The Reader/Web Surfer/Fellow Blogger sat aghast, appalled, contemptuous, and distraught. Cheated! Lied to! Strung along like a...like a...like a kite in the wind! Promises had been made! The Trusted Word had been given!
Where were the posts on New York City????
The posts, in their most complete form, sat warm and tidy on the hard drive of SeanEO's Acer Aspire One laptop. Some of them were done, but some of them were too done. Parts were lengthy. Parts were barren of detail. Parts were unfathomably boring. And locked away on another hard drive, a hard drive that had ceased to work mere days before this posting, were the majority of the pictures associated with said trip. But there was a glimmer of hope. A new enclosure for the hard drive was on its way up to Alaska. With any luck, this would make the hard drive readable once again, and maybe, just maybe, the posts on New York City could be fleshed out in the way they had been intended. This is not the recognized death of the hard drive or the New York City posts, it is merely an explanation for the delay and, if I may be so bold, a horrible segway to posting these two videos.
The first one is a foot battle game Niki and I made up standing outside the mercantile store while waiting for the shuttle bus. As far as I can tell (we never discussed the rules or anything), you want to tap the other person's foot without them tapping your foot. Either foot. This video is mainly for visual content.
The second one is a lone saxophone player's song in a New York City subway station. It's not much to look at but it's the sound that counts. This video is mainly for audio content.
Enjoy!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
And just one more thing...
Close to 34% of my readers requested more cellphone photography pictures. More have been added, and I'm going to make a conscious effort to continue this effort! That being said, I'm also giving captions to many of them, so I encourage you all to click on them for more detail and words as reference points. :)
Catch-up and Hot Sauce
A lot has happened since I last left words here!
My mother came to visit, I upped my WRPD (words read per day) count, and I had a short-lived, tragic love affair with a woman named Melinda. To be fair, she wasn't as hot as she claimed to be.
Following the two week cold snap (-30 degrees is enough to keep me inside most of the time, yet I still didn't blog), we got a 70 degree turn around with a week of 40 degrees and rain! Snowboarding be damned and solid ice sidewalks be praised, it became official winter biking weather! The mile long bike path from my house to my work was, and I don't exaggerate at all here, a curving up and down, back and forth, ice slalom of death for anyone without ice cleats.
Or studded tires. :)
One week gone and the rain turned to snow again. After three inches piled up, tire traction was gone and snowboards came back into style. I turned pages again and finished my Patagonia Trilogy Series and moved on to my first experience with Chuck Palahniuk with Rant. Before Rant, I spent a week hanging out with my mom. Call me a momma's boy all you want but my mom is great fun to be around! As this was her second visit to Girdwood, no tours were needed so engaging in winter sports, going to local concerts, and drinking lots of wine went uninhibited.
On the day my mother arrived, I also have a chance meeting with Melinda.
If you're a fan of sauces that make you simultaneously smile, cry, and slow down your food intake, check out El Yucateco's XXXtra Hot Chile Habanero. This stuff is great. I fell in love after one bite of one burrito.
The only problem is that she doesn't live in Girdwood, and she only hangs out at select stores in Anchorage. So when we don't drive into downtown Anchorage to buy Kombucha tea for my sisters, I search Fred Meyer's hot sauce sections (pluralized because their hot sauces are spread out across the store into three different sections. Asian foods, Hispanic foods, and canned tomatoes/steak dressings sections. How they decided to put Tapatio one place and Chalula another is anyone's guess) for an alternative. Unless there is a mysterious fourth section for hot sauces (industrial cleaning products?), Melinda was the hottest thing they had to offer. Sporting an extra 'X' and claiming to be a 'Reserve' item, I bought two bottles.
Oh, what a letdown. If you like sauces hotter than Tabasco, buy Melinda's hot sauce, but don't expect her to bring you to your knees. For off-the-shelf oral masochism, she is a weak player. El Yucateco, how I long for thee. Yet I still have nearly two bottles-worth of Melinda so I may as well buy some eggs and take the hit. I really didn't expect this blog to be a hot sauce revue but of all you readers out there (I'm reading three at the moment, tripling my count from the last blog!), I'm sure someone will take this into consideration next time they're making burritos.
