What a strange and sad week. First off MJ's death is really a tragedy the only celebrity death that's really comparable during my lifetime is Princess Di. And Princess Di didn't have the same love/hate obsession surrounding her life as Michael does and furthermore she was a member of the royal family not a pop icon. And MJ isn't just a pop icon, he is the pop icon, an immortal and transcendent performer. What I find really interesting is many people I have spoken to who are right around my age remember him for the molestation scandal and not his music. It's a real shame, but I guess it too is part of his legacy. Lost in all this MJ hullabaloo was Farah Fawcett's death. Hers was not sudden as she died from cancer that she was first diagnosed with in 2006, but still pretty tragic, it's too bad her life and career won't be appreciated in the same way because the rest of the universe is so caught up in mourning MJ and tracking down his personal doctor and prescription pill information. Ed McMahon also died this week, but pretty much no one noticed. Even in death Michael steals the show.
Here is one of my personal favorite MJ performances.
My week did have an ironic connection to MJ prior to his death, but I'll get to that in a second. Monday the rest of the interns in the Cultural Resource department showed up, 4 kids from University of Oregon all of whom are in the Architecture graduate school. They seem pretty cool for the most part, but I have made better acquaintances with two of the guys, Christopher and Patrick. Patrick shared my plight of not passing his background check quickly and being stuck in the Anchorage Backpackers Inn (the hostel I stayed in when I first got here) waiting to get cleared so he could come to work, he finally started for real on Thursday. Christopher is doing architecture research on Klondike Gold Rush NHP and specifically the Soapy Smith Parlor, so we will be working together on similar projects all summer. He is a really nice guy with a car and passion for exploring the outdoors, so I am excited to adventure in the coming months. I went out with him and his sister the night of MJ's death and every bar was bumping Michael's music and videos, it was really fun and a nice tribute to a legend. I was supposed to go on a bike ride with him today but have been ill most of the morning; me thinks I have food poisoning from sketchy chicken. (Totally gross and horribly frustrating way to spend you Saturday morning/afternoon and I pray not evening). The other two interns are probably perfectly cool in their own right I just haven't met them yet because they disappeared to Kennicott to do a site visit after just two days in the office.
My connection to MJ came Monday and Tuesday mornings in the special collections of the Anchorage Museum no less. I went there to collect historic photographs of Skagway, AK and anything else that might be helpful in my research. Turns out when you look through these old photographs you have to wear white gloves. The librarian lady made a joke about MJ and I agreed that they were pretty sweet garb to where in the archives. Little did I know what would happen by the end of the week, way less funny at this point. This is the same librarian lady who I previously complained about hitting on me. She now knows me by name and says "Hi, Michael" every time I walk in. Very friendly but becoming increasingly uncomfortable with every visit, good thing she really knows where to look for old photos or I would just turn tail and run and make up an elaborate story for my boss as to why I couldn't get the resources she wanted.
Monday morning I am heading to Skagway to do a week of research on historic buildings on site. Should be a lot of fun as Skagway is a stop on nearly every Alaskan cruise and I will be there during the week of July 4. After seeing Soapy's Parlor first hand, doing some up close and personal research and taking tons of photographs I promise I will bang out this Soapy post which I have been talking about for weeks. It helps that for the rest of this week I have been working on a Historic Structure Report for the building. It's basically a glorified power point presentation that explains how I (the National Park Service's Historic Buildings Slave) think we should rehabilitate the building. The darn thing is sinking into the ground and rotting all over so I gotta get in there quick and save it lest it totally deteriorate. I am a super hero of sorts--Saving gold rush era buildings in a single summer! And I don't even have to wear a tie, or a cape for that matter.
Finally, NBA draft business. The Minnesota Timberwolves thoroughly proved they have no idea what to do as far as personnel decisions go. They not only drafted two PGs (really three), but they alienated Ricky Rubio in the process. I hate Rubio and have since he showed up on YouTube three years ago as a 16 year old. So, fuck him I hope he stays in Spain. Also the Wolves traded Ty Lawson, who I think will be better than Johnny Flynn in the long run. They basically traded Lawson for a worse pick in the next year's draft. So they drafted three PGs and may end up with one who I think will be the worst of the group. Way to go, Minny!
Blazers have no roster spots so the draft was really just a formality, but they did manage to get rid of Sergio Rodriguez which I think is a great move and they drafted Victor Claver. They will stash Claver in Spain for a few years and bring him in once he is more NBA ready and actually have a spot for him. So I like the pick. They got three players in the second round Arizona State power forward Jeff Pendergraph in the Rodriguez trade, Villanova forward Dante Cunningham, and St. Mary's (CA) point guard Patrick Mills. I don't think Pendergraph or Cunningham will make the team and I doubt Mills will either. But I love Mills and really hope he does end up with the Blazers eventually. He played for the Australia National Team in the 2008 Olympics, the only NCAA collegiate to take part in the Beijing games, hence the picture of him in the link. He is extremely quick and really could have gone much higher in the draft if he wasn't an undersized point guard in a draft chalk full of undersized point guards. I bet he won't make the team, but it would be great. Best thing to happened to Portland this offseason is probably Martell Webster getting healthy and joining the rotation next season. Martell broke his foot and only played 5 stinking minutes last season, but he should really help this team as another scoring option.
I may not have the internet next week in Skagway so expect another long post in about a week. Peace.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
My Life in the Sunshine
This weekend was the summer solstice, which to most people in this fine country means nothing, but here in Alaska it's a huge deal. Huge.
So to celebrate this occasion I went to a bluegrass festival in Cantwell, a town of 150 or so people 30 miles south of Denali National Park in pretty much the middle of nowhere Alaska. We left Anchorage way late and didn't get to Cantwell till about 11:30, we set up our tent, cracked a cold one and got over to the stage to listen to what we thought, according to our schedule, was the final band of the night. Boy were we wrong. Another band got on stage at about 1 am and then the rain came. It was pretty cold to begin with but once it started raining it was absurdly freezing. Absurd because the actual temperature was like 45, but I felt like I was enduring a tough Alaskan winter. I couldn't survive here at negative 20 in January.
The strangest part of Friday was that this festival was tiny. Maybe 200 people there and we were four of them. So figures I would see someone I know from LC. Clarkies love music festivals, this is clearly proof. I was there for maybe 15 minutes and low and behold Lewis and Clark's own Danielle Ringer walked by me. Dani lives in Homer, AK which is like 430 miles away! She drove 430 miles to come to a tiny blue grass festival in nowhere Alaska. This can be explained, she's went to LC and she's a native Alaskan, of course she'd be there. Of course.
Since we had arrived at pretty much the darkest point in the evening my chances for sleep were totally shot and since the music didn't stop until about 5 am I was pretty much up all night. I woke up Saturday morning at 10 am somehow and the entire camp site was abandoned. So this is when these crazies sleep from 9 am till 11 am and then start all over again. 10 is like the peak sleeping hour at this event.
We rested all morning and finally regrouped at about 5 when the evening music started up. The music pretty much didn't stop for the 2 and 1/2 days so saying it started back up is a bit misleading, but it is almost true. Saturday was way cooler than Friday because the festival was at least twice as big. Apparently Cantwell used to be "the party" but it got too out of hand and it got shut down. So this year was the first time it happened in a decade, the word got out and tons of locals flocked to night two. Stayed up till about 7 am on Sunday and watched the sun not set. Here are some pictures I took that afternoon and into the early morning hours.
This is 10:15 in the morning when everyone is still sleeping the previous evening off. Plenty of people just don't sleep but those people end up half naked and cover in body paint.
Those are the amazing mountains that surrounded the campsite and the entire venue. It was an absolutely gorgeous place. Click the pics to view the larger.
3 am on the porch of the bar. Shouldn't it be dark?
The endless sun reappears at 5 am over the lodge! It never got dark, but the sun did hide behind the mountains and clouds for about 2 hours, but really it never left. What an awesome weekend.
I slept for about 2 hours on of the ride home and then fittingly enough went and saw The Hangover. Thought it was pretty good but not the funniest movie ever made like everyone has been saying. I just feel like I could easily write/direct this genre of movie. It was essentially a little meatier version of Dude Where's My Car. Still a funny movie, but not life changing.
I know I have been BSing about this Soapy Smith post, I swear I am developing it. Let me quote something I wrote earlier today to give you a preview. Warning, this will totally piss you off Jeff.
Well that was my weekend and I had a pretty hilarious archive experience today, but I'm doing the same thing tomorrow so I will write about it then.
