pool table action!

fun evening at the pool hall. nice to be entertaining again. of course, i seem to have more food and alcohol than i started with. the meatballs i made weren't that good, but i decided to mix up a batch of quintons salsa...stuff is the best! mine not as good as his, but still, it was easier to make than i expected. it's not the usual salsa. may have to sneak down and get a few more scoops before hitting the sack tonight. a small gathering, which was perfect for my first try out with entertaining in awhile. i think next time i'd make like a thing of lasagna or something. several people came from work. would be good to have more than just snacks to offer. bob above and below karen tries her hand at the pool hall. blossom kept busy entertaining. the dogs were excited to have guests. i think rio was a bit unsure what was up and took awhile to settle in. she eventually settled on the couch with maddie who discovered the disney channel on my cable box. blossom was actually hoping some food would accidently find it's way to her, if that meant kissing up to every guest that arrived, so be it! amy and sandra enjoy some of blossoms bribery attempts. no meatballs passed those lips though...that i know of. maddie gets a short lesson on pool cue holds and shooting techniques. it can get a bit chilly out there but our day warmed up today! everyone was pretty happy about that. i think we may have even hit the 20's! yeah!! amy joined me out on the trails of rovers run. rio actually got out of the house as well. great to have her join us. i hear snoring coming from the couch downstairs so i know she is wiped out. i'm sleepy as well. just started a good book so i think i'll go settle in. work is still busy, i just have one more day off and i have felt a bit like i got a bug brewing. that more tired than i should be feeling.

another day in the park...

temperatures haven't risen as much as hoped, but we have gotten out anyway. well, we being blossom and i. rio is choosing the couch over the great outdoors. i believe rio would like us to move to a warmer climate, like hawaii. some sort of mastiff relocation program. perhaps she could witness some crime and work it from that angle. yesterday rio actually made it in her coat and out on the front deck before putting on the brakes. blossom would be chill with winter existing year round however, though i believe she would miss her dips in the lakes and creeks. when the temperatures get over 20F she will happily dip into any body of water that is still open in these temperatures. finished the book i've been working through. "dovekeepers". it wasn't bad, took forever to work though. those old biblical days were quite rough. death. the book was based on a true story of a group of jews who had been driven into the desert and eventually get surrounded by the romans. rather than succomb to the romans and become slaves, they decide to be killed by thier own people. kinda a mass suicide. lots of death. got in a swim last night. 20 laps. got there right before free swim was ending. after free swim people start to return and take over lap lanes. it's getting annoying. rules, what are they good for. watched a katherine heigl flick last night. "one for the money". it was entertaining, fun. keep going to the grocery store and foregetting stuff. gotta get ready for the pool gathering. it's been awhile since i entertained. always a bit nervous, but less so this time. too often i have let a simple spoken word impact me too greatly. it's fun having people over, good as it gets me to clean house and also good as i attempt to cook tasty treats for friends. nothing wrong with food, wine and friends. i'm back!! may sneak down and play a bit of pool before i crash for the night. i'm rusty...time to improve my shot. of course, at the parties of the past, we had all decided that our game improved after a drink or two. at least we happily thought we were better.blossom is happily out chasing her blue frisbee.love the taco hold.she is just cute. love my dogs!!a few siblings have blogs out there, but theirs is all political ramblings. i am so not into political ramblings. everyone has to be right. our self esteem seems to be tied in to our need to be right. i think that is why religions and politics become so heated. i live in the grey. i always seem to see that both sides have both right and wrong elements. i'm not someone who could ever put some bumper sticker on my car for a politcal figure. they always seem to disappoint. i also have seen how damaging focusing too intensely on the details of politics. people just get warped. it's sick.despite the cold it remains beautiful!yesterday blossom and i took some loops in north bivouac. always a safe bet on the weekend. some of the other trails get pretty crazy on the weekends.watching some "big bang" episodes while i write. not sure what happened to rio the other night. she woke me at 3 am. i thought it was the gut gone wild but in the morning i found she had gone out with totally bloody urine. didn't look good. hope it's not anything bad. always love the light in this area.of course, it's lost on blossom. she is totally focused on her frisbee.saw this mama and her baby moose cruising along northern lights blvd. you just never know what you will find driving through town.today was the monday walk. tanya, amy, lena and i met up. 7 dogs. it was a work out. kenai joined us and he's not altered. he puts out the vibes and tries to hump manny...this leads to him being taken down by boddhi. tanya always worries about indie, but indie did pretty great. it was actually good though. a bit of a training walk. i found a way to distract boddhi from kenai by running with my hands waving high in the air and doing my best hockey hollar. i think everyone found it entertaining. of course, i think it only worked about 90% of the time. the other percent found us all trying to release boddhi from kenai's neck. didn't see any obvious blood so hopefully no actual punctures occured. was proud of tanya as she was jumping in there and working on boddhi. she wasn't able to scream and run like a freak like i did. we'll have to work on that one! she lacks the crazy gene i have. total ability to behave like a crazy person with no social concerns whatsoever.this would be a rare moment of peace between kenai and boddhi.really should see if cesar milan would like to venture to alaska and help us with our monday walks. how to get multiple numbers of dogs to mix without grumblings. 4 malemutes, 1 mastiff (albeit small and unaltered), 1 doodle and one retriever mix. i'm sure i still have some stuff to do for the gathering tomorrow. feeling sleepy so i really should try to attempt to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