On a sweeter note, Emily (my sister), has taken to coconuts over the past few months and, through trial and error, we've now learned an easy method for extracting the milk and flesh! A wine corkscrew and a hammer! Corkscrew into that sucker and let the milk drain out into a jar, then put a hole in the other side and hammer the shell for a fairly clean half and half split! Use a butter knife to pop out the flesh.
In other news, Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula residents have spent the last week on volcano watch. If you haven't seen it in the news yet, Mount Redoubt is bubbling, shaking, and is more than likely going to erupt 106 miles from Anchorage. Wind conditions may or may not drop a layer of ash on the more populated city in Alaska, so everyone is waiting with some form of anticipation.
Ah, and one week from today my oldest sister, Sarah, and my brother-in-law, Danny, will be here for ten days! We'll see if Mount Redoubt keeps them here longer... :)
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Blue skies...sunshine...
...and 15 degrees below zero.
It's the longest cold snap in years for the municipality of Anchorage. We're going on two weeks of temperatures with a high of -2 and a low of -20 Fahrenheit. Blow your nose before you ride your bike to work, or your snot will freeze and you'll have to breathe through your mouth! Trust me on that one.
After a week-long hiatus of no phone or internet service (the company wanted me to give them money, those fiends!), I'm back and feeling more than a little behind in placing the written word on the electronic paper. And to go just a smidgen more abstract than that, here's my recently conceived abstract on communication, co-written by Baileys and Jameson & Co.:
"The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate."
-Joseph Priestley
Communication
Communication is the true connection between two people. It has its roots with the original two primates, 'Adam' and 'Eve', of course, who screeched and clawed at each other over apple and snake, herbivorous or carnivorous, and were so effective in communicating that both resigned to incorporate the other's belief system. Being that the snake was a Philippine Cobra, and its meat a natural aphrodisiac, the two primates copulated time and again, creating many more primates with whom they could then screech and claw at regarding the finer things in life. Only later did Eve realize copulation was the motivation behind Adam's carnivorous disposition (all those nights eating cobra alone by the fire must have driven him half-mad with desire!).
But let's not get sidetracked.
Pretty soon there were plenty of primates running around, eating fruit and meat and communicating on the most basic level, which is grunting. And anyone who doesn't want to acknowledge this connection to our past brothers and sisters, anyone who claims that we were created well past the point of monosyllabic expressionism, and that Charlie's uncle Roy is extra furry because not only does he masturbate uncontrollably, but the werewolf that bit him did also, let them look no further than the bathroom. No, we're not on masturbation still here; I'm talking about clean teeth. Clean teeth? If I've lost you at this point, reread the quote at the top of the page and have a giggle at my expense.
Cleaning teeth, the act of, more specifically.
Take a community of four human beings, four toothbrushes, one bathroom, and the desire to continue the act of teeth-cleaning for the duration of the bathroom community meeting, and have a look.
Here they are now:
Sophia is already in the bathroom, actually. She purchased the much sought-after toothpaste and is here to store it after applying a healthy dose to the head of her toothbrush. Now she is brushing her teeth.
Enter Brandon. He knows the new toothpaste is here and wants a clean mouth. Ahh, how refreshing!
Following on his heels are Charlie and Josie. Demand for toothpaste this morning was high in the community, and Sophia was chosen to gather the resource because she not only knew where to find it, but also had the necessary materials for trade, should she need to barter with another tribe.
See them brush their teeth in unison.
Pleased at the acquisition of this commodity, Brandon is nodding his head, smiling, and making sounds of approval:
"Mmmmmmm-Mmmmmmm!"
Charlie and Josie join in with smiles and similarly-pitched sounds.
This gesture is acknowledged by Sophia, and we can guess that she interprets it correctly because she smiles back, offers a 'thumbs up' signal, and sounds back:
"Mmmmmmm."
Now it would seem that Brandon needs to communicate an entirely new idea to Sophie. He has an inquisitive look on his face and he’s cocked his head to the left ever so slightly.
“Hmmm. Hmmm-hmmmm?”
