SBL #6

Hike into the Tongass Rain-forest

Skagway 7

1. Summertime! Sunshine is great :) I remember throughout May when I first got here and it was so cold and rainy, I saw the sun maybe 5 times that month. June warmed up and then the beginning of July got cold again. Now it’s about every-other-day is sunny and then rainy. This past week it got up to 80 degrees! We were all dying of heat. The next day the clouds rolled in, it poured and the temperature dropped back down to 50-ish. And I thought Utah weather was crazy.

2. I went to the Stowaway Cafe with Mandy and her friend Amanda for dinner. Cafe my eye. That place was fancy! We shared some Bleu Bread for an appetizer and I got 'Bubbly But-n-Brie' (Halibut). It was amazing. 

3. Big Mike went home this week. The house is quite a bit quieter.

4. On Thursday night I went to a Lemongrass party at the Del Sol apartment. Lemongrass is a Colorado company that makes natural soaps, body scrubs, facial cleansers, foot-soaks, lotion and such. Meika (from the Kone) sells it. (like MaryKay, you know?) We got to do pedicures and facials using the samples. That apartment smelled so good by the time we were through with it! :) Unfortunately Heidi and I had to skip out early for the employee picture. Our theme at work this summer is ‘Ship Shape’ so for our picture we all donned striped shirts and sailor hats.

5. We celebrated Christmas in July! At the beginning of the week we drew names to do Secret Santa and then had a bit of Christmas all week. Tuesday was Turnovers of course. Wednesday we each wrote notes to our person, which was so fun! It was like Elementary school with us all passing secret notes all day. On Thursday Karla brought a bunch of fruit for everyone to eat on their lunch breaks (that was Christmas right there!) Then Friday was Christmas. Karla and Duff made turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and all that for Aloha Friday lunch. The breakroom was decked out with colored lights and we each got a stocking! Haha Karla and Duff are awesome :) They gave us each a pair of socks for our stocking with a coupon good for free candy from the Kone. We exchanged gifts and said ‘Merry Christmas’ all day. It was so fun! I had Little Mike so I made him a paper doll ‘Manilla Man’ since he is heading there for his mission next month. It was really cheesy but fun. My Secret Santa gave me some yummy tangerine soda, my favorite licorice and a bottle of nail polish from Del Sol.

6. Mamo plays the Ukulele really well. We randomly here him playing it through the wall at night.

7. The ‘OK’ button fell off of my phone. Random.

8. Kim texted me about starting the 8 week challenge! . . .on Christmas. . . :)

9. Ashley and I rode the TRAIN! (Sat. July 28) Half the people who work at WPYR are in the branch and the other half play softball with Ashley so…we got to go for free! We took the loop that goes up to the summit of White Pass and back. It was beautiful. I could ride that train all day long. I took 147 pictures on the 3-hour ride :) We got to stand out on the platform between cars most of the time. The scenery was gorgeous and we saw lots of neat places with lots of history. Like the old White Pass trail still worn into the rock and, [Jared] Dead Horse Gulch where thousands of  pack animals died (mostly due to neglect) on the way to Dawson City, and the old train bridge that had to be retired because it wasn’t safe anymore but it’s still standing. What can I say? I LOVED IT!

10. The branch had a big Pioneer Day celebration out at Seven Pastures. Pulled pork sandwiches, salads and desserts plus games for the little kids and handcart races. It’s funny how Utah is the only place where wards don’t do something for Pioneer Day.

11. Church was so good today. In Sacrament one sister talked about how Satan really tempts us with ‘If you are a child of God or not’, It’s the temptation of forgetting who we are and where we need to return. Like when Satan was tempting Christ he kept saying “If you are the son of God”…Satan wants us to forget who we are and where we are headed. If he can do that his job is easy. Don’t forget that you have someone to go home to.

12. I made homemade Pizza today. We ended up putting chicken, turkey lunchmeat, mushrooms and onions on it for toppings because the grocery has limited selection :) It turned out really good.

13. We basically have the T.V. on constantly now for the Olympics. It’s fun because it brings the house together. The gymnastics blows my mind. We just watched the US team doing the balance beam. They are amazing.

14. I can’t believe it’s already almost August! Time has flown.

Ashley, Kat & Me

Manilla Man...

At the Summit of White Pass

Skagway 6

It's been forever, so this is a long post...sorry.

1. Country music at work is the best thing. You know I love my country. We usually listen to ‘the Blend’ on Sirius Radio, or sometimes ‘the Pulse’. They play some good stuff but it is just the same stuff over and over…Mindy was gone a couple days so we switched it to a country station. It was so refreshing! And exactly what I needed when I was feeling so homesick. And the country station has a longer list of songs so you don’t hear the same ones over in one shift. I love country.