playing pool again and i like it!!

spent the day cleaning out the pool room. it's obviously my garage, but it had become storage this summer when i redid the floors upstairs. the mess just never got cleared out. this week i've been working on cleaning and clearing. looking great. of course, my idea of clean is always a bit shy of others idea of clean. entertaining is a great way to get me to clean though. i recall telling my mom that and her saying that this was why she always invited people over...i laughed and said, but you always skipped the cleaning part. my mom was not a neat freak and i inherited her lack of domestic skills. i think i'm a somewhat improved version, but i can't say my place doesn't have clutter and permanent piles. i tend to have organization behind my clutter though. stuff actually has a place, i just am not that great at getting it back. on my side, when i do get in those cleaning moods, i have no problem ditching stuff i've hung on to for too long. maybe my mom was like that at some point, but 7 kids and the stresses of life may have gotten the better of her. as the youngest of 7 kids i think i often saw my parents only in thier post stressed out days. i have to think hard to remember the days before they got all stressed.
the pool table is a reminder of my dad for me. we got a table in our basement one christmas. our folks used to always get a family gift that was pretty cool usually. i think the table was secondhand. it was a nice one. slate. we spent hours down in that cool basement in the summers escaping the heat and shooting those balls around. i remember my dad giving me pointers on how to get shots and how to play. don't remember him being down there ever in my teen years. i played with my brothers and thier friends. i'm not very good, but i think because i grew up playing pool i can pull off a good shot here and there. when you grow up with a stick in your hands i think it just becomes inate. served me well in a few bars. i'm not competitive, but i am independant. if a guy would question my ability i could take him down. i remember one guy in a bar...i impressed the hell out of him. i was all this ball will hit that ball and that ball will hit that ball and then go in that pocket. well the damn thing did. it's up there, but mostly i just hit the balls real hard and sometimes something goes in. we always played a bit of slop 8 ball at our place.
haven't had many pool parties these last few years. i can be very confident in some areas of life, but socially hasn't been an area i felt i excelled at. my one good friend, quinton left and he was just the guy you knew would always come and have fun no matter if nobody else showed up. when you have gatherings you just don't really know who will or won't turn up. it can be scarey. i mean i grew up in a church, if you planned an event, you were pretty sure to get people. in the regular world it can be a bit more tricky. then i think i got self conscious as i was with people i was just getting to know and we'd gone somewhere and were undecided what to do next. i remember i suggested everyone come to my place and play pool. people sounded interested, but then one very strong personality blurts out, "i don't like pool" and that was the end of that. i think it took the wind out of my sails. figured there was no chance this group of people would ever show up. sometimes you have to just do stuff that you like to do and eventually you will find people who will do it with you. there are some strong personalities out there and it's easy for me to just step back. took me some time to figure stuff out. you can't really blame others when you are the one who allowed yourself to become small. i just took awhile to notice. it just happens so slowly that you don't notice that you are always at fault and you always end up giving up whatever it was you wanted. i feel more balanced. getting the table back in action makes me happy. we had some really fun nights out there, laughing, playing pool and just mixing it all up.
the girls and i found time to circle the bog. would have done more but i was hoping to get the room done today and then just do general house cleaning before the gathering. was also hoping to get to the pool. i almost made it, but my errands just took a smidgey too long. the computer is GONE!! that old thing has been taking up space here for years. i hadn't removed the harddrive so they charged $10 bucks at Best Buy. i was so happy to give them the money. just wanted it gone. i still have a few bags of clothes to drop off for the ARC of anchorage that were collecting in the garage. other stuff just got trashed. got to cut up some boxes for recycling tomorrow.
spent a good hour playing pool tonight. it was my reward for all my work today. felt great to be playing again.
just watched, "rabbit hole" with nicole kidman. kinda a melancholy movie, but i actually really liked it. loss was covered well. everyone reacts differently and i can't imagine how it must be to lose a child. people lose it sometimes and friends and family don't always know how to help.
guess i shall try to sleep. tomorrows another day. hopefully i can get out for a much longer walk. blossom would love it...and also a swim. as you can see the day was beautiful!