This has attracted the attention of everyone in the group, but he is looking at Sophie specifically, and, with his right hand raised in a loose fist, he rotates his wrist back and forth.
Sophie has a look of confusion on her face. See how her lips are pursed outward, her eyebrows come inward, and her head cocks to the side, perhaps mimicking Brandon’s head placement. She includes a responding grunt:
“Hmmmmm?”
Brandon seeks to be understood. Now he moves his arms like he’s marching in place.
Now he’s rotating his wrist again.
He points at himself and grunts back:
“Mmmmmmmmm. Mmm! Mmm! Mmmmmmmm.”
Ah! Charlie recognizes these movements, a good sign, because Brandon is becoming frustrated. Charlie motions as if holding a large object in front of him, one hand in front of the other, and shaking as he makes the sound:
“M-m-m-m-m-m-m-mm! M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-mm!”
Whatever was the gesture of Charlie’s, it is not correct. Brandon is shaking his head, clearly frustrated. Now Brandon is searching for something. The toothpaste! He’s holding the tube of toothpaste and he’s smearing bits of it on the bathroom mirror. He’s drawing a picture! It’s a car! He wants the car keys!
“Mmmm? Mmm-mmmm!”
Sophie is shaking her head. She does not want to give up possession of the car.
Now Brandon is shaking, waving, and hitting a Listerine bottle against the bathroom counter - an obvious sign of agitation, possibly aggression. He grunts forcefully:
“MMMM! MMMMM! MMMMM! MMMMM! MMMMM!”
Charlie attempts to pacify Brandon while Josie has left the bathroom. The battle for dominance in the bathroom between these two has been building up for weeks, initially spurred from the yogurt-stealing incident. Oh! Josie has re-entered the bathroom and she's brought a package of polska kielbasa. She's waving it to the other three and sounding off:
"Mmm-Mmmmm! Mmm-Mmmmm!"
The others are not paying attention. Clearly, Josie will need to create a larger distraction.
Brandon seems to be calming down now, as Sophia rubs the car keys against his face. Charlie is smelling various items he is picking up off the bathroom counter (ie: toothpaste, hand soap, mascara, q-tips, lip gloss).
Look, Josie has started a fire in the middle of the bathroom floor! She’s waving the kielbasa in the air and gesturing from the fire to the shower! And Charlie’s joined in! He’s dancing around the fire and he’s got the toilet plunger!
Now, Charlie with plunger and Josie with (newfound) toilet scrubber are sparring off around the fire for dominance of showering privileges!
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmm….Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
“Mmm-mmmm, Mmmmmm-mmmmmm….”
Brandon, with toothpaste-ridden hands desperately clutching the car keys against his breast, now looks into the bathtub. He’s staring…he won’t stop staring…he looks annoyed…he has taken his toothbrush out of his mouth…
“Derek, put down your notepad and get out of the tub.”
Damnit.
This is field reporter Derek, signing off.
And this reporter is signing off as well. The morning and I have a date in Anchorage.
It's the longest cold snap in years for the municipality of Anchorage. We're going on two weeks of temperatures with a high of -2 and a low of -20 Fahrenheit. Blow your nose before you ride your bike to work, or your snot will freeze and you'll have to breathe through your mouth! Trust me on that one.
After a week-long hiatus of no phone or internet service (the company wanted me to give them money, those fiends!), I'm back and feeling more than a little behind in placing the written word on the electronic paper. And to go just a smidgen more abstract than that, here's my recently conceived abstract on communication, co-written by Baileys and Jameson & Co.:
"The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate."
-Joseph Priestley
Communication
Communication is the true connection between two people. It has its roots with the original two primates, 'Adam' and 'Eve', of course, who screeched and clawed at each other over apple and snake, herbivorous or carnivorous, and were so effective in communicating that both resigned to incorporate the other's belief system. Being that the snake was a Philippine Cobra, and its meat a natural aphrodisiac, the two primates copulated time and again, creating many more primates with whom they could then screech and claw at regarding the finer things in life. Only later did Eve realize copulation was the motivation behind Adam's carnivorous disposition (all those nights eating cobra alone by the fire must have driven him half-mad with desire!).