So to celebrate this occasion I went to a bluegrass festival in Cantwell, a town of 150 or so people 30 miles south of Denali National Park in pretty much the middle of nowhere Alaska. We left Anchorage way late and didn't get to Cantwell till about 11:30, we set up our tent, cracked a cold one and got over to the stage to listen to what we thought, according to our schedule, was the final band of the night. Boy were we wrong. Another band got on stage at about 1 am and then the rain came. It was pretty cold to begin with but once it started raining it was absurdly freezing. Absurd because the actual temperature was like 45, but I felt like I was enduring a tough Alaskan winter. I couldn't survive here at negative 20 in January.
The strangest part of Friday was that this festival was tiny. Maybe 200 people there and we were four of them. So figures I would see someone I know from LC. Clarkies love music festivals, this is clearly proof. I was there for maybe 15 minutes and low and behold Lewis and Clark's own Danielle Ringer walked by me. Dani lives in Homer, AK which is like 430 miles away! She drove 430 miles to come to a tiny blue grass festival in nowhere Alaska. This can be explained, she's went to LC and she's a native Alaskan, of course she'd be there. Of course.
Since we had arrived at pretty much the darkest point in the evening my chances for sleep were totally shot and since the music didn't stop until about 5 am I was pretty much up all night. I woke up Saturday morning at 10 am somehow and the entire camp site was abandoned. So this is when these crazies sleep from 9 am till 11 am and then start all over again. 10 is like the peak sleeping hour at this event.
We rested all morning and finally regrouped at about 5 when the evening music started up. The music pretty much didn't stop for the 2 and 1/2 days so saying it started back up is a bit misleading, but it is almost true. Saturday was way cooler than Friday because the festival was at least twice as big. Apparently Cantwell used to be "the party" but it got too out of hand and it got shut down. So this year was the first time it happened in a decade, the word got out and tons of locals flocked to night two. Stayed up till about 7 am on Sunday and watched the sun not set. Here are some pictures I took that afternoon and into the early morning hours.
This is 10:15 in the morning when everyone is still sleeping the previous evening off. Plenty of people just don't sleep but those people end up half naked and cover in body paint.
Those are the amazing mountains that surrounded the campsite and the entire venue. It was an absolutely gorgeous place. Click the pics to view the larger.
3 am on the porch of the bar. Shouldn't it be dark?
The endless sun reappears at 5 am over the lodge! It never got dark, but the sun did hide behind the mountains and clouds for about 2 hours, but really it never left. What an awesome weekend.I slept for about 2 hours on of the ride home and then fittingly enough went and saw The Hangover. Thought it was pretty good but not the funniest movie ever made like everyone has been saying. I just feel like I could easily write/direct this genre of movie. It was essentially a little meatier version of Dude Where's My Car. Still a funny movie, but not life changing.
I know I have been BSing about this Soapy Smith post, I swear I am developing it. Let me quote something I wrote earlier today to give you a preview. Warning, this will totally piss you off Jeff.
"Reconstructing the building to the 1898 'Soapy' Smith era would erase the work of [Martin] Itjen and [George] Rapuzzi, without whom the building likely would have been lost."That's my argument and I plan on getting some images to back it up. What can I say the NPS propaganda got to me. More to come, really.
Well that was my weekend and I had a pretty hilarious archive experience today, but I'm doing the same thing tomorrow so I will write about it then.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Cross Between R.L. Stein and James Fennimore Cooper
I sent my DOE off to the ultimate editors today for finally inspection. It was quite a task and is little bit nerve racking. It's like when a professor assigns you something that they wrote and you have to debate the merit of their argument in class. I am sending off my draft to the guy whose research I have been using to put together the DOE. I also have been emailing him on and off asking him where I can find certain sources and what not. And this is the guy who's going to evaluate my work. Tough.
So I spent another 4 hours doing my now daily image scanning and something about it seemed strangely ironic. Historians are always complaining that this generation might be lost to history because all our personal records are kept digitally, i.e. instead of letters we send emails and facebook messages and instead of diaries we blog and keep e-journals. So historians assume that all this will be lost and it will be extremely difficult to do anything resembling social history in the future. Here's what I see as ironic. My job is to take hard copies of photos and put them in a digital archive. Yeah, I get it. I'm saving them, and I really am. But in my 15th hour of scanning this struck me as a bit ironic and since I have so little to do here these types of Aha! moments end up in writing.
Oh blogging how I love and loathe thee.
In other news, I'm not longer going to Fairbanks for the solstice because the guy who was going to drive there has to be back Sunday afternoon and since its 6 hours away and the solstice party is Sunday we would miss all the real good stuff. So instead we are going to go to a Bluegrass festival in Cantwell, a small town near Denali National Park. Should be dope, but I'm bummed on not going to Fairbanks.
My final thought of the day: Head nods. I developed this theory with someone early on in college or maybe at the tail end of high school, but for the life of me I can't remember who that was. I have narrowed it down to a white male between the ages of 20-23.
But here's the theory. There are two kinds of head nods, the down nod and the up nod. The up nod is how you say "what's up" to your homies and or someone that you are informally familiar with. It's quick and can be exaggerated as needed. The down nod is for formal settings and can be used to acknowledge complete strangers as well if you are making strange and prolonged eye contact. It's like the tip of the cap type of head nod and can also be used in informal settings if you are so compelled. But the up nod on the other hand cannot be used in formal situations. You just can't do the up nod and say "what's up" to your boss and it would be weird if you did it too a complete stranger too. The up nod is only used if you know the person and they are a peer and preferrably a young person. It's a subtle difference but I think its a major and distinctive one.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Oh, and Jeff Smith, who "murdered" Soapy? It obviously wasn't Frank Reid becuase the exit wound didn't make sense for a duel and the bullet didn't match up. But who killed him, I can't find that information anywhere. Do you know? Does anyone? How? Also, I know I promised you another Soapy/Parlor Museum post. It's coming tomorrow evening, so look forward to it.
So I spent another 4 hours doing my now daily image scanning and something about it seemed strangely ironic. Historians are always complaining that this generation might be lost to history because all our personal records are kept digitally, i.e. instead of letters we send emails and facebook messages and instead of diaries we blog and keep e-journals. So historians assume that all this will be lost and it will be extremely difficult to do anything resembling social history in the future. Here's what I see as ironic. My job is to take hard copies of photos and put them in a digital archive. Yeah, I get it. I'm saving them, and I really am. But in my 15th hour of scanning this struck me as a bit ironic and since I have so little to do here these types of Aha! moments end up in writing.
Oh blogging how I love and loathe thee.
In other news, I'm not longer going to Fairbanks for the solstice because the guy who was going to drive there has to be back Sunday afternoon and since its 6 hours away and the solstice party is Sunday we would miss all the real good stuff. So instead we are going to go to a Bluegrass festival in Cantwell, a small town near Denali National Park. Should be dope, but I'm bummed on not going to Fairbanks.
My final thought of the day: Head nods. I developed this theory with someone early on in college or maybe at the tail end of high school, but for the life of me I can't remember who that was. I have narrowed it down to a white male between the ages of 20-23.
But here's the theory. There are two kinds of head nods, the down nod and the up nod. The up nod is how you say "what's up" to your homies and or someone that you are informally familiar with. It's quick and can be exaggerated as needed. The down nod is for formal settings and can be used to acknowledge complete strangers as well if you are making strange and prolonged eye contact. It's like the tip of the cap type of head nod and can also be used in informal settings if you are so compelled. But the up nod on the other hand cannot be used in formal situations. You just can't do the up nod and say "what's up" to your boss and it would be weird if you did it too a complete stranger too. The up nod is only used if you know the person and they are a peer and preferrably a young person. It's a subtle difference but I think its a major and distinctive one.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Oh, and Jeff Smith, who "murdered" Soapy? It obviously wasn't Frank Reid becuase the exit wound didn't make sense for a duel and the bullet didn't match up. But who killed him, I can't find that information anywhere. Do you know? Does anyone? How? Also, I know I promised you another Soapy/Parlor Museum post. It's coming tomorrow evening, so look forward to it.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tales from the Crank
This weekend I had my first experience bar hopping in Anchorage.
On Saturday night I mounted my trusty Schwinn and headed into the depths of downtown Crankchorage with my friend Evan. As you rabid blog followers know, Evan is from U of Cinci and works in my office. He has been here for about 2 months so he knows the city much better than I. He first took me to this place called The Snowgoose Grill, coincidentally the same name as the restaurant my sister worked at in St. Mary's, MT, but really not on the same level. The place is pretty nice, however, it has a big outdoor patio with a view of Snowgoose Mountain and a bunch of good beers on tap. Unfortunately somehow they were out of like every one on a Saturday night at 11pm. Who knows?
