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Wow!! I missed like a month!
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28 September 2005
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Temperature
this morning when driving into school: 39 F Precipitation
Today: Rain mixed with snow .
Weather man tells me we're
in a Alaska, and I think I believe him...
My big hope is that as winter
weather sets in, the climate starts to exhibit some
of its infamous aridity, and the mud and wet molds
go away like they're supposed to. It'll be
a big bummer if we brought Indiana's muck with us.
Bummer to me, not to the makers
of Benadryl.
On a more serious note,
this week Meghan's had a couple of her occasional
but regerettably not infrequent headaches, and they
were preceded by some occular manifestations this
time. So we're thinking it might be time to
get her into a doctor for some migraine treatment.
We also think we need to get her over to an
eye doctor to make sure she's not putitng more strain
on her eyes with a couple-year-old prescription
and working with computer screens and paperwork
so much of the day.
I myself have taken to wearing
my glasses regularly again for reading. I
had stopped because the problems caused by the arterial
occlusion in my left eye made them pretty pointless
since that was my worst eye to see with anyway,
and the glasses can't help it anymore. But
the volume of reading I'm doing is leading to general
tiredness of the right eye, too, and my hope is
that the glasses will take the edge off that. Reading
is pretty exhausting for that left eye, though,
despite its poor utility in the task. I might
try covering it while I read so it doesn't waste
its effort trying to overcome the distortions --
but I also don't want it to atrophe and get even
worse. So I'm probably stuck with tiring it
out, at least for now.
Classes are kicking it into full gear. Got
my first mid term coming up (take home exam for
Structures) and presentations are starting to creep
in. Next Tuesday I have to distill Tylor's
omnibus Primitive Culture into a five-minute
summary for Structures, and the following Thursday
I'll be leading an AnthRel class on shamanism, priests,
and healers.
Now I'm actually a real student. :)
NickC---
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26 September 2005
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Today's Useful
Fact from Human Osteology #1: If you're going to
fall from heights, don't try to land on your feet;
your best bet is to land on your side and let your
arm take most of the compressive force.
Today's Useful
Fact from Human Osteology #2: While there are a
lot of things you can tell about a blow to the cranium
from a fracture pattern, you cannot the shape of
the object used, thanks to the nature of the bone
structure there and the way it fractures. .
Goodnes oh goodness, no more
alibis; I'm just horrible about updating this place.
I think I get intimidated because so many
days I don't honetsly have any time to get on here
and then I feel like I need to catch everyone up
on everything, and I think that's going to take
too much time. I'm a coward, I get it. :)
There are a variety of little
updates around the whole site today and through
this week, various quotes
and peronality test results, etc..., so make sure
you click around and have fun. These updates
have been too far and between to waste by only reading
my 'blog!
Meghan had to go to training
last week in Denver, CO, so that was kind of a drag
for a few days. She was "only' gone Wednesday
through Friday, but that's more than enough!! :-p
And, yeah, I know, other
married couples often have to spend more time apart
than that, and that's crummy, but it doesn't diminish
my own crummy experience with it! :-p
Actually, Meghan had a heck
of an adventure, too. Something happened with
the alarm on Wednesday morning, and she was supposed
to be taking off at 7am, but I never heard the alarm
or else turned it off in my sleep, so we were both
pretty freaked out when I woke up with a start and
realized it was 6:45am. Oh my!!! We
threw on clotches, grabbed her bags, and sped to
the airport, which is thankfully right on our side
of town. I dropped her off at about five 'till
7 and they were good enough to call ahead when she
was going through security and hold the plane for
her. Whew!
The excitement didn't end
there. Next day she tried to take a taxi to
the training, but the taxi driver got confused and
took her twenty minutes out of town before she realized
they were probably going the wrong way. They
made it, training went well, but then she
came down with a 24 hour bug, and didn't sleep good
at all. Next day, not feeling even slightly
good, she went to the airport after training to
fly home and found out her flight to Seattle (where
she would connect to Fairbanks) was cancelled. After
some scurrying around, they got her re-routed through
anchornage, and she still managed to get home by
about 1am, still not feeling very good, but very
much glad to be home.
Let's see... What else is going on... Our
fantasy football league started up this weekend.
