Friday, July 31, 2009

Well, obvious if you read my last post, you would know that I woke up early this morning in anticipation to go to the clinic and take a pregnancy test. Which turned out to be positive, YAY for us!! The weather this morning is overcast but already 50F out, I don’t think the sun will come out today, but it’s clear enough that we should be able to get a plane! After getting back from the clinic we took our pups out for their morning walk, then made sure I made it down to the office in time. My mom came up and grabbed the 4-wheeler last night and my bike is down at the office, so I’ll have to walk this morning (fine with me!).

Got down to the office, and my mom was on the phone with one of my sister’s, crying saying she’s happy to be a grandma again! I had a lot of people come up and congratulate the both of us! I got the charge slips into the book and started to get the paperwork into the spread sheets. I am going to wait for this month’s bank statements to get in before so I can get the bank reconciliation caught up to date. Around 11AM, the first flight flew over head, all our hotel guests checked out (I’m guessing they are leaving on that plane). I heard a good amount of mail came in, I’m waiting for movies to come in now! So I hope I got something in… or more junk magazines would be nice! Love knowing what’s going on in Hollywood! :P

For lunch we decided on grilled cheese and soup. I have to start making sure I get enough diary into my diet, also need to start eating more veggies and fruits… and somehow stop drinking Mt Dew – my only source of caffeine!! I’m a pop addict (yes there is such a thing)…. I don’t know what it is… the HFCS? The caffeine? The fizzyness of it? All I know is that both my hubby and I are definitely addicted to pop… and if we don’t drink it we get: sick, moody, get headaches (all withdrawal symptoms!). So I have to wean myself slowly, I’m happy that in the last year I’ve cut my habit in half… just have to keep doing the same… maybe start mixing my pop with really ice cold water or something until I’m drinking just water exclusively….

Back at the office this afternoon I cashed a couple checks, took some phone calls and got more paperwork into the computer. I had a couple people come up and pay on their store bills. They know we aren’t open tomorrow and it’s the end of the month. Most people like to come in on the 1st and pay on their store bill once I finish getting the bills out to them by that afternoon! Monday is going to be a busy day for me… getting billing done, and helping with payroll. Oh well, Monday’s are usually always busy…

Tonight we are going to the café for dinner; they are having pork chops for a special today. That sounds really good to me, plus I don’t have to dirty my kitchen!! So that’s what we have planned for dinner. Not sure what we are doing after work, I just know I want to get my workout on my Wii Fit done for the day, shower up and relax! I wouldn’t mind going up the hill sometime and getting more strawberry plants and putting them in my parent’s “flower box.” Might just do that over the weekend if the weather stays nice!

Also I ordered that new Fast and Furious movie from Walmart.com, my hubby’s been bugging me like a little kid about how much he’d like to be able to watch it and who around here would get it and when. So I figured hell with it and ordered it for him… maybe he will let me get a new purse/bag that I’ve been looking at ;) LOL.. Our anniversary coming around the corner ;)

Well I’m so excited about my great news! I can’t wait to meet him/her and see who baby looks like and watch them grow up!! But in the mean time, I’m going to try to enjoy my 1st pregnancy – and try to keep track of all my cravings and everything else. I have first names picked out… but I don’t know about middle names just yet… they have to at least sound good together! I like Veronika and Brandon though for first names. Tonight I'm going to break out my "What to expect when you're expecting" and brush thru it, it's been since my little sis was prego with my Cupcake that I last looked at it!

Well around 3PM the fog started to lower its self from the sky, bringing with it a light mist. Doesn’t look like we’re going to get another plane today, but you never know, it could clear back up again…. Darn, I didn’t get my movies in either… oh well.. maybe its in the next batch of mail we get…

Well I’ll get my weekend posts published on Monday! Until then TTFN! Have a great weekend everyone!! Can’t believe it’s already going to be August!!

Oh and I forgot, sometime this week they put up the SkyStream wind turbine donated from APICDA. It's located up behind the library on the hill. Hoping it lasts in the high winds we get in the winter time. The company said they wanted to test their product, well we'll for sure test it for them!!

Pic of the wind turbine

Great News We Wanted to Share!!

Well... woke up really early this morning so that I can go down to the clinic... I've been impatiently waiting almost a week to go down there to do one simple thing... My hubby told me I said end of the month and we'll go down, I wanted to go on Wednesday - but he kept telling me I said end of the month.

Well today is end of the month. So we practically ran to the clinic at 9AM (when they open) and the staff looked at me puzzled... then I asked "can I get a pregnancy test?" Yes, a pregnancy test!!! I'm so excited!!! I was given the cup, filled it a bit, put some drops on the test and waited....

The first line showed up and my Aunty Lorraine gave me a big smile and a hug, then the second line showed up. A for sure postitive!! I'M PREGNANT!!!! Yay!! I turned around and looked at my hubby, who had just as big a smile as I did and I told him "we're pregnant!!" We are so excited!!! After making my appointments to come in on Monday and getting congratulated from everyone at the clinic, we went to find our parents and let them know!!

First stop, my parent's house - my dad and brother are out fishing so I won't be able to tell them until later, but my mom's home! So I went in and told my mom, who started to cry, giving me a big hug. Then we went to my hubby's parent's house - his dad wasn't home but his mom was there (laying in bed still), so we surprised her - this will be her first grandbabie, my parents 3rd. She was so excited, "finally" she said! Then off we went to find my father-in-law. We stopped by my great uncle George's house and told him and my brother-in-law, still looking for my father-in-law.... We finally found him at the City Office when we were stopping by to tell my hubby's sister that she was finally going to be an Aunty! So we went in the Mayor's office (my hubby's uncle) where my father-in-law was enjoying a cup of coffee and let them know the great news! All the time we're walking around I'm trying hard to get a hold of my sisters on my cell phone. I finally got thru to my little sis just before we got to the city office, got to tell my older sis when I finally got back to our house.

I'm so excited... I don't care if it's a boy or a girl... just a healthy baby is what I want!! Twins would be so cool!! They run on my hubby's side... so maybe!!! I'm wishing hard!!! So that explains my craving for ice cream the other day (Rocky road with pineapple).... and why I wanted something salty and sweet at the same time (I had fritos corn chips and skittles....). I'm going to have so much fun documenting everything so my future little one can go thru it all one day when he/she is older!! I know I appreciate all the stuff my mom did for me while she was prego!!!

So yay!! I wanted to share the news with all my blog followers!! I will make sure to keep track of everything (well to an extent) of how my pregnancy is going... My 1st prenatal appointment is scheduled for this Monday, August 3, 2009! Wish us luck!!

By the way... CB already told me I'm having a boy! (Hey CB, I think I got prego there at the Grand.. I was looking back at when I was supposed to be ovulating and it would have been right around that time!!! So that's what I'm betting on is we got prego over there!!!)

Our Due Date would be (according to my first day of my last menstrual cycle) will be March 28, 2010!! I'm hoping for an April Fool's Baby!!! That would be great!!! LOL!!!

My Postitive test results!!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

I am hoping that today is a great day!! The sun is out, we have patches of blue skies and some clouds – looks like it’s going to warm up today!! We cut our lawn last night, totally spacing out to get the grill started by the time it got too late, so we ended up eating on junk food and cereal for dinner instead of our cheeseburgers we were looking forward too… since the weather is nice today, we’ll just eat that for dinner tonight!! The temps are already in the high 40’s, it gets to about 43F at night…..

Took the pups out, they weren’t even fully awake, but once they got out in the sun they instantly woke up and started to run around in the yard. After a bit they finally did their thing, we played with them a bit longer then finally took them inside – I got ready for work, jumped on my bicycle and started towards the office. I saw a couple people out and about this morning, usually when it’s nice weather there are people out!

Once down at the office I noticed that my mom had finished up almost everything this morning (she must have been bored). So there wasn’t really much for me to do but work on getting some new files in my desk and to store the old ones – since my desk is getting full. So that gave me something to do. I was thinking about shampooing the carpet, but I would rather do that at the end of the day tomorrow and have it dry over the weekend! So maybe I’ll just vacuum and pick up a bit and try to make the office look that much more in place… I went down to the Post Office and got the deposit out that my mom got ready this morning. I heard that the plane is on schedule and should be here around 11:30AM. Wonder if they are bringing more mail, last night’s flight was full of nothing but incoming mail – I got some junk magazines in to read, yay!

