the spring moose are arriving....

does this goose look fat or what?

twins...cograts to mama moose. they are adorable and healthy looking. they were born just a day before this picture was taken. mom looks tired, but hopefully is doing well. as you can see she is quite protective of her new babies. she wasn't too keen on me trying to take pictures with 2 dogs in tow.

everyone in the neighborhood is enjoying the babies that were born in the bog the other day. i've seen this mom around with other kids of hers. she's pretty scarred up. think she has a bit of a limp as well. may take her longer to recover from this birthing thing. in the meantime she's been chilling at the bog, much to everyones happiness. the babies are just so cute!!

hope they do okay. heard of a bear in the hood today. the poop can had been knocked over apparently so i stopped to put all the poopy bags back in the trash. then i was out doing garden work. my neighbor stopped over, he'd seen me picking up the trash, asked if i'd knocked over the trash...big blind dog so that's possible. i hadn't though. he then told me that as he was coming out of the bog he saw a kid on a bike kick the trashcan over again. he gave the kid the what for and made him pick it up. hopefully, the bratty teenager doesn't repeat that. the older i get the more annoyed i am by teenagers. man, i totally get those "old people" when i was younger now. can't we just put all teenagers on some remote island until they mature up a bit...!!

gotta love baby moose...tis the season!!

the magpies rule the bog. they can get kinda cranky, i do love them though. today i watched 3 magpies going after a raven and then later the magpies were harrassing the poor new moose mom out there. well she's not a new mom really, i've seen her with other babies, but she did just have new babies so i guess that makes her new. someone worried that the magpies bothering her was some sort of bad sign. hopefully, she's fine. i didn't get a good look at the babies this evening though. she was back bedded down in the same spot. this morning when i walked the bog she got up and moved around with the babies i think. they weren't in the spot when i finished my loop...looked to be further down in the bog...maybe getting water in the pond.

woodpeckers are hard to get pictures of as they move so quickly, their heads move even quicker...so i was happy to get a few pictures of this guy. they are so tiny and i love the red.

the reflection the other day was awesome. you could see the seagulls flying overhead in the reflection so clearly. i never could get the camera snapped in time to capture that though. looked pretty amazing. blossom and rio were on the other side of the trail wading while i attempted to capture the birds in photo.

the first afternoon i spotted the mom out there i didn't notice the babies. i figured i'd get a bit closer and try to get a picture of her, she snapped up fast though, which seemed odd considering how far back i was..then i saw the babies.

the next three pictures are just more bog shots. spent alot of time in there this week, between shifts.

in my lazy state tonight i watched a few shows on tv. always love that national geographic channel. i always think of people who act like tv snobs, "oh i didn't see that i don't have a tv!", when i watch educational and interesting shows like the ones i watched tonight. tv does have good stuff on sometimes, not always. sometimes too i'm not opposed to watching an old "becker" or "seinfeld" rerun. light and breezy can be a great stress reliever. not tha my life is overly stressful, but i think we all waste time and everyone is entitled to waste time in thier own way. some people spend hours surfing the web, or playing computer games, or reading, or knitting. they are just all different ways to relax. some are more productive than others i'm sure...if you knit you make things.

anyway, the first show was about a meteor that was seen in space and tracked to earth. i guess there are lots of telescopes out there at night watching the sky for meteors. they had never actually been able to track one all the way to earth like this before and were very excited. it came through the atmosphere in sudan and broke up. it apparently lit up the sky. since where this happened was quite remote and from the time it was spotted to when it entered our earths atmosphere and burned up was less than 24 hours, these people out here had no warning. they reported later of the sky lighting up, bang, bang, bang they said with lights. they were frightened. a sudanese scientist and an american scientist went out to the desert with 20-30 sudanese college level students and looked for meteor bits. they were successful. excited to see what the meteors are composed of and use that information to see how to best stop a larger meteor from hitting the earth. they said this one was the size of a large truck i believe. there are much larger ones floating around out there. the original guy who saw this meteor was saying that with all the scopes out there doing this only maybe 5% of the sky gets searched each night for potentially dangerous meteors. the meteor that supposedly knocked out the dinasaurs killed off 70% of life on earth. they did find diamonds in the meteor...totally fried diamonds though.

