a few scanned pictures from '95

 i lived in south dakota for a few years when i was first a nurse.  this was back in '93-'95.  i'll put a bunch in here today, perhaps more tomorrow.  it's supposed to rain again tomorrow.  these first pictures are from the badlands.  an amazing place.  always wish i could return to places i've been with better camera equipment!  these really don't do the place justice and i know i would totally take different pictures now all these years later.

 you don't realize how you've evolved in your photography until you look back at some of the older stuff.  still there are a few nice shots in here and it was just a great place to walk especially on a day like this with blue skies and amazing clouds.

 just finished 3 nights of work.  i worked adult icu all three.  they have been busy.  haven't been to er lately..hopefully again soon before i forget it all.

 had a chat with one of the peat nurses the other day.  she had been the one who was initally very excited about me joining them which actually kinda freaked me out as i was sure i'd joined the float pool and i ended up having a chat with the new boss right after that first chat to clear up what my job was going to be.
after i started though i was finding out that i was scheduled for this peat role and it looked like i would be scheduled more and more.  when this girl asked me how it was going in peat we had a pretty frank discussion about it.

 peat isn't terrible, but it was never my intention to be spending half my shifts each month doing peat.  nor was it my intention to be put on peats schedule.  anyway....today i chatted with my boss about it all.  people have been telling me what a great boss she is and i am one to totally believe that at this point.  i didn't even have to say things and she totally was ahead of the reasons why i wasn't liking peat, even mentioned how that prehire phone call weighed in.  so i will be taken off the peat schedule and just do float pool, which i told her i'm fine floating to peat if they have sick calls and what not.  i know it's a matter of semantics and i'm probably kind of a freak for being so fixated on this.  it could be that a year from now i'll love peat.

 there are a few things about peat that don't suit me.  for one...i'd rather be in the thick of the mess than waiting in some room for the mess to happen.  sitting in that office with a pager and phone waiting for crap is annoying, boring and stressful.  odd i know, as i can run around in an icu room with a totally sick patient and it's just fine.  i also find the paperwork that they do tedious and kind of depressing.  they transfer all this information from the hospital computer system to a word format...you do all this and then 24-48 hours later all that information will just get deleted and you start over...it's like writing an essay every night and then deleting it before it ever gets graded.

 must say as well that i am not one of those people who are nosy.  some people would love having the okay to peruse any patient chart in the entire hospital.  of course as i write this it probably makes me better suited for the job being that i'm not nosy.

 it's a bit of a relief though.

 i slept much of today.  woke a few times, sometime around 10 am there was a super loud noise next door.  no idea what was dumped into the big truck in their driveway, but it seems like it left and i went back to sleep.  i'm a pretty sound sleeper but that thing made me jump.

 we had all these mandatory classes for work.  they do an annual hospital wide thing.  the times didn't really work for me.  there was one on tuesday, but i didn't realize you could come and go and it started early.  in the end i stayed after my 12 hour shift wednesday morning to do the adult icu skills fair and then head to the main hospital one to do as much as i could get done before 9 am.

 then thursday i woke up early walked dogs up patterson and went to the skills fair from 4-5:30.  i thought i may have to blow off some stuff, but i think i got it all done.  grateful to all the people at the tables who rushed me through once they knew i did the icu's and didn't need as much detailed training.  i must have given this one guy a look as i never said where i worked and he kept looking at me, saying, "you probably already know this".  it could be too that he's seen me wandering around the hospital doing that peat thing.  you do meet a lot of people doing that.  i'm terrible at remembering names.  faces better, but then i get confused as to which unit the faces were seen in.

 this morning after work i met with my boss, anna.  bottomline...i got less sleep than normal.  i did crack open a cherry dr pepper this morning. i've really cut way back on any soda drinking and i haven't had a caffiene drink in ages.

 to show how late i got up i had to feed the dogs their dinner at 5:30 before walking.

 we did get out though.  i took them up patterson through the neighborhoods to cheney lake.  then back down baxter to the bog and home.  no tennis ball tosses, but i think it was good enough for the girls.

 blossom should be itching to get to her tennis ball.  yesterday i headed south on patterson with them and the day before i hit university lake.  blossom had to stay on leash as the lakes are pretty bad right now.  u-lake was a mess.  puddles, mud...break up!

