Noni REALLY wants that cheeseburger...

Spring :)

I will soon be planting some annuals in a container in front of our office. As soon as the stores start supplying the flowers, that is... It's still a little on the cool side, but hopefully they will have them stocked this weekend :)

The glacier in front of our house is receding... (Quick - Call AlGore and tell him it's yet another example of "global warming"... Maybe he'll fly his jet up here to check it out!) As soon as it's gone, I will be able to start doing something with my front yard :)

Once I have the appropriate tools, I will be clearing out the back yard so I can put in a dog run back there for Noni. I need a rake, a wheel barrow (or other appropriate cart), a shovel, the cable to run from the back of the building to a tree, etc... We still have quite a bit of garbage back there from the previous owners and we never did get around to clearing it last summer... But then, last summer sucked so it wasn't a good time to take on a landscaping project... Definitely have to remove the "Devil's Club" that has grown under one of the massive spruce trees... Don't want to get the dog or myself tangled up in that...

It was such a nice day today that Noni and I let the hubby stay and work on the plane at the airport (he's trying desperately to get it to start before he leaves for another 3 weeks...) and we walked home. We may have to walk to work again tomorrow :) It's supposed to be nice all week :)

We've had more sunshine in the last 2 weeks than we did ALL LAST SUMMER!!! I am getting spoiled! There is nothing better than snow-capped mountains with verdant foothills framing a sapphire-blue sky. Not to mention the brilliant blue glacier that peeks around the trees when you look just right! I LOVE living here :)

Yesterday was Noni's birthday!

I (unfortunately) found myself too busy to post about it, but my hubby didn't. You can see cute pictures of her here.

Happy Birthday Noni!

The view from my hanger..

We survived it!

This was the first month that the hubby was gone for 3 weeks instead of two... While it was harder, we still survived it. I go to pick him up from the airport in an hour. Yay!!!

I'm putting it out there...

Open Invitation:

Anyone who wishes to come to SE Alaska to go fishing, and is willing to help me stock my freezer with halibut, please let me know... I do not wish to pay the store prices for fresh halibut and I do not have the time to go fishing myself.


Anyone who is interested in going to the NKOTB concert in Seattle on July 7, please let me know. I'm trying to decide if I want to go to it. I have heard it is a really good concert. But, I don't want to go by myself. And I have to weigh the cost for the concert (not to mention travel from/to JNU) with the money we have saved for our vacation at the end of July/beginning of August... But I won't look into that until I know if someone wants to go to it with me.

From Musings of the Wife of a Pilot

Any takers?

I am rather surprised...

Springtime in Juneau usually means the return of the rain. In fact, last weekend I checked the 5 day forcast that said rain every day, all week long, some days mixed with snow. I got kind of discouraged. Then the week actually happened. It didn't rain constantly like it is known to do, nor did it snow... Occasionally we would have short lived sprinklings, but for the most part, no rain... Most days were mostly-partly sunny too :)

I'm feeling spoiled, and I wish I was outside on a nice day like today instead of at work...

Disgusted...

Once again, I am disgusted with the mainstream media... If it's not bad enough that the "country" is rivited by what Michelle Obama is wearing today, or what Bo the White House Dog did today, more trivial Obama stuff is surpassing real news...

I should know better than to watch NBC for my news. This morning, the day after tax day, the day after all the organized Tea Parties around the country, they chose to say about 10 seconds worth of stuff regarding the tea parties, then proceeded to tell us all about Mr & Mrs Obama's tax return... Seriously? I would rather hear about how well the protests worked in the different areas... I mean, this is what this country is greatest at. Organizing ourselves into one voice to be heard... It worked for civil rights, and women's rights, etc... Let alone the grand-daddy of them all that became the Revolution that created this country...