There are a few thigns pendning on the Monday
night game still, but it looks like Meghan's gonna
clan Jason's clock and would have whooped any of
us this weekend. I should squeak by Dad, but
mainly because he was really stung by the bye week
and some bad advice from me. And Tiffany should
beat Sunbeam pretty comfortably.
Hmmm... Mainly it's more homework, lots
of reading and starting to gear up for projects,
and I'm preaching again this weekend.
I won't set the bar too high or else I'll get
intimidated and won't keep up with the 'blog like
I intend to.
Peace out!
NickC---
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15 September 2005
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Tennesee
Titans Turnovers: 3 Tennesee Titans Missed Field
Goals: 1 Tennesee Titans Total Scoring: 7.
Normally, I would print out
the documents because I read and comprehend off
paper much more readily than I do off a computer
screen. Unfortunatley, since these are PDF's,
they kill the printers in the grad room and bog
down even the printers in the library.
So I had this great idea: I'd
find a PDF-to-plain-text converter program. I
found many which were reasonably priced, demo'd
a couple on some PDF files I had laying around on
my tablet's hard drive, and was pretty satisfied.
So I went into school the next morning planning
to purchase one for $12.95 and then convert a bunch
of ERes class work and go to town. At the
last minute, I noticed a fine print dislaimer on
the software. "Note: this will only work
on PDF files with embedded fonts." I
had a sinking feeling what that meant, and demo'd
the conversion on an ERes file. Sure enough,
there were no embedded fonts.
Apparently, in order to speed
up the scanning and posting process to be able to
meet professors' last minute demands as best as
they can, the library staff scan the documents in
basically as images -- no fonts, no highlighting
allowed, no editing allowed, etc... So no
conversion progam will be able to touch them.
That means I'm back to working
off the screen and taking notes on separate paper
-- and that means I'm working slowly and inefficiently
for my brain.
Well, that's a mere sample
of the side issues which are going on. Nothing
really to do with professors' assigning ogre-like
tasks; more to do with being an old man going back
to school in a young man's world.
Interesting presentation
on Friday. olarship. More
on my classes as the week unfolds. I hope
to get the schedule thing worked out so that I can
update the 'blog and the rest of the website closer
to daily.
Oh, I posted a highly appropriate
new quote on the quotes page of the website. :)
Apart from classes, I did end up preaching again
this past Sunday. The associate pastor was scheduled
to preach now that he's back from the north slope,
but he had an irresistable invitation to go out
hunting this weekend (the open of moose season)
and asked if I could pinch hit again. I did
so gladly, and I think it went well.
Well, that's not a very in-depth entry again,
I know. Hopefully as I master this scheduling
issue, I'll be able to keep up better and get more
detailed entries.
NickC---
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10 September 2005
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Things I
learned on CSI: There are 206 bones in the human
body and if you can't tell if something is bone
or rock, you can lick it.
Things I learned
in Human Osteology: Tehre are 206 bones in the human
body and if you can't tell if something is bone
or rock, you've probably never seen or felt either
bone or rock.
Obviously I haven't
mastered the schedule thing yet. Honestly, the workload
isn't that horrible. It's just that while
I'm trying to get the work done, I'm also trying
to figure out the best way to do the work. For
instance, UAF used a great system from DocuTek to
accomplish something I once recommended the TUFW
library try with Blackboard (but at the time we
had too many other things going on with the library
to pursue it) -- electronic reserve for required
course readings. Well, the only downside to
the way that the ERes system works at UAF is that
the documents are posted as PDF files (Acrobat Reader
files, in other words). In case you've never
heard my rant, PDF = bloat. There is rarely
a reason to post something in that format rather
than rich text or another file format which preserves
formatting but doesn't result in large files which
are slow to download, difficult to read and
unholy to print.
Normally, I would print out
the documents because I read and comprehend off
paper much more readily than I do off a computer
screen. Unfortunatley, since these are PDF's,
they kill the printers in the grad room and bog
down even the printers in the library.
So I had this great idea: I'd
find a PDF-to-plain-text converter program. I
found many which were reasonably priced, demo'd
a couple on some PDF files I had laying around on
my tablet's hard drive, and was pretty satisfied.
So I went into school the next morning planning
to purchase one for $12.95 and then convert a bunch
of ERes class work and go to town. At the
last minute, I noticed a fine print dislaimer on
the software. "Note: this will only work
on PDF files with embedded fonts." I
had a sinking feeling what that meant, and demo'd
the conversion on an ERes file. Sure enough,
there were no embedded fonts.
