Three noteworthy anecdotes

This morning when I was pulling out of the driveway I heard this strange breaking noise like some huge chunk of medal fell off the car. I looked around behind me to see if I'd hit anything, but everything looked okay, so I continued on to work. Then coming home I heard the same noises. By now I was getting a little worried that we might not make it to noteworthy anecdote #2. Then the huge crash came while I was pulling into the driveway, in exactly the same place I'd heard it earlier in the morning. It turned out it was one of our dinner plates that had been placed on top of the car last night after puppy class. (Don't fault me, I'd have to climb onto the wheel to see up there).

Tonight we're going out to Red Robin, Neil's choice for his celebratory meal. Mmmm...I think I'll have a freckled lemonaide. We've been keeping a list of things that we want to get or do once Neil got a job. Now we can start checking them off the list.

Anecdote #3 involves presidential hopeful Barak Obama. Today we donated to his campaign, so that it can be included in the April financial statement, and since we are first time donors it will be matched by some other smart voter.

My bonus anecdote, that I just thought of is that today I had my first state report published. It's just a short "Epi Bulletin", which is perhaps why it did not get counted as an anecdote of its own.

Holla!!!!

Whoo-hoo!!! Months after I applied to be a forensic scientist for the State of Alaska, today I was officially offered the position! It took a while, but was way worth the wait. Michelle Collins, a very nice lady who has been in contact with me throughout this process, called me up this afternoon to give me the good news. I actually drove over to the Crime Lab this morning to sign a form stating that I don't have any domestic violence charges against me. Apparently not having any charges against me means I can be trusted to work with firearms.
There are two other people who are being hired as well. One of them is a teacher, so they are letting her finish out the school year so she doesn't leave her principal high and dry. And since they want everyone to start together, our first day of work will be at 8:30 AM on May 27th. I told them about my upcoming jaw surgery in June and they gave me the option of waiting to start until I recovered. But It's all about that insurance so I'm staring in May!!!

Slushie Cup

On Saturday we went to the Alyeska Sushie Cup. The Slushie Cup is a a weekend festival of activities based around skiing down a mountain over (or into, as mostly was the case) a 90 foot near freezing pond. We got there around 2:30 or so to see all of the contestants. To participate you must be voted in by the crowd by having a winning costume. Costumes included a gigantic hot dog, Ted Saddler (the crazy Mattress Ranch owner who dances in his own commercial), moose, Duffman, an ipod, three blue guys, etc. Once the participants were chosen they warmed up the audience with a cheesy bikini fashon show. It was pretty awful, and I felt sorry for the girls. They looked freezing even beneath their spray on tans. Next any idiot who wanted to was allowed to swim across the pond. Then the fun began. There was a little jump at the bottom of the hill in front of the pond to give the skiiers and snowboarders a little lift off. Surprisingly about 7 or 8 people made it completely across the pond to teh other side. Participants were graded on distance, height, costume, style, and something else. The judges were "celebrities" like the "first dude" (the governor's husband), Lance Mackey, the four-time winner of the iditarod, Keikan Randall a local Olympic skiier, a news castor, and some guy who was really bad judge. It was pretty fun to watch, but probably something you only need to see once in a lifetime.

16 inches in 11 hours!!

Just when all the snow had melted, it started to snow...and hasn't stopped yet! It's been snowing non-stop since about 10:00 this morning. Even for Anchorage standards this is a lot of snow. They've canceled school events and the heart run that's tomorrow. All the tree branches are weighed down.

It snowed between 15.5 and 22 inches around town. We got around 16 inches (when we took Banjo for a walk we talked to this lady who measured in her backyard - it was coming down at 2 inches an hour at one point). It was the biggest single-day snowfall after April 1st ever, and was the third biggest single day snowfall EVER. It was pretty cool to walk around in, and we were even able to cross-country ski around the dog park with Banjo on Sunday morning.