While I didn't participate in any Tea Party protests (I looked, but there wasn't one organized in the liberal city I live in), I do agree with what they are protesting about. And it goes beyond Obama... He's just the straw that broke the camel's back... For years, government has been packing it on with excess spending at the expense of the people... All in the name of "the greater good." I'm sorry, but they don't see the big picture if they think spending millions/trillions of taxpayer's money is "for the greater good." They don't understand that the people in this country is what makes it great. It wasn't FDR that brought us out of the great depression, it was WWII and the unity of the people standing behind one cause and working for one goal... But they want to polarize us into left/right because they know the truth behind "united we stand, divided we fall."

I guess I'll just have to keep my TV tuned to Fox News in order to get THE TRUTH reported, and not some stupid fluff stories that are being used to disguise what is really happening in Washington... If that makes me a "nut-job", then so be it...

Monday ZOOMED by...

Every time I looked at the clock today, I couldn't believe it was the time it said...

It was (and still is at the moment) SUCH a nice day outside today. I couldn't stay to work late... It would have seemed wasteful... And it's not like my work is going anywhere...

I took Noni out on a trail that is near our house. The last time I did it, we were gone for 3 hours... We hiked to the end of the trail, then took a side trail that spit us out in a neighborhood in Juneau, then had to walk home from there... This time, I drove to the parking lot at the trail head... It's like 2 blocks away, but I didn't feel like walking there this time.

It was soooooo gorgeous... One of those days where I am so happy to live where I live. Just enough nip in the air to keep you from overheating, but not so cold that you freeze...

The bad part about the trail is the lack of consideration on the part of the various dog owners who frequent this popular trail... Seriously, there were "land mines" EVERYWHERE... Someone even took the time to bag one of the piles, but then left it there... How rude!!! Long story short, after watching where I stepped for the entire walk, I missed one and stepped full into a nice soggy pile... and my shoe has a (before this, unknown) crack in it... Lovely...

But, on the bright side (and with the amount of sun out there today, who couldn't look on the bright side), both Noni and I got lots of exercise... I'm hoping that this year will be better than last and we will be able to get out more often.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

Economic Re-structuring...

In these crazy economic times, I have found myself re-assessing my spending, specifically my automatic "memberships" to certain services...

Netflix - I will continue with this service as I love it. We can get practically any movie we want and we watch them all the time. Especially the older movies that the local rental place doesn't keep in stock. They are only good for new releases IF I MUST see a new release right away... Usually, I can wait. Its more fun that way. In the mean time, I get to enjoy old silent films and classics.

Sirius Internet Radio - I signed up for this over a year ago, because I was tired of my local stations playing Taylor Swift over and over and over again... I mean, enough is enough... But then, Sirius started playing Taylor Swift over and over and over again on the stations that I listened to, so it wasn't worth the cost. For what I spent on Sirius radio in the past year, I could have purchased hundreds of songs from iTunes and listen to that all day long. At least that way, I wouldn't have to listen to Taylor Swift. Because I can assure you, I will NEVER buy one of her ANNOYING songs, EVER! Long story short, I cancelled this today... I thought it was cancelled 2 months ago when I got a new credit card and they wouldn't let me use the internet radio because they had an incorrect card number on the account... Oh well, at least they credited me back for the most recent payment (last week). That'll help. (Seriously, it's not a dig at Taylor Swift, but I really did sign up for this initially to get away from her dreadful songs...)

I wish I didn't have to pay taxes this year... That would be so much better off financially...

I think this is the month that I will ACTUALLY eat what I have in my pantry. I spent too much in Chicago (a little more than I had budgeted, but I had a great time). I haven't gotten a Diet Coke in several weeks. I have been eating turkey sandwiches at work (instead of going to Subway to get one) and have been eating the leftovers in my fridge as opposed to going to McD's for dinner... If I have to go to the store, it will be for things like milk, cereal, bread, meat, cheese, raman noodles, etc... No "treats"... At least my new admin brings in candy to the office on a weekly basis. Apparently, her mom sends her butt-loads of candy for various reasons and she doesn't want her daughter to have it all, so she brings it to the chocoholics in the office... She's definitely an enabler.

