freezing/thawing...winter is calling!

 the leaves seem to have mostly fallen.  the world is turned brown and is getting dark.  it's just a matter of time before the snow starts to take over our lives here again. 

 the moose are doing what moose do this time of year.  they can be spotted at the usual haunts.

 this guy was out towards Pt Woronzof.

 i got my flu shot with little fan fare..unlike the shingles vaccine.  my arm was sore for a few days, but never felt sick.  my knees...they are still feeling inflamed.  not sure what is up with that.  my right feels worse than the left, which the left is usually the bad knee..i mean i did have surgery on it. ice and ibuprofen, though i usually forget that i can use ibuprofen. 

 some hobbling around for me at work.  i survived the week though.  this week i worked ICU, PCU and then ER.  when i went to PCU i found that two of the ICU patients I'd had the night before were both in my patient assignment, so that made it nice...though the one guy was a bit of a cranker.  some people are just always cranky. 

 we can all be cranky sometimes.  when you are single, you can more easily hide those cranky days cause you are alone a lot.  you can choose when to deal with others more i guess.  i got a bit cranky in ER as i took holds after midnight and i had the ER tech as my pct...it rarely works out very well. they are great ER Techs, but they really just don't know how the floor pct's do their jobs. they can't anticipate what needs to be done, they wander off to do ER tech stuff so they aren't there.  basically, the flow is non-existent.  with holds there is not much flow anyway so when you lose any hope of any flow it becomes very frustrating.

 i already have things all chopped up.  i get slammed with admissions, those admissions have Dr's coming in and writing orders which can trickle in all night.  medications and tasks trickle in all night as well.  the ER flow is that the person at the front of the ER answers call lights and calls the nurse for the patient....but on the floor those calls would be answered by the pct often.  so, since i can't justify running around looking for the tech for the pct tasks that need to be done and it feels awkward to phone someone to do things that i can easily do...i become frustrated as i get interrupted constantly to do added tasks that usually a pct would manage for me...so totally inefficient, and therefore totally frustrating!!

 a few from Lake Hood.

 eventually, i got through it all. 

 some bubbles beginning to form, a light layer of ice forming on smaller bodies of water.

 always a favorite time...seeing ice in all it's formations.  water really is a miraculous thing.  so many forms, so much power, so vital to all our existence and yet it can kill us as well.

 so my one brother and i have had to stop talking politics.  it just became pointless sadly.  it always loops back to the same...so why not talk religion...haha.  what could go wrong there? 

 the God thing in the Mormon world is unique.  i always had a difficult time accepting the things that were being taught to me.  i question things.  in religion things fall apart pretty fast if you start to ask too many questions.  i always got the standard answers one gives a child when they ask questions.  watered down, simpleton sorts of answers.  sadly, this didn't improve as i got older.  one would hope that a more sophisticated response would come as you got older and wiser.  it was still responses like, "there are just things that we can't understand" or "it's not for us to have all the answers" or "you just need to fast and pray and read the scriptures".  i wanted answers. i needed answers.

 in Mormonism, man can become Gods in the next life.  women who never marry like myself will somehow be added to their harem because you must be married in order to get to the highest kingdom of heaven i think.  i may be fuzzy on some of this. 

 personally, i do not see why anyone would want to be God.  to see such human suffering and human violence and watch and do nothing.  i couldn't do that. I'd be intervening all the time.  also having to judge people in very complicated situations.  no thanks.  there is not enough reward for all the hell being God would be. 

 i also don't really get how the being God is...is there one God over all of the other lesser Gods?  how did the original God come to be.  who exactly am i praying to? is it just a God that before he died was Joe the plumber?  now he's God? when they seal people in the temple do they take single women and just seal them to random males, if not how do single women come to be sealed in the next life?

 far too many questions without rational answers....at age 55 do you still get the answers given to the 12 year olds?

 these are from the dog park this week.

 the ice at the edges gets broken up by dogs jumping in the water at the edges. you do have to be careful that the dogs don't go out far and then fall in...it can be a dicey time of year with ice and dangerous.

 that is one huge orb...it is cause it's the dog park and there are many dogs who return to play with their friends there?

 Friday night i determined i would re-arrange the furniture.  this is always a good idea from time to time for purely cleaning purposes.  it's good to empty closets or rooms out for the same reason. forces you to purge and clean.  it also got me to finally paint the last of the trim in this room and do some touch up on the doors that I'd be wanting to do.

 figure this will be nice to look out towards the new kitchen, the light from the windows and the fireplace.  should be nice and cozy for the winter.  of course, I'm talking about flooring with my handyman..i want to do the  main floor/stairs and upstairs halls. I'd also like to do the counters in the bathrooms and repaint those old cabinets or sand and stain them i guess. the other floors i have left are my bedroom and the bathroom downstairs. 

 slowly things get done on the place, of course, as they get done other stuff wears out.

 my sweet grand niece made these reusable straw holders to sell.  how cool is that!! she cares about the environment and is talented to boot.  there is great hope in the next generation. 

 there were 4 swans out there yesterday.  the day before there was just one pair.  always fun to see them out there at the dog park. 

 it's been pretty out side.  it's foggy out there right now.