Apparently, in order to speed
up the scanning and posting process to be able to
meet professors' last minute demands as best as
they can, the library staff scan the documents in
basically as images -- no fonts, no highlighting
allowed, no editing allowed, etc... So no
conversion progam will be able to touch them.
That means I'm back to working
off the screen and taking notes on separate paper
-- and that means I'm working slowly and inefficiently
for my brain.
Well, that's a mere sample
of the side issues which are going on. Nothing
really to do with professors' assigning ogre-like
tasks; more to do with being an old man going back
to school in a young man's world.
Interesting presentation
on Friday. olarship. More
on my classes as the week unfolds. I hope
to get the schedule thing worked out so that I can
update the 'blog and the rest of the website closer
to daily.
Oh, I posted a highly appropriate
new quote on the quotes page of the website. :)
Apart from classes, I did end up preaching again
this past Sunday. The associate pastor was scheduled
to preach now that he's back from the north slope,
but he had an irresistable invitation to go out
hunting this weekend (the open of moose season)
and asked if I could pinch hit again. I did
so gladly, and I think it went well.
Well, that's not a very in-depth entry again,
I know. Hopefully as I master this scheduling
issue, I'll be able to keep up better and get more
detailed entries.
NickC---
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5 September 2005
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Days of Class,
Week One: 2 Days of Class, Week Two: 4 .
I'm doing pretty bad about
keeping the website here up-to-date. Still
trying to figure out how to manage the various tasks,
chores, and activities of life with our schedule
these days. My classes start at ~ 11:30 every
day and go past 17:00 at least three days a week.
Then there's TA work, tons of reading for
class, independent learning required for my overall
graduate program, working out, household chores,
and trying to have time to just relax with Meggie
once in a while. It's not overly much; just
a matter of figure out what timeslots to plug what
into.
There was an interesting
presentation on Friday afternoon in the anthropology
department. Normally I wouldn't peg a colloquium
on the topic of mushroom gathering in the Alaska
burn zone as something which would capture my attention,
but it relaly did. Apparently, morel mushrooms
only grow in the burnzone of forest fires, and since
last year was a record year for fires in Alaska,
this year was a bumper year for morels. I
won't go into any more details because I don't want
to scoop another student's research, but if you
ever get a chance to read up on the culture of "circuit
pickers" who travel the country picking, buying,
and seling mushrooms and other forest products,
you should. It's a complex, multifaceted sub-culture
well worth knowing more about.
I think there's a chance it might come acorss
from my 'blogs that I'm not happy here in Alaska,
maybe that I even wish we'd not come, and it's important
to me that you not get that idea. All uncertainties
about what to make of the town and its people, all
stresses about scheduling and how to get things
done, all frustrations with systems which seem almost
designed to be inoperable -- all these things are
things which will pass, things which I must work
through and try wrap my mind and emotions around.
But they are not things which create any real
depression or dissatisfaction in me. Too,
even if, after a year or two, we decide Alaska really
isn't for us, I would never regret coming out here.
I know that this was the right thing to do,
and I know that even if it ends up being only a
short stop-off point in the career of our lives,
it will be well worth it, and I would always regret
not taking advantage of this opportunity and always
be left wondering what it would be like to live
in Alaska.
In that spirit, I think it's important for me
to close this 'blog entry with something really
nice to say about Alaska. A lot of folks from
the midwest you hear talking about fall in Alaska
say that they don't really care for it. (And,
yes, it's fall here; the leaves are changing and
falling -- and we've had a couple of frosts. I
had to scrape the windshield once last week, too.)
Anyway, these midwestern folks quite reasonably
miss the rich reds and oranges and range of colors
you get back home. It's true, the birch trees
and all turn pretty much the same shade of yellow,
but I think autumn is quite beautiful here. On
a distant scale, the foot hills are given an exquisite
sense of depth to them by the mixture of yellow
deciduous trees and dark green conifers which retain
their full hue still. And up close, the white
trunks of the birches sear through the swath of
yellow, and the evergreen branches poke through
here and there to interrupt the field, while the
underbrush turns a fiery red. All very pretty;
I don't miss the leaves of Brown County at all.
