Back with the dood!

We made it back to Anchorage this evening, and boy is it brisk.  The security guy at Seatac told us to take the cold weather with us, and I think we must have listened, because when we landed it was around zero.  

When we arrived home there was a big furry dood waiting for us in his kennel.  After a stay in his doggy cottage, and then a weekend with Jared and Kari, Banjo is finally at home again with us.  I think he was pretty excited to see us.  And we were glad to see him again.  He seems like he must have grown, or at least his hair did.  He's a giant!

I'm official

No, these aren't shoe-boxes. These hold the DNA of the convicted offenders of Alaska!
Here is the memo from our DNA technical manager deeming me properly trained.
Who is this goofy guy?
A CODIS analysts' best friend - the M48 Robotic Extraction machine.
I'm about to cut open these envelopes to access the buccal swabs.

As of last Thursday, I am an officially trained DNA analyst, able to process real-live convicted offender samples and upload them into CODIS. And since my beautiful wife was out of town, I celebrated by running said samples for 8 hours on Saturday, 7 hours on Sunday, and 8 hours on Monday (which are all my usual days off). I took these pictures of the lab while I was there all by myself on Sunday. I got to look at some of my data today, and it looks pretty good. It's nice to see the fruit of my hard work.

My lab had our holiday party/lunch-in today. It was a pot-luck (I made some lemon bars) and everyone made really good food. It was nice because Emily got to come too and she met a few of my co-workers.

The birth of Jacob

Happy birthday they one they call John! Not only is it Jacob Wayne's birthday, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime birthday at that - Happy 21! I'll have to take the not-so young Jacob out on the town once I get back for the holidays. Here are some photo's of Jacob when we were all down in Homer this summer.

Emily has safely returned home. She laughed at all of you Seattlites who complained about the 'cold' weather that you guys are experiencing. There was a low of -10 when I went into work on Saturday. So you can all stop your whining. Now.

Only 4 more days before we turn around and head back south for Christmas. I'm still really busy at work running all of our CODIS samples, but tomorrow my work is having a little Christmas party. Emily will come too so she can meet all of the crazy lab people that I work with.

Holy fucking shit - a Christmas miracle!

Yes, the language is excessive. But the tale is incredible...

So I wake up this morning at 6am to the sounds of Banjo barfing next to the bed. Next thing I know, he is racing around the bedroom, over and over our bed. Then I hear this 'plop' and the end of the bed, and some shakes. I get up to see Banjo on his side, legs flailing violenty with is his mouth wide open. I think he's choking, so I stick my hand in to remove the obstruction. I think I feel something, but I can't seem to get it out. Banjo is still flailing in obvious pain. I start to freak out, so I run down the hallway and burst into Matt's room. I tell him that Banjo is choking, and that he should call the 24 hour pet ER for me. But the time I get back to Banjo, he his mouth is closed, his breathing is a little labored, and he's still on this side. It seems like the is slowly working whatever is choking him down his throat. He is still struggling, but I think he's doing OK.
But then all of a sudden the stops moving. He's completely still, on his side. I shake try to shake him to see if he'll move. No luck. I stare in disbelief. Then I try and shake him again. Still, absolutely no movement. His feet are kind of stuck out to the side of him in a weird position that I've never seen before. An unnatural position.
Then the thought comes to me, "Holy shit, Banjo is dead." I start yelling and moaning, and I toss our bed across the room. I start thinking about how I'm going to miss him, about how Emily's going to take it, and about what the heck you do with a dead dog. Then as I get up from the ground (because I was wollowing on my knees), it seems like Banjo's head moved a bit. I wait a little longer, and suddenly the 'dood jumps up, good as new. I can hardly believe it. Just moments earlier I thought I had lost poor Banjo, and now he seems fine. I can't tell you how happy I felt right then!
After I look at Banjo to see if he's OK, I call up the pet ER to tell them what happened. Then I take a shower and take Banjo to have a vet look at him. The vet said his heart rate was perfect, he had a strong pulse, and his color was good. She also said that he could have had a seizure, or that he could have fainted from the vomiting. I still had a suspition that he had choked on something (b/c I really did feel something rigtht when I woke up. But it was 6am, my mind was racing and my heart was pounding - not neccesarily in the best of conditions to observe my suroundings) so Banjo gets an x-ray. Nothing there, just a lot of stool. So I put Banjo in the back of the car and take him to work, where I check on him every few hours.
This is probably the most frightening experience of my entire life. I don't know what I would have done if I would have lost Banjo. Maybe we should change his name to Lazirous.