Whitties in Ancortown

Today afterwork Neil and I went to a little happy hour event for whitman alumni. It was at a pub called the Snow Goose. It was pretty fun. A lot of the people were older (as in graduated the year I was born), but we met a few younger whitties too. It was fun talking with people about professors, and the changes that are happening on campus. It's funny because they had far more events in Seattle, which we never went to while we were there, but we decided to turn out for the Anchorage one. We had some tasty appetizers on Whitman, and then I had some salmon tacos (C minus) and Neil had a halibut burger (B plus). Towards the end they started an open mic, so a one man band with two keyboards serenaded us with "reggae" tears in heaven (A for effort). On that note, we went home.

Trip to the bush

Earlier this week I went to the bush on an outbreak investigation. Earlier in the week the clinician at the health clinic noticed a cluster of people visiting with a pretty bad upper respiratory illness of some sort. So, we went to take samples (just the nurses could do this) and to help investigate what was going on. I, and two public health nurses chartered a plain to the village of about 100 people to investigate actually what was going on. Now we believe it was probably just the flu, but some people were getting so sick that they were passing out from coughing so much (which could be pertusis). Since I couldn't do any of the specimen collection I was in charge of keeping a line list of information about all the individuals who were sick, and then making an "epi curve" to track the spread of disease.

I don't think I'm supposed to say which village it actually took place in--since it was so small, but what made this particular investigation so interesting is that it was located at the site where a big mining company is conducting environmental exploration to get permits to start mining. Some think that the tailings from the mine could harm the fishing industry, which is the big livelihood of the area. So, needless to say, there was a lot of politics going on. We had to sift through all of the information we gathered because there was a lot of conflicting info between the villagers and the outside mining people.

Graduation Day

Today was Banjo's last day of puppy training class. We started off with some contests such as seeing whose dog could lay down and stay the longest, who was the fastest to recall, and a few fun ones where we had a relay race to run down and put tee shirts on the dog. Our proud young prince was the champion of sit and stay (pretty good for a class clown). He won a biscuit for his efforts. He's a pretty good boy. We decided to continue with the next class--advanced puppy training. This one will go over the topics for the canine good citizen test. When he becomes a good citizen he can be an official therapy dog at the children's hospital.

Ahh, they grow up so fast.

Here is the beautiful sweater that Emily made for Eleanor Alice Thayer. She was born to our friends Joe and Minna Thayer on April 5th.

Check out those little bee buttons. So cute!

Here is letter that we wrote to little Eleanor.

Two Words - Crack Pipe

For those who don't know, our roommate's truck was stolen a month ago. Last Tuesday, on the day he was to receive a check from his insurance company for his truck, the cops called to say they found it. Banjo and I went with him to pick it up on the super-sketchy part of town (we just live in a sketch part).

The truck had been parked on the street for about two weeks, across from a tiny church. The pastor of the church came outside while we were there, and I talked to him for a bit. He called the cops about the truck a few days after it was parked, but they told him that it wasn't stolen. The reason was because the thieves had stolen plates from a different white Toyota Tacoma and put them on Matt's car, and the owner of the plates never called to report it. The cops didn't put two-and-two together until they were about to tow Matt's truck and they called the owner of the stolen plates. Then they kind of figured things out.

But this wasn't your normal stolen car situation. There was a green spoiler in the bed, and they had put a new bumper on the back. And Matt's key wouldn't start the car, which made people think it had been re-keyed (turns out it was just a little damaged). All of these crazy circumstances made the cops call a forensic cop to take finger prints inside and outside the truck, and swab for DNA as well.

Once Matt's truck was towed back to our house, he was looking through it to assess all of the damage. As he was cleaning and looking, he found a piece of glass that looked like it was used to smoke drugs with. But it didn't smell like marijuana. When Matt showed it to me, I thought it was a crack pipe. Sure enough, when the cops came again, they confirmed my suspicion. And they added "Yeah, that's a pretty big one."

Just another day in the AK.

Snow-shoeing on Flat Top

On Saturday afternoon, before we went to see Solette, we did a little snow-shoeing on Flat Top with Kari and Jared. It was beautiful with the new snowfall, and extremely sunny and clear. We had fun making new tracks in the snow and watching Banjo run around. The parking lot for Flat Top is about a 20 minute drive from our house. The trail we were on (Power Line Trail) is probably a 10 minute walk from the parking lot.