Off to go heat up some spaghetti leftovers...

It's Spring Time in Juneau, sort of...

It has been raining more than snowing/freezing... That must mean that spring is on the way. Although, I predict at least one more snow dump before summer.

Another sign that it is spring is that my workload just doubled (if not tripled)... We are starting the renewal process on all our members... Which means that I get to do a whole crap load of work to get their data in the system so that insurance premiums can be calculated, etc, etc... I know, sounds really boring... It's also REALLY time consuming... Don't be surprised if I go MIA periodically over the next few months.

What a Great Weekend!!!

It has been a very long time since I took some time for myself and hung out with friends. Thanks to the lovely ladies who I met in Chicago for coming and making it such a great time :) I wanted to write about my trip as soon as I got home, but I laid down for a bit after putting my clothes in the washer and the next thing I knew, it was 6 AM this morning...

Be prepared, this will be a long post...

I'll start with my experience on Thursday... As you all have read by now, I hurt my knee Wednesday night... Pretty bad, too... I went to my doctor who did some adjustments to my knee and did some e-stim on it to help with the swelling. She gave me orders to get a knee brace and to wear it on the plane to help counteract the pressure fluctuations while in flight. Prior to these instructions, I was oblivious to the fact that any inflammation on your body is fluctuated by the constant pressure changes in flight. I was also told to ask for ice on the plane and ice my knee as much as possible.

So, Thursday night, I started my journey to Chicago. Many thanks to the Juneau Airport - Alaska Airlines crew who accommodated me wonderfully. They changed my seat to give me my own row as close to the front of the 737 as they could. They also let me on first and brought me a bag of ice before we took off. They were awesome :)

Unfortunately, the remaining flights of the night were all packed. Not a spare seat in the house... Bummer... My leg definitely did not like being bent for numerous hours. Nor did it like the hike through the Minneapolis/St.Paul Airport... I know, there are carts with drivers who will take you to your terminal if you need assistance. However, I had a short connection and the carts that were empty were not going to the terminal I needed to be in. After waiting for 15 minutes, I decided to hoof it down there. I only had 10 minutes before boarding and I didn't want to miss my flight to Chicago. I felt so stupid because I didn't realize there was a tram to my terminal until I got to the stop just before the one I needed to get off at. Another bummer... I couldn't have been faulted at this point. For me, it was somewhere in the vicinity of 2 AM...

Getting into Chicago wasn't bad. I had a couple of hours to kill while I waited for Summer, so I set myself up to elevate my knee and I read a book. That made the time go by pretty fast. Summer arrived around 11:30 and we headed to the hotel. Again, no one told us it would be quite the hike to get from the terminal to the bus loading area, or that we could have gone directly from the terminal to the bus loading area rather than going through the maze to get there, but that's neither here nor there...

We were pretty oblivious to which courtesy van to look for. And this was pointed out to us by a Westin Hotel van driver who told us that we missed the van and that he had been sitting there for some time... He said that when it came back, to look for "Dowell Three" because "Embassy Suites" is written in small letters underneath it... We were stumped... We didn't see a van marked "Dowell Three" and we had no idea what he was talking about. Finally, we saw a van that said "Double Tree" and upon further inspection, we found where it said Embassy Suites beneath it... Whew! Finally!

So, Friday, we were waiting at the hotel for the rest of the ladies to arrive. They were all flying in non-rev, so we didn't know when they would make it. As it turned out, only 2 of the 4 we were waiting on made it, and they only did so by going through Milwaukee and having a friend (who was going to Chicago the next day anyway) drive them down. We had extra room from the 2 that didn't make it in, so she was able to stay in the hotel with us.

Dinner was good. We had reservations in the hotel and a local pilot wife, Kristen, joined us for dinner. We all enjoyed the good food and conversations while we were getting to know each other.