The day Haru was born

Happy birthday to the greatest sister-in-law ever, Hannah!  This is a picture when she was up here for my birthday.  Pretty sweet fish there!  I hear Emily will be down in Seattle to celebrate Hannah's birthday.  Should be good times.

So I was this close to being deemed properly trained so I could run real-live convicted offender samples.  But, there was a little hiccup towards the end of the day, so I had make one more note on my training sheet.  But I should be all signed off on by tomorrow, so I can start running samples and adding convicted offenders to the database.  Since we have lots to do (and no wife), I might put in about 20 extra hours over the weekend.  Watch out bad guys, I'm comin' to get ya!

201st Blog spectacular!

Apparently that last set of pictures we put up was our 200th blog post.  Not too bad for 18 months.  Emily is down in Hotlanta this week, so it's my and the 'Dood.  I dropped her off at the airport early Sunday morning, and then I slid about 100 yards trying to stop for a red light driving home.  In fact, it's so icy out our garbage can slid across the street last night b/c we had a huge windstorm.  I fishtail almost every time I turn off of Arctic (a main street) onto our street, and I couldn't get up our driveway tonight after work with the 4x4 on and with the studded tires.  This picture was taken around Thanksgiving.

I went to court again today.  This time I got to watch our firearms expert, Bob Shem, testify.  He's been in the business for 28 years and is a pretty smooth at giving testimony.  One funny part was when the prosecutor wanted to admit his CV as evidence, but the defense protested b/c it was heresay.  So the prosecutor then took his sweet time to go over virtually every single line of Bob's CV - which is probably over 7 pages long.  His education, his previous job experience, professional organizations, positions held is said organizations, peer reviewed papers he's published, patents he had, so on and so on.  It took well over 40 minutes.  Usually it takes maybe 5.  I think the prosecutor wanted to give the defense a giant F-U for not letting the CV be admitted as evidence.  Tomorrow we will go back to watch Abi, our DNA tech manager, give testimony, since the court didn't have time to get to her today.

Oh yeah, so maybe you want to know about the case.  There was this shoot-out at a football game a few years ago.  53 shots were fired from a minimum of 5 guns.  One bystander got shot in the head, but he lived, and apparently totally turned his life around and started to do triathalons and such.  There were a lot of people in the gallery, and two TV cameras.  And one of the anchors of the 6PM news of the local ABC affiliate sat next to us.  She had on some crazy boots.

Oh Christmas tree! Oh Christmas Tree!

The best christmas tree ever

So, our tree was extremely large. Even with our really high ceiling it was about 4 feet too tall. So we had to saw off the bottom, and then it was still too high so the top was slightly chopped off. We went to target to get a bunch of ornaments and lights. They didn't have any good toppers so we went with the tacky looking white bird. On top it actually looks pretty cool. When I took it out of the bag the dogs started flipping out and wanted to eat it.

A new Thanksgiving tradition - winter camping

So Jared has this crazy idea to go snow camping the day after Thanksgiving, and Emily and I were crazy enough to go along for the ride. We went up into Turnagain Pass (the way we went to Homer for the 4th) about an hour south of Anchorage, in Chugach National Forrest. We parked at the Johnson Pass Trailhead and then trekked into the snow to go make camp. Since we were just doing some glorifying car camping, we only trekked in about 400 meters or so. Emily and I arrived first, around 3:30pm (Jared, Kari, and Rachel had to work on Friday, didn't show up until 6:30). We brought up Jared's sled, so we were able to use that to pull in our supplies, like wood for the fire, a Dutch oven for our cherry cobbler, our tent, and other items. Since the snow was very deep, our snow shoes came in very handy. And Emily and I had to make our own trail through the snow to our camp, which took a little work as well.

Once we brought our gear in, Emily and I had to put up our tent in the dark (thankfully we had our head lamps). But first we had to dig down a hole to put our tent into. When the hole was dug, we set up our tent (which we rented from REI, free of charge, thanks to our super-cool roommate). I think we picked the best spot for our tent, since there were some vegetation under us, and we never flattened out our hole which made for a lot of lumps a little bit of uncomfortable sleep.

Once everyone was at the camp, we (and I mean Jared) made a fatty fire and we ate our yummy Hobo dinners. Basically you make a Hobo dinner by putting a lot of tasty veggies and meat in aluminum foil, tossing it on the coals in the fire, and let it cook for about an hour. Emily and I put potatoes, yams, red peppers, italian sausage, cranberries, dried jalapenos, fresh garlic and parsley, and seasonings. They were really tasty. Then we had cobbler made in the Dutch Oven. That took about an hour to cook as well. After that we hit the hay.