2. So we have this one t-shirt at work that shows how small Texas is compared to Alaska and says “Isn’t Texas Cute?”  We get lots of comments on that :) It’s our best-selling shirt. Some Texans don’t appreciate it. It’s fun to joke with them about it though. This one family came in and started talking about how we needed to take down “that defective shirt.” One of them was a very cute, maybe adorable, guy with a great accent…we enjoyed joking around with those Texans :)


3. Mindy calls Mathew (Ashley's man) Mountain Shop man. Mindy: It looks like either he is a model for The Mountain Shop or else Patagonia threw up on him.

4. Mandy and I went to Bombay Curry! I had never had Indian food before. I got Korma Chicken and we shared some garlic Nan. It was so yummy! And that place is awesome. There is a big T.V. on the wall playing a never-ending montage of Indian music videos, which are hilarious. Mandy and I sat and talked for about an hour, about randomness and laughed at the outrageousness of the music videos. It was great.

5. I went paintballing for the first time! We went for our Branch young adult activity. It was fun! I didn’t get hit :) I was the sniper that hid out :) Nicole, Jordan, Little Mike and I were on a team. Nicole and I crouched behind some plywood fronts and peppered the general direction of the other team whenever Jordan yelled “Cover me!” I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t ever get hit because everyone was comparing welts at church the next day… It was fun, but I was kinda scared at first.

6. Sundays are so great! We have an awesome branch, cute nursery kids, good teachers, free time, and Meet-N-Eat! This time it was Breakfast :) Pancakes, bacon, sausage gravy, berry pancakes… I love Breakfast!

7. Mamo is seriously the coolest guy I know. Not only does he have an awesome sound system set up in his room which plays hymns for all to hear on Sunday mornings, not only is he a Poly, (see he is already awesome right?) but he is super nice and kind of a big brother to all of us at the Kone House. And he comes home late at night deliriously tired and entertains us all with stories. Like the other night he starts talking about how he would make a great ‘snuggie’. Mamo: I’m so hot all the time it’s like hey are you cold? Call 1-800-blah-blah-blah and order your Mamo now! And then I just show up and cuddle with them for a few minutes and they are toasty warm. Crazy huh?

8. Happy 3^rd of July! Oh…well Skagway does fireworks on the third because the firework guy is from Haines so he does theirs on the fourth and Skagway gets shafted to the third. It was freezing! But awesome! Skagway makes everything fun. They closed off part of Broadway for a live band and then we headed down to the docks to watch the fireworks over the water. They started them pretty late (11:00ish maybe?) but it was still kind of light. We went out on the Ore dock (me, Jordan and Nicole, Ashley went off with Mathew) and met up with Kat, Keoni, and some of the other ACT peeps (Alaska Coach Tours). The wind was blowing hard off the ocean and it was freezing. Coldest Fourth of July celebration I have ever been to. They set off the fireworks from the end of the Railroad dock and, for the finale, from a boat out in the bay at the same time. It was awesome.

9. On the 4^th there was a parade. The theme was “Volunteerism”. So for the Klothes Rush/Kone Kompany/Broadway Video/Duff’s float Mindy came up with “Volunteering our Sanity for 30 Years”. So we were crazy people. Crazy people being chased around by tourists waving coupons and crew members yelling “Crew discount? Do you have a discount for the crew?” I was a crew member. I chased Nicole around, who was wearing a strait-jacket, and yelled crew discount until I was hoarse. It was great :) Then we all went to work and got paid time-and-a-half! Karla and Duff had hotdogs, macaroni salad and watermelon for us at lunch. Over-all a pretty great 4^th.

10. One day at work I commented on how long Keoni’s lunch breaks seem. Mindy: He probably walked past a mirror and just couldn’t tear himself away.

11. Little Mike swam out into the ocean on an already cold day to rescue his hat. He came home nearly hypothermic. Crazy kid.

12. Jade works at the Kone. She is a local and sorta my hero. She is getting ready to go to Ireland! She is doing foreign exchange and spending her junior year of high school in Ireland. How cool is that?

13. Aloha Friday is the best. Every Friday Karla and Duff make lunch for all the employees. They always make something amazing like homemade lasagna or gyros or taco soup. We love Aloha Friday. Also Turnover Tuesday. So good.

14. One of the tour guides told us about a guy on his tour who stepped off the bus, looked around at the scenery and said, “Alaska is just God showing off.”

