Just not overly chatty, for what it’s worth. But… summer!

The two story house is final and we still have the cabin to finish up. Today it was lifted into place. Now the two parts will be at the same height, very awesome.

Should have good potential here. The only downer about the operation is a 2-3 inch gap between the two pieces… Hmm. Next year we’re going to tear out the connector but that’s a long winter away.

Just kinda show more how crazy high the cabin is compared to yesterday / the last 30 years.

I tried to make a time lapse movie but it didn’t pan out. The battery life on the camera wasn’t good enough.

Couple photos from over the summer months. Went to Sitka, the Brooks Range, Nome, and Tok for outside of Fairbanks type action. Otherwise mainly consumed by the house foundation stuff…

Moose from earlier in the summer

Pretty nice time to be out in June!

We all dropped into Sitka for a weekend earlier. Fantastic weather start to finish. 80 degree days at the start and a nice low-overcast day for our kayaking trip.

We went on a couple of my favorite hikes back in Sitka June-ish. Popped down for a long weekend and had a super blast.

Oh to be more original..

Well, it’s been a quiet winter.  Picked up a snow bike and that’s been fun.  We finally got out sledding last weekend which was awesome.  Tolovana might not have worked out but we’ll take what we can get.

So the first couple pictures, I’ve been biking to and from work as often as I’m able this winter.  Coldest was -35F but most of the time it was more pleasant of course.  I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned the bike stereo project but I’m on to version two.  Despite the noise of the snow I was still able to soak up the tunes to and from campus for most of the winter.  That picture of the bike laying down in the snow is from up the trail behind the house a ways.  The overflow ice was only like liquid like that a couple times this winter but a pretty fun trick riding over it.  Pretty much do it as you’d imagine, pick a high gear and spin the pedals slowly.  Try to be deathly still and then hopefully no falling over…..

Also just wrapped up, ice classic predictioning. The models were all over the map this year but hopefully we guess right on the money despite!

Not sure if this will develop much past the list phase, busy on other projects so maybe this is just a placeholder but for myself, here is the 2011 books read list. The order is only how they sit on the pile as I review them… Maybe I’ll rearrange them generally by order of enjoyment, high to low.

Loved–
The Japan Journals: 1947 – 2004 — Donald Richie & Leza Lowitz
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll — Avlaro Mutis
The Death Ship — B. Travel
Life — Keith Richards & James Fox
Just Kids — Patti Smith

Liked–
Misadventure — Millard Kaufman
An Object of Beauty — Steve Martin
Idiot America — Charles P. Pierce
Finding Mars — Ned Rozell

Neutral
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Diaz
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
A Full Life in Sitka, Alaska — Martin B. Strand Sr.
Jokes Told in Heaven About Babies — Lucy Thomas

Okay
History of the One-fingered Fastball: A Baseball Memoir, 1950-2010 — Ron Rau
Faster — James Gleick
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning — Laurie Lee
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee

It’s young and budding but Jessie started a biz this year. Focused on airplane and other research services. It’s been many months in the making but there’s finally a kernel of a website up for Northern Science Services if it takes off maybe we’ll have to amend the incorporating documents to do work in the tropics, too… On a related note, we’re young owners of an IFR gps for the plane, too. Plans for next summer include doing something like this:

This is us next summer. Hello fishing!

So that will be pretty neat. Can’t wait to fly to weird places and go fishing. It’s a long time till summer though and once there’s enough snow on the ground we’ll be putting the skis on. I’m kind of looking forward to maybe doing some ice fishing…

Is it winter already? I started this post a month ago. Shoot! Anyway, good fun summer. Spent fourth of July with a squadron of F16 pilots on the Chena, that was a kick in the pants. Most of the funnest summer things were work related but not all. You can see our end of summer flight to Girdwood was a good time, too. I’ll try once again to get a bit better with the posting of inconsequential garbage because it’s winter after all!
Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve been sitting on for a month:

Flew by Denali on the way to Girdwood in September. Nice time to be out!

Wind plus ice is a bad combo!

Just catching the color as they were a-changing.

Couldn't pick a better day for flying!

