I'm continually interested on how different regions have different words and phrases to describe different things. As Lillie recently informed us, New Yorkers apparently never stand in line. They stand on line. Huh? And of course, you say soda, I say pop -- it all depends on where you grew up.Since moving to Alaska, four and a half years ago, my vocabulary has likewise expanded. There are words, terms, phrases and items here I had simply never heard of before. Here are a few:
Snowmachine: People in Alaska don't say snowmobile. Every time they say "snowmobile" in Northern Exposure -- including in the opening credits!! -- I cringe.
Outside: This does not mean, as you might think, outdoors. It means "Lower 48." In our stories, we regularly refer to "Outside" in this context (always capitalized).
Bunny Boots: Super warm rubbery white boots. Standard footwear in Arctic climates.
Subsistence: Essentially, living off the land. Living here, you hear a lot of talk about "subsistence rights" for Alaska Natives.
Snow berms: The big pile-up of snow on roadsides.
Termination dust: The first appearance of snow on the Chugach Mountains each fall, marking summer's end.
Break-Up: Nope, not with another person; with the weather. This is when everything starts to melt, usually in March or April, and the world looks pretty gross, wet and dirty for a couple of weeks.
Sun Dog: A rainbow around the sun. Pretty cool thing.
Muktuk: Whale. You can also have it pickled.
Kuspuk: An Alaska Native shirt-dress thing.
Cheechacko: Someone who hasn't lived through an Alaskan winter.
Sourdough: An old-timer.
"Gee" and "Haw": Commands to sled dogs that translate to "right and left." (And "come gee" and "come haw" mean the musher is telling the dogs to make 180 degree turns in either direction).
Poly-Pro: Shortened version of a super warm breathable fabric. People here eat it up.
Skijoring: When people cross country ski while their dogs, in harnesses, pull them. Really.
Ice fog: When it's super cold and the air is this haze of, literally, icy fog. Sucks.
What did I forget? I know I'll think of more as soon as I post this. Feel free to add on!
Ah, my darling family, all bundled up in knitted gifts courtesy of moi. Love the blue hats - making myself one with the leftover yarn!
Anyway, this was my first Christmas ever not spent with the family. Well, if you want to be technical, I haven't been home ON Christmas day for years. But we usually all gather shortly thereafter to celebrate. This year, a combo of factors kept me away, making this also the first year that I'll get to spend New Year's in Alaska, and with John.
So here's a rundown of how I spent Christmas day:
8:30 a.m. Woke up and started cooking!
9 a.m. Opened stocking gifts and some presents. One of my gifts to John was a framed print (pictured at right) that he's wanted for a while now. Fun!
10:45 a.m. Breakfast served to hungry boys -- John, Brad, James, Adam and Kevin.
11:45 a.m. Cleaned kitchen and finished opening awesome gifts from my family. John and Brad set to work downloading software for my new IPod Nano from Dad. !!
1:50 p.m. John, Brad and I headed to Jessica's for dinner, joining Jess and her mom, Julie, plus some family friends, and Shanda and baby Kash.
3:30 p.m. Dinner served! Yummy prime rib, twice-baked taters, ham, a delish corn caserole, and my now-famous layered green salad. And wine.
6 p.m. Left Jessica's and headed home. John played Battlefront... I knitted and watched Gilmore Girls...
9 p.m. Headed to Pioneer Bar to meet Shawn, Tamara and Jess. The bar was packed!!
1 a.m. Cabbed home. 
And to all a good night!
Spent a lot of time on the phone with family throughout the day. Mom posted a picture on her blog of the shrine they errected to me in my absense, complete with my stocking, olives, a martini glass and "ya-ya beads."
Meet CoCo! The kids at the house were apparently watching the dog for a teacher. But they left the scene without giving anyone the teacher's name, and now the family -- part of our growing Hmong community -- can't be found.
That means as little CoCo continues to recuperate -- and he is significantly better -- he's still a temp orphan, healing at the Pet Emergency Treatment Center here in town. But somewhere, CoCo's owner is probably happily vacationing and has no idea his/her precious poodly pet is poised to spend Christmas solo. I want to adopt CoCo!
I went to the PET Center yesterday to do an update on CoCo and he was just the cutest thing. He was a little trembly and every now and then, coughed and wheezed. Poor thing. To read my story, go here.
Guess what I chose?
My rental car.
It's like driving around in a tuna can.
I look at it, and can't stop laughing. Seriously.