NickC---
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30 August 2005
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Hours 'till
school year opens: ~ 41 hours Hours I've been
registered for classes: ~ 17 hours Hours I've
had a UAF login/e-mail: ~ 0.5 hours .
It's very nice to be registered
for classes. I met with my interim advisor
yesterday and got his approcal for the classes I
thought I probably needed to take, so I'm officially
on my way. I finally have an e-mail address, too,
as well as a desk / cubicle in the graduate TA room
in Eielson. And we've had a couple of TA meetings
with Dr. Shannon and the the other two TA's for
ANTH 100x. Things are finally starting to
happen. Maybe tomorrow I can even get a student
ID card!
What's next? A parking
decal????
This will be a pretty random
'blog today as I'm actually squeezing it in amidst
chores, but I wanted to get some kind of update
out there for everyone. The sermon went well
on Sunday. I wasn't too nervous and the people
we're too hostile, so all in all it was what I'd
hoped for... There's a change I might be preaching
again this upcoming Sunday. Pastor David is
still out of town and Pastor Pat was slated to preach
in his place, but he was asked to go out on a labor
day weekend (i.e. open of the moose season) hunting
trip with an old friend he hasn't seen in a while.
We'll see how it shakes out. Like everything
in Alaska, I'm sure it will shake out in it's own
sweet time, not necessarily when I'd like it to.
On Saturday we went out to try and find some
real Alaskan wildlife. We though the Large
Animal Research Station would be a good place to
do that, but turns out you have to pay for a tour
to get up even to the fences of the areas the large
animals are in, so that didn't happen. We'll
probably go back this weekend, more prepared for
that. Still, we got to see some nice scenery
on the drive...
OK, that's it for now. More later, perhaps.
I'll bug Meghan and Sunbeam to update theirs,
too. ;-)
BTW -- the descriptions of the classes I'm taking
are posted on the, "What we do," page.
NickC---
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26 August 2005
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Cost of Gas:
$2.51/gallon Cost of 1/2 gallon Milk: $1.99 --
$2.99 Cost of $0.79 nachos at Taco Bell: $0.99 .
Ah, it's good to be re-connected
to the world... By the way, there may be some
material on the site, including the previous entry
in this 'blog, which is from late July but was written
off-line and never able to be up-loaded, so be sure
to look for that, as well.
So I suppose after a month
away from the internet and this 'blog, I'd be better
off starting with reflections and thought on Alaska
and life as I now know it rather than trying to
tell all about the trip. I think the rest
of the pit-house should help let the light in on
that, anyway.
I'll start with the obvious.
What's Fairbanks really like now that we're
here? Good question. It continues to
elude me after only a few weeks. The city itself,
the people who live here, the natural environment...
Everyone always talks about Alaska about being
big and overwhelming, so I sort of planned on being
blown away. Instead, I'm left grasping for
little threads to pull together and not coming up
with much.
I think partly it's an effect
of the degree of remoteness we're dealing with here.
I'm sure I expected Alaska to be more or less
a colder extension of the experience we had in Wyoming,
and Fairbanks to be a northern version of Laramie
or Cheyenne or something like that. There,
isolation seems to take on a sort of universalizing
character: the winds sweep through and the skies
go on forever, makign you physically feel a part
of a broader piece of the world; people are forced
by conditions to depend on one another. Here,
however, isolation is individualizing. There
is almost no wind and foothills loom all around,
leaving you feeling physically surrounded. And,
as a friend who shall remain anonymous described
it, meaning a warning and nothing offensive about
the city or the people he loves, "The whole
city sends out a signal, 'I don't need you.'"
Rather than create an atmosphere of dependence
and sociability, the Alaskan interior's isolation
creates more a feeling of self-relience almost to
the exclusion of others.
Compounding this, in the
lower west, your remoteness allows you escape into
the wilds. Here, the remoteness leads to such
a loss of and cost of services, that your wanderings
are more limited. So, unless you're going
out to your cabin in the bush, you pretty much stay
in town. There is an emphasis on outdoor life,
but it's harder to exerpience that life without
more resources at your disposal.
