Gotta start him early!

This is what happens when you combine geeky parents, Saturday morning, and access to polkas.

Poor little guy.

Five. Five-dolla. Five-dolla foot longs.*

*(Unless you're in Bethel. Then they are nine-dolla foot longs)

Well! What's new here, you ask?

Not too much. Can not believe we're coming up on December and the end of the semester already! Maybe it's because I've been at home with Isaac and not teaching, but this year is just flying by. We'll see how next semester goes once I'm...knock on wood...back to working part time (or maybe even full time? Rumors are afoot...)

I got to make a surprise trip into Bethel last weekend. It's actually kind of funny, because on Sunday morning while we were watching the Packer game, Sara made a joking suggestion that I snowmachine into Bethel to get Subway. You see, Subway is the only national-type chain within a good 450 miles, and sometimes the lure of the TV advertising does its job. I, of course, replied to her suggestion in the negative, stating that with the trail conditions as they were, it would be 4 hours until I returned with her sandwich, by which time she would have surely eaten something else. We considered the matter tabled.

Well, little did I imagine that later that day, we would receive a call about our Principal being stuck in Bethel due to weather and planes not flying, and asking if I'd be interested to ride in and help pick him and his bags up. Of course, having yet to get out and "stretch my legs" farther than to Kasigluk so far this winter, I jumped at the chance. The trail had actually improved a little bit due to a few inches of light, fluffy snow that fell over the weekend (and without wind to drift it about), and we made it in at a decent pace...about an hour and 15 minutes.

So we picked Garry up, made it back before 9 (which was a plesant surprise, considering we didn't leave 'til after 5), and Sara ended up getting her Subway after all.

Thanksgiving in Wasilla...

Ah, our classy Governor. Is there anything she can't ruin?

Best quote: "(sarcastically)...certainly we'll get criticism for even doing this!"

She truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

Loooong weekend?

It's been a little odd around here this week. Sara's been home all week sick...well, home sick Monday and Tuesday by choice, and then yesterday and today because they sent her home Wednesday because her eye looked kinda funky. She went to the clinic today, more out of a desire to get the ok to go back to work, I think, but ended up "winning the clinic game" as she called it: mild eye, sinus, and ear infections, strep throat, and a cold on top of all that. So yeah, how Ike and I have managed not to really get sick (yet...knock on wood), I don't know.

As a side effect of having Sara home today, I had a few hours to poke around and retroactively apply "labels" to all the posts on this blog, all the way back through 2006. For some reason, the labels aren't showing up on the posts themselves, but the menu on the right should work if for some reason you ever wanted to go back and narrow down to all the entries I ever wrote about Loki, or snowmachining, or posts with video or anything like that.

Now if only I could post more often, eh?

Another link (with bonus rant)

Gentle reader, I hope you don't mind that many of my posts this year have been links to articles about our lovely state. It's just that we've been in the news, not to mention the lower 48's public consciousness, lately for some reason, and let's face it...the articles by the real, actual "writers" of the liberul media elite do a much better job than I ever could.

So! In that vein, here's an article from the ADN today about our use of wind power here in Kasigluk/Nunap:

Our view: Wind at work

Quite interesting to me, in that I think it provides a little bit of a roadmap to the viability and the way renewable energy is finally going to get traction in this country, at least in my humble and unenlightened opinion. Having less to do with concern about climate change, environmentalism, and worry about our "carbon footprint" (garbage disposal here consists of hauling trash out to a designated "dump" area on the tundra and setting it ablaze on occasion), and more about simple economic self interest. If wind turbines can generate energy in a local economy dealing with $7+ per gallon heating fuel, then hell yeah, we're on it.

Not that things like this would necessarily happen without the "pork" that Alaska gets from the Federal Government...you know, like the "Bridge to Nowhere". Sorry, venting again. I'm getting a little sick of reading all the Alaska-bashing on some of the lefty political blogs I frequent. Haha, we're still counting votes because they're arriving on dogsled...haha, we're all idiots who voted for a convicted felon...haha, we all want to "drill baby drill", shoot wolves from helicopters, and think we have foreign policy experience because we're by Russia. Well guess what, we need some of that "pork" because many places in this undeveloped state still are missing basic infrastructure like roads and plumbing. And those backwards, hillbilly rural voters whose votes they're now counting, more than a week after the election because the dogsled just arrived? Yeah, they just put Begich ahead of ConvicTed Stevens, even though we know not having Uncle Ted in the Senate will probably lead to less money and slower development out here. Yeah, you're welcome.

Haha!

What is up with all this national media attention lately out here??

Wall Street Journal - Are These the Shortest Commercial Flights in the U.S.?

Note to readers...as the person re-doing the school's website (at a snail's pace, admittedly), don't count on that link to the dog sleds working for long ;-)

Unfortunately, she is my Governor, so I must keep mocking her.

Copy-pasted, because I'm the laziest blogger ever:

From the Urban Dictionary:

Palin

1. An applicant lacking even basic job skills

2. Someone supremely un-self-aware or lacking any relative sense of what he/she does or doesn't know.

HR sent me another Palin for the marketing manager job.

Palin v.

1. to abandon one's principles for short term gain

Tom, a devout vegan, palined when he consumed a happy meal solely to obtain the collectible toy it contained.

Palin n.

1. Pejorative term that refers to an incompetent, impractical, irrelevant or incapable person who has been appointed to a position of great importance.

2. A person who holds authority disproportionate to his or her requisite ethics and qualifications. Derived from John McCain's controversial 2008 Vice Presidential pick, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

John was recently made principal, but everybody thinks he's a Palin who can't do the job.

My new boss is such a Palin - he took my deserved place because the CEO is
his personal friend.

This list, however, I compiled over the course of the last 2 months...some of the funnier nicknames I've spotted for our illustrious Governor (in no particular order):

Caribou Barbie

Snowbilly

Bible Spice

Nanookie of the North

The Disasta from Alaska

Mooselini

Brain to Nowhere

Iditabroad

The Wicked Witch of Wasilla

Jane Six-Pack

Jane Winebox

Sideshow Moosetits

Sarah Flailin'

The Election Day post

Okay, I'll readily admit I'm a big geek for politics (among other things, of course), so election days are pretty much like Christmas, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day and Trivia all rolled up into one. We did it up right yesterday, with a family voting adventure and a party to watch results come in until late in the evening. Plenty of comments I could make about what voting here was like, not to mention the amazing results nationally and some not-so-cool state level results, but for now lets just take a look at some scenes from the day that was:

This is a video I cut together quickly from what I shot yesterday when we went to vote...sorry if it's a little Blair-Witch-y at the beginning, I'm just no good at the walking and the shooting.



Outside our polling place...



Isaac got to celebrate the event by getting his first solid food - avocados! There's video of this somewhere, too...I may spare you that.



Sara showing off the Obama Victory Cake I made...did I mention I'm a huge nerd? But we figured if we couldn't celebrate with beer...



Yeah, we party like rock stars here in Nunap.

Stay tuned...

Busy busy election day...but stay tuned for a video and pics of Isaac's first election and the party to follow. Once I get a chance to edit and upload everything...