Toys for Bam-Man

Debi, the instructor of our puppy training class, recommended making some cheap toys to teach the dogs to retrieve. So we went to Stuart's favorite store, Home Depot, and bought 6 feet of nylon rope and a giant roll of red duct tape. After a few cuts and a little tape, Banjo had his three new toys. We took him to the park to throw them around and he loved them. And it's a good thing that they're red, because it would be pretty hard to find the white nylon rope against all of the white snow.

Emily del Mar

Emily was really hungry on Friday night (when she was anxiously awaiting my return). So Emily made a giant burrito, and even wrapped it in tin foil a la Taco del Mar. Maybe if Scott is lucky, she'll share her secret salsa recipe with him. It was quite tasty (we used the left over salsa to make a breakfast burrito the next day).

Soft headed

On Saturday I went swimming, per usual, and then when I got back we concocted delicious breakfast burritos, complete with avocado, cilantro, red pepper, onion, cheese, beans, and eggs sunny side up. It's my new specialty. If Scott's lucky I"ll sell him the secret recipe for his store. Afterwards we ran on a quick Costco run and picked up some grooming supplies for Banjo at Petco next door (he now has clean teeth and short nails--we were even able to use the quick stop thanks to a bloody du claw). Then we went up to Glenn Alps with Kari and Jared to go snow shoeing. It was a beautiful day out so there were lots of people out skiing and snow shoeing.

Afterwards we went Sophie and Todd were having a get together so everyone could meet their new daughter Solette. (Apparently they made up the name. It's a cross between Sol, the spanish word for sun, and ette, to give it a French flair, since Sophie's family live and speak in France). She was a really cute baby, but she managed to sleep through the entire party. At one point I was holding her and she started to squirm a lot as though she was ready to wake up, but instead she just ripped a big fat fart (I could feel it across my arm) and then calmed back down. Somehow it's cute when they're little. It's yet to be determined if Neil brain damaged her. Sophie was saying that she still had a soft spot on her head, so Neil decides to poke his finger in it and it sunk in a few centimeters.

A 2 liter bottle of pop

(you connect the dots....) The urine collection was to measure how much iodine Emily stores. Because she has a naturalpathic doctor.

Today we tried Dim Su, Alaskan-style, at a place called Charlie's Bakery. It had been recommended to us by one of Emily's co-workers as the best Chinese food in the city. Sadly, we were greatly disappointed when the Mongolian beef was slimy and the Shu-mai tasted like hot dogs. The only redeeming factor were the humbows. They were actually pretty tasty. Emily's was steamed, I had mine baked. We would actually go back for them.

Later we took Banjo for another walk at the dog park. He likes to run after his doggie friends. A few times we had to wait for a while so Banjo could run back to us.

For dinner we made some sweet Mango-dillas and black bean salad. We watched Kansas beat Memphis for the National Title while we ate them. Since Emily had Kansas winning her her pool, she came in 4th (out of almost 30), while I came in 8th (b/c I had Memphis).

Winter's not over quite yet...

It had warmed up quite a bit over the last few weeks. Our drive was almost entirely clear of snow and ice, but then the snow came. Yesterday we got a huge dump of snow--6-7 inches. Banjo has been enjoying it. We took him out to run on the trail and he raced back and forth.

Today I'm doing my 24-hour urine collection. I have a huge orange jug in the refrigerator and a red dixie cup. After only a few hours I've already collected about 14 ounces. Then tomorrow morning I mix it with this blue solution and stick it in the mail. We had to disguise the collection bin in the fridge so that Matt won't get grossed out.

Happy Birthday Prince Banjipants!

Today is Banjo's 6 month birthday. Jasmine his first mama called to see how he was doing earlier today. Then afterwork we took him to visit his dog friends at the dog park. He's been doing pretty good at his training so we feel comfortable letting him off his leash to run with the other dogs. Next to celebrate we'll take him for his neutering.