But let's not get sidetracked.
Pretty soon there were plenty of primates running around, eating fruit and meat and communicating on the most basic level, which is grunting. And anyone who doesn't want to acknowledge this connection to our past brothers and sisters, anyone who claims that we were created well past the point of monosyllabic expressionism, and that Charlie's uncle Roy is extra furry because not only does he masturbate uncontrollably, but the werewolf that bit him did also, let them look no further than the bathroom. No, we're not on masturbation still here; I'm talking about clean teeth. Clean teeth? If I've lost you at this point, reread the quote at the top of the page and have a giggle at my expense.
Cleaning teeth, the act of, more specifically.
Take a community of four human beings, four toothbrushes, one bathroom, and the desire to continue the act of teeth-cleaning for the duration of the bathroom community meeting, and have a look.
Here they are now:
Sophia is already in the bathroom, actually. She purchased the much sought-after toothpaste and is here to store it after applying a healthy dose to the head of her toothbrush. Now she is brushing her teeth.
Enter Brandon. He knows the new toothpaste is here and wants a clean mouth. Ahh, how refreshing!
Following on his heels are Charlie and Josie. Demand for toothpaste this morning was high in the community, and Sophia was chosen to gather the resource because she not only knew where to find it, but also had the necessary materials for trade, should she need to barter with another tribe.
See them brush their teeth in unison.
Pleased at the acquisition of this commodity, Brandon is nodding his head, smiling, and making sounds of approval:
"Mmmmmmm-Mmmmmmm!"
Charlie and Josie join in with smiles and similarly-pitched sounds.
This gesture is acknowledged by Sophia, and we can guess that she interprets it correctly because she smiles back, offers a 'thumbs up' signal, and sounds back:
"Mmmmmmm."
Now it would seem that Brandon needs to communicate an entirely new idea to Sophie. He has an inquisitive look on his face and he’s cocked his head to the left ever so slightly.
“Hmmm. Hmmm-hmmmm?”
This has attracted the attention of everyone in the group, but he is looking at Sophie specifically, and, with his right hand raised in a loose fist, he rotates his wrist back and forth.
Sophie has a look of confusion on her face. See how her lips are pursed outward, her eyebrows come inward, and her head cocks to the side, perhaps mimicking Brandon’s head placement. She includes a responding grunt:
“Hmmmmm?”
Brandon seeks to be understood. Now he moves his arms like he’s marching in place.
Now he’s rotating his wrist again.
He points at himself and grunts back:
“Mmmmmmmmm. Mmm! Mmm! Mmmmmmmm.”
Ah! Charlie recognizes these movements, a good sign, because Brandon is becoming frustrated. Charlie motions as if holding a large object in front of him, one hand in front of the other, and shaking as he makes the sound:
“M-m-m-m-m-m-m-mm! M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-mm!”
Whatever was the gesture of Charlie’s, it is not correct. Brandon is shaking his head, clearly frustrated. Now Brandon is searching for something. The toothpaste! He’s holding the tube of toothpaste and he’s smearing bits of it on the bathroom mirror. He’s drawing a picture! It’s a car! He wants the car keys!
“Mmmm? Mmm-mmmm!”
Sophie is shaking her head. She does not want to give up possession of the car.
Now Brandon is shaking, waving, and hitting a Listerine bottle against the bathroom counter - an obvious sign of agitation, possibly aggression. He grunts forcefully:
“MMMM! MMMMM! MMMMM! MMMMM! MMMMM!”
Charlie attempts to pacify Brandon while Josie has left the bathroom. The battle for dominance in the bathroom between these two has been building up for weeks, initially spurred from the yogurt-stealing incident. Oh! Josie has re-entered the bathroom and she's brought a package of polska kielbasa. She's waving it to the other three and sounding off:
"Mmm-Mmmmm! Mmm-Mmmmm!"
The others are not paying attention. Clearly, Josie will need to create a larger distraction.
Brandon seems to be calming down now, as Sophia rubs the car keys against his face. Charlie is smelling various items he is picking up off the bathroom counter (ie: toothpaste, hand soap, mascara, q-tips, lip gloss).
