Holy crap we made a person

I would like to know in what world is it okay for a city to get 8 inches of snow and not plow the roads for 4 days. In this world we drive a teeny tiny Saturn and slide around foolishly in our neighborhood with a newborn. Fun. It snowed on Wednesday and the plow came by on Sunday. Apparently Anchorage only has 28 snow plows. What the crap? That is ridiculous! We were looking forward to a ton of snow in this new city, but now we are really dreading the possibility of a lot of snow. Even the main roads sucked for quite a few days. We went to the doctor and we were bumping and sliding around everywhere. I just can’t believe a city that gets as much snow as Anchorage has such poor snow removal management. This is what happens when there are no taxes. That’s right people. No taxes in Anchorage, but try to get to the grocery store, I dare you.

Dan and I had a baby. It’s very exciting. Oskar is a great little guy and is busy eating, sleeping, and pooping. The labor and delivery went pretty well. The hospital was pretty busy and there were 2 unplanned C-sections so it took them longer than they would like to get me back into the delivery room and get my epidural. They gave me a different pain killer until I got the epidural that worked really well. I got this pain killer twice because it doesn't last very long. Then they gave me a longer lasting pain killer that made me vomit pretty violently. I requested to not have that medicine again. They finally got me moved back to delivery and got me the epidural and I was able to sleep quite a bit through the night, having only to wake up to flip to my other side every hour. At 5 am my water still hadn’t broken and they said they would break it at 7 to get things moving along. It broke on its own at 6:50. I think around 10 or so they gave me Pitocin to speed up the contractions and dilation and that’s when things really started to suck again. More vomiting. They tried to adjust the epidural but my pain was beyond the help it could provide. Some may say that with the epidural it’s more pressure than pain. Lies. All lies. It is pressure in the same way that getting your tooth extracted without Novocain is pressure. Little guy also decided he was going to come out face up instead of with his face toward my spine. For some this can be excruciatingly painful in the lower back, but I didn’t really notice that. I pushed for maybe a half hour or so and Oskar arrived into the world with what looked like a donut on his head. Most kids arrive with a cone head. Not Oskar. In the words of the doctor, “Hm, I’ve never seen that before.” Yes, that is what you want to hear when delivering a child. Everything since then has gone well. He scared us a bit at the hospital with some amniotic fluid spit-up and nose drip, but luckily there was a nurse there at the time and she took him away and suctioned him out a bit and he came back all cute and happy.

I have thoroughly enjoyed laying on my stomach and back, and having bad posture. I have not done a thousand sit-ups yet. We’ll wait for a couple weeks to do that. Even though we need to get up every 3 hours to tend to Oskar, I feel like I have never slept better in my life. I know that is an exaggeration, but I was sleeping so poorly before he was born that part of me believes it. Most of all, pregnancy nose has exited as fast as it arrived and I love not smelling everything as well as a bloodhound can.

It is official. If you don’t like the pastoral staff at your church, hire Dan and they will leave. No, I am not saying anything bad about any of the Pastors Dan has worked with. Actually, I like them all a lot. That has nothing to do with the fact though that every church Dan has preached/worked at has lost its Pastor(s) while Dan was working there. This began with Julie and Bock. He was only assisting on some weekends, but I think it counts. It continued with Chuck and Anne at House of Prayer and now it has hit Scott at Gloria Dei. I understand that it is purely coincidental, and for each of these Pastors it was quite simply time to move on, but the pattern cannot be overlooked. Scott has officially accepted a call in Marshall, Minnesota and will be gone at the end of January, leaving Dan to deal, once again, with the whole call and interim process. At least he understands how it works, I suppose, and can help the congregation through it all. Everyone goes to Minnesota except us.

This may or may not affect our timeline up here in the last frontier. We’ve decided that we don’t mind if our year gets cut short. We just want to be sure to make it up to Denali before we go. The people in the congregation have been absolutely amazing. They are all so wonderful, kind and extremely generous. We are absolutely underwhelmed by anything involving the rest of the city. Drivers are horrendous, the snow removal is terrible, and I am still upset with the fact that it took a week to get our power back on after a windy day. There are more things that bother us, but we will try to focus on the fact that the community at Gloria Dei is great and just leave it at that. The scenery is great too, the mountains are absolutely beautiful. Too bad between the gloomtag weather and the dark days, we can’t see them 80% of the time.

Shaken, not stirred.

We had an earthquake! It was a 5.8 (I know I said 5.7 on Facebook, but they changed it), lasted about 30 seconds and the epicenter was about 25 miles away from us. Apparently it was a fairly large one for its location, which was along the coast. I kept thinking it was over but it felt like it grew after it paused every time.  Our landlady said it was the biggest one she had felt in many, many years and she was very sweet and came down to check on us afterward. Some reported that things on walls fell off, but we didn’t have anything happen. Our greeting cards didn’t even tip over. It felt really big though, especially to us. I was napping. It was a very violent alarm clock; somewhat reminiscent of when Dan used to jump on the bed to wake me up.

One of the things I wanted to experience while here was an earthquake. Well, it has been experienced, and I must report that neither Dan nor I were particularly fond of it and the more I think about it I dislike it more. There are few instances in my life where I have felt less in control of a situation. And then it just kept going. We prefer tornadoes. They most often some with a warning, you get an awesome green sky, you go hide in the basement if necessary and it passes, usually outside of a town. It’s true that my life has never been much affected by a tornado, but still- the tornado comes, chances are you can get out of the way. The earthquake was everywhere. There is no escape. Instinct says get outside where nothing can fall on you, but apparently that’s wrong. But we live in a basement where the house could fall on us, and I believe that is wrong. By the time one makes a decision, hopefully nothing has happened and you are in the bathroom with one shoe on because you couldn’t decide what to do (no this is not what happened, we were much less smart than this, we just stayed put). In summary: we’re good on earthquakes; they can stay bottled up until we leave. Thank you for the experience.

No baby yet, but my doctor said things are progressing nicely and did something on Monday to hopefully help him along. We’ll see. I’m pretty stubborn; baby might be too. The due date is technically Thursday and I’ll go in to get hooked up and checked on then if he isn’t coming and we’ll schedule an induction date for next week that hopefully we won’t have to use. My doctor doesn’t like to go past a week overdue because in her experience, the babies tend not to like the contractions very much. She didn’t seem concerned though and just wants a contingency plan in case he doesn’t want to arrive on his own. I’m sure it’s partially for my sake to, just so I can see an end to my misery. My Achilles tendonitis has returned and my knee is super sore due to the stretching out of ligaments and tendons and the extra billion pounds so walking hurts super bad, which is unfortunate because walking can help move labor along. I had forgotten how much these injuries hurt. They hurt real bad.