So we left and went to this bar called Rumrunners that we had biked by and was just blasting music. What's weird about biking around at 11:45 or midnight in Anchorage is that it's bright as day. So you have to keep checking your watch to remind yourself that it is in fact an appropriate time to go out to the bar and not time for the early bird special.
Rumrunners was wild. At first I thought it was part strip club because there were these two scantily clad women dancing on a stage above the dance floor and fog machines going off and really really loud Soulja Boy fading into Lady Gaga. Turns out this place just wants to be Miami beach so they hire dancers and have brightly colored lights. Best part about this place was beer specials (5.75 for Alaskan 22oz, best deal I have found in Crank town) and widly good looking bartenders. This place along with the next spot we hit up was filled with tourists. Tourist season is not in full effect but certainly there were a bunch of them out this weekend and I'm sure more to come.
What was wild about the next bar, The Avenue, was that there was this whole crew of people in Moose hats. I kid you not, maybe 12 people, men and women, in those ridiculous hats. Click on that link its worth the mental image.
So we ended the night around 2:30 and biked back to my apartment to crash. Even at 2:30 it's still bright enough to the point that you don't even remotely need a bike light and most streets don't have street lamps. This is an absolutely bizarre place. Land of the midnight sun, land of the sun period doesn't matter what your watch says, the suns out.
Sunday was boring. Basketball game sucked. Even if you are a die hard Laker fan you gotta admit that game was a sleeper after the middle of the second quarter. Lakers just dominated and proved they were worthy champs. Maybe Orlando shouldn't have totally given away Game 4 and bricked a lay-up (albeit a tough one) to lose Game 2.
One thing I did learn this weekend is what happens to the homeless population during the winter. Turns out a fair number of them die. They freeze to death. Wild! So if Eskimo Holden Caulfield were to ask where the hobos go when the world freezes over, I got an answer for him now and its a depressingly morbid one.
Today at work I turned in my draft of my Determination Of Eligibility for the Soapy Smith Parlor Museum (see 'Nerd Images' post for more info). I got positive feedback and a genuine compliment about my ability to write. It was a great feeling. I also spent 6 1/2 hours scanning photos and putting them into an excel spread sheet. It was anything but a great feeling. But if you want pictures of Steamers on the Yukon River or early buildings in Circle or Eagle Alaska I can show you a very well organized document. Today I organized 120 images and I am a bout 1/6 of the way through all that I have to do. Not including slides. Shoot me.
This weekend I am going to go up to Fairbanks with Evan and his roommates who also work in the office but I haven't met yet. It's the summer solstice on Saturday-Sunday and there are two musical festivals in Fairbanks and just a generally large party. Should be awesome and it's a six hour drive so I should get to see a whole lot of Alaska. I am super excited and plan on taking tons of pictures and since it will be sunny for 50 straight hours I won't need to worry about any of them coming out poorly during the Midnight baseball game.
More to come later this week including a theory I developed about the appropriateness of head nods and the highly anticipated Guess What Time It Is Contest. I sure all (3-7) of you are excited.
On Saturday night I mounted my trusty Schwinn and headed into the depths of downtown Crankchorage with my friend Evan. As you rabid blog followers know, Evan is from U of Cinci and works in my office. He has been here for about 2 months so he knows the city much better than I. He first took me to this place called The Snowgoose Grill, coincidentally the same name as the restaurant my sister worked at in St. Mary's, MT, but really not on the same level. The place is pretty nice, however, it has a big outdoor patio with a view of Snowgoose Mountain and a bunch of good beers on tap. Unfortunately somehow they were out of like every one on a Saturday night at 11pm. Who knows?
So we left and went to this bar called Rumrunners that we had biked by and was just blasting music. What's weird about biking around at 11:45 or midnight in Anchorage is that it's bright as day. So you have to keep checking your watch to remind yourself that it is in fact an appropriate time to go out to the bar and not time for the early bird special.
Rumrunners was wild. At first I thought it was part strip club because there were these two scantily clad women dancing on a stage above the dance floor and fog machines going off and really really loud Soulja Boy fading into Lady Gaga. Turns out this place just wants to be Miami beach so they hire dancers and have brightly colored lights. Best part about this place was beer specials (5.75 for Alaskan 22oz, best deal I have found in Crank town) and widly good looking bartenders. This place along with the next spot we hit up was filled with tourists. Tourist season is not in full effect but certainly there were a bunch of them out this weekend and I'm sure more to come.
What was wild about the next bar, The Avenue, was that there was this whole crew of people in Moose hats. I kid you not, maybe 12 people, men and women, in those ridiculous hats. Click on that link its worth the mental image.
So we ended the night around 2:30 and biked back to my apartment to crash. Even at 2:30 it's still bright enough to the point that you don't even remotely need a bike light and most streets don't have street lamps. This is an absolutely bizarre place. Land of the midnight sun, land of the sun period doesn't matter what your watch says, the suns out.
Sunday was boring. Basketball game sucked. Even if you are a die hard Laker fan you gotta admit that game was a sleeper after the middle of the second quarter. Lakers just dominated and proved they were worthy champs. Maybe Orlando shouldn't have totally given away Game 4 and bricked a lay-up (albeit a tough one) to lose Game 2.
One thing I did learn this weekend is what happens to the homeless population during the winter. Turns out a fair number of them die. They freeze to death. Wild! So if Eskimo Holden Caulfield were to ask where the hobos go when the world freezes over, I got an answer for him now and its a depressingly morbid one.
Today at work I turned in my draft of my Determination Of Eligibility for the Soapy Smith Parlor Museum (see 'Nerd Images' post for more info). I got positive feedback and a genuine compliment about my ability to write. It was a great feeling. I also spent 6 1/2 hours scanning photos and putting them into an excel spread sheet. It was anything but a great feeling. But if you want pictures of Steamers on the Yukon River or early buildings in Circle or Eagle Alaska I can show you a very well organized document. Today I organized 120 images and I am a bout 1/6 of the way through all that I have to do. Not including slides. Shoot me.
This weekend I am going to go up to Fairbanks with Evan and his roommates who also work in the office but I haven't met yet. It's the summer solstice on Saturday-Sunday and there are two musical festivals in Fairbanks and just a generally large party. Should be awesome and it's a six hour drive so I should get to see a whole lot of Alaska. I am super excited and plan on taking tons of pictures and since it will be sunny for 50 straight hours I won't need to worry about any of them coming out poorly during the Midnight baseball game.
More to come later this week including a theory I developed about the appropriateness of head nods and the highly anticipated Guess What Time It Is Contest. I sure all (3-7) of you are excited.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Lord Stanley spits on Marian Hossa
Man, the fans in Detroit are really classy. Booing during the entire trophy ceremony after getting out played in the Stanley Cup Final. Real classy. What a nice city. They booed Mario Lemieux. Enough said.
My man Mad Max Talbot was the scoring hero, Jordan Staal and Chris Kunitz were great. Marc Andre Fluery was other wordly. (The final diving save with 3 seconds left was a career highlight. And it made my heart stop for a very dangerous 4 or 5 seconds). The defense played fantastic yet again. And somehow we won a game in Detroit where we only scored twice and Sid the Kid didn't even play after the 5 minute mark in the second. A complete team effort for the Pens, completely deserving World Champs. (The infamous "Gary Slam" still lives. Steelers, Heels, Pens all Champs, now we need a Pirate miracle, which is as likely as Dick Cheney apologizing for the last eight years)
Best part is Marian Hossa loses the Stanley Cup year two. Take that traitor. You wanted a chance to win the Stanley Cup? Ha! You walked out on one. Enjoy the losers lockerroom yet again.
Basketball game last night was horribly painful by contrast. Magic had it and either needed to hit a 15 foot jumper with a minute left or a free throw with 11 seconds left. Yeah, missed 'em all. One name comes to mind here, Nick Anderson. Now the series is over and the rest is just a formality. My money is on Lakers in 6 in LA, but I wouldn't be shocked if they won Sunday and celebrated in Orlando instead. I would be suprised if this series went to Game 7, but since the Magic should have won either game 2 or game 4 its not totally out of the question that they could win 2 in a row. Wait, who am I kidding. Yes it is, this one ends before Wednesday no matter what.
I survived my first full week of work this week. But today was pretty tough. I spent 7 hours scanning historic photographs into photoshop and annotating them. Horribly monotonous. I am beginning to feel much more comfortable in the office and people now know my name and I know them, but it helps that many of my interactions are very near signs bearing their names.