Okay, maybe one final one for today. I need to get the books off my chest so they can go back to their place on the shelf rather than in one lumpy pile. Good year for reading. In 2009 reading was limited to vacation and air travel. This year I did more at home, so nice. Plus I pretty much enjoyed everything (that I was able to finish). So what did I read? In roughly calendar year order:

How Doctors Think — Jerome Groopman — I don’t know, came across this a few years ago on a business blog suggestion list. I guess I just prefer how I think over these doctor people. Reading this book maybe made me feel like these doctors he writes of are more limited in their thinking than he realizes. But, to think that I had to read the book so there is that I suppose. Glad I don’t think like a doctor though. (Vacation Book)
The Sun Also Rises — Earnest Hemingway — Revisiting an old friend here. Nice contrast for me, this book with us on the west coast of Kauai pretty much middle of nowhere Hawaii in the blazing sun. (Vacation Book)
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian — Wallace Stegner’s posthumous love letter to John Wesley Powell. Liked it but it was a meaty read. Started it when we were on Kauai but then put it down until the October Boston trip… then put down again… finished over Christmas break. It’s a long dense bit of book but the early part was neat focusing on the exploration rather than the grandiosity of the West and what foresight Powell had etc. (Vacation book, from J’s library)
Dave Barry does Japan — Dave Barry — P suggested this as mandatory reading for my trip to Japan in March 2010. It’s a funny little book. Feels a little awkward but definitely a classic for Japan touring. (Work travel)
Under the Banner of Heaven — Jon Krakauer — Sort of a book about Mormon fundamentalists and such. Was kind of a follow up for me from the Powell book where there is documented speculation about maybe early Mormons massacring settlers passing through Utah once upon a time. Friend A picked this book up and passed it on after I became curious about the rest of the story. Pretty much a cover to cover read. (work travel book)
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich — Alexandr Solzhenitsyn — Read this sometime late winter. Dug it. (winter book, J’s library)
Cruising Paradise — Sam Shepard — Collection of short stories from J’s Nebraska library. Fast and tasty this one I burned right through it. One bit of trivia: Jens Lekman’s song ‘Your Arms Around Me’ (the avocado slicing song) is a riff off Shepard’s ‘More Urgent Emergencies’ in this collection. Looking at the book again though, just fond indistinct memories. (home/winterbreak book, J’s library)
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #29 Generally, a short story collection where the goal is to celebrate writing or something. Some good nuggets in this one. Been in J’s library unread for a while. I was totally into it. (winterbreak book, J’s library)
Superbad Stories an Pieces — Ben Greenman — Fair to middling. Kind of an erratic read like an album that isn’t solid start to finish. But, I liked it. (winterbreak book, J’s library)
Zeitoun — Dave Eggers — I had this on my want to read list for a while but I could never remember the name when J would put in the McSweeney’s orders. So, it took a year or two to get read. Totally enjoyed it. It’s all about this dude semi-surviving Katrina and the aftermath with the twist that he’s originally a muslim from the middle east with a sucessful small business in New Orleans and the havoc that comes in part from being so complicated. Total page turner and mind number because it’s just unbelievable as the pace picks up the cards he’s dealt. (winterbreak book)
Big Dead Place — Nicholas Johnson — An unlikely choice. I aimed to stretch myself a bit more 1) reading books we already had in the library this year (plane purchase…) 2) pick up odd ones that I didn’t think I’d like from J’s collection for a bit different than the usual (mainly this). This book is totally in this category (the other J books on this list were in this category but the ‘different’ came from a… different direction). I was pretty skeptical going in but I enjoyed it. It’s all about life on Antarctica and the dumb rules & regulations and the stupid stuff people do working in and around all that. An intentionally abrasive read I’d imagine for some but… having spent more time on the slope than I care for there were plenty of echoes of similarity. So, rather than a window into the a lifestyle few are lucky enough to participate in it was more an affirmation of the zaney direction an organization can take with overzealous obsession with safety and regulation. (winterbreak book)

So I think that’s basically it. There might be a book or two missing and I have this problem of which 2011 Christmas books I read before the end of the year (only a couple months back and I already can’t remember) but I’ll post them to the 2011 list. In general, 2010 came to conclusion and I was happy with the state of my reading. Feels nice getting back into the book business rather than just catching up with garbage internet to fuel my need to read anything as long as the words stream past my eyes (a hereditary disease).

Figured I might just keep my momentum up a bit longer. I’m on a pretty decent run of goodish music live. A sampler below. Saw some group called the Devil Whale over the weekend. Also a good time. I went in not thinking it, just going for an okay but it was good and that’s nice. I’ll toss a picture up of them once I get it off the camera. Kind of strange that over half of these shows were in Fairbanks. What do you think, is this an example of the weak economy, bands are having to tour in demographically smaller areas or is this touring becoming a larger chunk of the band revenue? No idea but I like that we’re getting better stuff than ever before!

It was a while ago but I celebrated a week of halloween in 2010. Here’s a sampler. On a trip to Boston in the fall the fam and I went to a wig store and a costume shop. Loved every minute! Anyway, got my firs honest to goodness wig. The lady at the store tried to talk me out of it, her dad was encouraging and R was also nicely supportive. Here it is seeing some daylight back in Fairbanks.

Do I look wise or what?

How about this badboy?

Pretty nice how accented my nostrils are in that second photo.

I figured, since I’m on a roll here I’d revisit some older things. To bad the posting order has the newest first….