Saturday, I woke up at 6 AM, without the alarm... Which would have been 3 AM for me... WTF... I was planning on getting up at 7 anyway to go to breakfast with everyone, but that's just wrong... I couldn't go back to sleep either, so I watched Saturday Morning cartoons... We then ate breakfast at the hotel buffet. It was pretty good.

After breakfast, we went to the "spa"... This "spa" was recommended to us by the hotel... They must not hold spas to very high standards... As it was, this was just a hair salon in a hole in the wall that happened to do nails and massage... Most of us opted for nails. I paid extra for a french manicure. Had I known it was not going to last 24 hours, I would have gotten a standard manicure...


We had lunch across the street. The food was really good. I stole a few pieces of Sweet Potato Fries from Nicole (ok, she let me have some, but that doesn't sound nearly as sneaky, mwah ha ha). That's the first time I have ever had SP Fries and I have to say that I like them better than regular fries.

We stopped at the 7-11 to stock up on supplies (read: Chocolate) and headed back to the hotel. After a quick cat-nap, we got ready to take the EL into the city. I found out that the GPS on my new phone is cool and all, but after walking around, it had us moving in the opposite direction 3 blocks away from where we ACTUALLY were. So we dumped the moving map and just used the map to acertain our location. Once we found the theater, we headed for dinner. It was really quite nice, at "the oldest Italian restaurant in Chicago." (You can see it in the background of this picture...) The food was good, but it was REALLY CROWDED there and we were on a schedule so we had to eat fast. If we had had time, and we could find the location, we would have had Chicago-style Pizza before the show. But we didn't, so we couldn't.

Jersey Boys is an amazing show. The guy who played Frankie Valli was awesome. I'm glad this was my first Broadway play. The music was great. I was dancing in my seat almost the entire time. If I could, I would go again.

Heading back to the hotel was another "adventure". We decided to take the EL all the way back to O'Hare to be picked up by the shuttle-bus there. Friday night, we had spoken to the guy who said he was the driver the next night and we told him our plans. He said that wasn't a problem and that he usually just sits out there with his DVD player and watches movies, so he would be there when we got in. Well, he wasn't. We called the hotel to let them know we had arrived, giving him the benefit of the doubt, thinking that he had to take some other people to the hotel before we got there. We were told that he was on his way and we went to wait for him... 30 minutes passed, and we called the hotel again... We were told again that he was on his way... Another 30 minutes passed (it is now 12:30 AM) and we called the hotel AGAIN. We were then told that they didn't know where their driver was and that they had no way of calling him... At this point, we had had enough. Thanks to our warrior, Becky, we were given a ride back to our hotel by a neighboring hotel's courtesy van, and our hotel had to pay him for it. Not 5 minutes after we arrived back at the hotel, the courtesy van shows up behind us... We were loaded down with goodies from Kristen (she left them at the front desk for us while we were in the city), and we really didn't want to confront the driver who neglected to pick us up (he probably wouldn't have survived the onslaught of 4 very tired, very angry, very hormonal women beating his sorry butt), so we booked it up to our rooms. We let the night manager handle him. And let the hotel manager hear about it as well the next day.

While we were in the city, I think the maids changed the time on our clocks. Nicole and Becky ended up getting up an hour earlier than they planned, so they went to the airport early. Summer and I slept through the alarm on my cell phone and I freaked when I woke up on Sunday and the clock said it was 8:30... We were supposed to leave to go to the airport by 9 at the latest. Luckily, my cell phone was correct in that it was actually 7:30, so we still had time to shower and pack and eat some breakfast. If Nicole hadn't texted me when she did, we might have slept longer. It was the text beep that woke me up. Thanks, Nicole :)

The flights home were better, but it made for a VERY long day. My layovers in MSP and SEA were long enough that I had time to eat something without being rushed, but not so long that I got bored. The gates were also MUCH closer than they were going out. I didn't use my knee brace on the ORD-MSP flight, but I should have. I put the brace back on in MSP and noticed the swelling had gone down considerably. I could barely get the thing on my knee on Thursday, but I had to tighten the straps to get it to stay in position on Sunday.