Lord knows what I am going to do this weekend. But I plan on buying a basketball, getting my hair cut and doing some laundry. I live a humble lifestyle, what can I say.
I have an idea for pictures coming up here. A segment I will call guess the time of day, where I will take pictures of the endless sun and you readers can guess the time of day. The winner gets my endless respect, but really it will give me something to do and you guys something to comment on. So look forward to that.
And for the love of all things right in the world, Go, Magic (stop choking).
My man Mad Max Talbot was the scoring hero, Jordan Staal and Chris Kunitz were great. Marc Andre Fluery was other wordly. (The final diving save with 3 seconds left was a career highlight. And it made my heart stop for a very dangerous 4 or 5 seconds). The defense played fantastic yet again. And somehow we won a game in Detroit where we only scored twice and Sid the Kid didn't even play after the 5 minute mark in the second. A complete team effort for the Pens, completely deserving World Champs. (The infamous "Gary Slam" still lives. Steelers, Heels, Pens all Champs, now we need a Pirate miracle, which is as likely as Dick Cheney apologizing for the last eight years)
Best part is Marian Hossa loses the Stanley Cup year two. Take that traitor. You wanted a chance to win the Stanley Cup? Ha! You walked out on one. Enjoy the losers lockerroom yet again.
Basketball game last night was horribly painful by contrast. Magic had it and either needed to hit a 15 foot jumper with a minute left or a free throw with 11 seconds left. Yeah, missed 'em all. One name comes to mind here, Nick Anderson. Now the series is over and the rest is just a formality. My money is on Lakers in 6 in LA, but I wouldn't be shocked if they won Sunday and celebrated in Orlando instead. I would be suprised if this series went to Game 7, but since the Magic should have won either game 2 or game 4 its not totally out of the question that they could win 2 in a row. Wait, who am I kidding. Yes it is, this one ends before Wednesday no matter what.
I survived my first full week of work this week. But today was pretty tough. I spent 7 hours scanning historic photographs into photoshop and annotating them. Horribly monotonous. I am beginning to feel much more comfortable in the office and people now know my name and I know them, but it helps that many of my interactions are very near signs bearing their names.
Lord knows what I am going to do this weekend. But I plan on buying a basketball, getting my hair cut and doing some laundry. I live a humble lifestyle, what can I say.
I have an idea for pictures coming up here. A segment I will call guess the time of day, where I will take pictures of the endless sun and you readers can guess the time of day. The winner gets my endless respect, but really it will give me something to do and you guys something to comment on. So look forward to that.
And for the love of all things right in the world, Go, Magic (stop choking).
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Oh academia.....
Today I had to go to the Anchorage Museum's library and archives to check some sources and do a little research of my own. It was my first time in a real archive setting. I had to check my bag, my jacket and my pen in a locker and they had to search my notebook before I could start doing research.
The facilities were super spiffy and obviously have a huge amount of funding. They had ergonomically chairs and marble-ish desks and these lights that looked like light sabers. They also had book shelves that slid automatically on this little track. You just found the row you needed and then pressed the arrow in the direction you wanted the shelves to slide and the entire thing would shift as a unit and your shelf would open up for you. Maybe you guys have seen this before , but it was my first experience and I was pretty impressed.
But what really struck me about this place was how hard I got hit on for being a history nerd. The librarian working at the desk was probably about 25 and looked like a librarian. What I am trying to say is, she was pretty enough to star on the radio. All and all she was super helpful and walked me through everything I needed. But for the first time in my life I got hit on for being a research geek. If this is what academia is like, kill me now. I miss being 17 and learning being lame. Well I don't, but right then I did. It was scary and oddly uncomfortable.
So to all my history buffs out there, if you are feeling like a loser just hit up a research library or archives somewhere and you'll probably meet some nerdo who really digs you being a nerd.
Other than getting hit on in the archives my day was pretty boring. I am excited for basketball tomorrow night, Let's go Magic! And looking forward to the weekend so I can get on my bike and go exploring again. Until then I'm just relaxing in the perfect Anchorage weather and surviving the work week.
The facilities were super spiffy and obviously have a huge amount of funding. They had ergonomically chairs and marble-ish desks and these lights that looked like light sabers. They also had book shelves that slid automatically on this little track. You just found the row you needed and then pressed the arrow in the direction you wanted the shelves to slide and the entire thing would shift as a unit and your shelf would open up for you. Maybe you guys have seen this before , but it was my first experience and I was pretty impressed.
But what really struck me about this place was how hard I got hit on for being a history nerd. The librarian working at the desk was probably about 25 and looked like a librarian. What I am trying to say is, she was pretty enough to star on the radio. All and all she was super helpful and walked me through everything I needed. But for the first time in my life I got hit on for being a research geek. If this is what academia is like, kill me now. I miss being 17 and learning being lame. Well I don't, but right then I did. It was scary and oddly uncomfortable.
So to all my history buffs out there, if you are feeling like a loser just hit up a research library or archives somewhere and you'll probably meet some nerdo who really digs you being a nerd.
Other than getting hit on in the archives my day was pretty boring. I am excited for basketball tomorrow night, Let's go Magic! And looking forward to the weekend so I can get on my bike and go exploring again. Until then I'm just relaxing in the perfect Anchorage weather and surviving the work week.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Another day, another guy with no teeth
Unfortunately my free internet no longer exists. Now I'm paying for this mess. To quote the great Olgierd Mihal Pucilowski II (aka Junior), "F*ck that noise."
But this week is going good so far. No bike crashes and sadly no new pics. But I do have new followers on the blog! So that's dope. Hey, Jane!
Tonight's hockey game was ri-dic-u-lous. What a game. For those of you who don't care about about Canada's game, tonight's showdown would have convinced you. Especially if you were at the bar with me and Zeb sitting next to this guy bald guy with a big ol' chin beard missing one of his front banging on the bar. Why do I go to these dive bars, you ask? This time I didn't! It was one of the classier bars in the city with 25 beers on tap. There are just people literally everywhere with dental issues. Combine that with the average hockey crowd and you bound to get someone witha few gaps in their smile.
But back to the game. Fantastic. Marc Andre-Fluery was absurd and the team defense was great all the way through. And the last 8 minutes were as intense as playoff hockey gets. So tune in Friday for Game 7.
Basketball game was pretty good too. But can someone do me a favor and make either Andrew Bynum or Dwight Howard go left. Here is the real story though. The Magic lost game 2 with JJ Redick on the floor at crunch time. Game 3: Magic win with no Redick when the game mattered. Phewf.
Tonight was also the second time in the playoffs Kobe has been stripped by a big coming off a pick and roll in the final minute. Last time it was Nené this time it was Dwight Howard. Both good defenders, but niether of have any business stripping Kobe of the rock. I'm sure Kobe will drop 40 or 50 in Game 4 and pretty much seal the series, so it's not that big of a deal. Just pointing it out.
But the Magic did look like they could win a few more games, the way their offense clicked tonight. They could have/should have won Game 2 (way to go Courtney Lee) and they have two more games at home. So, to state the painfully obvious and the type of thing I would murder a TV analyst for saying, this one is far from over.
Oh, and before I forget. NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayberry tested positive for METH! Crank, y'all, crank. This is bad. In case I had any respect for NASCAR this gives me more than enough reason to disrespect it forever. You think HGH in basebal is bad. METH and a high speed car race is far worse.
Work wise things are going good. Finishing up my draft tomorrow and working on the relatively difficult citation stuff. Unfortunately my boss is going on a site visit to Kennecott so she told me that if I get stuck I can work on this box full of scanning photos and maps and putting them into an Excel spread sheet. Sounds like a very rough way to spend eight hours.
Also I met two other interns who work on my floor. They work in the department on the other side, but that doesn't make them any less of students. They go to the University of Cincinatti and work as architects/engineers. They seem like cool guys and it's great just to meet other young people in similar situations as myself. Another intern in my department starts Monday morning. I already resent her because she has a cubicle with a window, but I'll try not to hold it against her considering she will only be the fourth kid I know in the city. Really I'm just happy to not be the new guy.
That's all I got. Peace
But this week is going good so far. No bike crashes and sadly no new pics. But I do have new followers on the blog! So that's dope. Hey, Jane!
Tonight's hockey game was ri-dic-u-lous. What a game. For those of you who don't care about about Canada's game, tonight's showdown would have convinced you. Especially if you were at the bar with me and Zeb sitting next to this guy bald guy with a big ol' chin beard missing one of his front banging on the bar. Why do I go to these dive bars, you ask? This time I didn't! It was one of the classier bars in the city with 25 beers on tap. There are just people literally everywhere with dental issues. Combine that with the average hockey crowd and you bound to get someone witha few gaps in their smile.