15. Squatch. Not long after I got here we were channel surfing and came across a show about these guys who were trying to find Bigfoot. They referred to him as ‘Squatch’. Like “it looks like the Squatch dragged some branches here to create a shelter” and they call their Bigfoot hunting “Squatching.” So…we have fun with this. Seriously just say the word ‘Squatch’ or ‘Squatching’. It’s just great. And Ashley has this irrational fear of Sasquatch. It really freaks her out. And this is Squatch territory don’t ya know? And then we got this crazy t-shirt in at work that has a freaky squatch on it which made this one tourist lady tell us about how her son and his friends are squatching right now in Oregon. HaHA! And she was dead serious. And she really called it squatching. And I love it.

16. Something I have learned about myself since I’ve been here?...I eat a lot of peanut butter. I’m on my third jar.

17. My roomie Ashley and her guy Mathew broke up. He has some stuff to figure out and thinks it would be better if they were just friends.

18. We had a girls’ night out at Brew Co. Nicole, Mandy, Jen, Ashley and I went after work. It was so fun! We just talked and talked and ate and talked. We got to know each other a lot better. And the Brew Co. has super yummy food. I got the buffalo chicken wrap with fries and got to try their Mac’n’Cheese because Ashley ordered it. It’s really good.

19. Every Wednesday night there is Karaoke at the Bonanza Bar & Grill. Kat and the other ACT peeps usually go and they invited Ashley and me. I was pretty excited. It sounded way fun but then they all flaked out so we ended up just hanging out at their house for a while eating popcorn cake and talking. Hopefully we’ll still make it to Karaoke night sometime.

20. We are working it out for Ash to come stay with me for my last week! I AM SO EXCITED!

21. Grocery shopping in small town Alaska is kinda like looking for water in a desert. If your timing is not right there is nothing there or else it has already evaporated.

22. Mandy is great. Her Mom works for Air Excursions so they get to fly free. The other day they went to Juneau and she offered to bring my back stuff from Costco. Yay! She got me a pack of tuna and a big bag of apples! Ashley and I split them and it’s been way nice to have something a little different. Of course the apples are red delicious, which if I had a choice I would never choose, but still its fresh fruit!

23. Days off are so nice. Lately I have been lucky enough to have Saturdays and Sundays off with Ashley. Last week it ended up being a beautiful day. We slept in, ran some errands around town, got smoothies at Glacial Smoothie, and laid out in the sun on our front lawn.

24. That Saturday night we went to the Drag Show at the Red Onion Saloon. They do one every year where guys dress up like women and vice versa. This year it was a charity event. All the money made that night, from people paying to get in and from the drinks sold and the money thrown at the ‘drag queens’, went to Anna and her husband. Anna works at the Shack. Her husband is currently ‘down south’, in the lower 48, waiting for a kidney and fighting cancer. They don’t have insurance. The Drag Show brought in $5,000 for them that night. It’s not much at all compared to what they are going to need but it’s still pretty neat that one little bar in one little town can raise that much in just a couple hours. Oh boy it was crazy and fun and hilarious. Mathew participated. Talk about one big woman. He is 6’4” and they found him some huge high heels to wear. It was hilarious.

25. We went on a little Twilight kick. Nicole was having a not so great day at work so I asked her what she wanted to do that night. She said veg and watch a Twilight movie. So I rented Eclipse when I got off work and she, Jordan, Alex and I watched it. So then the next night we got Breaking Dawn Part 1 and we all watched it. Good times. Alex’s Twilight confession: He watched Breaking Dawn Part 1 when it came out and then went and read the book because he couldn’t wait for the last movie to know how it ends. So he hasn’t read any of the books except for the last one and just because he was impatient.

26. Every Thursday is Disney day. Disney cruise ships dump a bunch of crazy families into our store so they are usually pretty crazy days. This past week Mindy has been gone on vacation with her family at Yellowstone and on Thursday Karla was gone to Whitehorse. So it was no Mindy, no Karla, Mandy was off, Nicole got pulled into the Kone because they were super busy, Jen was there, Ashley was there, Kat was there(which doesn’t count for much) Keoni was there with a sinus headache(ya he was worthless) and I was there. We just about died. It was so busy and hot and everyone was grumpy. Ugh.

27. Luckily that night we had an awesome Girls’ Night at the Del Sol apartment above the Shack. I made poppyseed muffins to take, there were a bunch of us and we just ate food (hummus, chocolate pie, rice krispy treats, etc.) and talked and painted our nails, and talked, and did facials, and talked and did pencil pregnancy predictions. According to the twirling pencil I am going to have one boy. Who knows? :) (July 19)

28. Like I’ve said before, since we get free movie rentals from the Shack we watch a lot of movies in this house. Some good ones lately have been: New Year’s Eve (good chick flick), Last Holiday, Just Write (I was on a Queen Latifah kick), and Becoming Jane. The last is the story of Jane Austin. It is such a beautifully done movie. I cried a few times and love Jane Austin even more now that I know a bit of her life. She was incredible.