My child gets the hiccups at least once a day. His size makes everything shake. It was cool at first, but now I don’t care for it.

From here on out, blog posts might be somewhat sporadic for a while. I’m sure you all get this, but just an FYI that this won’t be high on my list of things to do.

So... mouse traps work

Think us inhumane if you want, but we are down one mouse in our apartment with no indication of others. The senior pastor sponsored some mouse traps for us and they worked quite nicely. I did not care for the couple noises I heard following the snap, but luckily my dear one came home and took care of it so I didn't have to look at the dead little mouse.

The insomnia returned a couple days ago, of course this occurred right after telling my mom that I was sleeping better and that I was getting plenty of rest. I dread the nights now because not only am I not sleeping, but I often feel like I'm about to throw up and that is when I notice cramping/false labor. And then I get all excited/scared and then I don't sleep even more. Then I eat. Vicious cycle.

This internship came with a Christmas tree and some decorations so we put that up on Monday. It is very small, but that's okay. It's still festive and provides tree glow, which is nice considering we are down to about 6 hours of daylight. That feels optimistic though, the sun is never very high in the sky and it's always in the south so it doesn't ever really feel like real daytime.

Alright. We are officially at 39 weeks. Baby is due next Thursday. In case we don't (read: hopefully we won't) make it to week 40, I decided to take pictures this week. The one has a little shadow to it so the belly looks even bigger but oh well. At this point it just doesn't matter. This week you get front and side view. There is a smile on my face, but you can probably tell that I'm really not happy. I'm not sad either, I'm just done. (Sweater brought  to you by Kristin T. Thanks friend!)

I mentioned last time that I was hoping to discuss Bob Smith's Minnesota Christmas Trees. Well, I wasn't able to get over there to get a picture, but this is the name of the closest Christmas tree vendor. I don't know if he imports them, just thinks Minnesota trees give a Christmassy vibe, or it's called this because its close to Minnesota Drive (one of the main roads here). Whatever it is, it is fun.

Late night TV taught me that Alomune is great for increasing your immune system because it comes from the Minnesota Larch tree, and everyone knows in Minnesota you need to have a strong immune system. Yep, that's what I learned. I didn't even know there was a Minnesota Larch tree. I feel I don't know anything anymore.

In other Minnesota news, UAA (University of Alaska Anchorage) is playing St. Cloud State in hockey in their next game. Do you see how it's tricky to get through a day without hearing about Minnesota? 

The other day NDSU was up here for a basketball tournament and the girls did not do well. It was fun watching the highlights though, because NDSU and UAA have the same school colors so it was very pretty. I'm not a huge basketball fan.

I forgot to drop some nature knowledge on ya'll last time (yes, that sentence just happened). Do you ever wonder why polar bears look so much whiter in the arctic than they do at the zoo? This is partially due to the fact that their fur is not white, it is transparent and pigment-free and scatters and reflects visible light. They look whitest when they are clean and in the sunlight in the snow.

Dan and I are going out for dinner tonight- one last time before little guy gets here. We have a coupon for Siam Cuisine, so it should be pretty inexpensive too. Then just a couple errands and we are really ready for dude to arrive. For real. Get out, get out, get out.

Anchorage nuances

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I watched the whole parade and the whole dog show for the first time ever so clearly that was a win. We went over to a friend's place for dinner and enjoyed a good meal with some good people.

I wanted a hoagie the other day so we located one at a pizza place. It was called a hoagie on the menu and baked on a homemade pizza dough bun, so we thought that we would give it a chance. Ummm, it was good, but in any other world this item would be called Stromboli and it was in no way a hoagie. Anchorage does this though. Or rather, they just do what they want. There is a Mexican restaurant called Gallo's, and anywhere else this would be pronounce 'gayo,' except maybe by the old white people in a community who simply don't know any better. I thought that would be the case here, but even in the commercials on the radio it is pronounced Gallo's. And it's not like there is no Mexican population up here; people know how it should be pronounced, but no one does it right, and everyone just talks about it. Maybe it's a marketing strategy of some kind.

Some of you saw that I posted on facebook that we have mice. This is simply an awesome thing to learn 9 days before having a child. On the upside, our landlady might get a cat! Yes! It was brought up at my appointment yesterday and my doctor said that the mice problem is partially because there is so little snow cover so far this year so they have no where to burrow or something like that. She found some in her garage as well. We also found a granola bar stuck between the wall and the kitchen cabinet so I don't think that helped the situation at all. We keep waiting for snow to come and it just doesn't. It has been sunny forever, which is kind of good considering the days aren't very long. It is so dry though. My face skin is falling off in heaps.

Baby is still doing well. Some contractions have happened, but nothing noteworthy. I'm not particularly fond of how much I weigh, but luckily I'm pregnant so that makes it a bit better. I even got a flu shot for the little guy, which is something I don't do, but my doctor recommended it and I figured what the heck. I have never gotten a shot from a smaller needle. I seriously didn't feel a thing, it was so weird.

In these last days of my pregnancy I have been reflecting over the last 9 months. They have been the longest nine months of my life. Besides being sick and dizzy the whole time there really have been no bad things in my pregnancy. I have no weird leg veins or pains, no stretch marks, my feet didn't stretch out, my fingers aren't puffy, and I haven't had to kick Dan out of the bed in order to have room to sleep. In fact, all that pillow support they recommend made my back hurt so that was done a long time ago. I realize that I'm not in the clear yet, but even so, I've been pretty lucky... I guess.

Next time I hope to speak about Bob Smith's Minnesota Christmas Trees. Very exciting.

Hiccups or arrhythmia?

Team Nelson had a surprisingly busy weekend.

First of all, car seats suck. Well, they wouldn't if we had a normal sized vehicle, but we don't, so they do. They say the safest place is in the center of the back seat. Not that we have an option because it won't fit behind either of the front seats. It is wedged in to the middle space where our arms hit it when we're in the car. Not only that, but even though the car seat comes with a multiple level thing so you can adjust it so the baby is reclined enough, it doesn't have the right level for our apparently super slanted back seat so we had to put a towel under it. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but figuring all this out in the back seat of a tiny car when its 20 degrees wasn't great fun.

The baptism of his first grandchild and the sudden deployment of his son once again took the senior pastor to Minnesota to spend some time with his family. This left Dan in charge of things this weekend. On Friday we attended a rehearsal dinner for the couple he married on Saturday. Saturday he was at church from noon-ish to nine to monitor things and do his first wedding. Sunday he did all the church business (two services, confirmation and adult bible study). My friend was very sleepy come Sunday afternoon. He is also preaching next Sunday but the church has a contingency plan in case an early baby comes. I feel it won’t be an issue though.