But back to the game. Fantastic. Marc Andre-Fluery was absurd and the team defense was great all the way through. And the last 8 minutes were as intense as playoff hockey gets. So tune in Friday for Game 7.
Basketball game was pretty good too. But can someone do me a favor and make either Andrew Bynum or Dwight Howard go left. Here is the real story though. The Magic lost game 2 with JJ Redick on the floor at crunch time. Game 3: Magic win with no Redick when the game mattered. Phewf.
Tonight was also the second time in the playoffs Kobe has been stripped by a big coming off a pick and roll in the final minute. Last time it was Nené this time it was Dwight Howard. Both good defenders, but niether of have any business stripping Kobe of the rock. I'm sure Kobe will drop 40 or 50 in Game 4 and pretty much seal the series, so it's not that big of a deal. Just pointing it out.
But the Magic did look like they could win a few more games, the way their offense clicked tonight. They could have/should have won Game 2 (way to go Courtney Lee) and they have two more games at home. So, to state the painfully obvious and the type of thing I would murder a TV analyst for saying, this one is far from over.
Oh, and before I forget. NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayberry tested positive for METH! Crank, y'all, crank. This is bad. In case I had any respect for NASCAR this gives me more than enough reason to disrespect it forever. You think HGH in basebal is bad. METH and a high speed car race is far worse.
Work wise things are going good. Finishing up my draft tomorrow and working on the relatively difficult citation stuff. Unfortunately my boss is going on a site visit to Kennecott so she told me that if I get stuck I can work on this box full of scanning photos and maps and putting them into an Excel spread sheet. Sounds like a very rough way to spend eight hours.
Also I met two other interns who work on my floor. They work in the department on the other side, but that doesn't make them any less of students. They go to the University of Cincinatti and work as architects/engineers. They seem like cool guys and it's great just to meet other young people in similar situations as myself. Another intern in my department starts Monday morning. I already resent her because she has a cubicle with a window, but I'll try not to hold it against her considering she will only be the fourth kid I know in the city. Really I'm just happy to not be the new guy.
That's all I got. Peace
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Coastal Trail Bike Ride
On Saturday I took this 25-ish mile roundtrip bike ride. It was less daunting than it sounds because for the most part it was totally flat, only the last 300 yards are up a real hill and still it isn't that rough. It was a really nice ride, right along the water with views that looked back at downtown Anchorage at certain spots. What this ride really introduced me to were the infamous mosquitoes here. I thought that was pretty much a myth until I stopped in the woods to consult my map and was attacked by huge, relentless skeeters. I also saw a bunch of birds, a moose with her two babies and this 17 year old Russian girl from Wasilla eat shit and totally bloody up the whole left side of her body. Here are some pictures and further narration from the ride.
The ride starts right along these mudflats where there are roughly 1 million little birds.
This is downtown Anchorage looking back after about 3 miles.
I like this sign because the animal in it looks more like a beaver or a platypus than a dog. It is Alaska, perhaps there are tons of pet beavers out there walking around on leashes.
Shortly after stopping at that view point and seeing this sign, which there were a lot of and always made me smile, I was heading up a small hill and this girl coming down the other way just went right over the handle bars. I am not the best person to handle these injuries but it was pretty clear right away that she was more shaken up than hurt. She cut her head just over her left eye, ripped up her sweatshirt and cut her elbow, hit her hip pretty bad, bloodied four of the knuckles on her left hand and cut her knee a little. She was crying and it was just me and her for like 3 extremely long minutes. I made sure she was conscious and gave her some water and my jacket so she could hold it on the cut on her head which was still bleeding a little at the time. Then a family came up and also pretended to have vast medical knowledge. Finally after about 5 minutes of me and this family pretending to know what we should do an EMS guy from the near by airport drove by on the road that was only about 15 feet away from the trail at this point. Lucky she crashed where she did because it was pretty much the only point on the trail the EMS dude would have seen her.
Turns out her name was Olga, she is 17 and lives in Wasilla and had just come to Anchorage for the day with what she described as a "big group behind me." The big group eventually showed up and it was like the fucking lost boys brigade meets little rascals. Maybe about 25 Russo-Wasillan youths all on bikes who came flying down the hill at totally unsafe speeds and almost crashed into each other as they all stopped to check on Olga. Eventually the EMS guy told them all to leave because really they were just in the standing in the path causing more danger for bikers who kept coming by. There were no adults in site and only about half of these kids wore helmets. They should all wear helmets. Olga will attest to that. So I got on my way and saw these next two signs which pretty much summed up the tramatic last 20 minutes I had experienced.
Yeah, Olga, a helmet and you woulda been fine. But you are a maverick (to steal a word from a fellow Wasilla resident) and you paid the price. Hope your head is feeling better today.
The rest of my journey was way less eventulful except that I saw a moose! Actually I saw three moose, or is it meese? mooses? mice?
Notice they are right by some sort of power plant and while I was taking pictures about three airplanes flew overhead. These moose could not have cared less they were just munching on some grass and then they retreated back into the boggy woods. Perfect place for Moose and perfect place for skeeters, too.
This is the view from the top of hill at the end of the ride. Pretty anti-clamatic, eh?
Looking back at downtown on the way home.
After the ride I went to a bar to catch the Pens game. Wow what a terrible way to end an otherwise great day. If the Olga-ordeal couldn't ruin the bike ride watching Malkin get leveled by Datsyuk in the opening period surely did. Theme of the day: Russians getting totally lit up and then looking miserable for 20+ minutes although they knew it really wasn't that bad.
What was nice is that Olga didn't totally lose her cool like the Pens in the last two periods. If she had I probably would have got slashed in the legs for making sure she was ok.
Alright, well surprisingly that is my first real sports reference in this blog. After the Laker game tonight I plan on ranting one way or another on the outcome of the game. I will also share my feelings on the NHL and the generally amazing analysis that sports casters give. Brace yourselves.
And congrats to my cousins Megan and Matt!
The ride starts right along these mudflats where there are roughly 1 million little birds.
This is downtown Anchorage looking back after about 3 miles.
I like this sign because the animal in it looks more like a beaver or a platypus than a dog. It is Alaska, perhaps there are tons of pet beavers out there walking around on leashes.Shortly after stopping at that view point and seeing this sign, which there were a lot of and always made me smile, I was heading up a small hill and this girl coming down the other way just went right over the handle bars. I am not the best person to handle these injuries but it was pretty clear right away that she was more shaken up than hurt. She cut her head just over her left eye, ripped up her sweatshirt and cut her elbow, hit her hip pretty bad, bloodied four of the knuckles on her left hand and cut her knee a little. She was crying and it was just me and her for like 3 extremely long minutes. I made sure she was conscious and gave her some water and my jacket so she could hold it on the cut on her head which was still bleeding a little at the time. Then a family came up and also pretended to have vast medical knowledge. Finally after about 5 minutes of me and this family pretending to know what we should do an EMS guy from the near by airport drove by on the road that was only about 15 feet away from the trail at this point. Lucky she crashed where she did because it was pretty much the only point on the trail the EMS dude would have seen her.
Turns out her name was Olga, she is 17 and lives in Wasilla and had just come to Anchorage for the day with what she described as a "big group behind me." The big group eventually showed up and it was like the fucking lost boys brigade meets little rascals. Maybe about 25 Russo-Wasillan youths all on bikes who came flying down the hill at totally unsafe speeds and almost crashed into each other as they all stopped to check on Olga. Eventually the EMS guy told them all to leave because really they were just in the standing in the path causing more danger for bikers who kept coming by. There were no adults in site and only about half of these kids wore helmets. They should all wear helmets. Olga will attest to that. So I got on my way and saw these next two signs which pretty much summed up the tramatic last 20 minutes I had experienced.
Yeah, Olga, a helmet and you woulda been fine. But you are a maverick (to steal a word from a fellow Wasilla resident) and you paid the price. Hope your head is feeling better today.The rest of my journey was way less eventulful except that I saw a moose! Actually I saw three moose, or is it meese? mooses? mice?
Notice they are right by some sort of power plant and while I was taking pictures about three airplanes flew overhead. These moose could not have cared less they were just munching on some grass and then they retreated back into the boggy woods. Perfect place for Moose and perfect place for skeeters, too.
This is the view from the top of hill at the end of the ride. Pretty anti-clamatic, eh?