Too, Fairbanks feels like
a much bigger city than one might expect. While
lacking major business or inudstrial complexes,
it is still the center for all the villages
in the interior. This makes it a hub of travel
and activity at all hours of the day. (While
I've yet to see anything that comes close to a traffic
jam, I've also nevertheless less never gone a minute
without hearing vehicle noise.) Statistically,
the ~ 30k population figures for Fairbanks are also
quite mis-leading. Between the traffic from
the village, the high percentage of military and
college families (often not counted as population),
and the fact that a majority of residents live technically
outside of city limits, means that only the ~ 120k
population figures for the burrough begin to give
you an idea of the size of the town.
The size also leads to sometimes
furstrating situations in which you're dealing with
the impact of remoteness (higher expenses, slower
turn-around on delivery of service, less reliable
connectivity to the rest of the world), but without
the actual experience of remoteness you might expect
to go along with with it (fewer people, less car
noise, lower automobile emissions).
Lastly, it seems as if there's
a major identity problem here. People here
are desparate to distance themselves from images
of igloos, eskimos, snow, gold-mining, and all those
other stereo-types -- but haven't really found a
way to assert an identity apart from those things.
There's the cold, and there's moose hunting...
things like that... But there's not
much, "Hey, this is how you can tell I'm an
Alaskan." The folks are feircely proud
of being Alaskan, but don't seem to have a good,
comfortable communal identity in that.
It's important to stress
that none of this means that I don't like Fairbanks,
Alaska, or the people of this area. It only
means that I am still very much struggling to understand
this place, let alone how I feel about it.
Well, I should wrap up now so that I can
get the up-dated website loaded on the server and
e-mail folks to let them know we're back up and
running. Just a couple of really quick notes
on what's going on in my daily life. On Monday,
I meet with Dr. Shannon and one of the other TA's
for 100x to talk about what's going on with the
class. Hopefully soon I can meet with my advisor
and get registered for fall classes and get my student
ID card and all that, but he's just back from a
trip to Wales and Russia, so I don't know how quickly
he'll be swinging back into action. And, last
big note I can think of, this Sunday I've been tapped
by Pastor David to preach a sermon in church while
he and Pastor Pat are both out of town. (David's
at a conference and Pat's coming up on the end of
a work shift on the North Slope.)
More on all that later; I need to finish updating
the other pages and get uploading so I can go get
the dishes done before I pick Meghan up from work.
:)
Out!!
NickC---
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30 July 2005
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Home of the
NHL'ers or Help stop the spread of dutch elm
disease. Don't transport firewood..
Not sure where to even start
reflecting on this trip, but perhaps just a word
about this whole international travel in Canada
thing. I realize I'm a spoiled American, and
that travel here really isn't bad, but fellow spoiled
Americans should be warned: odds are, you're better
off driving most of your way across country in the
US rather than Canada, if you're heading to Alaska.
The Canadian highway system is decent, but
it's not an interstate system. The Number
16 (TransCanada Highway) passes through towns, so
it can be slow-going at times.
Gas is really expensive here
and can be difficult to find for someone used to
truck stops and travel centers at regular intervals
along a highway or gas stations at each end of a
highway passing through town. Pay at the pump
is a rarity in western Canada, and stations are
cramped, often with full service but pay-inside
arrangements.
Road signs are smaller than
Americans are used and less frequent, and often
only reflect one or two of the several names and/or
nubmers by which a road is designated. Warning signs
about exit lanes are also less frequent, so you
have to be pretty eagle-eyed.
Like I said, it's not bad,
but it's a lot more stressful for a frazzled American
travel accustomed to the Interstate System in the
states. God bless Eisenhower and his legacy!
Probably worth some reflection
on the places we've traveled. Indiana really
is prettier than we Hoosiers give it credit for.
It's fairly flat, but there's a lot of variety
in trees and bushes that give the state a very green
and alive, especially south of Fort Wayne or so.
I don't much care for the
scenery of Illinois. Especially south of Peoria
or so, it always looks messy to me or some reason,
and the skies almost always seem to be cloudy and
grey, even on a summer day which is sunny in Indiana
and north Illinois. I think it's probably
the influence of St. Louis dragging it down.
Wisconsin was really pretty
once we got to the Dells. Actually, I was
surprised by the hills north of the Dells. Very
cool mid-western wilderness and farm land. Would
be fun to go camping there, no doubt,
The parts of Minnesota we
drove through were frankly pretty boring. A
few areas had a touch of the wetlands and lakes
which make the eastern part of the state (which
we didn't drive through) so great by reputation.