Saturday morning, I hung out with some friends and then we went to a craft fair downtown of locally made things from art to jam. This was especially convenient because I was able to do most of our Christmas shopping. I know it’s early, but I doubt that it will be high on our list of things we want to do in the middle of December with a newborn. The only problem is that I want to eat some of the stuff we got. I should probably wrap it up so I’m a little less tempted.

This should be a nice week for Dan- Monday was his day off and then with Thanksgiving he gets Thursday and Friday off too. I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is already this Thursday. It seems so early! We've been invited to a friend’s place, actually a couple places, so we are happy that we get to celebrate the holiday with a larger group of people, instead of just us alone in a basement. Wow, I make it sound so awful. If we were spending it alone it really wouldn't be that bad. Our apartment is plenty nice and we know how to cook.

On Sundays I always try to get up for church. I am probably successful 50% of the time based on sleep patterns and blood pressure. What I find annoying is the last two times I have gone to church I have been greeted by bugs in my morning time. Last Sunday was a centipede and two weeks before that was one of those fast spiders I have mentioned before. I’m sure some of you are thinking that it’s just that you are awake when the bugs are out and you’re noticing them. Well, let me tell you dear reader, regardless of church I am almost always awake at this time, so your hypothesis does not stand. My theory, which has not yet been proven wrong, is that God is saying, “Hey Dorisa, good effort getting up this morning! Here is a bug to really test your dedication to starting the day!” Dan disagrees with me but has offered no alternative idea. He, however, does dispose of the bug after a five hour period of cup purgatory.

At the doctor yesterday when listening to the baby's heartbeat we also got to hear his ferocious hiccups that I'm fairly sure he inherited from me. The doctor was concerned for a second that he developed an arrhythmia but no worries, he's good to go. He remains in correct position and thrashes about like he's stuck in a cage with wasps. His movements almost made me puke the other day. I was not amused.

Your education today is thus: During a solar eclipse, the temperature can suddenly drop by up to 35 degrees. It's good to learn things.

It's tricky to rock a rhyme

That song has been stuck in my head since watching the news this morning. It won't leave.

We have a car seat! And a bundleme! We are almost good to go on the baby front. The car seat has jungle animals on it. It is very exciting. Today we are doing car seat installation. That will be fun...

Dan and I have learned that weather forecasting up here is particularly bad. We had no freezing rain, and only an inch of snow. What is troubling though is that the roads are already terrible and we have a lot of winter left. I was watching Early Today the other day and they actually covered some weather in Alaska! It was very funny, they kept saying how cold it was going to be up here. I think the highs for the day were 30 here in Anchorage and 2 in Fairbanks. When the local news came on, all the weather people talked about was how nice and beautiful of a day we were going to have. I agree with the local news. It was a beautiful day. We had some interesting fog that made us think the city was burning down, but it was a nice day. Today we had some freezing fog that made the trees look absolutely beautiful. Because of the lack of sun it stuck around for much of the day too, so that was nice.

I think that it would be easier to not miss Minnesota if it weren't mentioned every day. I may have talked about this before, and if so I apologize. There is a commercial on right now talking about UAA playing the best teams in hockey and they mention Minnesota. All the standings and stuff for hockey are in the news every night too, because they have no professional sports up here, and they always have Minnesota up there. The Mayo clinic is, of course, always doing something that makes national news- probably about five times since we got up here. Also, people up here fly a lot. I mean A LOT. Many of them have made trips back to Minnesota, including our landlady, friends, and the senior pastor here. Not just once, but multiple times. National weather forecasts have also been midwest heavy lately. Apparently ya'll have had some weather. We could use some weather. Apparently we are supposed to have a foot of snow by now and we have only had 4.5"- and only an inch on the ground currently. I would be okay if the snow waits until after the baby comes, but that probably won't happen.

I try not to talk about politics, mostly because you either agree with me or me voicing my opinion on a blog wont have any effect on what you think so why waste everyone's time? Something really funny happened during the election though that I think you should know about, if you don't already. First of all, I don't understand how someone who thinks that evolution and the big bang theory are lies straight from the pit of hell is allowed to be on the US House of Representative's Science, Space and Technology Committee. I know he's not the only idiot in there, but let's move on. I am a little angry, however, that he ran unopposed in the election, but super thrilled for Charles Darwin, who received 4,000 votes as a write-in candidate. Go Darwin!

And of course, a bit of knowledge to help you in your day. The back of lions' ears are dark so that when they are hunting in a team, they can see each other. Also, Saturn's rings contain 26 million times the amount of water on earth. Neat, huh?

I will teach you things about wildlife

Besides the spiders that scamper across our floors occasionally, the picture below contains the most frightening thing about our apartment. It is the hook on the back of our bathroom door. I find it just a bit creepy. And it's not like the bathroom has a frog theme or anything, there is simply this weird frog hook.

I had some great spicy Thai food yesterday with a friend. Goodness it was delicious. It might have food coma-ed me a bit, but these days it's real hard to tell.

We have a couple of friends who offered to buy us a car seat. Holy generous batman. We decided not to go with the whole travel system thing because of how bulky those strollers are and the fact that we just wont need it much and then we'll have to get it back to Minnesota and everything. Then we were thinking about getting a convertible car seat so we wouldn't need to buy another, but Cory pointed out that his didn't fit in his explorer and our back seat is minuscule, so it probably wouldn't work in there either. Honestly, they should just make one car seat in different colors. It's hard for pregnant people to make decisions. Really hard.

We got a bit of snow early this morning and we're supposed to have some freezing rain coming this weekend so that should be fun to do car seat searching in. Especially considering that they don't use salt here and the drivers are crazy. Seriously. I consider myself an assertive enough driver, but it is like I am the slowest Sunday Driver in the world. And then we are surrounded by giant trucks when we're on the road so it's extra terrifying.

I've learned some things from the TV this week. First of all, I have learned that I really like the show Big Cat Diary on Animal Planet. It's great. It follows cheetahs, leopards and lions and their families and it's wonderful. Baby big kitties are especially cute. The knowledge I have for you is thus; Giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in their neck as humans do and because giraffes are most vulnerable when they are sleeping, they only enjoy about five minutes of deep sleep every twenty-four hours or so. Also, they look super awkward when they run, especially from behind. Now you can rest easy knowing you learned something new today!

Moose are so big! They are the elephant of Alaska!

I have voted in three presidential elections in my life, but haven't been able to go to a polling place for any of them. Minnesota does have a very easy absentee voting system, and I suppose it's nice not to have to wait, but I wish they would send a sticker. I would like a sticker.

The big story again today is a fantastic moose encounter around four yesterday afternoon. I can not believe how big they are. The calf below is easily larger than any buck I've seen, and when they walked away, you could hear them trotting down the hill, even though we were in a basement. They are not so much a creature light of foot. It was so magical though, Dan just looked up and saw a window full of moose. Due to where the windows are, I couldn't get  them both entirely in one picture, but it was still a good viewing opportunity.