29. Yesterday (Sat. July 21) Ashley and I hiked the Lower Dewey Lake loop. It was a gorgeous day, lots of sunshine and just enough breeze. The trail starts at the end of town and heads straight up the pine-covered mountain. The first section is steep switchbacks and I was not loving it, but after a while it levels out and the trail winds through the forest. The trees are so close together here, all fighting to be taller than those around to reach the sunlight. It’s beautiful. The trail takes you to the lake and then around (the loop) on the water’s edge. It’s gorgeous. I could’ve spent the entire day hanging out around the lake. (Pictures on Facebook soon) We followed the trail around the lake, stopping to take pictures along the way, and back to the beginning. We talked girl-talk and joked about Squatch, and I saw my first wildlife! Haha a squirrel :)

30. The rest of the day we lazed around. We borrowed the smart car and went to the grocery store to get ingredients for our desserts for the next day’s meet-n-eat and hit The Mountain Shop, which is like Duff’s but even more high-end (think Patagonia and Mountain Hardwear). We ditched our groceries at the house and then drove up to You Say Tomato, a little organic food store at the other end of town. Neither of us got anything, though the pineapple was tempting, it was all real expensive. We came back and watched Becoming Jane again and ate grilled tuna and cheese sandwiches. That night there was supposed to be a bonfire out at the Point for the Branch young adult activity but it got cold and super windy so we ended up playing Pictionary at the church. There were only about ten of us, we did girls against guys and had a blast. We came up with things like Pinterest, Twilight, exfoliate, Cinderella, and pole dancing for the guys to draw. They gave us stuff like excavator, jock strap, macaroni noodle, plyers, and gremlin. There’s a lot of fun people up here.

31. Nursery is something else. Those 3 little kids are adorable but it’s just such a small space and they are so not wanting to be cooped up. But they are cute.

32. I made peanut butter pie for meet-n-eat tonight. It turned out pretty good for going off of memory. Well I didn’t try any but there wasn’t any left so I guess it was good.

33. It’s nearly midnight but I wanted to finish this post. I’m doing great here in Skagway. There’s just something about this town. The hippies feel it, it attracts the mountain men and city-slicker tourists alike, it’s in the air and the landscape. The crowded pine trees and the wildflowers. The air is amazing here. Just breathing in lightens your weary soul. Life flows through the ocean, along the rocks, up the slopes and in the trees. It’s carried on the wind and breathes through the cracks in the old buildings. They are alive as well. Everything fits together to paint this incredible landscape which is Skagway.

Something To Say

  This post has no purpose or specific theme. I just feel the need to write. To maybe get some stuff out there that's been milling around in my head. Who knows what will end up on this page. Your guess is as good as mine.

   I've got a million emotions, we all do. They roll around in my mind like playful sea otters on the water's surface. They are always moving, switching places, disappearing for a moment only to pop up again somewhere completely different. They never tire.

   And then there's the self-doubt. Those nagging thoughts that sneak in and grab hold, threatening to send you running to the safety of loneliness. Alone is much safer. Alone is easier, but never easy. Alone doesn't make you feel self conscious of what you're wearing, how much weight you need to lose, or how blah your hair is. Alone doesn't make you worry about everything you say. Is it stupid? Is it the wrong thing to say? Alone doesn't care about the number of zits on your chin. Alone doesn't care about how little you know. Alone doesn't make you feel embarrassed. Alone doesn't judge. Alone is always there for you.

   Alone can be a constant companion or an every-now-and-then. Alone can be your best friend.

  Sometimes when I think about the future, my future, I see quite a bit of alone. It's almost as if I've resigned myself to it. Like it's all okay. Alone and I are going to be together for a long time. I see me and alone painting walls. Painting murals on the walls. Seashore landscapes, mountains, lakes and meadows. Quotes and lyrics and favorite passages from favorite books. Splattering colors that look like the 80's and a select few (namely nieces and nephews) painting with me. I see myself trying good-looking recipes from Pinterest and babysitting all the time. I see myself with a dog, or 4, at all times. And a wrap-around porch. And a big, beautiful bathtub.

    When I think about that guy. The one that is out there. I can't imagine him. I can't imagine him being real. Be realistic. Realistic? Realistically is there a guy on this earth who would be willing and able to put up with all my issues? Who would want me?

  I know I'm young. 21. There is plenty of time to meet guys. Fall in love. Get a broken heart. All that living is ahead of me.

   But realistically, I need to explore. I need to find out what I love. What am I passionate about? What field or career is right for me? The search is on. Because happiness is being in love. With your work, or your dog, your man, or your life. Love life. Because that's what you have.