David is artistic, deep, sympathetic -- all the great leading man traints. Most recently, he worked at Indigo, the swankiest furniture store in town. He is thoughtful, giving, kind -- that's David. And I live with him. Lucky me!
David is a very talented artist from the East Coast who has lived in Europe. He lives in the Loft on the east side of the building -- complete with sauna. Th e rest of us live east of the staircase. So, imagine. Big kitchen in the middle. Two rooms either side (north and south). James has one north room. Julie, the other. On the opposite side of the building, John and I have two rooms -- one for sleeping, one for hangin'. And did I mention there are two full living rooms? Dining room? Kitchen? Sauna? Three full baths? Four bedrooms? A loft?
James labels himself "the ex-con." True. But deceiving. He's a mild-mannered man who reads the bible daily. And, thanks to his year in prison, knows ever card game in the book. He is the only formidlbe Scrabble opponent I've found since Scott left. He's also been a chef at Anchorage's finest restauurants and is constantly whipping up enviably fabulous dishes. Seriously.
And then there's the awesome and fabulous Julie. The gorgeous size stick-insect California blond who is genuinely amazing, lovely, fragile and strong -- all of the above. She just quit her job at the seedy Wood Shed as a bartender. Said she was tired of people paying attention to her for the wrong reasons, and I couldn't applaud more enthusiastically. Julie -- sky's the limit, babe!!
Because we live in a fabulous place -- four bedrooms, a loft, fireplace, sauna, loft, three full baths, two living rooms, blah blah blah -- one patron at a recent party said "This place is like a house they'd use in the 'Real World'" For those un-hip, that means, basically, that our place kicks complete ass. And it does. Alas, my digital camara is busted but soon I'll get a new one and post some exterior and interior shots of the pad. Til then, Feliz Navidad, merry solstice, and -- lest I forget ;.) -- the fifth roomate.
P.S. We recycle : )
It snows in the fall, as early as October. Usually there is snow on the ground by Halloween. Then the snow stays til spring -- March or April, typically -- when we have what's called "break up." That's when everything melts, and it's pretty much the ugliest time of year for Anchorage. During the winter, average temperatures here seem to range from the upper teens to upper 20s. Occasionally we have some warmer weather. We'll have cold snaps in the single digits. Sometimes it drops below zero.
Well this winter has been bizarre. We got our snow, and had a pretty significant cold snap where i swear we went weeks with it in the single digits. But twice now, it's warmed up. A lot. First, it got up to almost 50 degrees. Then it cooled and snowed again. But today, it was up above 40 again. I could see grass -- and it was still green! It's just not right. Not that I'm going to complain about nice weather. But when it freezes up again, which is will, that always sucks. And it's just not right to look on the Oregonian web site and see it's colder there than here.
Monday, I told a coworker it was one of those days when I should have never gotten out of bed -- and that was before I got in a car accident!To start with, I slept in, thinking my first work appointment of the day wasn't until 1:30. I checked my work e-mail at about noon and there was a note from the teacher I was scheduled to meet with -- asking what time I'd show up and reminding me the class session ran from 11:30 to 1:30. ACK. So I contacted her and appologized and she was super understanding about it and told me to not worry and just come the next day, that I shouldn't rush since the roads were awful, etc.
I got to work, only to learn that two stories that had run each had wrong info, and that I needed to write two corrections. You journalists understand what a drag that is. So everything seemed to be going wrong. And then, on the way to the school board meeting, I got rear-ended. I had pulled into a slick left turn lane and kept my distance from the car in front of me -- something I always do. A lady pulled up behind me, idling pretty close. I scooted up a little, and so did she. Why do people do that? And I'm thinking, "Well if I move up more, I'm too close to the car in front of me... and what's the chance of getting rearended anyway?"
Then, impact. Someone rearended her, scooting her Volvo smack into my precious Scarlet O'Subaru. Luckily, my car was hardly scratched. The front end of the Volvo looked good too. The back end, where she got hit? Not so much. And the front of the first car was also screwed up pretty good. So I got the best part of the deal, which is good, since none of it was my fault.
(The funny thing is, I had stalled about five minutes at the post office, reading a birthday card from my grandma in Hawaii. What if I hadn't? What if I'd waited and read the car later? Or what if I had also opened the bills I received? Life is funny like that, how tiny seemingly insignificant decisions can have big impacts.)
No one got hurt, thankfully. I called John once I was safely at the district office, and actually it was the third time in about a 90 minute period that I'd called him, so when he answered he didn't say hello, just "are you bored or something?" I was quite snappy: "No, I just got in a car accident, but if you're too busy to hear about it, I'll let you go." Grimace.