The gigantic eight month baby bump is below. I know, I know, some people are this pregnant at six months, but that doesn't make my experience any less uncomfortable. Besides my aching ribs, I pulled a muscle in my upper stomach (assuming there are any still there) while rolling over in bed. It's just that a person's body is used to moving certain ways and when that liberty is taken away, the likelihood of injury increases by apparently about a billion. My balance and leg flexibility are still good (yay for dance) but, for example, when putting on pants, one needs to lift a leg, and that leg is certainly not used to bumping into belly. It is sad every time. Dan has no balance. Or flexibility. It makes me feel a bit better about just having the belly issue.

I told Dan he should have written "1 month left" but he likes to keep people guessing.

After a fairly invasive exam yesterday, my doctor informed me that there is no reason to believe that the baby is coming this week, which is good I suppose. At the beginning of my pregnancy, as most of you know, I was so very sick. Because of this, at my first appointment, my blood pressure was like 140/100 or some crazy high number like that. It has been trending downward ever since, which is good because high blood pressure is extremely dangerous during pregnancy. It is now very low. Yesterday it was 98/70. I take this as proof that this baby is very slowly, yet very surely, killing me in a very stealthy manner.

Ahh, music from high school

I'm sitting here enjoying some old music. It is nice. Music is magical. If you don't think so, you are either wrong or have not had enough music in your life.

Alright, down to business. I hope you all enjoyed your Halloween festivities. Out of the 3 most frightening holidays our country celebrates, I think it is my favorite. Sorry about the blog slacking. I have chosen to take the sleep when it comes to me, and sometimes that interferes with my afternoon access to the church's internet.

After Dan's run last week, he came home with a smile that said "something has not gone well." From this, I inferred that he either fell (which he does more than he should) or he was ridiculously cold. It was the latter. Dan proceeded to get a pretty bad cold, and actually listened to me when I told him to take a decongestant instead of using a nose pot. He is better now and after a mostly restful weekend, he was healed and back to super hyper on Monday. Monday is his day off so I was the recipient of all his craziness. Fun.

Because of his cold though, and my current state of blah we did miss the Halloween party we wanted to go to. He was just to worn out and head miserable and I wasn't feeling the best and a little nervous about going to a party that would probably have a lot of people and limited places to sit. That would lead to a tip and no one wants a tipping pregnant lady. Because I skipped the party though, I finally had energy to get up and go to church. That didn't really go well though either. I know people don't care if I don't stand, but I feel stupid being a supposedly healthy young-ish adult and not standing. But again, it was better than tipping over, so I thought the people would prefer the sitting. And yea, no one even mentioned it. Someone did mention that they didn't recognize me from the back because from that angle I don't look pregnant at all. That was a welcome comment. My brother used to joke that when I turned to the side I could not be seen. That is certainly no longer the case.

We finished our baby class. I was hoping for more confidence from the class, but now I'm just aware of all the stuff I won't remember instead of being entirely clueless. I don't know which is worse. Our teacher really was quite delightful. She also runs the Cuddlers group for new moms and their teeny tiny babies so I might go there to be overwhelmed with all the other new moms and to get out of the house a bit more. We got all registered at the hospital so they are ready for us. I am at 35 weeks today, and I am also ready. Apparently you are considered full term at 37 weeks so once that point comes I'll be fine with a timely exit. My phone app says my baby is over 18 inches long and about 5.25 pounds, or as much as a honeydew melon. Sounds like the size of a baby to me.

We have a slight spider problem in our apartment. It isn't atrocious, but I don't like spiders. They are pretty girthy little guys and extremely fast. One upside was that they weren't climbers, we only saw them on the floor, and I guess the fastest ones are still grounded, but there was one that made it onto the counter in the bathroom. Don't fret, I had a cup. He was not happy about being cupped, or maybe that I accidentally ripped out one of his legs during the cupping, but I have no sympathy for spiders. If they wanted to live, they would stay away from me.

I may have mentioned before that we have some annoying dogs next door who seem to hate everything about the people who inhabit our house. The pack includes a German Shepherd, a possible Lab/Retriever mix, and a Rottweiler who bark all the time, don't have enough room to run, and don't get played with enough. There is a spot in the fence that got destroyed during the storm and we don't know if that's how they got out the other day or it was something else, but on Tuesday they got out. You'd think it'd be time for them to go on an adventure, but no, they seriously just circled our house for like three hours. Luckily, Margaret upstairs is back from her trip and took care of it. It was her first full day back in town though and she hates those dogs, so I doubt that was the welcome home present she wanted.

I am absolutely fed up with living in places with radiators. They are the worst. I have lived in such dwellings for six years and I feel I have put in my time. In Fargo, our radiators sounded like an angry man pounding on pipes into a microphone. At seminary they were less loud, but sprayed water everywhere. Now, it seems that we have multiple drumlines in our ceiling and walls. Most annoying is that these noises occur between 6 pm and 9 am. I know I have mentioned I like the noises that buildings make, and I do, but this is out of control.

Dan and I were unsure if we would get trick-or-treaters at our door last night so we went out. It was a good night and I actually felt good for the whole thing. We went to Target (which was packed), went to Kincaid to look (unsuccessfully) for moose, had delicious Thai food, got some cake, a new headlamp for Dan, and then got Dan a movie and beer. It was a success. We have noticed as of late that the words we say to each other are a bit odd. Most recently I told Dan, "Nice hair... you look like Satan" and at a different time he said to me,"You're cute like the fish on Mario." Oh well, at least we found each other.

Finally... a moose!

Attended baby class again on Friday. We did breathing exercises. We are NOT good at them. We laughed. A lot. It was like when you laugh in church. Everything was so quiet and you're just trying to stifle. But she said it's best if your partner can distract you, so we got an A in that.

Went to the doctor again yesterday. Everything is still good, I'm actually measuring a bit big (surprising considering I can still see my toes), AND I finally gained 2 pounds! This was exciting. So I asked in a hopeful manner, if I'm measuring 35 cm, does that give me any chance of this baby coming early? No, it does not. We're finally pretty set on a name. All we need is a car seat and diapers and we're ready for this thing.

After our errands yesterday, we were heading home and I told Dan we should go up on the hills sometime to look down into the bowl. He sugeested we do that, so we had a mini adventure. We went up on the hills and it is amazing how the climate is different up there. It is definietly winter and we weren't even that far up! We're talking icy roads and snow everywhere. When driving around anchorage lately, you can tell who lives on the hill because they come down into the bowl with four inches of snow on their car and the rest of us are quite snow free. We saw some views from the hill, but the vegetation where we were is pretty thick so there were no picture opportunities. We (and our teeny tiny car) are happy we live where we do though. Those hills would be terrifying for us when real winter comes. No, not terrifying, just not passable. Plus we've had a lot of clear sunny days down here recently which have been absolutely delightful.

