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.

Holy dreariness Batman

     Never have I lived in such a boring climate.  This time of year it is apparently 55 with a good chance of rain.  It sucks.  What makes it worse is that some of my computer settings still tell me the weather in the twin cities and that is just rubbing in the crappiness.  Sometimes it makes me sad that Dan didn't even consider the placements in Florida.  Apparently we are in some kind of storm right now involving high winds.  I'm not quite understanding the situation.  It looks like every other day. Cloudy and rainy.  We'll watch it develop but having spent time in Fargo I really don't see how this will be a problem.  Up in the hills and on the mountains may be another story but we don't go there so no worries.
     We still haven't met anyone who grew up in Anchorage, that I know of.  There is a mid-west potluck coming up in a couple weeks that will be fun.  Sooooo many people here are from the mid-west.   Those odds of us meeting them are probably increased since we are in a Lutheran congregation but still.  Everyone has been incredibly kind too.  Dan and I went to a game night last Friday and while he was at the Bishop thingy on Saturday I was invited to lunch with a couple ladies.  Tonight we are going to dinner at another person's house.  What is especially nice is that these are people OUR age.  It is awesome.  People of all ages here though have been wonderful.  They have had 5 interns here in a row so they have a system down to make us feel welcome and comfortable and to get us involved in the community.
     Dan has already given 2 sermons and has another one coming up on Sunday.  As far as I can tell, he's doing well.
     I'm so hungry.  All the time so hungry.  I'm not sure how many of you watch Warehouse 13 on Syfy but there was a hilarious episode where one of the characters is suddenly about 8 months pregnant (its on Syfy- weird stuff happens) and if you've been pregnant or spent a lot of time around a pregnant lady it is hysterical.  I think it's season 4 episode 5- watch it when it arrives on HULU if you're interested.