But most of the St. Paul --> Fargo route was
pretty un-spectacular.
Speaking of Fargo, there
were some cool old farm buildings in North Dakota,
but the eastern part of the state, through which
we were driving,was not to my taste at all. It
seemed like it was really really flat, but still
in most places lacked the great horizon and high
sky which can redeem that sort of great plains monotony.
I'll grant that some of the fields were still
pretty, though.
Manitoba, once we'd gotten
about an hour past Winnipeg was amazingly beautiful.
I'm a sucker for wet lands, and they're all
over the place in the province. Not to mention,
some really fantastic hills and a few glimpses of
great horizon.
Saskatchewan in the east
was much the same as Manitoba, and I quite enjoyed
that, though the middle was more like North Dakota,
and I didn't so much enjoy that.
Alberta is a province which
still escapes me. It has a lot of rolling
hills, a lot of sweeping horizons... But
for some reason, my first impression when I think
back on it is, "Eh." Not sure why.
Maybe it'll come to me.
British Columbia. Wow.
We've only driven in BC for about six hours
or so, but it's been pretty amazing. The rockies
and their so-called foothills are just beyond compare
for mind-blowign scenery. And where else can
you be driving on a highway and see not only hawks,
ravens, and deer, but moose and a bobcat, too? The
rockies are wonderful to drive in, and BC is crammed
full of 'em.
The trip has been so crazy it would be hard to
say it's been fun. All the ordinary stresses
of moving and leaving friends and family have been
compounded by the frustrations of trying to learn
how to travel in Canada, silly as that sounds. Still,
we've had our good moments. (Like sitting
outside eating corn dogs at the Chief Buffalo truck
stop in Minnesota, pulling over to take some pictures
in Alberta, things like that.) And our adventures.
(Like the thunderstorm which literally drove
us into a parking lot in Edmonton to wipe down our
windshield with napkins, and our total inability
to find Highway 43 this morning.) And I think
when we look back on it, we may regret the rushed
pace we've kept up, but we'll still think fondly
of it. That's usually what happens with nostalgia
over frustrating trips.
Thank God.
NickC---
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27 July 2005
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Well, I'm not going to dwell
on U-haul day. It was pretty tense, but we
got most of what we needed done done, and we got
to pack most of what we were hoping we could, plus
some more. Sure, it it about 92 out with 95%
humidity. Sure, Meghan and I respond to this sort
of stress in totally opposite ways. But with
God's grace and my parents help, we got packed
yesterday and this morning. Whew.
Only two real glitches today,
apart from stresses over last-minute packing. First,
the Blazer wouldn't start. The battery was
totally and utterly drained. And, of course, it
was pouring rain for both the last minute packing
and the Blazer's not starting. Dad jumped
the battery with his truck, and it was good to go.
We think maybe the U-haul electrical stuff
shorted it out somehow, so I unhooked all that tonight
before retiring.
The other glitches was that
the route which my Dad and I concocted to save time
to avoid Chicago ended up adding like 150 miles
or so to the trip. Doesn't seem like much
but when it changs 12 hours into 14 hours of driving,
it feels like it. Oh well, live and learn..
Last thought for tonight: dont' stay in the Motel
6 in St. Cloud. It's nasty. I don't
usually even mind smoking rooms, but this entire
building reeks of stale, nasty cigarettes. And
the ceiling above the shower has tiles which are
black with mold and mildew. And the carpet
has mildew stains. And the first floor rooms
in this building, except for Room 1, start with
3xx.
NickC---
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25 July 2005
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Days 'till
we pick up the U-haul: Uh, one.
So when I said the 28th in
the last 'blog, I meant the 26th. I was looking
at the wooden calendar on the wall by the outside
door in the living room and didn't realize that
the slider tiles hadn't been re-arranged for July
yet. Oops. So, U-haul day is tomorrow
and pull-out on Wednesday morning, bright and early.
Pretty insane around here.
I should have been updating
my 'blog long before now, but ever day has pretty
much been the same. We didn't even end up
getting out to the fair, unfortunately. We
still have a few things we want to do before we
leave and that sort of thing, but we've been pretty
wrapped up in the pursuit of housing. It's been
a pretty miserable time, but there are few lights
at the end of the tunnel right now... We're
working on two possibilities, one which would be
with university housing and would not allow us to
bring Sunbeam with us. The other, with an
apartment complex where David and Marci know
the management; that one would let us bring our
kitten and might entail our helping out around the
complex some.