Looking back at downtown on the way home.After the ride I went to a bar to catch the Pens game. Wow what a terrible way to end an otherwise great day. If the Olga-ordeal couldn't ruin the bike ride watching Malkin get leveled by Datsyuk in the opening period surely did. Theme of the day: Russians getting totally lit up and then looking miserable for 20+ minutes although they knew it really wasn't that bad.
What was nice is that Olga didn't totally lose her cool like the Pens in the last two periods. If she had I probably would have got slashed in the legs for making sure she was ok.
Alright, well surprisingly that is my first real sports reference in this blog. After the Laker game tonight I plan on ranting one way or another on the outcome of the game. I will also share my feelings on the NHL and the generally amazing analysis that sports casters give. Brace yourselves.
And congrats to my cousins Megan and Matt!
Friday, June 5, 2009
Nerd images
Started doing real research today and actually started writing my draft. Other than that I got nothing. Probably going to go biking tomorrow and take a bunch of pictures. I will share then. For now here is just a bunch of pictures relating to the research I have been doing and will do in the coming weeks.
First up, Jeff. Smith's Parlor. More famously known as Soapy Smith. Now its a dilapidated former museum. This is my first project that I am working on. Here is what the building looks like now.
And this is what that building look like at the turn of the century. When it was a saloon/crime headquarters during the Klondike Gold Rush
At that point it was owned and operated by this fellar
Soapy Smith is the cat with his hat off and his hand on the bar in the top photo. He was the crime boss and ultimate con man who basically ran Skagway, AK from 1897 till July 1898. Eventually he got shot in a duel and that was the end of his crime ring's reign. But he was big time for a second.
What I am really working on has little to do with Soapy. It more has to do with what his Parlor became. And that is a museum that was restored to be just like the old Parlor. It was owned, operated and tirelessly promoted by Martin Itjen. Here's his old school portrait from 1820s.
He restored the Parlor to look like that. It's pretty similar but regrettably not perfectly accurate. The people who regret it are mostly super huge history nerds, but it is slightly different and that is basically what I write about. At this point the Parlor was a major tourist spot. Eventually it passed on to Itjen's friend George Rapuzzi. Here is a picture of Rapuzzi inside the restored Palor Museum.
Rapuzzi lived in this house in Skagway, which happens to be my next project.
I'll know more about it in a few weeks and will include that info in another insanely dorky post. I bet you're already looking forward to it.
My last project is a WWII Commissary that I know nothing about. Here is a picture of it
It currently sits right next to the Jeff Smith Parlor Museum so I will get a real good look at it when I head up to Skagway at the end of June. Should be a good trip and really feed my history nerd cravings.
Until next time. Out.
First up, Jeff. Smith's Parlor. More famously known as Soapy Smith. Now its a dilapidated former museum. This is my first project that I am working on. Here is what the building looks like now.
And this is what that building look like at the turn of the century. When it was a saloon/crime headquarters during the Klondike Gold Rush
At that point it was owned and operated by this fellar
Soapy Smith is the cat with his hat off and his hand on the bar in the top photo. He was the crime boss and ultimate con man who basically ran Skagway, AK from 1897 till July 1898. Eventually he got shot in a duel and that was the end of his crime ring's reign. But he was big time for a second.
What I am really working on has little to do with Soapy. It more has to do with what his Parlor became. And that is a museum that was restored to be just like the old Parlor. It was owned, operated and tirelessly promoted by Martin Itjen. Here's his old school portrait from 1820s.
He restored the Parlor to look like that. It's pretty similar but regrettably not perfectly accurate. The people who regret it are mostly super huge history nerds, but it is slightly different and that is basically what I write about. At this point the Parlor was a major tourist spot. Eventually it passed on to Itjen's friend George Rapuzzi. Here is a picture of Rapuzzi inside the restored Palor Museum.
Rapuzzi lived in this house in Skagway, which happens to be my next project.
I'll know more about it in a few weeks and will include that info in another insanely dorky post. I bet you're already looking forward to it.My last project is a WWII Commissary that I know nothing about. Here is a picture of it
It currently sits right next to the Jeff Smith Parlor Museum so I will get a real good look at it when I head up to Skagway at the end of June. Should be a good trip and really feed my history nerd cravings.Until next time. Out.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Office
I just finished my second day of work this afternoon. And despite the label on my little sign there I am not an intern. Although I applied to be an intern and they call me an intern, apparently the National Park Service doesn't pay interns and really doesn't have interns. Instead I am a Cultural Resource Aid, meaning I get paid and I am someones bitch. That someone is this nice middle aged woman named Bonnie Houston. My job is basically doing research on a couple of buildings in Klondike Gold Rush National Park in Skagway, Alaska, or as hip office folk refer to it KLGO (pronounced kill-go).My first project in to do research on a the Jeff Smith's Parlor Museum. Originally this building was a saloon and gambling spot run by Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith, probably the most famous person in the history of Skagway although he only lived there for just under two years. My job is to show the distinguishing characteristics of this historic building and present it to the Park so they will preserve and restore it. If you have any questions just google Soapy Smith and Martin Itjen and you will learn more than you ever wanted to about what I am reading in these next couple of weeks.
So I have a draft of that proposal type thing due June 15, pretty damn professional for a bullshitter like me, but hopefully I can pull it off. The good thing about this first project is there is already a ton of research on this topic availible to me, so my job is just to put it all togehter in a concise and formal manner.
My next two projects are similar, but are on different buildings. I will do research on a WWII Comisary and then a house owned by the Rapuzzi family. I don't know shit about the Comisary, but I do know that the Rapuzzi's were a prominent family and they managed the Soapy Smith Museum for about 15 years in the 70s and 80s. Basically I am doing the exact same thing for those two buildings as I will do for the first one, but the difference is there isn't near as much info readily availible. So those will both require a ton of research and a lot of work and are pretty intimidating when I think about it. But luckily I will already have one project under my belt so hopefully I will be a little more confident when the time comes.
So that's what I am doing. If you got any other questions (why would you, right?) just leave a comment under this post and I will clear it up for you.
The research is relatively interesting but office live is a soul draining experience that I am absolutely dreading entering when I graduate next year. As my dad told me "There is a reason they say college is the best time of your life." Right on, Dad, right on. The real tough part is that these first two days I have been the only intern at the office. The others either aren't in town yet or don't start for another week or two. So that means I am not only the new guy, I am the young guy and the only guy in my situation. When other get into town, one kid starts tomorrow, but then will be out of the office at the beginning of next week. So it's going to be a tough first 10 days. Here are some pics of my very own cubicle.
It is a little hard to relate to my co-workers thus far. Cubicle life is awful. I don't have kids. I am actually younger than most of these people's kids. This one dude has a grandson who is a freshmen in college, so he is basically my grandad. Most of the other folks are real weird academic types, but they are friendly. Well at least the ones that I talk to. The big boss is incredibly awkward and talks to me like I am a hearing impaired slightly disabled infant. The only time he spoke to me like a semi-adult was when I met him with Bonnie on the first morning. After that he just gives me mean looks and treats me like a moron. Maybe I am a moron, but at least wait until week two until you make your opinion so obvious.But again, for the most part I like what I am researching and am excited to be doing something so professional. Hopefully I will still feel that way in a few weeks. But I am in desperate need of some young people around the office. There are 6 or 7 other interns coming so I just gotta tough it out. I will share more office stories as they happen.
Here are a bunch of pics I have taken while biking around the city. Anchorage is pretty small so a lot of the views are similar, but when it's clear its absolutely gorgeous.
So this is somebody's pet reindeer that lives in a Plexiglas/chain link change about 6 blocks from my work place right in downtown Anchorage. The poor thing looked miserable, but he also looked like he would make a delicious piece of jerky or a burger. Sorry vegetarians.
This is my apartment building from the outside. Looks great doesn't it.That's it for today, more later.
A Week in Cranchorage
I have been in Anchorage just about one week now. I am working for the National Park Service Regional Office downtown. So far in this one week I have already met some crazy folks and seen some ridiculous things. Here's a run down of my first week.
I got here at about 7:45 on Thursday night (May 28), the flights were pretty good considering I traveled like 5,000 miles on three flights for roughly 16 hours. The highlight was easily the lady I sat next to on the flight from Seattle to Anchorage. She began the flight by dropping an F bomb on the woman sitting in the aisle seat in the row in front of us because of trouble fitting her big ass suitcase in the overhead bin. My frustrated soon to be seatmate then turned to me looking for my approval of her swearing in the direction of a stranger. I smiled back at her because it seemed like the best solution considering I had to sit next to her for the next four hours.