 nice to see the green here from south dakota.  it was a nice place to live.  can't complain....i think i could have stayed longer, but i got itching to get to alaska and try it out.  didn't want to not come here and then spend my life wondering if i should have.  no regrets at all.  alaska is amazing and i feel it suits my personality.  on the radio the other day they were talking about being "native alaskan" but they were just talking about being born here.  they were also questioning what it takes to become alaskan?  someone said, some people don't know they are alaskan until they get here.

 i find people either love alaska or they hate it.  if they hate it they do everything possible to leave, if they love it, they may leave, but they will return or wish they could return for the rest of their lives.  the place does get in your blood.  long ago i decided if you are quirky and independent you will fit right in here. probably more so in the bush than anchorage but still true.  in ketchikan this new girl had started there and this came up.  i told her i thought she would do well there as she was quirky and independent.  i think she took offense at first to me calling her quirky.

 several months later she came to me and understood what i'd been saying to her.  she's still there!!  it's been years.

 the badlands are just an amazing place.

 i like those red rocks in utah too and wish i had spent more time exploring those area's.

 these loaded the right way...may have to try another again for my more recent photo's that i take with the camera turned longways. perhaps blogger has fixed that issue.  it could just be that i scanned these in though.

 a great thing about the central plains is the flatness and how you can watch the weather roll in for miles and miles.  the sky does just go on forever.

 in the summers it seemed like every day the sky would darken in the afternoon and we'd get thunder and lightning storms.  this is rare up in these parts.

 i try to scan in an album every so often.  break up is a good time to do that.  nice to get the old photo albums put on to disc's.  it's a slow process though.  eventually i'll have to get these onto shutterfly as well.

 here is my little apartment in rapid city, south dakota.  i was in the lower unit.  there were tons of windows though and i used to turn out the lights and watch the lighting flash all over.

 my little toyota corolla.  i traded that in for the dodge dakota not to long after this was taken and headed north to alaska.

 baby huey joined my little family in south dakota.  i worked with a nurse who bred yellow labs and her husband ran the family buffalo ranch.  huey was born on a buffalo ranch.  he sure was a cute puppy!!

 may have to post more puppy pictures of him another day.  he has passed away as has butch...all the great dogs i've had in my life.

 me out in the badlands.

 huey and i out hiking.

 my friend michelle joined me in the badlands.

 these are out in the blackhills and surrounding area.

 custer state park i believe it was.  they had all these buffalo.  used to just watch them roll around on all the prairie dog holes and the little prairie dogs would be squacking and squealing.

 no close encounters with buffalo that i can remember out there.  lots of wide open space so maybe it was just easier to get around them than the moose here.

 there is butch...another great pup.  he's gone many years now.  i got him in california. i was in vet tech school at the time and wanted a sweet pup.  my friend knew of a 6 month old lab that needed a home.  he already weighed over 60 pounds.  big puppy!!  he was an area rug and went blind at a fairly young age.  don't come as sweet as butch.

 a few more of butch.  he developed a skin condition in south dakota.  eventually i got it under control.  he traveled north to alaska with baby huey and i and he is buried there.  he developed cardiomyopathy...no surprise that he died of a heart to big.

 i think these are actually more around rocky mountain state park in colorado. lots of great places to visit near south dakota.

 a co-worker, sue, owned a ranch in newell with her family.  she took me horseback riding a few times and i even joined in one day when we rounded up these little guys...i'm thinking herefords. can't recall all my cattle breeds.

 always enjoyed my time out on her ranch.  beautiful out there.

 this last one was in wyoming.  devils monument..at least i think that is it.  hiked around there a few times as well.

it was always funny as there were people who grew up there that i worked with that were always amazed that i got out and did all this stuff.  much of which they'd never done and they lived there.  some people had never left south dakota.  the patients who were ranchers were in bed early and awake early....many had old farm injuries that had never been set right or fixed properly.  such a major change for me from my life in california.
guess i will crash for the night.  hope you enjoyed my stroll down memory lane....i always enjoy it

dogs and horses...

 the day began seeming windy and wet.  i was slow moving as i figured it was a bust day...now i have too many pictures again!!  the horse and cows...there is a place that i pass on the way to prospect heights that has horses.  they always look so cool with their winter coats.  i've wanted to stop by and take some photos. finally i did.