Anyway, yesterday was much better. My birthday!! I had the day off so I slept in, woke up late and opened presents, and John came home for a yummy lunch. After that, I spent a few hours Christmas shopping, then John and I went to dinner. And the bulk of the night was spent with some of our friends at Pioneer Bar, where Delmag was playing. They -- and the whole bar, actually -- sang happy birthday to me and at the night's end, the Pio bartenders gave me all my drinks free. Awesome!
Here's a funny link, courtesy of Jay: Merry White-Trash Christmas!
The party was a big hit.
As I always do post party lists of all the guests, in a temporary Type-A takeover ... and I had close to 50 people show up!! That's not even counting the five babies (Kash, Adalaide, Silas, Haydn and Josie). The babies left early and the party people stayed late. Heck, some even stayed the night! DJ Josh rocked the house, had the "dance floor" (AKA my living room) packed several times over, and the foosball table and dart board were in use all night.
I got some great presents too -- very cool yarn from some of the girls, a "totally cheese" cookbook from Aggie and Vaugn, bottles of wine, champagne from David, fun hip chick stuff from Tamara and Shawn, a copy of "Lolita" from Lillie, funky coasters from Zaz, a yummy cake from Kristi, DJing from Josh, and on and on. The present that made me laugh the most: Two framed pictures of John in college, courtesy of Mirjam and Roger. Total blackmail potential. Wish you could all see them.
All in all, it was my favorite birthday party ever. Realizing that also made me ponder past parties, and I decided the runner up was my 17th birthday.
It was the stuff of legends. For years, Mom let me play hooky so I could ski on my birthday. Skiing was free at Timberline Lodge where Dad works. Alisa usually came with me. But on this particular birthday, some 80 other kids skipped school to come up too. It was so amazing. I believe it was a Tuesday, a slow day, and it seemed like every other person at the lodge was a friend or classmate. Dad had the lift tickets that day read "Katie 17" (I still have one somewhere). At lunch, with all of us having taken over the day lodge, a cook brought down a cake and the whole place sang. I felt like a princess. But, the powers-that-be at Milwaukie High were not impressed and every kid absent that day without a parental note got detention. Which was actually quite stupid because it just gave everyone a chance to hang out and talk about how great the snow was and how much fun they had.
Breaking news: Mom has started a blog!
My stories are done and soon I get to go home to rapidly primp and preen for John's work party at the Hilton. After that, we're meeting some friends at Koots to see a couple of bands. But I plan to call it an early night (read: home by midnight!) because tomorrow is my big birthday party, in several phases.
The WWB (women with babies) are coming early, like 5 p.m., to snack and knit and hang out. Close friends probably will start showing up around 7 or so. And I told the masses to come any time after 8 p.m. Josh is going to DJ, which is very exciting. We might barbecue. And there's always the dart board and foosball table to keep people entertained. Looking forward to it!
Finally - the long awaited Girdwood pictures. I'm sure you were all dying with anticipation : ) That gorgeous scenery above was the view out our bedroom window, which was on the Northish side of the chalet, I think. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here are the pics in chronological order:Here's Tamara, at the Sitzmark, before her snowboarding lesson:
And after everyone else hit the slopes, we checked into our chalet -- which was amazing, completely luxurious, and even had a bar! 
and the guys liked to stand around the bar... 
And here's Jess and Cye... Sye... Cy... I don't know exactly how to spell his name, but he's cool.
And Tim and Cye. Notice the gorgeous scenery out the window.
And here's the view from our front porch. Completely stunning, no?
And I woke up Sunday morning... and found two guys I didn't know washing dishes. Keep in mind, I stayed up til 2:30. I'm thinking, "What did I miss? Who ARE these people?"
Well, turns out they were two of three friends of Jessica's who were in a truck enroute to the chalet the night before, got lost, and went off the road. So, Jess and Cy went to rescue them -- Cy driving, as he was sober, Jess not driving, as she was not. But they were in Jess' Forester. So on the way back, with the three refugees in the car, Jess is in the backseat being a crackhead and dancing around, and hit the gear into neutral... and HER car went off the road too. Ug. Luckily it was just down the road from the chalet so they could all walk back. But still... See how much you can miss when you go to bed early? 
The morning after, Tim (AKA Duff Man) caught some Broncos action... Then we all headed home.
But first, lunch at Chair 5, a popular Girdwood restaurant. Here was our view from that place. Lovely...