Well for lunch we’re going to the café for the usuals. I’m a little sore today from my workout last night and probably from all the bike riding I’ve been doing lately. Oh when we got out of steam bath last night, on our way home, I stopped by my parent’s house and fixed up their flower bed. Pulling all the weeds and grass out so that the raspberry plants aren’t being choked out. They used to have these beautiful lupines from New Zealand that used to grow in there when I was younger. Blooms with pink, white, yellow and blues – way different than just our purple blooms we get. We were hoping they would pollinate with the local plants, but they never grew at the same time (probably because we planted them from seed at the wrong time….) I don’t know if they are still in there or not – I haven’t seen any plants/flowers for a couple years now, slugs probably ate the whole plant down to nothing. At least I cleaned it out at least… I used to be the one who kept up on the little flower bed, but once I moved out of my parents – no one took care of it… so I have to make sure to stop by and make sure it’s looking good and not over grown with other crap. Just so that it can still look nice right there by my parent’s house!! :)

Well my hubby and I raced each other from our house to the store, he won… I got tired… :P I got to the office out of breath and breaking a sweat (great), so I caught my breath, and then went up stairs to the office. I have to find our office vacuum so I can get the carpet looking a little cleaner, I really don’t want to do the stairs but if I have too I guess I can…

My hubby decided that after he gets some work done he’s going to start up steam bath again. He found out that a couple people who asked him if they could go yesterday didn’t get called until like 10:30PM last night and they were already in bed. So today we’re going to let those people go right after we go so that we know they get called! Steam bath sounds good again, looks like it wants to start to rain… the sun is hiding behind all the clouds that decided to roll in after lunch – darkening the sky, threatening us with rain once again. At least if it rains it will cool down and bath will feel that much better! Easier to cool off when it’s a little cooler outside.

This afternoon was pretty slack in the office. The phone rang just a couple a times, and one of our hotel guests asked to stay a little longer. Other than that it was a pretty quiet Thursday! At least all the kids are out on the playground having fun, screaming and running around like kids do! The sun went away and it’s just overcast skies now, a slight sprinkle at times, temps are still in the mid 50’s though.

I’m looking forward to BBQ up some cheeseburgers and watching Gangland after enjoying a nice hot steam bath!! Then I’m going to make sure to get on my Wii Fit for a bit and clock in my daily workout, if I’m not too sore – hopefully bath relaxes me enough so I can get a good workout done up!

I need people to start getting on my hubby about his soda pop habit… he doesn’t realize the damage it’s doing to his teeth… and if he does notice – then he obviously doesn’t care and I don’t want to just sit back and let it keep going on… I’m tired of him drinking pop all the damn time… his damn teeth are going to fall right out of his head!!! He has so many cavities… and he already spent like 5 hours getting work done last time the dentist was here last year, and he has more this year!!! PISSES ME OFF and he won’t drink water because he’s a big cry baby! I need other people to help me to bitch at him – we need to have an intervention with him about his soda habits and the damage it’s probably wreaking on his overall health and probably not just his teeth. I wish he would listen to me more about it… I told him he can drink juice or something with not as much sugar and acids!! I’m tired of his box (12cans) of pop a day habit!!!! Plus at $9.00 a box he doesn’t realize the impact it has on our budget too!!!! I told him the way he bitches at his parents about how much they throw away on cigarettes is the same as him and his pop habit and he don’t look at it that way – but in reality it’s practically the same situation!!! So I’m trying to get people to help me point it out to him that he’s just pouring battery acid on his teeth and by the time he’s 40 he won’t have any of his real teeth!!!! I’m happy that I don’t drink as much pop as he does and my teeth are great!! :)

I haven’t heard anything on the second flight today, probably going to show up around 6PM like they did last night! All I know is that I have no one coming and no one going for the hotel so I’m not worried about that. As long as the outgoing mail makes it out, and people get happy with any mail that comes in!

Oh!!!! My strawberries are starting to ripen up, most of the little green berries are starting to change to a pink color!! Hopefully here in another week or so we'll be able to eat them!! I think I might go up the hill, pick more strawberry plants and go plant them infront of my parent's house, since I cleaned up the "flower bed" - which is just a dirt bed now..... Strawberries would grow great with those raspberry plants my dad planted in there a couple years ago!!! So I might do that later or this weekend!!! Just another sign that fall is coming... the fireweed is starting to grow their flower blooms (once it blooms we say Fall is here), all the putchky's are flowered, the salmonberries are starting to ripen and the blueberries are finally dropping their pink petals. I love it when it's this green on the island, but it also sucks because that just lets us know that everything is ready to die and turn brown again for the rest of the year.... :P

Ok well I hope everyone has a great Thursday!!! Until tomorrow, TTFN!!

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Woke up to a clear but overcast skies, temps are in the high 40’s. Looks like we might get a plane today if the fog stays away! There is a slight breeze, but the water is pretty calm. The whole island is green now… it makes it looks so beautiful when it’s that lush out! We took the pups out for their morning outing, throwing a ball for them afterwards for a bit. So cute watching Dante chase Tug as he and Roscoe are going after the ball! After about 15 mins of watching them play, we brought them inside and I got ready to go to work.

Riding my bicycle down, I actually saw like 10 people outside today! That’s like a record so far!! LMAO! I guess my mom somehow lost just the ring with the 3 office keys on it this morning, so she was waiting for me to get in so that the store can open. (I wonder if it was my mom calling my home phone and hanging up on my answering machine? We don’t have caller ID, so I screen my calls on our answering machine.) I get a lot of hang-up calls or people who don’t say anything but you can hear those bastards breathing on the other end! That or people always trying to sell me something or get me to donate money to their cause!

So after getting the office opened up and the cash down to the store so they can open, I started to enter the charge slips from yesterday into the charge book. We are starting to get all of our shareholder stuff ready to be mailed out, I think they finally set a date for the annual meeting (I think it’s in Sept). So we are starting to get all the stuff ready to send out to our 86 shareholders. My mom went down to the Post Office and noticed that my cousin Kay brought her baby down, so my mom “stole” her from Kay and brought her up to the Corp Office. Such a cute baby girl!! All smiles, probably wondering who the hell my mom and I were! I guess she just got done eating before my mom grabbed her, so I helped burp her, then we changed her diaper. So funny… I’m happy she’s a girl!! OMG, as soon as we took the front flap off, she started to pee!!! I hurried up and put the diaper back and we couldn’t stop laughing. I was so happy she was a girl and not a boy, or I think we would have gotten soaked! Kay was busy doing paperwork at the PO and my mom figured she’d help take baby off Kay’s hands while she’s finishing up the paperwork. I guess Kay was happy to not have to worry about Natasha, knowing she was with my mom and me! Polly would have helped watch her but at 11:30AM our first flight came in, packed full of mail – so Polly was busy sorting and taking care of customers.

Also on that flight was one of the hotel guests I’ve been waiting the last 3 days for finally made it in, he’s hoping to have his equipment on this afternoon’s flight so he can get his work done and hopefully get back out within the next couple days. I also got a couple more hotel reservations in for next month, we are completely full until the 13th or so (weather permitting), so I hope if anyone else is planning on coming out during now and then that they have somewhere they can stay. I only know of a couple people in town who will actually “rent” out a room in their house to people if the hotel is filled up. I don’t know if I’d ever do that, open my house up to a stranger – maybe if it was someone I knew then I might do it – but not for someone I don’t know… I don’t have that great of trust when it comes to having someone stay in my house especially while I’m sleeping or when no one is home… you know?!?!

Yeah sure it’s a little village, but crime still happens – and the hard part about finding out who did it is that people will come up with rumors about who could have did it… but yet no one will come clean about who actually did it (that or people know who did what but nothing gets done about it)! Or people will lie and cover for each other so no one really knows if someone is guilty for something or not. It’s a good thing and a bad thing – but I think that’s just something that comes along with living in the village. I would think that most villages are like that, but that’s just what I think – I don’t know that for sure! I just know what I see around here – families protect their families – it’s just something we do because of the love and respect we have for our families! Ok enough of that :P

For lunch I cooked us up Jose Ole brand Taco Snacks – they must have changed their recipe because they taste and smell different than they usually do…. They didn’t taste that bad though, I like to have mine with ketchup. The sky is starting to show patches of blue, maybe the sun will come out! It warmed up a bit to the low 50’s.

Back at the office this afternoon, we busted open the box full of our financial books that we need to get to our shareholders. Then I noticed that they weren’t the right books! So we called up our auditing company and told them the wrong books were in the box, so they said to tape it back up and mail it back to them and they would get the right ones out to us. Then like 15 mins after hanging up, they called back saying just the top 8 were books for our board members, and the rest are our financial books! So after digging under the 8 for our board members, we found the books we were looking for! Time to get them all in envelopes and out in the mail! Can’t believe we almost sent all our financial books back… LOL… good thing our auditing company called us back to let us know the correct books were just a bit farther down! Hopefully should have all these out in the mail by this afternoon!