I slept for the beginning of the flight and woke up when the aforementioned woman was ordering a cheeseburger and then rejecting the complimentary nuts by saying "I don't want that shit." She was a real joy. And it got better.
She proceeded to order a Crown Royal and Coke. At that point I thought that she was actually doing the right thing by getting some booze to take the edge off. She downed that round in about 5-7 minutes and then quickly ordered another. She couldn't fit all the Crown in the little airplane cup with her Coke so she just slammed the rest of the Whiskey, straight no chaser. Gotta love it.
After her third Crown and Coke she watched some terrible movie (Bride Wars) on a portable DVD player, but she was so crunkard at that point that she kept laughing obnoxiously loud and then recounting the plot at an equally inappropriate volume to her friend sitting next to her. The final straw came when she told me she was going to kill her husband for getting tickets that forced them to sit separately on the plane. Lady, if I had known which guy was your husband I would have gladly switched seats with him and let him deal with your absurdity. Hell I would have killed him at that point. She then mumbled that he was a "stupid f*ggot," and I turned my music up so loud that I am certain I will lose most of my hearing in my mid 30s. Thanks for the headphones, Mayme.
I survived the rest of the flight and checked into my hostel in downtown Anchorage around 8. I met up with the other intern from LC, Zeb, and me and him got a burger and a beer for dinner at some place right in the downtown area. Welcome to Alaska dinner will be $16 with tip.
The next morning I went and looked at a couple of apartments in this neighborhood called Fairview. It would be more aptly named Drunken-natives-with-missing-teeth-posting-up-on-the-block-Village. After I saw two apartments that despite their semi-sketch locations seemed appealing I walked to a sandwich shop to get lunch.
What happened next seems like a bad sitcom plot. I assure you it's not, but if you would like to pitch it to one of the networks I demand 10%. I walked in at the same time as this guy in his mid-twenties with a big Hurley snowboarding backpack on, long hair, a trucker hat and a beard.
Seemed like my kind of dude so I talked with him while we ate our overpriced, mediocre sandwiches. His name is Nick and he is a freelance photographer who takes stock photos that he sells to Getty Images. He was in Anchorage doing an outdoor photo shoot with some local would-be model.
Nicholas J Reid is the guy in the picture below. Turns out he has a cousin at LC, that guy Evan who got his finger bit off by a barracuda in Cuba. I don't know Evan, but I know the legend so we had some connection there.
Eventually he told me that I am one of the better looking guys he has seen and Anchorage and offered me $300 to be his male model for the photo shoot. I am totally terrified at this point and want lunch to end immediately. I give him my number and tell him I'll think about it and to give me a call later that night.
I was pretty creeped out so I called Andrew (Sas) and asked him if I should do it. He basically laughed and told me to go for it because $300 is a lot of money to make in one day even if its a very uncomfortable one. So when he called I agreed to do it and set up a time to meet the following morning. Literally 3 minutes later I met my second bizarre dude of my first afternoon in Anchorage.
I went into this bike rental shop to try and rent a bike for the summer. In less than 10 minutes the bike shop guy, Pete, was offering me a room in his house for the summer. I had barely met the dude and he was all ready to be roomies. I needed a place to live real bad so I listened to his offer. Despite the creepiness it was a good deal. Fully furnished place with a hi-def tv and DVR and access to a whole bunch of bikes. I was a little to creeped out to really pursue the offer, but I will admit that I thought about it. Pete turned out to be a real nice dude, but seeing as he is in his late 40s and was offering a young lad such as myself a chance to sleep in his house after 10 minutes of chit chat I can safely say that he is a bit strange in his own right. He ended up renting me a bike that normally costs $32/day for $30 for the three days I had it. It was a great deal and he has recognized me every time I have been back in there for bike advice since then. A weirdo, but a friendly guy so I can't complain.
Later that night I went to a bar to watch the Lakers-Nuggets Game 6. I was in the bar all alone which is never a good idea and the only person I had a real conversation with was this extremely drunk hobo type named Lance. He could easily fit in in the Fairview neigborhood that I mentioned before. And when other young people saw me talking to this guy I got some seriously strange looks.
I went to sleep at about 10 after an exhausting day of bizarre occurances. Needless to say at 10pm it's still bright as shit here. Here's a photo I took on my ride back to the hostel. It looks darker than it felt like, but if you close your eyes everything is black so I managed.
The next morning I woke up got some coffee and Nick picked me up for the photo shoot excursion. It was a less awkward drive than I thought and we ended up at his cousins house in Wasilla about 2 miles from Sarah Pallin's house. I could not see Russia although I tried pretty fucking hard all afternoon to catch a glimpse of Putin rearing his head in our airspace.
Chantal was the name of the 19 year old girl model. She was not the outdoorsy type and could barely hang on our 7 mile hike. By the end she looked like she was coming down from base camp 2 on Everest. That is a picture of her below with some awesome mountains in the background. The hike was called the Mint Glacier Trail. It was supposed to be 18 miles round trip, but we didn't have the time nor the personnel to really pull off that epic of a journey. And the photo shoot part of it wasn't that bad. We just had to walk back and forth on the trail looking intense and then do it again smiling and then looking at each other and then looking at the mountains. It was worth the $300 any day of the week. And the picture of Chantal down there is not all that flattering, she wasn't that ugly, but if you saw her on the street you wouldn't immediately think "Holy Shit model chick."
After the photo shoot I went out with Nick and his cousin from Wasilla named Blane. We went out to the "classiest strip club in Anchorage." Classiest in Anchorage is not the same type of class you might expect in say anywhere else in America, but it wasn't that bad and Nick bought me a dinner before hand and a few rounds of Heineken's once we were at the club.
I got back to the hostel that night at 2:15. And it was dark out! Yes that's right, I saw darkness in Anchorage. It really doesn't get that dark, but I can confidently say that the sun did set. But when I got back to the hostel my key card didn't work and there was no one at the desk so I had no choice but to sleep on a couch in all my clothes downstairs in the lounge. Luckily I met this other guest who gave me a blanket, so it was manageable, but not exactly worth the $25 I had paid for a bed. I woke up at about 6 and went up to the front desk to demand my money back. They wouldn't give me a refund but they apologized and agreed to store all my stuff for free indefinitely while I continued my hunt for an apartment.
On Sunday I damn near signed a lease on this tiny little box of an apartment. Actually I did sign a lease, but I didn't put down the deposit so I was able to snake my way out of it Monday morning when my first choice for an apartment came around. If I had got the phone call 10 minutes later I would have been living in a little shack with really nice hard wood floors and nice appliances, but luckily this slightly older furnished apartment came through. Here are some pics.
The apartment came with two couches, a little dinner table, a coffee table, a queen size bed and two lamps. Pretty good deal considering what I almost ended up with. Thank you Norseman Apartments you are so good to me. So good I almost forget all the missing tooth drunks roaming the block just outside my window. Interestingly there are some nice semi-suburban homes right across the way and they don't seem to go to near to those properties. They must know better. But today alone I did see two people get arrested in broad daylight. Ok, it's always broad day light, but it makes it sound sketchier.
So after I got my apartment I bought a bike from this old couple. It's a great little cruiser and the perfect mode of transportation for this city. It's not near as bike friendly as Portland, but still a bike is a great way to get around here and there are enough bike paths and a few bike lanes that is a way manageable. Also there are only a few really fast moving streets and you can avoid those so its a pretty nice way to navigate the city.
The old couple was WAY Canadian and delivered the bike right to the door of my apartment for $80. They were very interested in what I was doing for the summer in Anchorage and why I didn't have a car. The old guy was definitely sad to see his bike go and kept telling me how nice the bike was and how he used to ride it when his legs were better. So after 5 days I had a place to stay and way to get around. If you had asked me on day 2 if I thought I had any chance of being that lucky I probably would have said, "No, but I do have a great chance of becoming a successful outdoor life model." But really I was not too optimistic when I first got here and was a little scared at what the summer was going to end up like for me. Now I am settled in and feeling like I could enjoy myself here. It would be nice to know a few more people, but I am managing and starting to like living by myself. Tomorrow I will share stories from my first two days of work and also some more pics from around Anchorage and my office. There is always more to tell but for now I'll call this post finished. Or as they say in my neighborhood, "Beer and crank!"
I got here at about 7:45 on Thursday night (May 28), the flights were pretty good considering I traveled like 5,000 miles on three flights for roughly 16 hours. The highlight was easily the lady I sat next to on the flight from Seattle to Anchorage. She began the flight by dropping an F bomb on the woman sitting in the aisle seat in the row in front of us because of trouble fitting her big ass suitcase in the overhead bin. My frustrated soon to be seatmate then turned to me looking for my approval of her swearing in the direction of a stranger. I smiled back at her because it seemed like the best solution considering I had to sit next to her for the next four hours.