I finally got home at 9:30 PM Sunday night. Long, busy weekend, but well worth it. I met some fantastic women and had a great time. I can't wait for the next meet-up. :)

Becky and Nicole, I hope you don't mind that some of the pictures I used here are ones you took. Some of them didn't come out that great on my camera. Thanks for taking such great pictures! It was very nice to meet you :)

Oh what a night...

This is a picture of Nicole and Bec in front of the theater where we
saw "Jersey Boys"... The play made up for all the weird and crappy
stuff that happened before the show and almost made up for the crappy
stuff after. I'll post more when I get home. BTW... I highly recommend
seeing "Jersey Boys" if you get a chance...

Just great...

I'm not having the best day today. Last night, I tripped on Noni's
pedi-paws and wrenched my knee. My doctor was able to get me on right
away this morning, but I'm in a knee brace with imstructions to keep
of elevated as much as possible. Not an easy feat when I will be on a
plane for several hours tonight. I only hope that my PWC ladies give
me some extra understanding as I hobble around Chicago.

Sent from my iPhone

After the bath...

Noni's new look! After two hours of grooming and a bath...

Testing the picture capabilities...

Here is a picture of Noni, taken with my new phone.

Testing my mobile post options...

I'm sending this from my new phone. Hopefully it will allow me to blog
while in Chicago.

Sent from my iPhone

I have joined the dark side...

I caved and got an iPhone... I decided that it wasn't worth the stress of not being able to do what I needed to on my trip this weekend... I also decided that if I don't like it, then we already have an iPhone for A when he wants to upgrade, then I can get the blackberry... We'll see how I like the iPhone... So far, it isn't irritating me, yet...

Discouraging Day...

Today was the day to pick out my new phone. After agonizing over it for the last month or so, I finally decided on the Blackberry Bold. Has all the features that I want with an interface that I like. So I headed down to the AT&T store to purchase one. Ever since AT&T came up here, their store has ALWAYS had a line out the door, especially at lunch time. I was expecting at least a 20 minute wait. Lo and behold, they were almost empty. One of their sales reps were waiting for the next person to walk in the door... It just happened to be me. I knew exactly what I wanted, so there was none of that "just shopping" crap... I walked in and said "I want a Blackberry Bold." To which the reply was "We are sold out. Can I offer you an iPhone? Or put you on the waiting list?" WTF!!!! I checked all the other stores in town that sell AT&T phones and NONE of them have my phone.... WTF!!!! I leave tomorrow night for a trip that I was expecting to use my BB on so I can still do stuff for work, and now I can't do that... They can't even tell me WHEN they are expecting to be restocked... Something about them only receiving from AT&T what they are projected to sell. They have 3 on the waiting list before me, and they don't know if they are even going to get enough to fulfill those orders... She said they could get 2 they could get 15, they don't know. Same deal at the other store... The only saving grace is that they expect a shipment in tomorrow that may have some in it. They are supposed to call me if they do. I'm only hoping that they do come in tomorrow so I can get it programed to check my work email... That's what I REALLY need it for. Otherwise, I don't know what I am going to do...

Another thing that irritated me today was something I saw on the Today show... Now, I don't normally watch it, but this morning I did. I also know that they do a lot of "fluff" stuff on the show, which I am usually OK with... But today, the big question on everyone's mind was "What is Michelle Obama going to wear to meet the queen of England?" Are you kidding me? The current state of this nation as it is and that is what is on everyone's minds? Seriously???

If you ask me, all the press around Michelle's "fashion sense" and Barack's late night talk show appearances are a smokescreen to distract us from what is really going on...