random thoughts, random pictures...

great sun dogs the other day. this is just in the parking lot at the local fred meyers. was in between shifts so no time to really drive to a more picturesque place for it. love sun dogs though, very cool. something about sun reflecting on ice crystals in the air that causes them to occur. we've been quite cold this month. drove home from work this morning and the sign near my house said -22. made it easy to just sleep all day. think i needed some extra nap time. super cold days are like rainy days, just so lazy. once i get out in rain or cold i'm fine, but it does take a bit of extra ambition to get motivated. blossom is the only one disappointed in a day without a walk. i know i'm a terrible dog owner today!
did get out to meet a few friends for a lovely meal at a restaurant i haven't tried yet. i liked it though. Ling and Louis's. tasty food, friendly staff, nice atmosphere. i think we'd all be willing to return there again. met up with gail and sandra. always good for some laughs and we all love to laugh so it was fun. otherwise, i'm trying to spend some time each day prepping the place for tuesdays pool gathering. i'm excited to start entertaining again out there. it's a bit chilly some days but it's just always fun to hang with friends and play some pool, eat some appetizers and have a few drinks.taken from my car window...dog teams and the equipment that is required are frequent sights on the streets of anchorage this time of year. you can't see the pups in this picture really, but they were in there. little noses at the door. so cute. i'm always a bit mixed at the dog sled thing. as with anything there is always a negative to the positive and there are always people who suck. overall, i think the dogs have a blast as do the people. i'm mostly for, but there are always those people who are irresponsible and they ruin it for all those who work hard to take great care of their team. some people just have a totally different view of animals and pets. it's hard for me to comprehend. to many people dogs are simply something they own. to be dumped where ever when they have grown tired or bored of them or when the animal becomes inconvienent. for me, the animals i take ownership of are a responsibility i take on for the length of that animals life. (or mine ).
a guy had his 22 cats taken by animal control according to the news. i actually feel badly for the guy. he lives in a cabin north of tok and the cats all live with him. guess he can't just leave them out there alone so when he comes to town he carts all the cats with him. this isn't a simple load cats in the car event it doesn't sound like. he's gotta get them from the remote cabin to the place where his car must be. the cats, according to the report, were all healthy and well cared for. he's very distressed that he's been seperated from them and i actually hope in this case he gets them back. can't imagine the car with 22 cats in it smells too great though. he came to town for a supply run and apparently to try and find a girlfriend. don't think i'm ready to take on a man with 22 cats. hopefully he finds a nice cat lady friend. did make it out to university lake and the bog over the week. no moose sightings though. rio likes the dog park and seems to understand the difference when i mention that the walk is at the dog park. she gets off the couch more easily to join. work, busy still. i had my little one. she failed her extubation the other day, but they tried again on my stretch. sang "let it be" to her repeatedly as she seems to calm when i sing this to her and hopefully, after last night she will just cont to get better. did my heart good to see the poor kid off that machine. prayers and fingers crossed she continues to improve. i don't let myself get attached very often, but this girl has gotten into my heart. i'm not a machine. work is crazy too. as if the peds unit wasn't in rough enough shape, our manager up and quit as well. the timing totally sucks and it feels like a captain abandoning ship. change is not easy and in a unit all the change just can make everyone edgy and moody. i'm not immune and i found myself pretty upset the other day after hearing about it. it's not the person so much as the situation and my anxiety regarding all the changes and possible changes. texted a friend in acc and emailed the manager of the float pool, just want to know what my options are and if i have options. overall, i prefer just going between the two units, but i don't want to end up in a situation where i feel pushed to make a decision. better to be proactive. chatted with my friend sharon for a bit before work last night and i feel a bit better. these are the only lights i saw on my search for the northern lights the other night. bust. great lights here and there with cloud cover in other places. i just was a miss for the night though. anchorage is a big city for alaska, but the skyline is sure tame compared to the skyline of los angeles that i grew up with.
summer plans are getting cooked up. my niece called me today to say she is coming up. :-). hopefully she'll be coming the time i have byers lake cabin. that would just be kinda fun. always great to chat with her.
guess i will head to bed. i gotta get some of the bigger items out of the pool room tomorrow. the spare seat for the element. the spare spare for the car, time to finally take the old computer to best buy for recycling. i will do it tomorrow, i will do it tomorrow!!! (at least i hope i do)