 first i cruised over to kincaid. it was breezy and i think some rain was even falling.  i made it in time to see one group of skijorers take off.  so i stayed long enough to take a few photo's of that.  rio and  blossom were in the car so i didn't want to leave them too long before walking them. easy to just cruise over to the dunes.

 it was a bit windy there too, but the rain eventually changed to snow.  very light.  right now it's coming down heavy at my end!!  go snow!!  i was happy i wore my cleats out there.  i took a back trail away from the edge to go out for most of the walk and then cut back to the trail that is right along the edge of the cliff.  this can  be a bit stressful with a large blind dog.  i'm always a bit nervous rio will veer off course, sniffing shit, and fall down off the trail.  a real fear i must say.  poor dogs.  blossom is trying to race ahead to chase the toy,  making me fear she'll fall off the edge.  not the most relaxing walk in some parts.

 she loves the dunes though. for part of the trail i finally just put blossom on leash.  for some reason she feels obligated to chase her toy if she is off leash and once off leash she gets the "oh we are just walking" idea.  took me a few minutes looking like a crazy dog owner to figure that out.  lucky for me dogs are pretty forgiving of silly human behaviours. we really must look nuts to them sometimes.

 i've had way too many terrifying dreams where blossom has met some horrible fate.  not sure why i kill off blossom in my dreams.  rio never gets hurt. the brain is a funky thing when you have no control over it in your sleep.

 was watching a bit of the grammy awards tonight.  seems like musicians are way more arrogant than movie stars? why is this?  maybe it's that they play to stadiums full of people screaming their praises while movie stars make movies and then go home.  i mean even when a premier and red carpet, the movie theaters only fit so many people and then they are sitting quietly watching a movie, not screaming and carrying on.

 anyway, it just gets tedious to watch them up there. i'm not saying all musicians are arrogant, it just seems like there is an overabundance of arrogance at the grammys.  imho of course!! did put together a few names of songs that i will probably add to my music list.  i do enjoy music and there is always something new out there.

 blossom's fur shows off the breeze we had to contend with up there.

 still loads of people out enjoying the trails today.  i saw bikes, sleds, ski's, snowboards and even what looked like paraglider packs or something similar.  anchorage is full of outdoor folks who come out in all types of weather.  i do love that about this town. it's totally been developed with the outdoor activities in mind.

 still i'm sure that many folks never take advantage of all of the trails and parks and complain that their tax dollars are wasted on parks and recreation.  there are also people who complain about the moose and bear that live in the city limits.  one woman thought we should build a fence around the city to keep the animals out.

 the barn manager that i met today, mary, told me people who live around the horse stables have been known to complain about the smells that come from the stables.  horses shit, you bought a house near a stable, you will occasionally smell shit.  people are ridiculous sometimes.

 loved the ice as seen from above.  the chunks i was walking by yesterday look much smaller from overhead.

 rio didn't oblige me the photo attempts, but i still try.

 fungi

 in order to take photo's at the stable, mary, the manager needed to walk around with me.  i felt bad as i unknowingly interrupted some meeting to ask her if i could photograph the horses.  she happily left the meeting in order to show me around the place and let me take photo's. totally nice of her.  hopefully, i can go back again. i'm sure i'll be more relaxed and get better photo's.  these weren't bad, but i felt badly for disturbing her. i  really shouldn't have, i mean she seemed to be enjoying showing me around and even took me over to see the young cows they had there.

 the horse are all privately owned and there were many people about cleaning and taking care of the horses and also riding in the various arena's they had available.  it's a great place as there is a big park across the street so they can trail ride right from there.

 mary said she goes out there often with friends.  wondered how moose encounters went.  doesn't appear to have been any moose/horse issues.  she did say she has heard yeti run off.  that is apparently what they call any strange noise that they can't get a look at whatever the noise came from.  it must be a yeti.  of course i had to tell her of my travel channel experience with my yeti/sasquatch footprint.

 i'm thinking i may print off some of these horse/cow photo's as a thank you and see if they would be willing to let me wander about again.  the horses are funny and fun to photograph.  they were quite curious of me.

 you can see all their personalities coming through.  would be fun to learn to capture them better.

 this one below was huge.  tall, big!!  good looking horse.  i didn't change lenses and i mostly just left it in black and white.

 more of the big guy, his feet below.

 i haven't ridden too many horses.  not that there aren't horses in Los Angeles, they were just a spendy hobby and i was the youngest of 7 kids.  there wasn't money for such things.  i'm guessing, looking back, if i had asked my mom she may have tried to make it happen, but i remember not asking her as i didn't want her to feel bad that we couldn't afford it.