Many of you have heard that I finally saw a moose. It was awesome. We think it was a relatively young bull moose and it was just walking around our neighborhood, much like the deer in Eagan. But the moose was not skittish, like a deer, and it was much bigger, obviously. I wanted to take a picture, but it was quite dark and apparently it's mating season so it's best not to annoy the bulls. Also, we were in our car, so our heads were probably a good five or six feet below his head and we felt the moose had the advantage when it came to speed and power. Dan also saw a moose on his run yesterday and chose to alter his route because of it. This one was a cow and didn't seem bothered by him or the small dog that was near, but Dan chose to go a different way just in case. I think the weirdest thing about the moose is that they just don't really care that you exist. Deer are always so on edge. You can't even make a sound or they will sprint away. That's not the case with moose. They seem to do what they want and if anyone is going to be running away, it is going to be the human. This does leave me in a bit of a perdicament though. My main goals while living here were to see a moose and the northern lights... what am I going to do for the rest of the year?

I just saw a cat outside! Yippee!

Don't you hate when you try to cut a tomato with a credit card and it doesn't work? Well I have a solution for you! How did people live without that?

I've been starting to make a mental list of things I'm going to do once the baby is here. It includes barrel rolling across my bed, laying down flat on my back, and cutting my toenails without having to hold my breath. I have big dreams people, big dreams. Ooh, and sit-ups, I am going to do a thousand sit-ups.

A couple years ago, I was looking forward to being pregnant, but not at all wanting a child. When we decided to have a baby, I was looking forward to having a baby and didn't really consider the pregnancy part, it was just necessary to get the baby. Well, I hate being pregnant. If that surprises you, you have not been paying attention to my life. I have never felt so crappy for so long in my life and if every pregnancy were like mine I wouldn't be here because the human population would have died off long ago. We are exactly seven weeks away from the due date, and it cannot come soon enough. Don't get me wrong, I want a fully cooked baby, but if it could be December right now that would be okay. Dan and I really do want two kids, but how and if we get that second kid is up for debate. People say you forget all the crappy parts about being pregnant. I will never forget. Thinking back about how sick I have been makes me feel sick. I might reach a point where I'd be willing to do it again, but then we should do a quick survey of my mental health just to be sure I'm in my right mind.

Believe it or not, there is not much for a light-headed pregnant woman to do in Alaska in October, so there has been plenty of TV watching in my recent past. Mostly I try to watch something I can learn from, but I am not always successful. There was a really good program on National Geographic though (I think). It was called Wild Mississippi and the one I saw was the fall to winter transition in Minnesota so that was neat. It mostly covered the wildlife at the headquarters in Itasca. Nature is cool. It was especially nice to see the fall colors, because that is something that doesn't occur here in Anchorage. We got a little yellow, but that is about it. Other observations: voles are funny, I wouldn't mind having a domesticated bobcat, I had no idea that porcupines climb trees, and whenever I learn something about wolves I think of Julie and camp. Also, it is absolutely hysterical to watch a wolf try to attack a porcupine. Not at all exciting. The porcupine looked at the wolf while the wolf approached not at all stealthily, circled and sniffed a couple times, and left.

We started baby class last night. The woman running the show seems to be really good at her job and passionate about teaching the class. She is on her sixth child/pregnancy, which I don't necessarily condone, but at least we know she knows what she's talking about. The class has mostly young couples in their mid-late twenties, but there is one younger girl who is there with her mom too. Don't judge me, but at first I felt kind of bad for her not having the dad there, but then if the dad doesn't wanna be there, maybe he shouldn't be there. Her mom is wonderful though and knows all sorts of stuff whereas most of the guys, though comfortable enough to ask questions, look a bit scared. It is definitely nice to have her opinion as well as the instructor's opinion.

I think there were about ten pregnant ladies there. All but one are having boys. This follows the recent trend that I encountered with friends at church. There are boys everywhere.

Our instructor said that while having good posture is a good trait most of the time, when it comes to being in labor, having the ability to relax your core into a slouch helps a lot. WINNER. Slouching may temporarily be increasing pain in my ribs, but my slouching mastery will prevail!

Our registry is up at Target if you are one of those interested/waiting for it. We might be adding things, and we welcome gifts that aren't on there as well. Many of you know what we need better than we do.

Most of you know that I am usually the one with the absolutely insane dreams. Well, this was said to me by my dear husband when I woke up at 2:30 or so. He was not fully awake. "If we are ever stuck in the 1920s... and we are trying to get out of a mob-type situation... we shouldn't rely on reality stars... from Honey Boo Boo." After laughing, the response he got was a condescending, "Thank you Dan, that is incredibly useful information."

"Be safe," says the dizzy pregnant woman holdling the knife

I learned on Alaska State Troopers that all moose roadkill is harvested and used for charitable causes. I thought that was neat. I think you can take the meat yourself if you want to, but it is illegal for it to be wasted. Good job Alaska.

Speaking of local meats, I made caribou chili. This is where the title for this post came from. Don't worry, I was sitting down. The chili was pretty good. It smelled incredible, I guess I'm just not entirely sold on the caribou, but I am glad that we used it and I will do it again. It definitely carries more of its own flavor than beef does and that flavor really pops out in the bites of chili that contain it. I guess I might have found it gamey- but I don't really know if that is the right term. Dan really liked it a lot. That always surprises me considering how he wavers back and forth being anti-meat and pro-meat. I guess he thinks that if there is meat, it better be good and taste super meaty.

Dan ran in a half marathon on Saturday that he didn't train for. It was also a zombie race and he didn't dress up for it. It was his slowest at 1:41:20, which is about 14 minutes slower than his best, but he's okay with it due to the not training business. He did have fun at the race and ran most of it with a guy from church. The course they ran was right along the coast so I guess it was pretty beautiful. He also bought some trail running shoes so he won't tip over when running in the hills tonight for the Tuesday night races.

Dan also decided to get some vitamin D pills, which isn't a terrible thing considering we lose about 5 minutes of daylight every day. To paint you a picture, when we moved here, sunset was around 10:00. Apparently the sunset tonight is at 6:42. It's different. Just to be safe I looked up vitamin D toxicity to see if we needed to be careful with these things. No, no we do not. The dosage of the pills is 1,000 IU. Toxicity occurs at 50,000 IU. We're safe.