We should know more about
that by the end of the day.
Today, Meghan's dad and grandparents are coming
to visit. In fact they'll be here any minute,
so I'll sign off for now and try to write more later.
NickC---
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Respond
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25 July 2005, pt. 2
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We worked out a basic itinerary
plan and I posted on the, "Move," page
in the, "Adventure: Us" section of the
Pithouse website, along with Google map links for
each of the main travel points in our trip plan..
The days will be long, but
audio book swill help it pass the time, I hope.
Audio books and bathroom breaks.
Looks like we'll probably not be going with the
university housing. We did get approved finally,
and I really appreciate Belinda's work on our behalf.
But it looks like the apartments that David
and Marci are referring us to will let us take Sunbeam
with us pretty inexpensively. Since we appear
to have that choice, we're going with the option
that lets us have our kitten. :)
Meghan called Aunt Kim for advice on travelling
with Sunbeam. Aunt Kim was very encouraging
about it, having met Sunbeam once before and being
an excellent vet with a great heart for pets and
pet owners alike. She recommends that we let
the cat have a bathroom break at least every eight
hours or so and that we do it by letting her use
the litterpan inside the car. That's great,
because I wasn't comfortable with the idea of putting
her in a harness to use the pan outside and risking
her running away 1800 miles from either home. She
said not to worry about sedatives, but that if she
seems to get a car sick after a well we can give
her a portion of a small dose of dramamine
non-drowsy.
Not sure how much they'll sock us with lodging
plus pet costs once we get into the Yukon and all
that, but we'll deal with that once we get closer.
I have the first two nights' hotel reservations,
and right now I'm planning on doing it in small
steps like that so we have the flexibility to adjust
the itinterary if we want to go shorter on some
particular day.
NickC---
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Respond
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17 July 2005
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What's the
point of a rainforest level of humidity without
the rainforest?
Now we're trying to get everything
taken care of before we head out. I'm tentatively
thinking that the 28th will be our pull-out day,
or at least our stuffing the u-haul day, but there
are still some odds and ends to work out, and we
theoretically don't need to be there absolutely
until the 7th, assuming we don't want to roll into
Fairbanks at 7:30 am on the 8th, in time for me
to drop Meghan off at work and then take our stuff
to wherever we're going to end up living..
Among preparations, there's
the final sorting and re-packing or boxes, making
sure we have a solid set of "must go"
boxes as well as "maybe" boxes and so
forth. Meghan and my mom have been working
on that, and been doing some good miracles with
a few of our more hastily thrown together boxes
from the previous move. Hopefully we can make
sure we have everything we need plus room for our
broken-down assemblable furniture, the futon from
Meghan's old house, and our bikes. We should
be able to have suitaces, guitars, computers, etc...
in the Blazer ("Mr. Green Truck"), and
our clothing vacuum bags and some other protected,
flexible stuff in the rooftop carrier.
We're also working on making
sure Meghan has all the professional wardrobe and
accuterments she needs to feel comfortably and confidently
prepared for her new job. Clothes shopping
is neither of our favorite activity. Shopping
for a PDA is not so bad. ;-)
And, importantly, we're
trying to take care outstading maintenance details
on Mr. Green Truck. Next up, some noise in
the rearend that's hopefully just something pretty
straight-forward like a shock absorber.
Today I also got to some
yardwork, trying to help Mom and Dad get the trees
and stuff into shape while I can still do that.
Cut a ton of branches off the Willlow Tree
to clear most of them off the roof o the garage
and get rid of the worst overhang growth from where
winter ice storms distorted the way the branches
hang and buds could grow. And then I went
through tried to cut back most of the worst overlap
in the southern row of trees. Hopefully they
still provide a good hedge but now look like distinct
trees once again. I need to do a little more
wrap up there and hit the front yard like the good
kind of tornado tomorrow or Tuesday evening.
Plus the fair just started
today so we need to get out and checkout the livestock
houses!
Let me just wrap up by saying that it's strange
how you go all summer waiting for some idea of the
time-frame you're under, some clue to the pace of
your next step in life -- and then when you finally
get the clue you've been waiting for, the timeframe
is, well, now.