Oh, did I mention that it was raining the entire time? As we were driving out of Anchorage there was pretty crappy weather. And once we hit the pass we thought it might turn to snow. It didn't. It wasn't a pounding rain, just a light sprinkle, but enough to be a nuisance and force us to erect a tarp to keep things dry (like our firewood). We all had water proof gear on, so we stayed dry. Except my boots weren't really waterproof so my socks and feet were pretty soaking wet. But since it was raining, it wasn't cold, so I was ok.

After a hearty breakfast of oatmeal, hot chocolate and pop-tarts we went Christmas Tree hunting. You can cut down your very own Christmas Tree in Alaska, any size you wish. You just have to be 100 feet from the trail. So with saw in hand we searched for a tree. After looking for a little more than 45 minutes, we found our trees (Kari and Jared were getting one too). Once we cut our down, it posed a small problem - like being way too heavy for Emily and I to carry back to our car. Since Kari and Jared's tree was small enough for Kari to drag, Jared helped me carry it back. It was probably only about a half-mile back to our camp, so it wasn't too tough, but was still a workout. Our tree was a good 15 feet tall. Jared helped us tie it onto our car roof. It always helps to camp with an Eagle Scout.

Once we got back from tree hunting we broke camp and headed back to town. We had a late-late lunch at Dairy Queen. And of course when we get BACK to town it's snowing. Go figure.

Thanksgiving-Alaska Style

We started off Thanksgiving with some good exercise.  I went to my swimming, which got moved to the morning, while Neil took banjo around the dog park.  Then afterwards we came home and prepared a few of the things we were going to bring to kari and jared's (yams, beets, and a few appetizers).  While Neil watched the Seahawks lose horribly (apparently it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to watch them on Thanksgiving day) I went on a really long ski with Rachel on the coastal trail.

We headed over to the Parrish's around 3.  Kari prepared a great thanksgiving feast and we had a really fun time.  She even made a table cloth for the event.  Rachel brought some yummy lemon/cranberry scones, and Matt brought himself.  Afterwards we played poverty (otherwise known as 31 by everyone else), which was Neil's family's thanksgiving tradition.  Then we watched charlie brown's thanksgiving, followed by blades of glory (i'm not really sure why).  All in all it was a great day!

A note from Neil (as scribed by emily)

Neil will be working on convicted offenders' samples starting next week.  Apparently our lovely governator is getting pissy about something having to do with his work.  And she doesn't want to fund their new crime lab.  I'm not so sure how, but this means that he will start on the samples.

Thanksgiving eve

Tonight we're getting ready for thanksgiving weekend.  That included shopping at the crazy busy store, picking up authentic dog sledding booties for banny, making auntie nance's cranberry sauce, and picking up some warm socks at rei, oh...and don't forget stretching the stomach for tomorrow's festivities.  

Tomorrow we're going over to kari and jared's for thanksgiving.  Rachel and Matt, our roommate are also going.  I'm brining cranberry sauce, beats, yams, and some appetizers.  In the morning I get to go swimming, because it was rescheduled from the evening.  yay!  And then Neil and banjo and Rachel and I are going to go skiing.  (before the football game, for neil's sake).  

On friday we're going camping.  Yes.  Camping in Alaska and the winter in the snow.  I'm pretty excited.  We're going to cut down christmas trees.  And make little shelters with snow (surrounding our tent).  If you don't hear from me in a few days you can suspect that perhaps I'm an icicle up in Turnagin pass.  

35 lbs

is how much the underwater camera adds.  Yesterday in addition to going to my regular swim practice I went to a swim clinic for part of my triathlon club.  It was pretty cool.  They showed us 5 different drills (which we already do at my swim group) and then we took turns swimming a 75 on camera.  The camera had this large periscope (is that what you call the thing on submarines?) that went underwater.  After everyone had taken a turn we got out and changed and then watched the footage.  This guy who must have known a lot about swimming would critique us and then suggest the various drills that we could work on to improve.  When it was my turn on the hot seat the asked me whether I have swam competitively.  I guess all my work with masters is paying off.  The clinic only cost $3 a person.  But I accidently forgot about that detail and didn't bring money.  FOrtunately Karen was there and so she paid for me.  But then when I paid her back with a 5, she apparently thought that I was giving her a tip.  Silly republicans.