the other show was really strange. apparently in camaroon a few thousand people and all the animals, even the bugs, were found dead. a fog had come over the villages and everyone had just fallen asleep, never to awaken. there were a few survivors, but mostly, everyone died. the focus of the investigation centered around a volcanic crater lake. at first they thought that there had been eruption. this wasn't found to be the case. in the end, it was found that the lake had a super high concentration of co2 at the bottom. stormy weather had weakened the cliffs of the lake and causes a huge rock slide. when the rock slide occured it overturned the water, which caused a release of co2. this huge release created a huge co2 fog that rapidly exploded off the lake and down the valley to the villages. people who survived smelled rotten egg type odor. the people had burns though as well which seemed odd...but i guess the co2 descended so rapidly that it actually caused frost bite burns. it could happen again and fears are that it will as the one end of the lake shore has eroded and the natural dam will no doubt collapse sooner than later.

watched, "raise the red lantern" the other day. it was good though the ending was just odd. can't imagine finding any happiness being a concubine, especially being 3rd or 4th wife or whatever. one hopes that the times have changed for women, but i know times haven't changed for all women everywhere. many are still treated like property, disposed of at will. as i got ready for work last night the "miss america" contest was on. how strange this must seem to other women across the globe. now they don't even select thier gowns or swimsuits, it's just a bunch of cookie cutter pretty girls in extremly short dresses. it's all kinda freaky.

on wednesday i took the girls to little campbell lake in kincaid to do that loop. it is often super muddy this time of year, but i was pleasantly surprised. it was a little muddy in places but not bad at all really. the mini lake that is usually at the bottom of this one hill wasn't there. not sure if that will be true on the jodphur part but we'll see. so above is little campbell lake. i like it cause of that little dock....blossom is a pretty good dock jumper. i also like this loop on clear days. there is a part where you get a peek at denali if it's out. this day was windy and cloudy however so no vista's.

there were plenty of pretty green leaves to enjoy. the town has turned all green. you can see all the bright new green leaves across town. looks really amazing on a blue sky day with the snow still on the chugach range. weather seemed to get better and better as the week progressed and i headed to work. boo hoo. isn't that the way it goes?

okay so it's probably not okay to try and take photo's while you are driving, but don't the girls look sleepy and adorable. blossom sits in the passenger seat and rio stretches in from the back.

met up with tanya a few times this past week. we did the loop at n. bivouac both tuesday and wednesday. this has really been a nice spring and we found this trail not too bad either. the dogs could run free. i had bear spray, but we had nobody and no bears to deal with out there this week. rio did catch a sniff of something the first day. i got dragged something awful in her quest to meet whatever was out there, but luckily, we never saw whatever she smelled.

the pups enjoyed the little creek that has thawed. mud and water=happy dogs. i got in the water myself...at the gym. got my 3 days in. tuesday and wednesday i got my mile in. felt great. today i was a slacker. they wore me out at work this week. wanted to get to the gym, planned it but eventually had to give in to the lazy me. may be able to pick it up wednesday before work or friday. scheduled for overtime. will probably be getting my ot these days as several of our nurses will move into the peat postions. peat is our rapid response team at the hospital. it has decreased the number of in house codes, gets them transfered to higher level of care before they code. in the past peat was a responsibilty of our charge nurses at night. now the peat nurse will make rounds, check on patients moved from the icu and respond to concerns in house. the electronic icu also took several of our nurses when it started up. i guess we are getting ready to add kodiak hospital to the e-icu.

i kept the e-icu busy my first night. one of my patients wanted to sit up. 2 of us assisted him to dangle. my co-worker thought maybe the guy would like to get in a chair and he liked the idea. unfortunately, all didn't go so well. the guy weighs nearly 400 pounds, went orthostatic and slid down. we managed to get his butt on the edge of the bed, but couldn't hold him there. luckily, he slid down gently. he was in and out of conciousness though and his blood pressures got pretty crappy before we could get enough folks and equipment around to get him back in bed. i think of us and the lift machine got him up. when we had him dangling in the air, he pooped a big bloody poop. i know graphic, but that is just another day at work. we were very busy after we got him back to bed, boluses, blood, lines....took a few hours. you don't see stuff like that on your television medical shows!!

my lady the next few nights had rhythm issues. blocks with nice brady's to the 30's. so the next two nights were steady, but not insane. have seen a few anorexic girls who have heart rates into the 20's when they sleep. seems crazy to think someone goes along with thier heart beating once every 3 seconds. i mean people breathe 20/min.

my last night was very pleasant. was in peds. had some super adorable patients. i do enjoy that about peds. you can laugh, sing, do tongue twisters....fun is good. haven't read twisters for a bit...still have some memorized from my tongue twister book i had as a kid. my favorite was always "a twister of twists..." and "shred simon short...".

just realized i gotta pay bills...tis late so off i go. don't you just love paying bills? grateful to have a job and health so i can pay the bills though.