmar largely because I liked the models a great deal and really enjoyed their back story. But man, I could never paint them to any degree of personal satisfaction. I just hated any paint job I gave them. At the time I was painting a lot of Vampire Counts, skeletons, Eldar ships for Battlefleet Gothic, and maybe a few Warhammer Quest models. Looking back I am moderately pleased with much of that painting, and some of it still garners compliments when they hit the table today. But in that time period those Sisters models were puzzles I just could not solve. Just a conundrum. I must have sprayed them primer white 3 times just to cover up my painting attempts and start anew. So here I stand today -- a much better painter staring down a Mordheim tournament in a few weeks. It's reasonable to paint the Sisters in a few weeks given that the color scheme will be very similar on each model. It's like a showdown with a high school bully from 1o years ago. I'm halfway through the bulk of the models and they are looking great. I feel like my time away from them was well spent, and my skills have much increased. 10 years ago I painted in a typical high light driven approach, whereas now I push towards blending with solid layering as my back stop.

I'm getting to the point where I am not pleased with sloppily painted models, so I just can't rush things. I'm not an amazing painter, but I know when I am painting at my best and when I am cutting corners. My dwarf army will not be painted within the next month to any degree of quality, but the Mordheim models could be. I'll target the achievable goal.

Now if I can just get better at the game itself!

...

I usually attend spin class at least twice a week on Elmendorf AFB. The class is usually taught by active or retired military. It's a good class and the music is always whatever the teacher wants it to be. One guy is techno, the other 80's cock rock, and another loves 70's soul and early Michael Jackson. That class always ends with Thriller. Cool. However, this past Saturday we found ourselves sprinting to The Village People's "In the Navy." And I thought it was odd pedaling last month to Def Leppard. Maybe it's a snide jab to a different branch of the armed forces? I know good natured sniping is common.

So that's it. I finally finished all of the Homicide:Life on the Street dvds. I don't even want to count the number of discs/episodes/hours, but there were 7 seasons (5 of which were full seasons) and a tv movie. I had spread this task over several years, but it still feels exhausting to be done. And extremely satisfying. What an amazing show, and what a moving coda. The movie finale was just perfection. I'm not physically ready to start watching the Wire yet, but mentally I am prepared. I'm ready for more Baltimore. It looks like a strange permutation of Chicago's Canaryville smashed into old Bronzeville, with an occasional trip to Hyde Park.

...

In all my years of fishing I have never run into a game warden. Before moving up here I assumed that Alaskan game enforcement was certainly less than in Wisconsin. It's a bigger country, game is more plentiful, etc. Wrong, very wrong. Upon settling in here I immediately heard many tales of strict enforcement and commando tactics.

Case in point, a friend was fishing with people for King Salmon on a river after having been flown in. There was no one around for miles.

As a side note, once you catch a King Salmon in Alaska you cannot fish for King Salmon again that day. You cannot fish for fun in the same water. Your line is now dry so just drink your beer and watch your friends fish. Those are the rules.

One of the friends caught his King and was bored watching his friends fish. He figured that being in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness after being flown in made it reasonable to keep fishing. Maybe he has the hot pole and he can help his friends limit out? Makes sense. Out of the trees comes 2 wardens, "Why are you still fishing when you caught your King 10 minutes ago?" Bang. $250.

I obey the rules anyway, but still don't expect to get checked. Saturday we were ice fishing in Wasilla and out of the snow storm drifted a solo figure in all black with a definable gun belt bobbing along. We ended up chatting with the State Trooper for about 20 minutes, received some tips as to hot fishing on other lakes, and produced our licenses. The natural resources up here are a big deal, and their strict enforcement is fine with me.

This demonic moose was in our condo parking lot on and off last weekend. There are plenty of tracks near the trees just outside of our door so it seems that we're just missing this moose on our walks to the car or trash. I'll have another moose on my doorstep sooner or later.

I took a handful of pictures in Juneau as well last week. Our new camera is getting a workout.

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.

...

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.

...

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.

As every winter really sets in, my movie watching spikes. I'm catching up on all the good stuff I missed while I was riding my bike, fishing, and getting married.