On Saturday we enjoyed an evening with friends and a casserole in which I can actually enjoy salmon. We got a decent amount of snow that day, probably about an inch and a half. Although it is all gone now, it was really pretty and came with that delicious cold outside smell of fall/winter. You know what I'm talking about. Observe the beauty:

Okay, so the picture isn't great, but it was that nice fluffy snow that sticks on trees and makes everything Christmasy. It was good. We have studded tires on our teeny tiny car for the upcoming snow pounding. It looks ridiculous. Apparently they don't salt the roads here so they are necessary. It still looks funny.

We also saw some northern lights. That was cool- I had never seen them before although I know some people have seen them at camp. I felt like crap and it was cold and we have a lot of trees in our backyard so it wasn't an optimal viewing situation, but we got to see them swirl about and they were very high in the sky. For being in the middle of a city, it was especially impressive.

Recent events have led me to conclude that it is indeed winter here in Anchorage. Luckily I bought some slippers last week, so I'm ready.

2 months left!

     I had another appointment yesterday. Everything looks good. Apparently everything I'm experiencing that makes me feel like I'm dying is normal, so I guess that's good too. My stomach regularly looks like there is an alien trying to get out. It is somewhat comical, but it also makes me feel like people are looking and wondering what I am doing that my stomach is so angry and exploding. It's even worse when I tell him to stop or he makes me jump and people hear or see me. Here's a picture to observe my progress. I can still wear a lot of my normal shirts so that's a nice money saver.

That shirt is not great in photos. The hands are in honor
of the penguin documentary I watched on Sunday.

     You Minnesotans should be thankful for your TV Emergency Alert System. We have had a couple of TV interruptions, which is not unusual, especially considering the flooding that has been going on up here. They last four minutes, cut in and out,both in picture and sound, and because of this not only do you miss your show, you have no idea what you should be alerted about. There was an amber alert that all we caught was "if you have any information please call..." and got none of the description of what to look for. Obnoxious. And it's always during the show- right after a commercial break. Heaven forbid the alert interrupts this gem of a commercial that is on ALL THE TIME. That one is not the exact one on, but that old guy is always dancing and the song is always the same. I prefer that one to the guy selling 4 x 4 trucks though and instead of saying "four by fours" he says "four befores."
     I found another house I would like to buy. It's only $55,000 and needs a bit of work, but the location is great and I want a project house. This will not happen, but it is fun to dream.

It's a rather blustery day

     Most of our deciduous trees are well on their way to naked. We did have two rain free days in a row this past weekend, with a sun out and everything! I don't think that has happened since the first week we were here- and I can't guarantee that it happened even then.

This is the pond by our house that they call a lake.

Looking down the path toward the pond.

Snow covered mountains that didn't have snow last week.

     I have noticed that people here are more accepting of winter weather than we are in Minnesota. I'm used to seeing people resist putting on their winter coats until it is simply unbearable not to have one on, but yesterday we were out and most people had on a winter coat or some layer of it and it was not that cold at all. Some people do come down from the hills though and apparently they had four inches of snow in one night, so maybe that explains it a bit. Apparently we did have a slight dusting down here in the bowl, but I chose to ignore it because it was gone by the time I woke up. To me, that is not snow.     Something is different here in Alaska. Well, many things are different, but I think this is in reference to air pressure. Dan's shoes arrived in the mail from home the other day and they contain gel insoles. After wearing them for a bit- including a walk to church, Dan realized the gel was not so much in as outside the sole. Goop everywhere. Both shoes. Very weird. Another strange thing is that glass jars are nearly impossible to open here. It is very annoying. One particularly hard jar was our strawberry jam from Costco. After about 5 minutes of attempting to open this jar,we were successful, but it came at a price. Not only did we lose about half a cup of it from the jar tipping over, but we also lost our coffee pot, which was killed when the jar of jam flew two feet from the momentum of the opening. In retrospect it could have been worse- but now we need to buy a new coffee pot, which is annoying because they aren't as cheap as one would hope and we have two in Minnesota.
     Another thing that we have encountered is that fast food joints don't have ketchup pumps- just packages. Granted I think we have just been to a couple different Arby's, but still. They also ran out of Arby's sauce though... maybe they shouldn't be trusted.

Suppe!

     I made soup from scratch last weekend while watching Doctor Who. It was not a complete failure, but I struggle with my soups being too sweet. My reasons for making the soup were threefold:
  1) At the rate I've been eating soup, it is really getting expensive
  2) I enjoy vegetable beef soup, but the chunks of meat they give you are disgusting and super fatty
  3) Because of the beef situation, I tried just getting vegetable soup, but then it's all tomatoey and sweet and I don't like it
     So I made a vegetable beef broth soup and was mostly happy. Potatoes, onion, celery, carrots, corn, and peas. Luckily I can eat a lot of salt because it is necessary in the consumption of this feast. I think next time I'll stick to chili- that rarely goes awry and even when it does it isn't sweet.
     I am working on setting up a baby registry at Target for those of you who are waiting for one. It is not easy. There is a lot of stuff out there and we don't want too much because we'll just have to move it at the end of August, but there is still some stuff that we need. The gift cards we received have been extremely helpful in getting us started baby-wise, so a big thank you to everyone who got us those! We received our boxes last week of stuff we shipped up here and it was exciting all over again to open up the clothes, books, and toys we got before we left.
     I must say I am thoroughly enjoying Matthew Perry's new show Go On. So far it is fantastic- hopefully they can keep it up.
     It is Dan's birthday today. He apparently shares his birthday with Google. Dan is twice the age of Google today. Neat. Wow a lot can change in just 14 years.

Voting is hard

     I am trying to vote. Absentee style. It is amazing how hard it is to find information on the local candidates. And then if I can find it, it often seems that I'm voting for the lesser of two evils. Maybe evil isn't the right term, but you get it. Voting should not be this difficult.
     Sorry to those of you who actually missed hearing my stories on Thursday. I didn't think it would be noticed but apparently it was. I have not been sleeping well at all and chose sleep over writing about nothing- because that is what was happening up to that point. On Thursday night we went out with some friends to a place called Moose's Tooth. They have unique pizza's and apparently very good beer. We had a good time and ate some seriously good pizza.
     On Friday we got our Costco membership set up through the church so we had quite a time exploring. We now have enough pasta to get us through the year and enough sauce ingredients to hopefully get us through part of the winter. I saw that they also have really inexpensive diapers there so I thought I would go online and check out the reviews. There was no consensus- its seems to be a love/hate thing. Who knows what we'll decide in the end. After Costco, we went to the recycling center to drop off our things. I miss the days where you can throw any recycling in a bin and it disappears from your curb. They only recycle plastics 1 and 2 up here and the only place to recycle glass is at Target, and who knows if it actually gets recycled since they don't do glass at the recycling center.
     The weather remains cloudy/rainy and 50 degrees here. We have some pretty trees, but since the climate doesn't support oaks and maples, we only get the yellow color. In the thirty minutes of sunshine yesterday though it was quite breathtaking. On my way home I pulled over for a second to get this picture in our neighborhood. This was pots-sunshine. It was prettier in real life. I promise.