I tried to get some of the wedding pix I have uploaded to Facebook, but FB is just being a pain in the butt and not letting me upload pix…. MySpace is so much easier to upload pix to…. I have a little project to work on, I’m trying to get all my pics I can find from when I attended RAHI (Rural Alaska Honors Institute) back in 2000 and get them all scanned into the computer and uploaded to either MySpace or FB and share them with all of my friends who attended so they can have copies too.. I would really like if they could do the same so I can have copies of their pix! I can’t believe this year is our 9 year anniversary and next year will be 10 years since we all met!!! Time goes by way too fast!!

Speaking of time going by fast… today happens to be my older sister’s 3 year wedding anniversary! I can’t believe that 3 years has already blown right by us!! To my sister and brother-in-law: I hope you guys have an awesome day and I love you both more and more everyday! To my bro-in-law Steve: Thank you so much for making my sister happy: not only physically but emotionally. It makes me feel good to know that my sister has someone that loves her just as much as she loves you! You make a great addition to our family!! Speaking of which… Steve it’s about time you come down to the village for a visit!! ;) Love you both! Happy Anniversary, many more happy days to come!!!

Yay… at 3PM that big yellow thing in the sky that gives off heat – oh wait I think they call that the sun…. finally decided to grace us with its presence! Warming it up a whole 2-3 degrees, making the temp get into the mid 50’s now!! Hopefully it stays nice enough out so we can get our lawn cut!! My yard needs a mowing bad, but it’s just been too wet out to get out there… so hopefully today… My hubby decided that he’s going to cook steam bath tonight, so that’s something to look forward to after work.

OMG did anyone watch Hell’s Kitchen last night? Can you believe that fool that got up in Chef’s face just because he couldn’t understand, “Give me the 2 ppl up for elimination and the reasons why.” I guess that guy couldn’t understand that and wouldn’t give the reason why…. So chef got mad that he didn’t answer what he asked. And this guy got all up in Chef’s face saying that chef was just a bitch and he wanted them to shut the camera off and take it outside… what a hot-headed, idiot with no respect… I couldn’t believe after 7 years of watching them do the show, that someone actually challenged Chef Ramsey like that. Wow that was a good show!! Then to catch that new show “More to Love” afterwards, I think I might get into that show… (Me and my stupid dating reality shows :P). I wonder how I used to look sometimes… I used to be 216 – did I look as big as some of those girls do? I know for sure I don’t know being a size 8…. But when I was a size 14, I might have looked like that… but I never really thought of myself as being that BIG of a girl… I think my body just holds the weight well. But I was like, OMG, we’re same age, same height and I used to be that weight – did I look like that? So I searched thru pix of me, and didn’t see any that resembled the woman on the show. I know they said the show is about real sized women, and I’m a real woman… so no wonder why I’m comparing myself to them. I used to be that size, and still kind of associate myself with woman of bigger size… I’m proud of my curves and my womanly figure – just would like to lose some of the jiggle… Like I said, my BMI used to be 32, which is considered Obese. So I look at those girls as my size… since I’m not one of those pin thin girls who starve themselves. So I guess it’s pretty cool to be finally watching a show that has “real” sized woman on it that people like me can relate to! I still want to know how exactly that boat got stuck on the north side of our island too…. The Deadliest Catch didn’t really give that great of an explanation on what they did or what happened for the boat to get up on the shore like that. There are a couple boats out there trying to salvage what they can off it, from the looks of it – it almost looks like they are trying to get it off the beach. But the part of the beach that boat decided to go on is practically in a place that you can’t really get into because of all the reefs and rocks in the water! So I’m not sure how they are going to want to salvage that boat, but they are at least trying. I really wouldn’t want it to have to stay there just to rust and become another reminder of what could happen if you’re not prepared for this part of the world! Hopefully they can get it off the rocks and do whatever they do with it!

So I heard a rumor that there were counterfeit bills circulating around in Dutch Harbor… we are trying to make sure that all our places that deal with money have a counterfeit bill checking pen… I have a couple extra here in the Corp office, so I let the Café know. They were happy to hear we had an extra pen that they could have!! Better to be safe than sorry!! I haven’t heard of any fake bills here in Akutan, but I will keep my eyes open (beware any of you that are doing this stupid stunt, I will report any bills I notice and who gave it to me! So don’t try anything stupid with me!!).

Well today was at least productive and felt like I was busy all day, which made the time just fly by! I am looking forward to going to steam bath after work. Throwing some water on the stove and relaxing in the hot, hot steam sounds so good right now! Sometimes I wish more people would enjoy in taking steam bath… but a lot of people I guess just don’t go – Guess they think a shower is good enough… Sometimes I think they don’t go because they are too afraid to ask if they can fit into the schedule of whoever is going! Don’t be scared… if you want bath don’t be afraid to ask! If there is enough wood, hell yeah jump on in and enjoy a hot steam!!! I’ve never really been told “NO you can’t go to bath” ever in my life or heard anyone say that to anyone else, so just ask next time if you see bath cooking and you want to go!

Well I’m going to BBQ up hamburgers tonight, the weather is so nice that we have to take advantage of it while we can!! My weather station is recording 62F on my porch in the shade!! Hoping it stays warm out and nice so that we can get our lawn mowed! I am also letting my brother borrow my iPod – he had some complications with a car rental company – and they wouldn’t return any of his personal belonging out of the car: including his PSP and all the games with it, his iPod and some other stuff. I told him to sue them for his personal belongings; they have no right taking them from him just because they were in the rental car when it got towed!! So I told him he needs to fight them or something for his stuff!!! That was a lot of money in electronics that they jacked from him!! So I’m letting him borrow my iPod synced with all his music on it. He wants to use it for when he goes out fishing, so I said no prob he can use mine! :)

Wow… this is a long post for the day… been a while since I wrote a long blog!! I need to get a subsistence blog done up... I should just go clean one fish and show everyone how to make dry fish!! I want to make dry fish so bad!! I think will when/if I get another fish!! Hope I don’t have to go snag a bunch of humpies a head of the bay again…..

The plane should be back for the second flight sometime between 5-6PM.

Well until tomorrow, TTFN!! Have a great Wednesday!!!!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Well woke up to nothing but fog once again, but at least today it’s not as thick as yesterday, and the grass isn’t coated with as much dew either, so the pups didn’t get as wet this morning! A chilly 43F out this morning, I hope summer is still going to give us a couple more nice days. I am still really disappointed about not getting any fish put away this year. They weren’t really running that great, people were only getting up to 10 a day in their net, and trying to share that with everyone in town. I didn’t want to try to do only 1 or 2 fish at a time… I’m used to doing about 30 at a time…. Plus with the wedding trip we went on, we couldn’t really depend on someone else to watch our fish, so we didn’t start any before we left. Then when we got back no one was really getting any fish, and now I heard the silvers and humpies are already in…. darn it….. At least I got one bucket of salted salmon done up (that used all of 4 fish that we got this year!!)

Well got down to the office, a little winded from my bike ride since I decided to race my hubby. He beat me but I think it was because my shoe lace wrapped around the pedal! LOL… I got the charge slips entered into the book, then sat around cashing checks and answering the phone. A couple times I had to run to the Post Office to help Polly with some International Mail. Not too bad of a morning, at least there was a lot of activity that made the morning seem to just blow by!

Lunch time rolled around, so I went home and made us some poor boy sandwiches. :) Something quick and easy and doesn’t dirty up the kitchen! Pizza tonight!

This afternoon was pretty slack this afternoon. No one really showed up to the office for anything and the phone was actually quiet. I mostly got caught up with most of the paperwork into the computer, but haven’t started this month into the spreadsheet yet. Got the bank reconciliation work for the new statements that came in done up.

Well I am looking forward to the finale of the Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel and Hell’s Kitchen on Fox tonight, and then we have America’s Got Talent to sit back and laugh at after! Then I’m going to get sweating on my Wii Fit, shower up and enjoy the rest of the night!!

Hope everyone has a great Tuesday!! Until tomorrow TTFN.
PS It’s been way too foggy for the plane to come in…. one day it’ll clear up and we’ll get one flight then another week or so until the next one!! :P Something we get used to living here!!

Monday, July 27, 2009

Well woke up to a thick fog, so thick that you can’t see town from my porch, shoot the hydro building is hard to see! There is a slight dew on the ground, getting the little ones soaked as they did their thing this morning.

I rode my bicycle down to the office, not seeing one person on my little ride down. Once I settled in and checked my messaged, I started to get the charge slips from the weekend into the book. I had a couple hotel reservations come in – sorry to say that we’re full until the middle of next month. You can bring a tent if you want, but they don’t have any out houses or public bathrooms if people do camp out.

For lunch we went to the café for our usuals (French dip and a chicken burger).

Back at the office, nothing much happened this afternoon. We had the freighter come in over the weekend, so there happened to be a lot of people checking out what’s in the freezers. Got in some pizzas and microwave sandwiches.