I slept for the beginning of the flight and woke up when the aforementioned woman was ordering a cheeseburger and then rejecting the complimentary nuts by saying "I don't want that shit." She was a real joy. And it got better.
She proceeded to order a Crown Royal and Coke. At that point I thought that she was actually doing the right thing by getting some booze to take the edge off. She downed that round in about 5-7 minutes and then quickly ordered another. She couldn't fit all the Crown in the little airplane cup with her Coke so she just slammed the rest of the Whiskey, straight no chaser. Gotta love it.
After her third Crown and Coke she watched some terrible movie (Bride Wars) on a portable DVD player, but she was so crunkard at that point that she kept laughing obnoxiously loud and then recounting the plot at an equally inappropriate volume to her friend sitting next to her. The final straw came when she told me she was going to kill her husband for getting tickets that forced them to sit separately on the plane. Lady, if I had known which guy was your husband I would have gladly switched seats with him and let him deal with your absurdity. Hell I would have killed him at that point. She then mumbled that he was a "stupid f*ggot," and I turned my music up so loud that I am certain I will lose most of my hearing in my mid 30s. Thanks for the headphones, Mayme.
I survived the rest of the flight and checked into my hostel in downtown Anchorage around 8. I met up with the other intern from LC, Zeb, and me and him got a burger and a beer for dinner at some place right in the downtown area. Welcome to Alaska dinner will be $16 with tip.
The next morning I went and looked at a couple of apartments in this neighborhood called Fairview. It would be more aptly named Drunken-natives-with-missing-teeth-posting-up-on-the-block-Village. After I saw two apartments that despite their semi-sketch locations seemed appealing I walked to a sandwich shop to get lunch.
What happened next seems like a bad sitcom plot. I assure you it's not, but if you would like to pitch it to one of the networks I demand 10%. I walked in at the same time as this guy in his mid-twenties with a big Hurley snowboarding backpack on, long hair, a trucker hat and a beard.
Seemed like my kind of dude so I talked with him while we ate our overpriced, mediocre sandwiches. His name is Nick and he is a freelance photographer who takes stock photos that he sells to Getty Images. He was in Anchorage doing an outdoor photo shoot with some local would-be model.
Nicholas J Reid is the guy in the picture below. Turns out he has a cousin at LC, that guy Evan who got his finger bit off by a barracuda in Cuba. I don't know Evan, but I know the legend so we had some connection there.Eventually he told me that I am one of the better looking guys he has seen and Anchorage and offered me $300 to be his male model for the photo shoot. I am totally terrified at this point and want lunch to end immediately. I give him my number and tell him I'll think about it and to give me a call later that night.
I was pretty creeped out so I called Andrew (Sas) and asked him if I should do it. He basically laughed and told me to go for it because $300 is a lot of money to make in one day even if its a very uncomfortable one. So when he called I agreed to do it and set up a time to meet the following morning. Literally 3 minutes later I met my second bizarre dude of my first afternoon in Anchorage.
I went into this bike rental shop to try and rent a bike for the summer. In less than 10 minutes the bike shop guy, Pete, was offering me a room in his house for the summer. I had barely met the dude and he was all ready to be roomies. I needed a place to live real bad so I listened to his offer. Despite the creepiness it was a good deal. Fully furnished place with a hi-def tv and DVR and access to a whole bunch of bikes. I was a little to creeped out to really pursue the offer, but I will admit that I thought about it. Pete turned out to be a real nice dude, but seeing as he is in his late 40s and was offering a young lad such as myself a chance to sleep in his house after 10 minutes of chit chat I can safely say that he is a bit strange in his own right. He ended up renting me a bike that normally costs $32/day for $30 for the three days I had it. It was a great deal and he has recognized me every time I have been back in there for bike advice since then. A weirdo, but a friendly guy so I can't complain.
Later that night I went to a bar to watch the Lakers-Nuggets Game 6. I was in the bar all alone which is never a good idea and the only person I had a real conversation with was this extremely drunk hobo type named Lance. He could easily fit in in the Fairview neigborhood that I mentioned before. And when other young people saw me talking to this guy I got some seriously strange looks.
I went to sleep at about 10 after an exhausting day of bizarre occurances. Needless to say at 10pm it's still bright as shit here. Here's a photo I took on my ride back to the hostel. It looks darker than it felt like, but if you close your eyes everything is black so I managed.The next morning I woke up got some coffee and Nick picked me up for the photo shoot excursion. It was a less awkward drive than I thought and we ended up at his cousins house in Wasilla about 2 miles from Sarah Pallin's house. I could not see Russia although I tried pretty fucking hard all afternoon to catch a glimpse of Putin rearing his head in our airspace.
Chantal was the name of the 19 year old girl model. She was not the outdoorsy type and could barely hang on our 7 mile hike. By the end she looked like she was coming down from base camp 2 on Everest. That is a picture of her below with some awesome mountains in the background. The hike was called the Mint Glacier Trail. It was supposed to be 18 miles round trip, but we didn't have the time nor the personnel to really pull off that epic of a journey. And the photo shoot part of it wasn't that bad. We just had to walk back and forth on the trail looking intense and then do it again smiling and then looking at each other and then looking at the mountains. It was worth the $300 any day of the week. And the picture of Chantal down there is not all that flattering, she wasn't that ugly, but if you saw her on the street you wouldn't immediately think "Holy Shit model chick."
After the photo shoot I went out with Nick and his cousin from Wasilla named Blane. We went out to the "classiest strip club in Anchorage." Classiest in Anchorage is not the same type of class you might expect in say anywhere else in America, but it wasn't that bad and Nick bought me a dinner before hand and a few rounds of Heineken's once we were at the club.
I got back to the hostel that night at 2:15. And it was dark out! Yes that's right, I saw darkness in Anchorage. It really doesn't get that dark, but I can confidently say that the sun did set. But when I got back to the hostel my key card didn't work and there was no one at the desk so I had no choice but to sleep on a couch in all my clothes downstairs in the lounge. Luckily I met this other guest who gave me a blanket, so it was manageable, but not exactly worth the $25 I had paid for a bed. I woke up at about 6 and went up to the front desk to demand my money back. They wouldn't give me a refund but they apologized and agreed to store all my stuff for free indefinitely while I continued my hunt for an apartment.
On Sunday I damn near signed a lease on this tiny little box of an apartment. Actually I did sign a lease, but I didn't put down the deposit so I was able to snake my way out of it Monday morning when my first choice for an apartment came around. If I had got the phone call 10 minutes later I would have been living in a little shack with really nice hard wood floors and nice appliances, but luckily this slightly older furnished apartment came through. Here are some pics.
The apartment came with two couches, a little dinner table, a coffee table, a queen size bed and two lamps. Pretty good deal considering what I almost ended up with. Thank you Norseman Apartments you are so good to me. So good I almost forget all the missing tooth drunks roaming the block just outside my window. Interestingly there are some nice semi-suburban homes right across the way and they don't seem to go to near to those properties. They must know better. But today alone I did see two people get arrested in broad daylight. Ok, it's always broad day light, but it makes it sound sketchier.So after I got my apartment I bought a bike from this old couple. It's a great little cruiser and the perfect mode of transportation for this city. It's not near as bike friendly as Portland, but still a bike is a great way to get around here and there are enough bike paths and a few bike lanes that is a way manageable. Also there are only a few really fast moving streets and you can avoid those so its a pretty nice way to navigate the city.
The old couple was WAY Canadian and delivered the bike right to the door of my apartment for $80. They were very interested in what I was doing for the summer in Anchorage and why I didn't have a car. The old guy was definitely sad to see his bike go and kept telling me how nice the bike was and how he used to ride it when his legs were better. So after 5 days I had a place to stay and way to get around. If you had asked me on day 2 if I thought I had any chance of being that lucky I probably would have said, "No, but I do have a great chance of becoming a successful outdoor life model." But really I was not too optimistic when I first got here and was a little scared at what the summer was going to end up like for me. Now I am settled in and feeling like I could enjoy myself here. It would be nice to know a few more people, but I am managing and starting to like living by myself. Tomorrow I will share stories from my first two days of work and also some more pics from around Anchorage and my office. There is always more to tell but for now I'll call this post finished. Or as they say in my neighborhood, "Beer and crank!"
Midnight Sun
So I tried my hand at blogging once before and I don't think I made it past sentence two. So maybe this one will end up a little more extensive
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