 I'm getting the house set up for tomorrow nights Pumpkin Massacre.  always fun.  was hoping to bake some bread tonight but admittedly i ran out of time.  i have the pumpkin thawed now so maybe in the morning before the walk i can get some cooked up.  would be nice to have it for folks to eat while they carve.

 the rest of these are more from the trek out to Sitka.  we had a great trip, bummer we didn't get one of those beautiful southeast days.

 lots of beach time though.

 the news...well it's been a tough week.  the iitoo spoke to the turkey leader and then made a hasty decision which was tragic...the kurds have been our allies and have saved many American lives.  trump ditched them for unclear reasons.  impulse and bad impulse at that.  yes, we'd all like to get out of the endless wars in the middle east but not in a manner that ditches our allies causes their instant death...but that is what is happening.  we have had to blow up bases we built rapidly as we turn over the area to Rus. not to mention the isis forces are now given the opportunity to rebuild and thrive again. see a pattern here.  as Pelosi said "all roads lead to Putin". 

 everything he does seems to play right into the hands of Put.  the right screams that the left has been after the iitoo since he was elected..yes they have been...why? because he was a corrupt businessman.  he had a lawsuit settled days before he was put in office for a scam university.  he has often and consistently stiffed contractors. he is no longer allowed to run a non-profit in New York because he funneled money from the non-profit for personal gain.  it was so dirty they closed it down.  yet these same people who whine about how tough the left is on trump, have consistently for decades now tried to find anything and everything they could on the clintons.  even the emails, that they had looked into yet again, and found nothing...why doesn't the right bitch about these costs and the time...haha!

 sex and lying about it, even under oath is hardly worthy of high crimes and misdemeanors.  it's an embarrassment that the right put our nation through that!

 it becomes even more ridiculous when you see the right continuously and strenuously defend this man who has had multiple wives, cheated on all of them.  has partied with a man who appears to have ran a game with underage girls for his friends. he's fondled and grabbed and done all sorts of lewd things and they defend him....after going after Clinton and screaming about morality and family values for my entire life. 

 they act shocked that the right is associated with racism while looking the other way while all the racists vote with them and while those same racists put out an agenda that is racist and cruel for that matter.  it's a fine line to straddle.  we all have to pick sides sometimes but if your side welcomes white supremacists you may want to questions which side you have picked.   or you may need to questions your views a bit. 

 there was a plane crash in Dutch Harbor.  it's a tricky place to land and take off, the plane went off the runway before stopping short of going in the water.  it could have been worse but one did die and several were injured.  there was a high school swim team on the plane. they had come there for a swim meet. they were all physically ok.  they will still have to fly out of there.

 the iitoo decided it would be a good idea to break federal laws and host the G-& meeting at his failing hotel next year...illegal because one should not be able to profit on being in a federal position.  he doesn't understand this and now many on the right act appalled that the left would scream foul on this.  he's decided to not do this now...because of the media and the left...or perhaps because someone explained to him it's illegal.  just add it to the impeachment...along with obstruction of justice, which the right is doing every chance they get.

 now Pence is also on the obstruction of justice team. it would serve them all right if they got taken out and Pelosi got put in. 

 a woman got 60 years for burning her boyfriend to death.  no real motive.  a history of drug abuse, but i think she was clean that day.  she had a kid but apparently she tried to kill the kid once as well. 

 another police shooting. this officer ended up in cuffs though.  it happened in Texas. it was just a wellness check as a door was left ajar a the house.  the officer appears to have shot with little warning through the window. the woman was just babysitting her nephew, playing video games.

 Giuliani is in a mess of trouble it appears.  people around him are getting arrested. he seems to have been running a shadow foreign policy system.  no doubt trump will throw him under the bus....he eventually throws anyone and everyone under the bus to save himself.  not sure if Giuliani will lay prostrate under the bus though. so far he seems pretty content to but I'm not sure how far he will be willing to go.  they are all rats on a sinking ship. 

 was just reading an article about yet another guy on a spiritual quest went into the wilderness of AK and hasn't been seen since.  the last he was seen was last winter.  not much chance he'll turn up alive.  sounded fairly unprepared for the wilderness he was headed out into. 

 i kept asking locals and eventually we found some good beaches to check out.

 we did find a few sea stars out there.

 my friends niece was with us and she was loving the ocean life. 

 we found a few good tide pools and explored those for a bit.

 sea weed

 this little island is only accessible at low tides and we caught the right time.

 barnacles.

 sea anemones.

 still some cleaning to do for tomorrows gathering which is one of the perks of having gatherings...encourages me to clean. 

 my friends chill on the rocks.  we missed our friend Val, who no doubt would have joined us and loved every minute.

grateful for:  a. to see the chips beginning to fall. b. to have the new configuration downstairs, i think I'll like it. c. that the plane crash was not as bad as it could have been.