Everyone that saw (500) Days of Summer told me is was a warm, sweet, charming , and surprisingly deep and insightful story of love and relationships. I genuinely hold these people in high regard when it comes to movies. I was excited to see this at Blockbuster the other day and scooped it up without a pause. Usually I drift down the entire wall of new releases before deciding on a new flick to grab. Not this time. It was at the beginning of the alphabetized wall and I did not hesitate. After watching it, it was...ok. I enjoyed it, and the actors are very charming and perfectly cast. The movie has so much going for it and none of it is bad, though in the end it felt like a creatively organized flavor of a solid romantic comedy. I am told by those that recommended it that I am dead wrong on this. I wonder if I would have loved it much more if I wasn't married? Maybe if hipsters didn't grate on me as much as they sometimes do? Maybe I am just getting older and more cynical? I have always loved Say Anything... and probably always will, but man do I see the cracks in that when I watch it these days. Perhaps you need to see certain things at the right time in your life and just reconnect with those memories in order to enjoy subsequent viewings? I suspect many people would not love The Catcher in the Rye if they waited till their 30's to read it, though I read it in high school and always find those warm feelings drifting back each time I reread it. (500) Days of Summer is not bad, but not the great thesis on modern or hipster love. She doesn't like you. Get over it.

I initially thought Rushmore was a tight little masterpiece and The Royal Tenenbaums came up short, yet with a more audacious reach. I loved them both, but preferred Rushmore. I remember vividly seeing Rushmore on the mag mile in Chicago with Melissa, Jess, and the entire crew. We walked out of the movie giddy with the enjoyment of having seen something truly original and enjoyable. After a handful of Rushmore viewings quite a few years ago I sort of set the movie aside in my mind. It's great, let's let it happily sit in that trophy case. I kept digesting The Royal Tenenbaums and the layers of that onion expanded unceasingly. I was wrong. It had not failed in anything it reached for at all. Like Scorsese or Kubrick, Wes' work really needs a few screenings to unfold. We watched Rushmore again last night and while I still laughed non stop, I saw little cracks here and there. I always thought of Bottle Rocket as the learning experience that produced the perfection in Rushmore. Maybe they both were a big warm up for RT's? I still love Mr. Littlejeans.

I'm planning on seeing A Serious Man this weekend. That is supposed to be excellent. And World's Greatest Dad is on dvd now. Time to catch up.

Texting Fun

I don't often get random texts from unknown numbers, but when I do I try to play ball. Last night around 9:30 I received one from a 907 (Alaska) area code, couldn't find the name in Becky's phone, and therefore decided to respond. The whole back and forth took under 5 minutes.

?:Hey chris...r u and Becky in town for the holidays?

Is it a coworker from my former job planning a New Years party? There are all kinds of people up here that have their families elsewhere. We are a sort of pack of strays up here so parties seem to develop more randomly. I did leave my number with former workers before my last day. Ok, my money is on party. We're in.

Me: Yep. We're here in Anchorage.

?:Cool. I have banana bread.

?:Sorry for the late txt. didn't realize the time in my baking frenzy!!

?:Oh and if u don't like b bread I have mini cheesecakes too.

No party, but man do I like cheesecake.

Me:They both sound very good. Cheesecake is a fav of mine though.

?:Cheesecake it is!!

At this point asking whom it is may be a little late. Cheesecake is coming, though I'm not sure from where or how I will get it. But cheesecake is coming. The details are an uptown problem.

I woke up today not sure where it could be coming from. Hmmm... At this point I don't have the guts to mail back. Let the ball stay in their court.

The doorbell rang at 3 pm and there stood my realtor from a year or so ago. She was great -- just beyond great. And she was now holding 2 cheesecakes. "I'm parked illegally so Merry Christmas!," she smiled and shuffled away. Perfect.

...

About 6 months ago I had some similar fun, albeit without cheesecake.

?: R u going to kerrys?

Me:Yep. For sure.

?: Kewl. When are you leaving?

Me: In a bit.

?:Who is this?

Me:Kris. Who is this?

?:Anna. How old r u?

Me:How old r u?

?:14

Game Over. Phone down. Becky and I stopped laughing and let those texts slip into the ether.