 did get the chance to ride a few times with my friend catherine in california and also with another friend sue in south dakota.  in south dakota i even got to herd cattle on horseback.  it was great fun, but it really is high up there on those saddles.  wouldn't mind giving it a try again.  keep saying i will do one of those trail rides in like hatchers pass in the summer.  perhaps this summer i will make that happen finally.  

 they look right at you and those ears really do tell you what they are thinking.

 i took a bunch of cow pictures when i took a photography class years ago at pierce college.  it was back in the film days.  we shot with black and white film then we did the whole process of making negatives and photo's in the dark room. that was a super fun class!  will have to look for some of those old photo's and scan them into the computer.

 i just snapped away today, hoping to get a few good shots in a short time.

 so many beautiful horses out there.

 i'm sure they were looking for treats from me.  i mean who would come see them and not bring them treats. doubt the various owners would want unknown items added to their diets.

 the horse on the right is mary's horse...a fine looking horse.  she was quite proud of this one!!  as well she should be.

 took a few extra's of her horse...she didn't seem to mind.

 does have a cute face. the guy he was nuzzling with is the horse in the first photo.  i loved his mane...it was beautiful!  there were some nice coats and manes and some lovely braid jobs.  i'll have to try and focus on some of those next time i go over there.

 a few more horses and then we headed over to the cows.

 not good at my cow breeds, angus perhaps.  took husbandry classes when i got my animal health tech.  we had to write a paper on cows, goats, sheep...of course, i wrote a silly paper that was totally inappropriate on each to entertain my classmates with.  i remember trying to learn all the various breeds of these animals and the names of males/females/castrated males....
even had to band pigs testicles in one class.  we did spend some time with the horses and cattle, but there were classmates who really wanted to go into large animal vet work so mostly us small animal sort, just watched from the sidelines.

 cows clearly have less personality than the horses, but they aren't completely stupid either.  they also came forward hoping for a treat from me.  they are fat and happy cows.

 here is the bull of the group.  still all babies though.

 not too much livestock in alaska.  i mean compared to other states.  they are here though.  i imagine it's spendy to have a horse up here and a real labour of love.  many hours to care for a horse and money to buy supplies.  my dogs take up a lot of my cash, i can just imagine what a horse would set you back.  people who have them, sure do love them.  everyone i met today seemed like nice folk too.

 a lone colour shot from today i guess.

 wasn't out at the skijor races for too long.  these guys are excited and waiting to take off.

 various dogs do skijoring.  don't have to be  a specific breed.  just must be a dog that loves to run.

 one lady screamed as she flew past something about how fast she was going.  those dogs take off and as a skier you just have to stay upright.  the dogs just run.

 blossom has the harness and she looks adorable in it.  she never really got the hang of skijoring though.  it wasn't her, it was me. i'm just not that good on ski's and i also freak out when you hit warp speed, then i just fall over in fear.

 the only time blossom actually pulled me was when friends would ski ahead several hundred feet and then call blossom excitedly.  then she booked it!!  it was impressive.

 she really doesn't get the pull thing in general though and she is so friendly she is easily distracted by everyone we encounter. she must say hello.

 this shot came out blurry, but i liked the action in it.  fun to watch the dogs go if even for just a few minutes.  looks like i'll be off for the iditarod festivities so i can hopefully get tons of dog shots soon.

 still not sure if the fur rondy dog sled races will happen here in anchorage.  we are a bit short of snow.  hopefully tonight will rectify that.  i'm hoping we can snowshoe for tomorrows walk

 a few more shots of the inner tidal zone as it were in anchorage.

 as i took a few pictures i noticed these shoes hanging on the tree.  random...at least it was a complete set.  did someone go barefoot out there?

 saw a few moose out there today as well, it is kincaid.  this young guy was out on the trails.  nibbling away at the brush.

 don't think he was too happy to share the space with me and the girls..thus the ears back.

 this moose was in the parking lot at the trailhead.  she didn't seem to concerned with me.  i was in my car at this time, ready to head out.

so another full day of photo's.  who knew.  from the crappy day it started out to be, it turned out to be a lovely day for me out there.  they do say of alaska....if you don't like the weather just wait a few minutes it may change.  good night.