I’m going to have to get started on getting this month’s paperwork into the spreadsheets. Can’t believe that Friday is end of the month already!! Where is this year going?? I had to go over some of the other substitutions from our order we sent out last week to one of our vendors. I like that they call and ask about subs before just doing it. Before they used to just send whatever sub they had for an item without consulting us first. Then we’d get in an item that wouldn’t sell because it wasn’t what we originally ordered. So now they call first.

Well I think we’ll be going to the café for dinner. I want onion rings and ranch dip and a small bowl of egg flower soup, my hubby went for a big plate of Mongolian Beef.

Nothing much on TV tonight, how boring… at least I can use up time working out on my Wii Fit, then soaking in a nice hot bubble bath before going to sleep!

Well hope everyone had a great Monday!! It was way too foggy today for the plane to come in, temps only got up to 46F! OK until tomorrow, TTFN!

Saturday and Sunday, July 25-26, 2009

Well let me see… This weekend was pretty nice… the weather was foggy but at least it was dry! I enjoyed doing pretty much nothing this weekend!

On Saturday the State Ferry came in, bringing a good handful of tourists with them! I took some pix of the ferry at the dock, from off my porch.

OH and hey Mamawas, that YouTube link you sent me yesterday got on the news last night! I guess that couple became overnight celebrities having over a million hits to their video in less than 24 hours! Both of us are one of those million who viewed it with in the first 24 hours! Thank you for sending it to me!! I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw it, and then couldn’t stop laughing when I saw it on the news later that night!!

Well we didn’t really do much but sit in the house and enjoy each other’s company. We did clean up a bit in the house, wish we were able to go out fishing.

On Saturday we ended up eating our egg rolls we were going to have on Friday (we ended up going to the café instead for soup). For dinner we ate on junk food that we got from Trident store: ice cream, chips and beef jerky. On Sunday we had pizza for lunch, and I cooked us up a big pot of halibut chowder for dinner (and maybe lunch or dinner again tomorrow!).

I worked out on my Wii Fit both days – loving watching my weight slowly progressing south!! So far I have about 13.6lbs to go to get to my goal weight! Yay!! The only reason I wanted to lose weight was because I figured that if I want to get prego, I’m going to have to put on like 20-30lbs… plus to increase my chances for getting prego I figured I’d better get to a healthy size… With a BMI of 32, I didn’t feel fit enough to be getting pregnant… plus with having that much weight on me already, I really didn’t want to stress my body with the gain pregnancy weight. So I figured if I could get to a healthy BMI, it should be easier for me to get prego and my body should be able to handle the extra weight (hopefully) since I used to be that size already! I am extremely happy to have gotten myself to a BMI of 24.86!! Finally out of the Overweight and Obese categories and entering the normal weight for my size!! I’m surely not used to shopping in the size I fit now! I went from a size 14 to a size 8!! Practically half the size I used to be!!!

Well we had a great weekend hanging out with each other, wish the weather was nicer... oh well… maybe this coming week the fog will go away… I doubt it… Fog-ust (August) around the corner!!

Well until Monday, TTFN!

PIX:

An Otter playing in front of town.


Salmonberries - shedding petal and becoming green berries



The Tustemena down at the dock.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Well today is another cool, wet foggy days. There is a slight drizzle outside, doesn’t look like I’m going to get that soaked going down to the office. Happy that my mom is back and I can go back to work at my usual time of 10AM instead of coming in that 1 hour earlier!! Took the pups out, they didn’t like anything about getting wet while they were trying to do their business.

On my way down to the office I didn’t happen to see one person outside! I know its Friday, but where is everyone? Usually see at least one person on my way down! I stopped and put Boss out on his line. Yay, his owner should be back on the ferry tonight (well Saturday morning). Wonder how many people are going to go over and back this time? I know I’m not going…. At the office this morning it was pretty quiet… just dealing with some problems with the Xerox machine… says to change the drum unit, we change it with a brand new one and it still wants it to be changed…. We don’t know what the heck to do… but shut it off and wait a couple hours... hopefully get it working this afternoon….

For lunch I grabbed a can of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meat Balls for me and a can of Dinty Moore for my hubby. I think we’ll have pork egg rolls for dinner tonight!

This afternoon was at least a little more active that this morning. I had about 6 Trident employees come up to cash their checks. I heard a lot of Trident employees down stairs buying up the bananas then more will come in asking if there are any more bananas…. I don’t know what they do with all those bananas but we can sell 5 cases of bananas just to the cannery employees and they will still come down asking for more!

We finally got the Xerox machine working again. Not sure what exactly its problem was, but hopefully it doesn’t act up again. I am thinking about enrolling in a couple Distance Ed classes again… that or go to the school and see if I can borrow some of the algebra math books and refresh my memory and finish up taking my college Math credits – one of the main courses I was never really that great at… I mean I liked it… just wasn’t that great at it…. Formulas and all that crap… but at least it makes me happy to know I know that stuff (even though we rarely use any of that information in daily life….). So I might do that, but right now we’re budgeting for our trip for this fall/winter.

We were going to another wedding this winter: we got our airline tickets purchased already, our hotel deposits done up ready for us to check-in, and our car rental is set up. Then the wedding got pushed 2 weeks later… pushing the wedding right next to Christmas time… a time of the year I would rather be sitting at home than trying to travel. I’m also stressing over who was going to watch my 2 little ones, since my bro-in-law John is a groomsman and is attending the wedding (he usually watches them for us). So I’m really sad to say that we’re just going to go down and enjoy ourselves on a little vacation that was supposed to be for us to attend the wedding. Not only can I not get the dates at the hotel we wanted to stay at, all the prices go up right around Christmas (due to all the kids going on xmas break), the car rental would be almost 300 more, and not to mention all the fee’s we’d have to pay to change our airline tickets!! So, I’m really disappointed that they pushed their wedding date 2 weeks later than the date it was supposed to be on, now we aren’t going to be able to attend like we wanted to. I would love to go, but I can’t get the hotels we want during the new wedding date, we really can’t afford all the change fees (especially when I’m expecting us to be paying for our party of 4’s daily food bill, bringing my sister and her b/f). So we’re just going to start putting away money to take care of the rest of our expenses and maybe if we have enough we can try to change our dates…. But like I said the hotels we wanted are booked up for new wedding dates… and we already have the rooms confirmed and put deposits down for them for the dates we wanted in the first place!!! So that really sucks to not make it to the wedding, but I’m happy to be going back to Los Angeles and Los Vegas once again!!! If I could… would… I’d up and move my hubby and 3 dogs down to LA… I wouldn’t know what kind of jobs we’d have or what part of town to live in or anything like that… so that’s why we don’t just do it! Or we probably would!!

The weather kind of cleared up this afternoon… it stopped raining at least and the board walk is starting to dry up. My hubby said he’s going to cook steam bath tonight, so that’s something to look forward to after work. We didn’t get any planes in today, and Polly didn’t call once so everything must have gone smoothly down at the Post Office (yay!). The freighter is scheduled to arrive in the early AM (around 4-6AM) so we have a little crew that is ready to knock out what we have coming in.

Well I’m going to go enjoy steam bath… then get sweaty working out on my Wii Fit… then hangout and flip thru the channels. My hubby borrowed a VHS tape from the library… an old high school basketball game that we both played in when we were in the 7th grade!! OMG it’s going to be so funny to watch!!

Ok well I hope everyone has a great Friday and an even better weekend! Until Monday (I’ll get the weekend posts published on Monday) TTFN!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Well today look promising for a plane! The weather outside is nice today, clear out with patches of blue sky and we can actually watch the sun rise today, not to mention it has finally stopped raining and starting to dry up once again! We took the pups out, there are a lot of Trident employees walking around – must be no fish up at the plant to process… Dante acts so tough with all his hairs standing up, barking at everyone who is passing by. Big tough mouse we always say to him! They eventually did their thing, and then I ran down to take care of Boss then get to the office.

This morning was pretty active with all the Trident employees flooding the town… we didn’t have cash this morning because the plane hadn’t come in yet, and they would look at me funny when I say come back once the plane comes in! I ran out of paper and didn’t know where my mom’s office keys were so I can get into our storage room where all our supplies are, so I had all the machines beeping at me – reminding me that they were empty. I practically put our used paper back into the fax machine so I can get the incoming faxes in still at least. Ended up getting the invoices for what shipped last week, so I’m going to get that priced up and sent down to the store so they can get ready for what’s coming in.

Right around 11:30AM the plane finally came in, my mom said it was a pretty foggy ride, but overall it was really nice ride. I told my mom that I would get the cash counted up after lunch, since I didn’t want to be handling that much money before I eat! She said that was fine and put it all away in the safe for me to deal with after lunch… Before leaving for lunch I went over what was faxed into one of our vendors for the next order, my mom said they called earlier when I wasn’t in and she didn’t know what they were talking about and she wanted to call them back, but needed to know what she was calling them back for! So I went over everything that I had faxed in then went home for lunch.