     Apparently here though they get about a week of the colors, and then the leaves are gone. Winter is coming. (Game of Thrones? Anyone?)
     Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment. It went well, I guess. I did my glucose test which was one of the worst things ever. I chose lemon lime because I thought it would be less sweet than orange. I don't know that I was correct. If you know anything about my passing out situations the worst things are sweets in morning time, standing, and warm. Well, it was 12:45, which isn't morning, but it was for me due to the lack of sleep. I had to stand while doing this, which was probably insignificant to anyone else, but I hated it and it got me all worried. I had to chug this drink that was like flat 7-Up in 5 minutes, which is a problem for me because I drink everything super slow and my gag reflex is a bit sensitive to such shenanigans. They gave me some information to review while doing this, and because its a clinic it was fairly warm. I saw some black dots, but it was fine once I was able to walk around a bit. They took my blood pressure pretty soon afterward and they didn't say it was high, but I bet it was higher than usual due to me being a bit worried about passing out.
     Apparently I'm not gaining weight like I should, but since the baby is still growing normally she said to not worry about it. Because of this news I will continue to enjoy my daily giant bowl of ice cream with chocolate and peanut butter. It is delicious and I refuse to feel bad about it. We were also told to take childbirth classes, which is a good idea, but costs a ton of money and I find that rude. We'll probably still do it though. Plus the fee includes a textbook, which is more than I can say of any college course I took.
     Dan is joining a running club that does races every Tuesday and is starting tonight. That should be fun for him. I will not be joining him.
 

Hooray for punctual babies!

     Hooray for new nephews! Kieran Ray was born on Monday- right on his due date. Who doesn't love a punctual baby?
     It seems that I have had poor luck with plumbing this past year. On Palm Sunday this past spring, I got to church, felt terrible, and left. I think this is when the preggo sickness was starting. I went home to be greeted by the sound of a waterfall from a pipe bursting in the bathroom. Because of how sick I was feeling, I couldn't think clearly and really had no idea what to do. Eventually it was sorted but it was hugely annoying, but more so annoying for our downstairs neighbors.
     This past Saturday I was also feeling super crappy and Dan was doing the dishes and we heard a weird sound of water. Dan investigated and discovered the pipe below the sink had broken. Which we also dealt with a bit in our last place. It was dealt with in a pretty quick manner, but still annoying to say the least. I just wish these things happened when I wasn't sick and I was able to think clearly and attempt to help. Luckily the storm we were expecting didn't really happen in our neighborhood, so we didn't lose power. If we had lost power, I would have exploded. More storms are expected tonight and later this week though, so this is still a possibility.
     I am so excited for the day when I can buy a house and not rely on landlords and stuff to get things done. Hopefully when we move back I can find a job so we can stay there.
     Thanks to a kind man on the intern committee here at church, our bed no longer acts like a hammock. He cut some pieces of wood to assist the bed frame and got a piece of plywood to put between the box spring and the mattress and we no longer roll toward the middle of the bed. Since I have trouble sleeping anyway, this was a wonderful gift.
     I had heard that babies kick your ribs. This is a true statement. If it were the kicking alone I would be cool with it, but the pressure that is constantly on my ribs that I sprained 12 years ago is mostly unbearable. The doctor was right, it would have been better if I had broken them because then they would have healed. When I sit as straight as possible it isn't so bad, but good posture has never been something I've excelled at. I'm much better with the slouching. I've also developed muscle spasms near my collar bones that make it difficult to breathe and a somewhat husky cough. Dan calls it the cough of vomit death. He is scared each time he hears it. This will be mentioned to my doctor at my next appointment. Like everything else I've encountered while being pregnant, I will assume it's normal.
     Dan found a quarter. He is going to buy some candy.
     We are both having trouble adjusting to the monotonous weather here. I keep asking Dan what  the temperature is and it's always the same. Tomorrow we have a four degree temperature range. It's so weird. We had some sunshine yesterday and discussed how just looking outside, if we were in Minnesota it could have been anywhere from 40-90 degrees. I miss the days where anything can happen with the weather. It made life more eventful.

I would like some fall weather please.

     We bought snow boots. Very exciting things are happening here in the Last Frontier. I almost didn't post today because of all the excitement. It is simply astonishing how midwesty it is up here. Our dishes (the majority anyway) have loons on them, so do some of our decorations in the kitchen. There is a woman who came over for a quick visit who said she has the same dishes at her cabin in northern Minnesota. Speaking of which, this was nice to see today. I really do enjoy living in Minnesota and I like when other people hear how great it is, but I do think its a sign of general pessimism when instead of being called the best state to live in, it is simply the least miserable. Right now I miss the weather most of all. It's like some late October weather here, so I got no late August or September transitional fall weather, it is just all of a sudden very cool. The weather is almost always 50-55 degrees and usually rainy. It's a bit dull.
     There is a midwest potluck tonight at the church.  It starts at 6:12.  I don't really know why. I have learned that people are not prompt in Alaska. This was told to me by many people here- I'm not trying to be judgmental. To prove my point, I am writing this at 6:00 and there are 2 people here, besides me and some people in a meeting.
     We finally have everything cleaned up in the apartment and it is glorious. We have had an incident with our space heater though. We had it on for quite a while and it leaked some kind of oil. It's an electric heater that looks like a radiator. We don't know why it leaked or what exactly it was that leaked, so we cleaned it up and put it away. For all we know, it was on too long and simply started melting.  Who knows.
     Super short post today, seriously nothing is happening. We're expecting another windstorm this weekend so I'm sure I'll have words next week.

Three months to go!

     Well, after the power company posted an update pretty much guaranteeing power to everyone but outlying houses by Friday night, our power came back on Saturday morning. The house is back to making the beautiful sounds that houses make and I am once again able to sleep, as well as usual anyway. We spent the weekend cleaning up the place and getting the dust out of here. It was very dusty. We just have a couple more cupboards to go through and we will be fully settled in. Yay. We also have to glue the magnet on the bathroom door, but the glue we have been supplied with is toxic and has a warning that it causes birth defects so that will have to wait a bit. Our bathroom is separated from the rest of the apartment and has a fan, but the lady upstairs says the fan is really loud upstairs so we should probably wait until she’s out of the house for a while. 
     Dan was in charge of everything this past Sunday morning at church because Scott was out of town again. From what I can tell, it went well. It seems like Dan has had a lot of responsibility really early in this job, which is totally fine, but it makes me wonder what would have happened if they got an intern who didn’t have so much experience in the church.  Dan has been working 3 weeks and has already given 3 sermons and run a few Bible studies. He is the only pastoral staff person in the office for the rest of the week, but then he should get a bit of a break.