Begich Party

As Emily said yesterday, we were invited to the Begich Party at the Snow City Cafe downtown tonight.  It started at 5, but we didn't get there until 5:45 b/c we don't get off work until 5.  We got there right when Begich was giving a speech.  The place was packed wall-to-wall with people.  We left after the speech b/c we didn't have any drink tickets.  We said hi to Kiel, the Begich staffer who worked with us for the GOTV (Get out the vote) and George, the All-Star volunteer who turned out for three straight days canvassing.  

Then we went to Sahara, a middle-eastern restaurant by our house.  We shared the veggie sampler and a lamb shank.  It was so gigantic we decided to pose for pictures before we tore into it.  We saved the bone for Banjo.  He was so excited when we released him that he somehow knocked over our plastic dresser in his jubilation.  He had some good munches on it - a little too good b/c the bone started to splinter so we had to take it from him.  He was so sad :-(

Addendum: We didn't walk Banjo last night, and I think he was a little wound up.  We never picked up the contents of our spilt dresser.  As a result, we woke up in the middle of the night to Banjo chewing on something...and that something turned out to be one of our REI headlamps!!!  Which is a drag b/c we liked to use them when we go XC skiing on the dogpark lake at night.  Now we just have one.  How sad :-(

Way to go Alaska!

By now I'm sure everyone has heard the news.  Begich defeated convicted felon, Ted Stevens!!!  Yay!  Because we helped out with the get out the vote stuff, we're going to a volunteers party tomorrow night to celebrate the spectacular win.  

It's been really cold here lately--face-stingingly cold.  

Hatcher Pass - Redux

Emily and I went up to Hatcher Pass on Saturday - this time with her swimming friends Laura and Marieya.  This time we went all the way to the top, where there is an old mine and some cross country ski trials.  Once we got to the top, we met up with Dagmar and some of her friends.  It was pretty cool skiing around.  We kind of went up the mountain, and then back down.  But the snow was so fluffy and thick, whenever you would fall down if felt like you were landing in a big jar of marshmallows.  It was pretty fun.  Then afterwards Emily, Laura, Marieya and myself hit up the lodge to eat some fondu, salad, and chili, and to kick back a few beers.  

We didn't bring our camera, b/c we were still a little worried from the past XC experience (ie Emily falling down a lot and getting the camera wet).  Hopefully Dagmar will email us some pictures soon to pass along.

Oh, on another note, Emily finally broke down is now a member of Facebook.  She has about 36 friends.  But that's small potatoes compared to Little 'Ru with over 380 friends, and Melyssa who has over 500.

Right now we are making Chicken and dumplings for dinner, and Kari and Jared are coming over.  And we're about to watch the Amazing Race.

Bridge

The Camera Lives On!

I'm still not sure how the camera got so wet in my pocket.  I guess the fall to stop technique has its downsides--including the gigantic bruise I've acquired.  The snow pictures are from Hatcher pass.  The picture of what looks like a bridge is the bridge that I skied on with one foot, while the other foot continued down into the frozen stream.  That was a doozy.  I think we need lessons.

First Day I met the Dood!

Today is November 13th, which is my brother's birthday. Happy Birthday Scott!! I hope your birthday dentist-appointment hits the spot. But you'll have to wait a bit before you receive our present (since I haven't bought it yet - but I know what it will be). But you'll love it!

Besides it being my brother's birthday, November 13th is also the first day I (along with Ruth and Jeanne) ever met Banjo! Back then he was named Sug, and was a little smaller and lot sleepier. But I that famous Banjo personality still shined through, and I knew I wanted to take him hom to Emily. I'll try and find some pictures of that day to post.

On Wednesday night, after work, Emily, Banjo and I went to the dog park. Who cared that it was completely dark and we could barely see anything? It had just snowed a few days over, and since the lake was frozen, Emily and grabbed our Cross Country skis and skied on the lake. It was actually a lot of fun, and once we got moving we weren't all that cold. And Banjo even met a Goldendoodle-type cousin of his (half poodle, half goldendoodle). Then we had some bitchin' Spam Fried Rice when we got home.

Part 2

Yesterday we drove up to Hatcher Pass, because there still isn't enough snow on the ground in Anchorage for any skiing.  Hatcher Pass used to be an old gold mine and is located out about 10 miles past Palmer in the "valley" (where Sarah is from).  We took a trail called Gold Mint.  It was a lot of fun, but there were quite a few small hills.  Neil and I realized that skiing lessons this winter will be a must.  I didn't really know how to stop.  It was pretty icy so it was hard to dig the edges of the skis in to turn and maneuver.  This resulted in a lot of falls, and a nasty bruise.  It also resulted in a wet camera.  Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working any more.  So, no pictures of the pass.  It was really pretty up there though.  Driving out it looked like it might be kind of crumby weather, but up in the pass it was really clear and sunny out.