just another week in paradise.

trying to get my butt geared up to head outside and take a little drive. it's -16 here by my house so that makes it more difficult. the aurora forecasts are at a level 5 on my app as well as the news mentioning it. have no idea how i'd take pictures of it, but i could play a bit and see what happens. i may not be the only person out there so i may find a kind soul who will take pity on me. would love to get a few pictures of northern lights. the lights of anchorage are too bright for a really good display here.
above are the dogs on the monday walk. manny, blossom and boddhi. we were joined by karen, tanya and lena. rio came along, but opted out of todays walk. it was warm and lovely out yesterday, teens i'd guess. today those temperatures dropped again. rio's got it figured out and settles in on the couch more these days. here is rio out enjoying the relative warmth of the day. today lena and did the rovers run loop. i was sleepy. she was sleepy. seemed an easy way to get the dogs out and walked. she worked last night. i worked all weekend. peds and the adult icu are all busy. i went back and forth a bit between the two units. was pulled to peds icu on thursday to take care of my little pumpkin and got her again on sunday night. hopefully, she was extubated today. i stopped by last night after my epic class to fix my time sheet and it was mayhem up there. the staffing has been horrible and nobody seems to look at the numbers at all. it's not enough to just have a number of nurses, you have to look at skill levels and abilities. lucky for them lena worked and lucky as well that michelle looked ahead and saw that monday was going to be a mess. it was.
i'm thinking less and less of the current administration running providence hospital up here. all the talk of the core values are just words thrown at us. obviously, these words have no actually meaning to those in the tower. they all seem to have totally lost site of why we are here and what happens in all those tiny rooms below thier offices. sadly, it will probably take some horrible mishap to clue them in that we all have a responsibility to those people who are staying in those tiny rooms hoping to feel better. i stayed a bit until the house supervisor was able to get them some further help and i watched over the little pumpkin for a bit. since it was monday walk i hadn't had but 3 hours sleep since probably 1:30 the previous day. i wouldn't have wanted to stay there all night. happy i could help for the time that i was there though. it totally sucks to have patient numbers that you know are dangerous and it really sucks when you call your management team and they are totally useless. the monday walk was great though. it's not easy waking after so few hours sleep, but it is good to get moving and to get out there in all the beauty. my walks were a bit curtailed last week. with me starting back at swimming i suspect my muscles tweaked on me. i could hardly move my neck wednesday. i decided to schedule a massage that afternoon with whoever was available at my usual massage place. was hoping a good massage would work out my muscles and i could start work without the pain. i'm thinking i'm done with male masseuses. totally spelled that wrong i'm sure. not sure if it's that they are men and they think they know what is best for you or if they just have a massage routine and find it hard to go off thier routine. i explained to him a few times why i was there and what i needed. i just wanted a 1 hour massage on my upper back and neck. i had to keep redirecting him. nope, not my arms, my back, nope not my gluts, my back. in the end after i paid and i was drinking my little water he mentioned to me that i hadn't had any problem areas at all. now this really makes me angry. does this mean i'm crazy and just imagining my pain. i'm never without problem area's as far as knots on my back. needless to say, by the time i was pulling out of the parking lot i could feel whatever tenseness that had left returning. by the time i got home my back was just as bad as it had been when i arrived. the next day i tried all my tricks to try and break up the knots. heat wraps, drugs, tennis balls, dog toys and even throwing myself at the corners on my wall to break up those knots. they loosened enough for me to manage work. the wonderful monitor health unit clerk gave me a little chair massage on friday. she is awesome. swam again today and i can feel my backs a bit tense. we'll see. with my winging scapula it's always a battle. i'd rather do activities as much as i can and deal with the pain that follows. the dogs having fun out there on the big loop at north bivouac. snowed a bit on