We went to the café and ordered our usuals to go, there were so many people in the café that they had a big group of people waiting outside for tables to open up so they can sit! The place was packed and we were told that they would call us at home when our order was ready – since they were swamped in orders already. I didn’t mind, went home, waited like 10-15 mins then got the call to pick our food up.

As soon as I got back into the office I got all the cash counted up, and then explained to my mom everything that’s happened in the office while she was gone. She told me she cleared up all the substitutions with the vendor on the order that we just put in, that’s what they called for this morning. I let her know the hotel is empty for a couple days, and then next week we’re full until middle of August…. So I hope anyone else who’s planning on coming out here brings a tent or something with them, because there is no vacancy at the local hotels until at least the 16th or so. It’s a good thing and a bad thing…. We need a bigger hotel, but it’s not like our hotel is full all year… summertime we’re full almost the whole time, winter is pretty slow… We did have one guy check out this morning when the plane came in, I got his billing done up to his company and went down to mail it at the Post Office.

I shouldn’t have even gone close to the Post Office… OMG… like I said before…. If you can’t speak English then how do you get stuff done? I couldn’t live with a language barrier like that… I had to go down and help explain some stuff to people… they didn’t understand that you can’t put a stop payment on a money order, that you can only put in lost money order paperwork and if it never got cashed then they should be able to get a refund. They were tripping out because I guess they sent an Express mail package to somebody… and someone else signed for it… so they freaked out and wanted the money orders that were in that Express mail to be cancelled… I talked them into calling the recipient and seeing if they got their package or not. Because it could have just been someone who was authorized at that address who could have signed for it… low and behold… that person’s cousin signed for it and the person they originally sent the money orders to have them. What a big hassle for nothing… here I guess they were giving Polly a hard time – bitching at her in their language and yelling and making it hard for her to deal with them…. She’s a great working but her people skills can do some work – especially when it come to being patient with an unruly customer who’s yelling at you and she doesn’t have the patience to deal with someone acting that way towards her. I could understand the stress the feels from dealing with that crap… I usually just smile and say sorry I can’t help you and let them get mad, or tell them to bring a friend so I can understand them – it’s not my job to learn your language because you don’t understand English!!!! I still say if you want to be in our country, you must speak our language proficiently! There should be a law somewhere that states that!!

So, I ended up getting stuck at the Post Office for over an hour trying to help and explain to limited English speaking customers about their mail and how the mail works and the different ways to send mail. Then having to keep telling people that the credit card machine at the Post Office isn’t working and they don’t want to believe you and still try to hand you their card and ask for a money order. I think our Post Office is one of the only places you can use your credit card to get cash or to purchase a money order!! What a hassle, I got a headache from dealing with some of the customers who decided to come in today.

Well the store stayed busy all day, flooded with cannery workers. The sun has been out all day, and the kids have been playing on the playground most the afternoon. It’s only about 55F out and everyone is talking about “it’s so hot out!”…. I wish it was like 75F in the shade, not just 55F!! But I’ll be happy with what we get! It’s a lot better than mass rain and fog!!

My mom got a whole bunch of produce from Dutch and had it sent over here so we can sell it at the store and offer fresh fruits and veggies to everyone. They usually sell really fast, since it’s not every day that we get fresh produce in our store! Might go see what they got, banana’s sound good… make some banana sorbet!! I better go see what all came in before it’s all gone.

I don’t know what I want to cook for dinner tonight, I might go look around in the store and find something that looks appetizing… I don’t know Sloppy Joes sound good… so does homemade chili… sloppy Joes are easier to make though….. I just want to break a good sweat on my Wii Fit, shower up and enjoy the nice weather. Maybe we’ll go for a walk after work, take the pups up the hill (watch out for eagles with my little ones).

Well I hope everyone has a great Thursday!! Much luv, until tomorrow TTFN!

Pix

Here are a couple pix I took. One of town, and a couple of my strawberry BBQ planter :) and some of the little daisies that are growing in my neighbors yard just off my "drive way"...

Going into town so I can go to work...

A bunch of little flowers!
They are about the size of a quarter.

My BBQ turned into planter

A bunch of happy strawberry plants,
most of them have berries waiting to ripen!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Well woke up to another foggy wet day, but at least it’s not blowing 45MPH today! We had to tie the BBQ strawberry planter to the porch so it wouldn’t blow over last night! Woke up kind of early so I can get down to the office early, we had a guy come in on a boat last night for the hotel. But he told me that he’d check in to his room in the AM, because it was about midnight or so when he got in. I told him I could go get him his room, but he said in the morning would be fine… so I’m up early so I can go meet him down at the office. Took the pups out for their morning outing. As my hubby was taking them inside I got on the 4-wheeler and ran down let Boss out and made my way to the office.

So the internet is still out and I guess we’re one of the only ones whose internet is not working, so I called GCI and spent time with their techs trying to figure out why our antenna isn’t connecting – all the lights on the back of the antenna are off, they should all be lit up! I tried to do the unplug it then plug it back in and wait… but nothing… they said they would do what they could on that side… but we might need new equipment… hopefully not…. Then it seemed like right after I got off the phone with GCI tech, the power went back off!!! WTF are they doing with the power?? I’m happy I have a laptop and it has a battery!! But that doesn’t make me not worry about all the other electronics we have here at the corp. and all the ones I own at home! Sometimes it messes up our register down at the store when they shut the power on and off and on and off like that! Hopefully they don’t have the power out for a couple hours like they did yesterday…. I feel so lost without the internet, it’s like my only connection off this island and when the power goes off and takes us back to the old days of no communication off the island it makes me want to go crazy… I don’t know how they did it back in the day!!

Oh and to say I got up early and came to the office early…. And that guy didn’t show up to check in!!! What the heck? Wonder what boat he came over on??? Wonder if they had room to bring my mom over?? Oh well, they are already here and my mom isn’t…. so she obviously didn’t know a boat was coming over… darn….

I want grilled cheese for lunch today, sounds good… I’ll go grab my hubby a can of soup to have with his.

Well it’s clearing up a bit, but still raining lightly (well compared to the last couple days!). I can actually see patches of blue sky and Akun if fully visible. Maybe a plane will come in today, we here at the Corp are practically out of cash to cash checks with, I heard the City doesn’t have any cash, and I’m not sure about the Roadhouse (the bar)…. Kind of sucks for people when they can’t cash their checks, and debit/credit isn’t used everywhere here (and I don’t think any of them offer cash back).

I was getting a lot of calls from Polly today about stuff down at the Post Office that she needed help with. One thing I couldn’t help her with was trying to track a package using the Delivery Confirmation and trying to explain to someone who doesn’t really understand English that their package was forwarded due to the addressee’s request. We don’t know how to find out what their forwarding address is… I told her to tell them to wait a couple more days since it was just scanned Forwarded on Monday. They have to wait 30 days from the day of mailing to put in a lost mail request, and this guy just mailed his “package” on the 13th (we flew in the 14th so it must have gotten off the island then). So he has to wait a bit more before waiting for his envelope or whatever he sent to get to where it has to go. I feel bad for her when she has to deal with people who don’t speak English and they are trying to be all bossy and start to yell and slam papers down and stuff because there is such a strong language barrier. It’s not our fault that we don’t speak whatever language they are speaking. I almost feel that if you want to come and work here in the USA that you should speak, read and write English proficiently! I expect the same out of myself when I decide to travel to another country. I’m not just going to go to some foreign country and not know how to communicate in their language – so why do they do that to us? I just don’t understand that part… then to get mad at me because I speak English and they don’t understand a word that I’m trying to say to them!!! I always just say next time bring a friend who can explain to them!! It’s so frustrating!

Happy I don’t have to deal with as many people here in the Corp office as they do in the Post Office! With me it’s you don’t have your ID then I’m not going to cash your check and it’s a 10% check cashing fee, which is pretty easy to explain to most. Some people will get mad and slam stuff around, grab their checks and walk out after explaining the fee – others already know how much it is to get cash here and that if you really want cash in your hand then you have to pay a small fee for it, which most people don’t mind. Other’s can throw a fit though… I’ve seen some customers who scared me a bit, but didn’t stop me from standing up to them and telling them that I don’t need to deal with that kind of behavior in our office and that if they don’t leave we’ll call the VPSO. That usually takes care of the problem, that or just call Trident and report them to the office and they will have them removed from the island (a step we usually try to avoid), because Trident doesn’t want to have any problems with its employees and the locals. They’ve had some major problems in the past that cost them a good penny, so it’s best to just avoid the situation now!