The Sanctuary at Gloria Dei.  Not too big; not too small.

     We had our first appointment on Monday and met our doctor. She seems very nice and so does her head nurse. We had to go over a whole general history thing of course and it bothers me that when this happens and they ask if I have any major medical issues or have had surgery and I say no, they don’t believe me.  The nurse just kept looking at me in wonder so I tried helping her out a bit by telling her that I sometimes have problems with low blood pressure and hypoglycemia, but that apparently didn’t count. We did a quick teeny ultrasound and belly measurement and everything looked exactly as it should and the doctor changed my due date back to December 6. Three months to go! I know I’m not very big, but I’m already sick of my limited mobility. I’m not used to not being able to bend the way I want to and I forget and then I try and it doesn’t go well. I still have use of my stomach muscles so I’m usually able to sit up and switch sides when sleeping like normal, but I fear this skill is on loan and will soon be taken away from me. Our doctor told me to start doing kick counts once every day for an hour and make sure there are 10 movements. I don't know that there is an hour in which this kid doesn't move at least 30 times. Super active. Oh, and he started kicking my ribs, that's fun.

     This is the first bump picture I have taken. I wanted to do more, to coincide with the weekly fruit/veggie size, but since no one could even tell I was pregnant until 20 weeks, and it remained debatable until about 24 weeks, this didn't happen. Plus, pretending to be happy when you are so sick you can't stand up didn't sound like a good time. Anyway, last week baby was an English hothouse cucumber (no one knows what this means), this week he is a head of cauliflower, and next week he is a Chinese cabbage. Our child is very international. We think we have a name picked out, but its hard to know without seeing the little guy. Hopefully we'll think of a couple more options just in case the one we have doesn't suit him. 

     Note from Dan: We are accepting bribes to name our child, although with no guarantee. So, you can give us money and we will name the kid what we want to.

Lies, all lies!

     Oh to be pregnant and living in Alaska with no power.  I really am living the dream.
     The storm did turn out to be a storm, but I don't really know how to describe it, because it isn't what we identify as a storm.  Our storms come with green (and various other colored) skies, lightning, hail, wind, maybe spiky clouds, rain, thunder- all sorts of stuff.  This was just wind.  I guess there was rain, but no more than any other day so I'm not going to count it.  From what I know they had unverified record breaking wind gusts, like 60 mph here in the valley and from what I can tell about 90 on the hillside.  Okay, I accept this as windy.  Fine. We, however, have not had power for 40 hours.  The houses across the street have power, across the block to the east has power, quarter mile to the north?  Yep, power.  Dan's church is a half mile to the east.  Power all over the place, including many houses in between.  It is a bit on the cold side to have no power.  Dan and I sleep on the futon huddled together in sweatsuits being continually taunted by the streetlight on the opposite side of the road that turns on and off every minute casting light onto our walls.  If we are without power tonight, we may accept an offer to sleep elsewhere.
     Silent buildings make me angry.  I can not sleep in silence; I've tried.  This explains me waking up at 1:00 and being awake until around 6 from what I can tell.  Add a pregnancy, the fact that none of our cold food is cold, we can't make anything hot, and I have trouble sleeping anyway.  This creates a crazy version of me crying out of frustration in the absolutely deafening silence, still being taunted by the damn streetlight 40 feet from our window.  It may paint a comical picture now, but pregnant lady on 3 hours of sleep found no humor.  I was able to watch some of Harry Potter (#2) on my computer and that helped and eventually I was sleeping a bit.  Please bring back the power so I can sleep in a building filled with clunks, weird refrigerator noises (that I keep thinking sounds like a moose, and no I don't know what a moose sounds like), and the glorious hum of electricity.
     So, when do we get our power back?  Why, how sweet of you to inquire! On Wednesday morning, they said Wednesday night.  On Wednesday afternoon, they said Thursday morning.  It is now Thursday at 1:45 p.m. and they say hopefully by tonight, but it could possibly be 3-5 days total.  So, they have no idea and chose to tell me lies.  What could possibly be taking so long?  There were neighborhoods with electrical fires that got their power back after 12 tiny hours.  They keep saying how unseasonably early this storm is, which makes me wonder how this scenario being possible in 20 degree weather makes it any better.  From what I've worked out, I guess something with the frozen ground prevents so many trees from going down, so power outages are less common then.  Part of the problem is that I think they just don't have the man power to deal with outages like this since they don't really get giant storms like we do.
     Wednesday, after the stormy overnight hours, they had an actual downpour that even got a bit slanty in direction and that freaked everyone out too.  They don't get downpours apparently.  I would have enjoyed it more if at the time I wasn't getting drenched by it because a stupid lady pulled in front of me at the gas station leaving me to make a giant circle and having to use the unprotected pump on the edge.  Yea, I didn't care for her much.
     I am sitting here at the church, overhearing conversations, enjoying my tombstone pizza (that thawed out, got refrozen and is still delicious), and enjoying a small glass of Dr. Pepper.  People have come in and keep saying they can't remember anything like this storm ever happening.  Apparently we moved to Alaska and brought our erratic weather with us.  I refuse, obviously, to be held responsible for this storm and its repercussions.  Where we come from, this storm is not a "lose power for 3 days" storm.
     For those of you interested in keeping up with our local news and weather issues (probably only our parents) here are the links I've been using: Alaska Daily News, KTUU.  One neat thing is that a flag pole fell over.  Apparently it had dry rot, brown rot, and white rot in it.  This means nothing to me, but they did find a time capsule underneath that was buried in 1961, and that's always fun.  There was a guy's ID in there and they were able to contact him and talk to him which is neat. More on that here.

     Finally: the termination dust.  A couple of days ago I posted a picture of the mountains, one will note that there was not really any snow.  Well, there is snow now, as you will observe below.  This is called the termination dust.  Apparently its a sign that if you are working on an outdoor project, you stop now because winter is coming.  We are learning so much!

     It is kind of hard to see with the clouds, but you get the gist.  This is the view on the walk home from the church by the way.  It's not so bad.  Many of you know that we are really close to the ocean and might be wondering why I don't often post ocean pictures.  Well, we can't really get to the ocean.  The land near the ocean is incredibly unstable and since Anchorage is an earthquake prone area, they have not let people build on the coast since it all collapsed in 1964.  It is now full of beautiful parks and trails.  Which is good, obviously, but makes it much harder to drive up and get a pic.  Hopefully someday soon I'll be up for a big walk and we'll head over to Kincaid and see a moose and the ocean.  Yes, I realize that I chose a link that sends to to Wikipedia.  I don't care.  Look how pretty that winter ocean picture is.  Very pretty.