sunday. beautiful though. i love to watch snow fall. the girls and i just did the bog here. rio made it out. tried to get pictures of her, but she's usually too close on my tail for photo ops. she was coated in snow though. oh, i forgot to mention another strange happening with my massage. for the second time i had one climb on the table and straddle me. i find this quite odd and uncomfortable. this guy didn't ask or anything, just climbed on the table. is this a new thing? has this ever happened to anyone else? am i a freak because i find it a bit strange and uncomfortable? maybe i'm just more sensitive as i've had a few incidences happen through my many years. anywho...female massagers from now on. great story this week up here. a elderly guy and his wife were out walking thier two retrievers. the one retriever is older so the husband hung back with the dogs while the wife headed to the car to warm up i think. anyway, she starts hearing the dogs barking wildly. turns out a moose had run at her husband and the dogs. there weren't any trees to hide behind (what one does when i moose chases you as they tend to kick forward and can't kick around a tree) so the old guy threw himself into a big snow bank. smart move. he got pounded, but the softness of the snow probably saved him. he got a huge gash on his head and had many fractured ribs. the wife though grabbed a shovel from the truck and went after that moose with it to save her husband and dogs. she tototally rocks!! the lady is 5 ft tall and weighs less than 100 pounds. pretty brazen move, but it eventually worked. i loved this story. hear it's a national news story at this point. i figured it would go viral. totally entertaining tale!everyone looks so happy to be outside. lena, tanya and karen...as usual the dogs can make forward motion tough.a few from the bog the other day. as we were finishing up the snow stopped and it looked quite pretty out there.haven't heard from my plane people about our flight out to round island. i may try and get a group of us out the night before and we could just camp out a night. i think bob, tanya, scott and i would have a blast out there beach combing. that would just get us there on the first run to round island. came to me today. may make the whole thing run smoother. we may add 2 more, gail and a doc from the icu who want to come. probably sent them through togiak. let the planning commence. always fun.blossom is loving her blue frisbee. since it was just manny and her today she got to chase it. he's not as much of a toy stealer as some other dogs and so she can romp with him and chase toy too.the rest i took at the dog park. went there friday i think. beautiful day as you can see. denali in view. i love the frost.haven't brought my macro out that day. just the basics. happy i went to the epic class through the adult unit. they jsut seem more organized right now. bummed as i discovered i'm working the day we go live, again. that can be a messy day. computers will be down and then you do catch up charting or paper charting which will be put back online. not a day to look forward to. i should be in the adult unit too though so that will help. again. they are generally better staffed for these events and more organized. did watch a net flix movie last week as i rolled around in misery with knots. hehe. "mao's last dancer". it was based on a true story. interesting. they selected kids in china and took them for tests to determine if they would be good dancers or gymnasts or whatever else they needed. this one kid was selected for ballet. he was then taken from his family and raised to be a dancer. under mao's government of course, the dance productions needed to have a military slant and story line. his one teacher was punished for having them dance one of the usual ballets. no guns and no mao spin. he sneaks a vhs tape to this kid that showed a real ballet and it inspires him. he ends up getting an opportunity to dance ballet in the united states and train at a US ballet academy for a few months. he opts to defect. a difficult choice as he has no idea if his family will be punished. always interesting to see what happens when people from nations that are so repressive get a glimpse at the other side. he was told all sorts of things about americans and it takes him some time to understand that he's been spooned a load of crap.guess i should get on some warm clothes and get out there. i'm a little worried i'm getting a bug. on my swim today i felt oddly tired, which is why i only did 15 laps. that and it was open swim and the kids were unusually wild today it seemed.
okay...layering up for a trek out to the cold, clear night in hopes of watching lights dance across the sky!!