Well at 3PM the sun came out and the temps went up a couple degrees, making it feel good outside! I see all the kids playing out on the playground! They must have been bored being stuck inside for the last 2 days with all the rain we were getting! My hubby told me that he’s going to cook steam bath tonight so that’s something to look forward too!!!

OH… and HOW COME NO ONE TOLD ME THAT HELL’S KITCHEN WAS COMING BACK ON?!?! I thought I wrote it down somewhere, but totally forgot until we happened to pass across Chef Ramsey yelling at the new recruits for this year’s prize. We missed the whole beginning and everything and that show doesn’t repeat and it’s not like we have a DVR anyways…. Darn it… at least we got to see the last 30 mins or so… already looks like it’s going to be a great season already from the looks of this first show!!! Yay, I have a new Tuesday show to start watching (since DC is about to wrap up). I’m going to see if iTunes has a pass for this new season, if so I might just have to get it… :)

This afternoon was pretty quiet… the guy that called me last night saying he was going to check into the hotel never showed up and I don’t have a way to get a hold of him… so I don’t know what’s going on with that…. Looking forward to getting off work and going to steam bath… then go home and cook up kielbasa with potato and corn for dinner (if not go to the café) and work out on my Wii Fit.

The sun came out just in time for me to enjoy it when I get off work. Hoping the plane comes in, I heard they might try a flight…. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed….

OK well until tomorrow, TTFN!

Tueday, July 21, 2009

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, hearing all the rain hitting the house made me want to curl up tighter in my blanket!!Wow is it raining out today! I swear it’s like someone has a couple sprinklers aimed at our window, that’s how much water is hitting the glass! The dogs seemed happy to be going out, but once they got out in the rain and wind they all looked back at the front door, probably wondering “what are we doing out here?!?!?” LOL… they eventually did their thing then all 3 of them came barreling into the house – shaking off getting everything wet!

Happy I have the 4-wheeler today, I wouldn’t want to ride my bicycle down in this rain, especially in a head wind! I got soaked, I mean SOAKED on the short ride to the office. Big big rain drops falling from the sky, looking up it looks like sheets of water moving in the wind, slowly falling towards the ground. There are mass puddles everywhere! This is when I’m happy we have boardwalks and not just dirt roads!!

The office was super quiet today, guess no one wants to be out in the rain either! The only person I saw this morning was our store manager! The phone was even pretty quiet… what a boring morning… I’m caught up in everything… so I guess I can just sit here and hold my chair down…

For lunch we went to the café for the usual meals we enjoy: French Dip for me and chicken nuggets for the hubby.

Once I finally made it back to the office this afternoon, I was pretty much soaked to the bone. I turned the heat up because I’m so cold from being soaking wet! I had a couple customers actually show up on this super wet, rainy, windy day to get some cash. Lucky they have small checks and I can accept them! The phone actually rang, and it was for hotel reservations!! I have some people who are stuck in Dutch right now… and other people making reservations a couple months in advance! (This is always a good thing to do when coming here!).

The rain hasn’t stopped… wonder how long this is going to go on for. I heard that we’re supposed to be getting a big storm… wonder if this is it? All I know is it’s packing a lot of rain with it!! You can tell when it’s falling hard is when it starts to get a bit darker because all the water is blocking out the light!! Then it gets brighter, but the rain just won’t stop.

Then for a couple hours this afternoon the power went out. Not sure exactly what for, but it was out from 2pm-4pm. Making this morning not even compare in how bored I was, especially with no internet and the phone silenced. I should have just taken a nap or went home :P but I just sat here trying to find new spreadsheets I can make to make my work that much easier, at least I’m still able to listen to music on my laptop!!!

Not sure if the internet is going to turn back on today… after the power goes off and on like that the main internet building has to be reset (usually that’s what they do). I think with my internet at home my antenna is broken and they are sending me out a new one… so once I get that in and installed I should have my internet back on at home!!

Not sure what I want to cook us up for dinner tonight…. Maybe have French toast, or pancakes… breakfast sounds good… if not cream of mushroom soup over toast….. I’ll see what the hubby wants…. Either way I’m going to get on my Wii Fit and get my sweat on! Hoping that all this working out pays off by the time we have our wedding next year!! I hate working on the problem spots – you know that little pouch by your belly button that doesn’t want to budge and how it’s harder than heck to get your thighs and butt to “tighten” up… I just have to keep doing what I’m doing and by this time next year I should be in the body I’ve always wanted! :)

Ok well until tomorrow, TTFN!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Woke up this morning, trying to remember why I set my alarm so early… oh shoot that’s right, my mom went to Dutch and I have to get the office opened up! So I got us up, ran and took the pups out, and to my disappointment – saw that it was completely fogged in and just standing at my door way the mist was getting me soaked. The dogs hate this kind of weather, where you don’t really have to move and you’re just getting soaking wet! They ran out and did their thing; my hubby put them away while I was jumping on my bicycle getting ready to head to the office.

This morning was pretty busy. The typical Monday morning… getting payroll done, getting billing done up, sending out the outgoing mail and picking up the incoming mail, then going thru it all… all while I’m trying to answer the phone, take hotel reservations (or hang up on my uncle who keeps calling for nothing…. Aarrrggg) and cashing people’s checks. Lunch time couldn’t come quick enough!

For lunch we had cereal… I had frosted mini wheat’s while the hubby went for some cranberry almond crunch (some healthy brand).

Well I ran out of cash this afternoon… which really sucks when there are a lot of Trident employees wanting to cash their checks. Must not be any fish to process up at the plant, since all their workers are walking around today (in this wet weather too). The afternoon happened to be really quiet once people found out we ran out of cash, the phone didn’t even ring until my hubby called to tell me what we needed from the store! Fast rushing around morning, slow boring afternoon…

Hoping the weather clears and my mom is able to make it home. I think she thought it was Sunday when she left… thinking she’s only spending a night in Dutch… when she happened to take off Saturday night… LMAO… must be something that happens to you when you get older… start to forget… shoot if I didn’t work a 9-5 job I probably wouldn’t know what day it was either.

With all my spare time this afternoon, (and seeing that I couldn’t find something work related to do other than maybe vacuum again) I went on David’s Bridal.com and looked at what they have to offer. I found a couple dresses that I’m interested in…. I am still debating what colors to go with... I still think black bridesmaids dresses would be best (so they can use the dress over again… or even maybe us a LBD they already own!!) I don’t really care about matching styles… just matching colors!

Well not sure what we’re eating for dinner. Think I might just get everything for tacos and use up some of that TB Fire sauce I brought home!! That or just go eat at the café again… lol…

Well hope everyone had a great Monday!! Until Tomorrow, TTFN!!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Well the weather is once again beautiful. I don’t know what I’m doing up at 8:30AM on a Sunday…. Took the pups out for their morning outing, they weren’t even fully awake yet! All three of them yawning and stretching before even making it to the front door! Once getting outside it’s like someone put instant coffee in their blood stream or something: all of them running, jumping, barking and chasing each other around the yard. So cute how Tug thinks he’s a chi… then it’s even cuter when Dante thinks he can follow Tug into the tall grass and gets “lost”!! LMAO!!! Feels like it wants to rain, it’s getting a little hazy/foggy across the bay.

My mom left on the last plane last night, so I have to take care of the store today. So before noon I ran down on my bicycle and got the paperwork done up and put out so the store can open for the day. When I was heading back home the first flight was coming in for a landing. The office is once again out of cash… so we have to go do a pick up… I think Trident people are leaving and they are taking the cash off the island, because we’re not getting any of the cash back from the Roadhouse or the Post Office…

I decided that I was going to find a new use for my old BBQ. The lid doesn’t shut on it anymore and it doesn’t want to hold heat… I know I could still use it for just a flat grill with no lid…. But we ended up getting a new BBQ earlier this summer… so I’m recycling my old one into a planter! I am going to go up the hill later and pick a bunch of our Aleutian strawberries, put dirt in my old BBQ and make it a planter! Then I think I’ll just put it next to my front porch, in the winter I think we’ll move it inside and keep them alive. I picked a lot of strawberry plants that already had berries waiting to ripen! I grabbed a couple that had flower blooms still (there weren’t many most of them are already turning into berries, oh and the salmonberries are finally shedding their pink petals and revealing little green berries that will grow and change color here in a couple months (from a yellow-orange color to a deep purple/black color) and be fully ripened and ready to be picked! (usually September-October is berry picking season).

I am sad that I didn’t get any fish put away this summer and the summer is almost over already and I don’t know if anyone is getting any more reds in their gill nets…. Humpies are going to be showing up soon :(

Well we ate Hebrew National Kosher hot dogs for lunch and for dinner my hubby had deviled ham spread on pilot bread and I had sardines (I call them “little fish with their heads cut off” LMAO). I have to make sure to get my workout done up today too before it gets too late. So I think I’m going to go do that, shower up, and then lay down… Monday tomorrow already…. The days and weeks are just flying by!