Whew, I'm tired. :)
NickC---
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Respond
to Blog!
13 July 2005
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Originally
posted on Tripod, moments after the last one
Meghan got the job!!! :-D
WOOHOO!!!!
I knew she could do it -- she's the best!!! :-D
NickC---
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13 July 2005
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Originally
posted on Tripod
This whole life change is starting to get pretty real, even if there
isn't a *whole* lot more clarity. What's left of this week and then
next week and we'll be done with our work at Taylor, so that adds a lot
of reality itself. Plus Meghan had a phone interview for a job at UAF
this afternoon and she thought it went well, and she should hear about
it this week hopefully. I was looking at the graduate classes for
registration the past couple of days, too, and saw a few that would be
really cool (Anthropology of Religion, Human Osteology, and
Sustainability), but there are some scheduling conflicts and I'm not
sure yet how detailed a plan Dr. Smith has for me. She gets back from
the field in August, so I'll be able to iron it out then. Nevertheless,
looking at the classes made the whole going back to school thing pretty
real.
(Incidentally, on an anthropological note, if you've ever been to
the express lane at the grocery store, you know darn well that the
ability to count is not common enough among humans to qualify as an
aspect of what distinguishes us from the animals around us.)
It's been interesting the past few days as Meghan and I have gotten
back into bike riding around town and also looking at photography
projects to realize how invested I feel in the history of Alexandria.
Kinda strange, but as I glance back at things, names like Nineveh Berry
still have some significance to me. I'm pretty obsessed right now with
piecing together a thorough history of the development of the town,
especially fleshing out this aerial photo of Alex from 1936. Too, there
are some interesting stories that I'd love to read more about from the
town's founding in ~ 1836. Like, for instance, there were stories about
a ghost which made regular nightly walks along a path so reliably that
the town put its first wooden jail right in that path to help control
prisoners. And then there's the cemetery where they were going to
eventually build a church, but had the plans changed when an orphan
girl was kidnapped from that cemetery and the whole place was pretty
much abandoned.
It's weird to think that, as little history as we live amongst in
most parts of North America compared to, say, Europe or Asia, I'll be
moving to a place with an even shorter settled history. I mean, the
un-settled history is just as cool -- more cool in many ways. But the
settled history creates buildings, roads, cemeteries, and other
physical manifestations of history in my every day life, and that's
something I've always taken for granted. The west is wilder but younger
(so to speak), and that's yet another aspect of this move which will
take some adjusting. NickC---
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Respond
to Blog!
6 July 2005
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Regular gas:
Alex -- $2.29; FW -- $2.47
I suppose in
some ways where Ieft off yesterday might seem pretty
self-obvious. "Oh, so you're saying,
Nick, that we relate to something better when we
know more about it. Really? Amazing!"
Not quite where
I was going, though.
I don't know how well my analogies
always translate to the way other people think anyway,
but here's the central question. I could easily
learn more about many of the people who died in
London than I know about Jason's friends. Yet
learning that material wouldn't have the same "realism-ing"
effect. Why is that?
To me, the analogy works like
this. The news is data, like basic algebra
with variables. Learning more about the people
involved is like putting in numbers. Suddenly
it corresponds to life, and the significance can
be felt and understand. But knowing someone
who knows the people suddenly makes it a story problem,
something that can be incorporated into my life.
After all, I can directly identify with Jason's
friends. Meghan and are among them, and are
friends with others of his friends. So the
tragid death of Jason's friends is something I understand
in a very personal way. But, like with story
problems, something I have a harder time working
out and analyzing.
Well, enough philosophizing
for the moment. Today I got to do some demo
with Dad. There's an on-going project to redo
parts of their bathroom, and I've been pitching
in some to help where I can while we've been here.
Today we were getitng things started for the
replacement of the old medicine cabinet with a newer,
larger one. Hammers, a reciprocating saw,
and several pounds of dust and debris. Woohoo!
Incidentally, Dad finished
the effort this afternoon while Meghan and I were
gone. New medicine cabinet is in and looks
nice!
This afternoon we went up to FW to help Tiffany
and Eli help Jason and Bethany move a load into
their apartment and then go out to to dinner with
the whole gang. Spent the first couple hours
battling headaches and asthma from a gas leak in
Jason and Bethany's oven. Jason and I pretty
much identified the problem pretty much ri | |