Meat is murder yummy!

So our Span frozen order came. Finally.

Admit it, you've always wondered what a few hundred dollars worth of frozen meat products looks like. It's ok...it's good to be curious.

Almost enough to make me sad we'll be headed to WI for Xmas on Friday, unable to really dig into the wonderful symphony of animal flesh in our freezer.

Almost ;-)

iTraining

I spent last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday with a great group of students, in Bethel for training for some of the great multimedia tools that are on the school computers. The district flew up an Apple trainer from California who, from the sound of it, does a ton of these sorts of workshops. At first, I was a little skeptical of how the training was going to work, but I have to say, he won me (and more importantly the kids) over right away and just took off running with showing us the capabilities and the nuts and bolts of some of the "iLife" programs that come with computers that the schools have for all the students to use.

Now, I've never been a "Mac guy", but that's mostly been because I've never had occasion to use a Mac for any reason. So when I did, it was only to, say, check my email on Sara's school computer, and of course the interface was pretty foreign to me, and I just didn't have the comfort level to use it like I do with my PCs. But now that I'm using them more, and seeing the kinds of programs available on Macs, and their focus on creative-type stuff, I'm definitely seeing the appeal. I'm even entertaining the possibility of having a Mac around at some point in the near future, and splitting my time on seperate gaming/work-focused and creative-stuff-focused setups. Not that I want to buy another computer right now...just saying I can see myself doing it in the future sometime. Like maybe a tax-return or PFD time splurge...

But the training itself went awesome...can't wait to get started on some of the website and podcast stuff we're going to do with the High School students next semester. I think they're going to have a blast...

Without further adieu....

It's a boy!!!!

Here are the first of what are sure to be countless pictures of the kid to appear on this blog :-D





(Doesn't that second picture make him look like the pig-doctor from that Twilight Zone episode??)

Update

For those of you wondering...here's what I know so far:

1. Sara's appointment went really well.

2. The ultrasound person wrote down the sex of the baby on a slip of paper and put it in an envelope along with some snapshots, etc (apparently the printer was working this time...heh). We'll open it together when she gets home tomorrow :-)

3. You can definitely expect another blog post on the subject.

*cue halleluja chorus*

New York Times: Some Airlines to Offer In-Flight Internet Service

One of the airlines mentioned? Alaska. Yeah, how nice will it be to be able to get online during the six-and-a-half hour flight between Chicago and Anchorage? A much better use of $10 than the "digi-players", that's for sure :-)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they equip the long-haul planes by spring. If so, I might have to invest in an extra laptop battery so I get my money's worth out of the flight...heh.

"it's all kinda sketchy past anchorage"

[rant]

Christmas shopping from the village is interesting.

Of course, the "revolution" of online shopping has undoubtedly changed life out here...I wouldn't know personally, as I've only been here a year and a half. But to be able to sit at one's desk and browse the full collections of the online retailers of the world is definitely a comforting connection to the world outside. It's just as easy (and dangerous) to browse Amazon or Target.com on payday as it is to go bum around Target in person, tossing things into the cart on impulse...more than once, I've exclaimed my relief that Fleet Farm doesn't have an online store :-)

The only problem is when it comes to the shipping. That's where the title quote of this post comes, from Sara. I've been doing most of my xmas shopping online, of course, but just as planning travel this time of year involves a little bit of dice-tossing, the same goes for the speed (or turtle-like-sloth) of the arrival of anything purchased online. The variables are myriad and sundry...weather, river, competence of a company's shipping people, the service they sent the package with, karma, the phase of the moon, the direction of the migration of the Caribou herds, etc. A package sent regular mail arrived from Florida in a matter of a few days...a box from Seattle sent UPS "next day" a few weeks ago has yet to arrive...frozen food shipped freight from Anchorage even earlier is, at this point, probably halfway over the Alaska Range on dogsled.

Really, anything we need to buy has to be done online, seeing as we won't be getting home until right before xmas. Thankfully, we've been making a few of our gifts this year, so that's dependent only on our motivational level and raw materials. Anything else I need to finish up ordering online, at this point, is going to have to just be shipped to Wisconsin, lest they turn into Martin Luther King day gifts.

[/rant]

(Non) Controversy

So, after a couple weeks of cold and snow and actual winter weather, it decided to get all warm and springlike again last week. We're talking almost 50 degrees for a week. All the snow we had is gone, and the ice on the river got so bad again that we missed some school on Friday and again today. Awesome. *smacks forehead*

The reality of "climate change" may be questioned elsewhere in the world, but all I heard here last week was students walking the halls, looking out the windows, muttering "#*&^@%! this global warming!"

I didn't have the heart to yell at them for swearing.