Until tomorrow, TTFN.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Ok well I can’t tell you how great it feels to finally be able to sleep in!! We didn’t wake up until after 11AM!! It’s been so long since I’ve slept in past 10AM!!! We took the dogs out in what looks like is going to be a beautiful day! There isn’t really any clouds in the sky and the sun looks like it’s going to share it’s warmth today! There is a small breeze blowing out the bay, but it’s just enough to cool you from the warmth of the sun.

We had a couple flights today, not sure what’s coming or going, I don’t really care right now. I’m just happy to be home, enjoying life with my pups in my home!!

I made us egg salad sandwiches for lunch, for dinner I’m think we might go to the café and have our usual meal.

I’m going to get a good workout on my Wii Fit, shower up, then see what’s on the tube… probably nothing seeing that it’s the weekend…

Ok well hope everyone is enjoying the weekend (I know I’m enjoying the weather!), until tomorrow TTFN!

Friday, July 17, 2009

Well I can’t tell you how great it feels to be sleeping in my own bed under our own roof! Woke up to a completely foggy day, you can’t even see town from my house this morning! It’s slightly wet out (misty), but there isn’t any wind at least and temps are right in the low 50’s. Took the pups out for their morning outing, they sometimes seem like they aren’t even fully awake yet!

I rode my new bicycle down to the office this morning. We put it together last night. Pretty tricky, but not too hard to get the brakes and everything hooked up and ready to go. I got a one speed BMX bike that has the trick pegs on the tires; single speeds last longer here than speed bikes! I think I need to get a more comfortable seat though! Then make sure I lube everything up with some gear lube oil (stays on better than 3-in-1 or WD40).

The office was pretty quiet all day. I didn’t really do much but answer the phones, take hotel reservations, cash a couple checks (a couple people put money on their store bill so I wrote out receipts), and checked a couple people out of the hotel (they are catching a boat, I joked with them and said “watch the plane come in now!”). Other than that it was pretty quiet and boring, but that’s ok gives me time to clean up a bit… it needs a good vacuuming up here and I wouldn’t mind shampooing the carpet too sometime… doing it on a Friday or over the weekend would be best…

For lunch we went to the café and had the usual (me and my French Dip… my hubby had chicken nuggets this time).

This afternoon was pretty dead… just my mom coming in and out of the office… I think she’s debating whether or not to fly to Dutch for a cash pick up, we are running low on cash again. If I would have known that when I was flying back I might have had time to go pick it up from the bank, but my mom didn’t tell me until it was too late… so she’s going to go over and pick us up cash if the plane ever comes in. It’s still pretty foggy out there, but it’s lifting and getting warmer out… never know if they might make it in or not!

I can’t believe that it’s already Friday… time goes by way too fast... that trip went by fast… I’ve already been home for a couple days… feels like we went to the wedding just the other day not coming up on a week!!

Well I’ve been shopping for wedding dresses, bridesmaid’s dresses and all that good stuff…. Still not sure who we want to be in our “bridal party” – for sure our siblings… and flower girls will be my nieces and ring bearer will be my hubby’s youngest brother. I want a candy pink color with white…. I was thinking black but I don’t want it to look like a funeral… LMAO! But at least with black dresses the girls can wear them again, unlike a bright pink dress!! Right now I’m playing around with the wedding designer that David’s Bridal has, pretty fun to be able to play with what you want people to dress like and what they would look like together! I have a couple styles of dresses that I like so far…. I hate being so picky sometimes!!

I think we’re going to go with the save the date magnets that I wanted to get. I got our sample order in and my hubby seems to like it… something plain and simple the size of a business card that has our date, place, our names and a note saying our formal invitation to follow! Once I order and get our actual ones in, I will scan or take a pic of it to show everyone else!! :)

I don’t want anything too “over the top” but I just want us to be able to look nice, especially for pictures… I wouldn’t mind a small reception though… we’ll probably have no alcohol at our reception either… just have lots of food – cut the cake – play a song or two – then head home and relax! If everyone else wants to continue up at the RH go right ahead…. I don’t want to give people around here another reason to party it up (they come up with enough reasons!), also I don’t want to be the one just supplying their habits (no free drinks off me!). I’ll have sparkling cider or something non-alcoholic – make a great punch with sparkling water and juice! I wouldn’t mind having a big beautiful cake though! I love cakes and I think I would like mine to be a 3-tier (save and freeze the top tier for our 1yr anniversary!), with lots of pink flowers! I know it’s early… but better to be prepared and know what I want before it gets too late… plus I’ll probably be making my own cake anyways!! :D

Well today was a pretty boring day… can’t wait to get home and get on my Wii Fit and get a good sweat going! When I was in Anchorage I sent myself a hula hoop home since I fell in love doing the hula hoops on the Wii Fit (although I think actual hula hooping will be harder). I think it’s funny when people try to tell me that I don’t look over weight or they ask why I’m working out… they don’t know that mentally I still see myself as that almost 200lb girl, the one who fit size 13 jeans perfectly…. Now that I’m 159 and fitting a size 8 jeans, I don’t really “see” myself at that size, I still think of myself as that heavier April… and knowing that according to my BMI, before I started to watch what I ate and workout, I was considered Obese (a BMI of 32). I am trying to get myself to a healthy BMI of 24 or less, right now I am hovering at a BMI of 25, so I don’t have much more to lose before I hit my goal weight. But I’m just afraid that if I stop working out and watching what I eat… I will be that bigger person once again, something I don’t want to happen (not only for my health but for my happiness). I have to start learning to love myself and stop thinking I’m “fat”… because if I think I’m fat (when I look good)… then what kind of image am I portraying to everyone else? You know… I hope the lil girls aren’t looking at me thinking that they need to lose weight or anything because they see me struggling with my weight battles and with me wanting to lose a little bit more when I actually look good and shouldn’t really worry about it (doesn’t stop me from wanting to hit my goal weight of 145!). Or any of my friends who just had babies or are prego and her me say “I’m fat”… I hope they aren’t thinking “well then what do you think of me?” I don’t criticize anyone about the choices they make in life: including anything to do with weight, race, occupation or anything else that people are prejudice about! So I hope that when people hear me criticizing myself that I’m not trying to subconsciously trying to pick on you or say anything to hurt anyone else’s feelings… those are just the feeling towards myself and the way I put myself down to make me push myself to look better, to give me motivation to get that last 15lbs off! I know it’s not the best way to do it, but it works for me…. So yeah….

OK well I didn’t plan anything for dinner. My dad got a good sized halibut that he couldn’t deliver because it got torn up a bit when it got pulled aboard, so I took it home and cleaned it… let my hubby put it in Ziploc bags for me, told him to put it in the freezer (this was the day we got home)… well he just called and told me that he had to throw the halibut out… because he put it in the fridge………… OH DID I GET MAD ON THE PHONE…. I don’t know how many times I bitch and say I have to do s**t myself to get it done right…. What a waste of fish…. Aarrrrgggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I defiantly don’t want to cook dinner, I think I’m just going to have cereal or make my hubby find something to cook… that just ruined my day… here we were just talking about cooking halibut burgers tonight with that fish…. There goes that idea…. Oh well… cereal sounds good to me! LOL….. I guess I can say there are more fish out there… but damn it what a waste……

The plane ended up canceling, I heard it was beautiful, sunny and calm over in Dutch but its slowly clearing up here… maybe the sun might come out! aWell until tomorrow (if my internet is working at home... if not I’ll post the weekends on Monday!) TTFN!

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Well woke up to a rainy, foggy morning – but at least its warm feeling (temps are at about 53F this morning). Walked the dogs, they seem really happy to have us home!! We woke up a little late, 9:30AM, so we were rushing around a bit getting ready for the day.

I got down to the office, nothing much happening this morning. I helped my mom go thru all the incoming mail (from yesterday’s planes); we got all the bikes I ordered last month! I heard that they are already selling quickly! I got myself one, I needed a new bike and figured a single speed bike lasts longer here than a speed bike (believe me I’d know!). I got our store manager working on a new store order; we should have a freighter leaving Seattle tomorrow (Friday). I got my sample in of the “save the date” magnet (it’s about the size of a business card)… thinking we might just go with that... I don’t want anything too big… but big enough to put all I need on it… once I order ours I will put a copy on my blog ;)…. Next I have to figure out what style invitations I want to get… then start on all the small little things… I like to be ready way in advance… and I know if I get most of what I need priced and written on a list, then it’ll be easier to get them and store everything away until it’s needed!! I need to get my internet at home fixed before I can get any of that done though….