This morning we did a few errands, and then were planning on going snow shoeing with Rachel, but the weather wasn't really looking good.  So we instead drove down to Summit Spice and Tea SHop.  It was a really neat shop.  THey had tons of different teas.  So I got a few $1 samples to try.  I'd heard about this shop from the tea tasting we had at work a few weeks ago.  This afternoon it's been snowing non-stop.  So, if it sticks there will be plenty of snow in town for playing.  I think Banjo is happy.  Even though we haven't gotten him his musher's booties.  We ran into his favorite poodles at the dog park (Fred and Magic) and their owner who is a huge Clemson North Carolina fan.  And he told us about this musher's supply shop that sells booties for a dollar each---this sure beats the ones from REI that we ended up returning for $65.

Tonight while I was swimming Neil went over to Todd's house for a little poker party.  

4 day weekend--first half

Because we don't work on Mondays, and because tuesday is a holiday we have 4 days off!  (Well we have to go into work tomorrow for 2 hours to make up the difference of only having a 7.5 hour holiday rather than 9.5 hours, which is our work week.

On friday we went to the University of AK -Anchorage Seawolves hockey game.  There were many bulldogs in lipstick there.  It was pretty fun.  And definately a colorful crowd.  But I guess I should have been prepared for that considering America's favorite hockey mom.  This was my first experience with hockey.  It was a pretty strange game, but it was kind of fun.  THe players were always moving and slamming into teh walls.  Kari who went with us laughed each time it happened.  It was pretty amusing.  The seawolves ended up losing, but it was still fun.

On saturday we didn't do too much.  We spent all afternoon putting out our snow tires.  We decided we didn't want to spend another 6 months sliding around so we found some on craig's lis for a pretty good deal.  The best part was that they were on rims, so we were able to change them ourselves.  During Saturdya evening we went to Kincaid chalet for the Ak Tri Club party.  I'm now officially a member.  It seems like it will be pretty fun.  They have a lot of clinics and things that you can do as a member of the club.  The first activity that I plan on participating in is the river swim.  H2Oasis is this indoor water park that has a 200 meter river that they're renting out so the club can go swim around the river before the water park opens.  It sounds like fun.  

Today we went over to a friend's house to watch them brew beer, because we've been wanting to start doing that.  It was pretty fun.  Basically a lot of boiling and sterilizing.  THey were making a holiday porter, so it had a bunch of pumpkin pie spices.  It smelled really good.  

The future first Dood

The Obamas were promised a dog in the white house.  And, apparently Malia has allergies, so it will have to be a doodle breed.  Our country will never be the same with a Banjo in Washington.

The senate race here is still too close to call.  I can't believe our seragate state will most likely be the first to elect a convicted felon to the senate.  Could Palin actually appoint herself once Stevens is voted out?  Let's hope Begich wins and we never have to find out.

GOTV day 3

For the last three days we've been helping with the get out the vote campaign.  Volunteers were directed to our house to get packets to go out and knock on doors to remind people to vote.  If they had a Stevens sign they just let them be.  The campaign was really focussed more on getting out the vote for the local elections.  In Alaska the US senate seat and house seat is open.  Today was the best turn out so far we had 19 precincts in our house district covered.  One gentleman, George was our favorite volunteer.  He came out each day and usually covered one in the morning, and then came back for another precinct in the afternoon.  With the dwindling hours of day light available (especially now with day light savings time), and the cold weather (today it snowed a few inches) all the volunteers have been really great.  We even had a few high school students who had the choice of volunteering for three hours on a campaign or writing a "really long paper."  

I hope everyone has already has already, or is planning on voting tomorrow!  I absolutely can't wait for to watch the returns.  I'm skipping swimming so we can watch the results.  

Lethal Luau

For Halloween we went to a murder mystery party.  I was Lelani the hula dancer who killed her fiance.  Neil was Chief Honikoa Wiki Wiki, Polynesia royalty.  It was pretty fun.  I made spam sushi for the ocasion, and we had kalua pig and some other hawaiian favorites.  The story was that Chase Diamonds, a private detective, was having us all over to celebrate his birthday, but he ended up dying.  We had to solve who it was.  Also at the party were Holly Day, the billionaire who who loved flirting with Chase; Les Bags the clumsy tourist, who we later learned was really an escaped contict; Nadia the swim suit model; Birdy Put the golfer; and Joey Breaker the surfer.