Look, Josie has started a fire in the middle of the bathroom floor! She’s waving the kielbasa in the air and gesturing from the fire to the shower! And Charlie’s joined in! He’s dancing around the fire and he’s got the toilet plunger!
Now, Charlie with plunger and Josie with (newfound) toilet scrubber are sparring off around the fire for dominance of showering privileges!
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmm….Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
“Mmm-mmmm, Mmmmmm-mmmmmm….”
Brandon, with toothpaste-ridden hands desperately clutching the car keys against his breast, now looks into the bathtub. He’s staring…he won’t stop staring…he looks annoyed…he has taken his toothbrush out of his mouth…
“Derek, put down your notepad and get out of the tub.”
Damnit.
This is field reporter Derek, signing off.
And this reporter is signing off as well. The morning and I have a date in Anchorage.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
40 miles in a blizzard?
"
WESTERN PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...WHITTIER...SEWARD...GIRDWOOD...
MOOSE PASS
1223 PM AKST TUE DEC 23 2008
...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT 3PM AKST THIS AFTERNOON
UNTIL 5 AM AKST WEDNESDAY FOR SEWARD AND WHITTIER...
"
So, the last minute Christmas shopping remains to be
completed, and four individuals (including myself) have
come together to make the drive from Girdwood to Anchorage.
That was the plan, anyway.
The weather forecast changed from 'snow likely' to 'blizzard
warning', the fine grain snow outside is blowing sideways,
and it is impossible to see anything in the distance.
Will we have to postpone our shopping plans (and Christmas?)
or will we venture into the unknown white, throw caution to
the wind, and proclaim that even phrases like:
"THIS WILL LEAD TO WHITE-OUT CONDITIONS...MAKING TRAVEL
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. ALL TRAVEL AND OUTDOOR ACTIVITY IS
STRONGLY DISCOURAGED"
do not hinder our God-given right to consumerism?
The verdict to be decided when the sisters return home
from work.
UPDATE: The decision has been made for us. A head-on
collision on the highway and resulting fatality has closed
the highway for now.
RIP Meghan Murrell :(
Saturday, December 20, 2008
A Bitter Baking Battle
Survey the battlefield depicted to your right. So many men spread out amongst the tools of war. And yet, they are all the victors. What stuff they're made of will help them survive against a horde of hungry party-goers. They refuse to be tasty.
It is a well-kept secret that I am not skilled in the creation of gingerbread cookies.
So well-kept is the secret that I, myself, found out a couple nights ago.
My sister, Niki, and I set out to make a batch of cookies for a holiday party in Girdwood. Based on the limited selection of ingredients available at our mercantile store, we settled on gingerbread cookies from an internet recipe.
I won't bore you with all the details, but I will say that after the first batch, we had to make adjustments. After the second batch, we made more adjustments.
Third batch, add rum.
Fourth batch, add chopped ginger.
Fifth batch, drizzle with honey and raw sugar.
Final batch, maybe more molasses?
Did I mention we didn't have gingerbread man cookie cutters?
We used Halloween cats, pumpkins, and ghosts! Turns out modified ghosts look like gingerbread men.
And maybe eating cookies that are not a flavorful sensation enhances the experience of eating any other cookie that tastes better in the future.
An example:
I once mixed Tabasco sauce into my coffee to give it an extra kick. (yes, ONCE.)
The downside was that it tasted horrible. The upside, which I didn't realize at the time, is that now even the gas station coffee isn't so bad, because I can always think back to that one, absolutely horrible cup of coffee.
Will this hold true for cookies?
Is this the antithesis of striving for the best of the best in the culinary arts?
And does this define me as an optimist or just someone willing to settle for anything that isn't the worst of the worst?
I'm voting for optimism. :)
Monday, December 15, 2008
December Sun
At 3pm, in the middle of December, the sun doesn't rise high enough in the sky to top the mountains around Girdwood's valley. Looking south from the courtyard of The Hotel Alyeska, vitamin-D starved Alaskans wait for the sun to peak around Max's Mountain and burn off the lingering clouds.
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