For lunch we decided to have grilled cheese, and my hubby likes to have soup with his. I ended up getting him Progresso Turkey Noodle… he usually like a vegetable beef, but there was none at the store… The plane came in during lunch hour; I heard there was a lot of mail once again! I’m not expecting anything expect bills so I’m not too excited… LOL

This afternoon was pretty quiet. Our store manager is down stairs getting a candy order ready… I wonder if I should look in the book for anything different. I should contact our vendors and see if I can get new books from them; it’s been a while since we got a new one that I can remember of…

Well it’s warming up but it’s still foggy out… it’s about 68F here and I just got a call saying it’s about 74 over in Dutch Harbor…. Having a heat wave with clouds and fog…. Well when I was flying in I noticed that it’s just a thick layer of low clouds that are blocking out the warm rays of the summer sun… so maybe if the sun burns those clouds and fog away we can enjoy some of its warmth!

I finally got my post for the wedding published… it’s dated for Saturday, July 11 if you’d like to check it out and see some pictures! :)

Well I don’t know I think I want to make beef stir fry tonight… my hubby should be cooking steam bath, so that’s something to look forward to after work! Still not going to stop me from getting on my Wii Fit and getting my workout done for the day! Have to get back into my routine! I love the way my body seems to be changing, if just slightly… I notice a lot on how my clothes fit! I’m just happy that all that fast food and junk I ate over the last week didn’t really impact my weight at all! (Maybe it was all the running around in the stores…)

Well I hope everyone has a great Thursday!! Until tomorrow, TTFN!!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

OMG I can’t tell you how great it felt to sleep in our own bed with our pups!!! We woke up just in time to get ready for work; I grabbed my computer and headed down to the office.We let our pups out for their walk, and then I headed down to the office. Today is garbage day, so we made sure to put our garbage out.

Oh and we noticed we were out of fuel when we got home, so we called the City office and ordered 50 gallons of #2 diesel, then had to wait for the house to warm up and for hot water to be made so we can shower later!! Our power still has a good amount left on it so that’s good!!

The office was pretty quiet at times but mostly busy with people cashing checks. The weather is pretty nice, a little foggy but other than that we might get planes in today!! Felt good to be back at work. Didn’t have much to catch up on, my mom did a pretty good job on my side of the office! The first flight came in during lunch hour.

For lunch we went to the café and we had our usuals (French dip and a chicken burger).

The weather today looks like it’s going to clear up a bit and the sun might come out! Yay, my hubby wanted to get the yard cut again, so we’ll probably go grab my parent’s lawn mower again. My hubby wanted to cook steam bath today, but I wanted to finish unpacking and getting our laundry done up and get my workout done up and I don’t really see me trying to take an hour off to “relax” when I have so much to do! The second flight came in right around 5PM; I heard there was a lot of mail on both flights today!

I made sure to get my sweat on working out on my Wii Fit; I know I’m going to be sore for sure tomorrow! While I was working out my hubby was out cutting the yard, he went and borrowed my Uncle’s weed whacker to do the trim job up. After getting my workout done and watching some America’s got Talent – we both showered up then heated the oven up to bake a pizza. (Like we didn’t have enough pizza on our trip….)

Felt good to be back in my usual routine of working, working out and relaxing! Tomorrow my hubby might cook up steam bath. The sun came out and it got up to 62F, feels way better than the 48F this morning!

Ok well until tomorrow, TTFN!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Yay!! Thank goodness we actually made it all the way home in one day (thank you everyone who helped pray for our safe and quick arrival home!). I heard that they got one plane yesterday and the last plane was the one we left on last week! I'm so happy to have made it home all in one day, get to sleep in my bed!! And I can't wait to get a workout done!! I jumped on the scale and noticed that I didn't put on any weight, yay!!!

Well I'll make sure to update this later if the internet stays on (it's cutting in and out again here at my house)... I still have to write about the wedding and post some pix..

Really missed my pups and I’m super happy to be back at home with them!!

Oh and I have some pix of an Orange County Choppers (OCC) bike that they made for Alaska's 50th Anniversary of our statehood. They are raffleing it off for $100 a ticket, proceeds go to the Providence Children's Hospital. What a beautiful bike, and I got to sit on it too!!!!! I'll post those later!!

I have some pix to post too that I took on our flight home!

Until sometime TTFN

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Well the drive back from Fairbanks was really nice. The weather was perfect and the traffic wasn't too bad. Lots of campers. No close calls this time, thank God!

Well now we're heading home! Wish us luck everyone, pray for our safty please....

Can't wait to get home and get back to my routine... I think I put on like 5 lbs or more on this trip and I haven't really had time to get a workout done. I did jog around this big park my sister has infront of her house one day though! I miss my Wii Fit!

So until I can get on the internet again, TTFN!!

PS I will write about the wedding in a separate post with some pix! when I have the time to get them uploaded!!

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Well the wedding went great! I loved being able to have a reason to go back up to Fairbanks and being able to take my hubby and show him around and also introduce him to any of my friends that might still be around up there! I loved the feeling of being back on campus, and showing him around there!

The wedding was super beautiful! The weather couldn’t have been better, it was about 80 degrees, mostly sunny with some clouds – not a breeze in the air. The wedding was at Pike’s Landing right next to the Chena River, the setting couldn’t have looked better! The colors were pink and orange with a beach theme going on (like a Hawaiian tropical theme). The night before the wedding Shery (the bride) gave me the piece of paper with what I was supposed to read at the ceremony, so I only had over night to practice. She wanted me to read an excerpt from the Velveteen Rabbit. I was told that I did a great job, that made me happy. I was excited to be able to be part of their special day! I was just happy attending, let alone doing a reading in front of everyone!! After the vows were said, and everyone congratulated the wedding party – almost everyone jumped in the limo to go take pictures. After pix were taken, we all headed out to Chena Lake for the reception. The place was set up very nicely, there was a lot of great food and of course plenty to drink! I was designated driver so I let my hubby go try some new drinks they had… including jello shots! LOL!

We ended up taking one of the bridesmaids (and one of my good friends!) Kori and her lil girl back to FBKS, we let them stay with us for the night since we were all taking off in the AM (them on their flight back to WA, and us driving back to ANC). It was really nice to be able to sit up all night catching up (girl talk). We were supposed to be laying down to go to sleep, but we both laid there with the lights off still talking until almost 2 in the morning!! (we had to be up at 5… no wonder we didn’t hear the alarm clock… we woke up at 6:30… just in time to get them to the airport to catch their flight back to Seattle!!). After dropping them off we fueled up and got back on the road back to Anchorage.

The wedding was so beautiful and I am so happy that I was invited to go!! There was maybe a little drama with the bridesmaids and some finger pointing going on… but that’s kind of expected I guess… :P But overall it was a really great wedding. It was great to be able to meet my friend’s new husband and his family. It was also great to be able to see Shery and her family! She’s like a sister to me, so is Kori! I wish Shery and Sean happiness in love and life, may you two grow old together!

Below is posted some of the pix we took.. hope you like them:

A pic of the mts and the highway (eww bug splats on the window)

Us at Pike's Landing

My babe downtown Fairbanks

Walking around UAF's Botanical Gardens

My babe and a giant cabbage

Explaination of the cabbage

Walking around UAF's Botanical Gardens

Some of the flowers

Types of cabbage

Pumpkin patch

Getting photos done before the wedding

Picture of a pic of the bride and groom, Shery and Sean

My babe and I, like the tie I got him to match me!

Waiting for the wedding to start...

Poeople enjoying refreshments before the wedding

Waiting for the wedding to start...

Here comes the bride!!!

Putting rings on!!

The wedding party...

You may now kiss the bride!!

Walking as man and wife!! Mr and Mrs Elterman!

Getting lined up for the thank you hugs/handshakes

Shaking/hugging and congratulating the wedding party

Shaking/hugging and congratulating the wedding party

Shaking/hugging and congratulating the wedding party

At the reception at Chena Lakes Recreational Area

Bride and groom at the reception

I let the flower girls take my camers and have fun with it!
Kiara on the right and Kaycee on the left.

Taking cute photos by the river!!

The cork didn't pop.. had to use a cork screw... dangerous,
but the bartender eventually got it to pop!

Cutting the cake!

Getting ready to feed each other cake...
they didn't really push it in each others faces...

First dance as man and wife...

Getting the garter....

Throwing and catching of the garter

Ready to throw the bouquet

Catching of the bouquet

LOL.. Kiara put umbrellas in my hair..
she thought it was cute... I just giggled at her!

Another one of me taken by Kiara, 6 yrs old

My beautiful "niece" Kiara,
happy to finally be able to meet her in person!!
I was the first to find out her mommy was prego,
but I never got to meet her after all these years until now!