I liked my job here in Anchorage plenty, but work there was drying up. A few months ago they told us it would be wise to look for a new job while also promising to hold on to us as long as possible. They had every hope that something would happen and contracts would be signed guaranteeing work for another year at least. They also promised that if anyone was let go they would be given 30 days notice. Given the economy, that's a very ethical promise. It seems that the east coast branches are doing gangbusters, but the Alaska location (which started the company) is not doing as well. The DoD prefers to do business locally. I guess I can see that. Regardless, the last few months have seen a careful polishing of my resume, a hope that a contract might pop out of the ether, and a careful attitude about dollars being spent. And Hawaii was put on the back burner. Through a priceless recommendation and a few successful interviews I was able to land at a new gig doing the same software engineering I have always done, yet with clients local to the state. It's more stable and the future there looks much brighter. I am very thankful to have avoided an interruption in income and the honeymoon is being booked any day now. Given the economy, I anticipated being out of work a lot longer. I really dodged a bullet and I know I am much luckier than most these days. Sounds like I owe a few Novenas.

A funny epilogue is that after my final day at the old gig I attended the Christmas party that night at Sullivan's steakhouse. Today, the following Friday, I will be attending the new company's Christmas party. Do I know how to time it or what?

...

I bid on things on ebay all the time, mostly in a completely dismissive way. "If if stays this cheap and I win, then great. If the bidding increases, I lose." I lose all the time, and don't really care. I rarely win anything with this approach, an approach which is really more of a constant litmus test on the weekly price of Mordheim or Necromunda miniatures. Minimum bids do not stand, until this past week that is. I guess everyone is burned out on Christmas shopping because I ended up being on the hook for a pile of great stuff this past week.

Talisman game and Reaper expansion for half price? Check.
1980 Dungeons and Dragons Electronic game for $10? Sure.
Dungeonquest? Yep.
That random, hard to find AD&D solo adventure I had been hunting down? Gotcha.

All at great prices and sure to fill the random holes in my Dungeons and Dragons collection. But man did they all come at once. It's never bad to have gaming stuff show up in the mail like presents though.

I've never had pink eye, though I've seen it in plenty of other folks. Last Wednesday I woke up with one eye sealed shut with gunk and the other full of plenty of gunk as well. After rinsing it all down with a damp cloth I noticed that both eyes were completely bloodshot. The night before only one eye was mildly irritated -- this sucker moved fast. At work that morning I read about pink eye and most of what I read said that treatment mainly masks the symptoms and keeping your hands clean was really the key. You ride it out. So I had somewhat decided to just tough it out before I came upon the nagging fact that it could permanently damage your eye in rare cases. Fine, off to urgent care I went.

At a glance he looked in my eye and told me that I certainly had an infection, but also that it was not pink eye. So they tested me for everything under the winter season banner of possibilities. Negative on strep throat, H1N1, pink eye, etc. I walked out with a Rx for some antibiotic drops and a promise to come back for the results of the eye gunk culture in a week. The eye drops then zapped it within 24 hours.

Well, it looks like it was strep after all, though it never made it to my throat. A round of antibiotic pills should kill it for sure.

I always try to not touch my face when I'm at the gym, and I do often wash my hands after leaving the weight room. It has to have been from one of the plethora of people there that use the barbells.

I got off light -- Becky's the one that had swine flu. No complaints here.

...

Is Maui the best island to hang around for a week? Are any of the islands really bad? I doubt it. We'll be fulfilling a typical Alaskan lifestyle trait by heading "outside" to our 50th state this winter.

...

I am currently knee deep in the final 2 seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street. I had plowed through the first 4 back in Madison after getting my wisdom teeth yanked, then put the last few season sets aside just to avoid burning out. The years have passed and the snow is here and everytime I head to Blockbuster I think about grabbing the first season of The Wire. I've never seen it and I'm told it will change my life. I want in. However, the little voice in the back of my head keeps reminding me that I need to finish the other, precursor Baltimore cop show that I have already paid good money for. Fair enough. I love Homicide and I really see a lot of Chicago (and any other decaying, northern, industrial city) in its depiction of Charm City. Homicide may seem a necessary stop off on the journey to the Elysian Fields of The Wire, though it is a perfect destination all on its own.