beautiful day in los anchorage...

 seemed fitting as this sculpture is in front of the local crime lab.  a new building with this cool sculpture.  i'm not overly fond of modern sculptures, but this one always picks up the light and looks pretty.  i do like light displays and colours.  people sometimes refer to anchorage as los anchorage.  i grew up next door to los angeles proper.  i'm a city girl.  i can assure you that anchorage is nothing like los angeles.  not that i abhor l.a. though.  it's my hood.

 i should have gotten up and moving much earlier.  as the light gets better i could be doing some super long hikes.  the perk to this low snow year could be some very fun long hikes on cool days like today.  it's also great for bike riders and moose.  i headed up to prospect heights  with blossom.  took the trail that heads to williwaw lakes, but since i didn't get on the trail til after 1, there wasn't time to go all the way back.  would be great though, no bears..nice trails..and amazing scenery.  my next stretch off if conditions are good i will have to kill my body and get some trails in.  no time like the present to get my arse back in hiking shape.

 still probably did nearly 5 miles. it's mostly uphill.  rio was good to sleep this one out.

 i could have headed up to near point or wolverine...missed opportunity.

 great views today though.  no denali out though.

 can't say as there was tons to take pictures of.

 finally got to the post office and the grocery store.  dishes, laundry...so something was accomplished.  i'm sure normal people would have done more house cleaning.  ran into a friend at the grocers.  always fun to see people you haven't seen for some time.  we finally exchanged phone numbers as we lost track of each other ages ago and when we do run into each other we forget and again lose track.  she and her partner went on a kayak trip i went on.  her partner and i teamed up in a kayak.  super nice folks.  fun, adventurous.

 another friend gave me news that she is moving out of state.  boo....always sad when people leave the state. hopefully, it works out for her, but i'll miss her.  :-(

 there is the crime lab

 was happy to read that they were able to get the kid who was being held hostage for nearly a week.  i think they killed the guy who had taken him and killed a bus driver in the process.  too bad the kid had to be held for so long.  always funny that this happy news was not front page news.  on the front page was some good news.  malala is improving in england.  she was the pakistani girl who was shot for trying to improve education opportunities for girls.  she is a brave young woman.  the taliban still would like to kill her no doubt, even more so.  can't recall the details but another woman was raped and tried to talk to media about it, both she and the reporter were sentenced to a year in prison.  the rapists are free.

 there is a bridge over the creek, there were some lovely icicles in there.

 the tustumena 200 dog sled race has lost 2 dogs.  two dogs died.  not sure the cause yet.  it's been a warm year for dog mushing.  dogs prefer to run in colder temperatures.  always sad to hear of dog deaths in these distance races.  this one is only 200 miles whereas the iditarod and yukon quest are closer to 1000 miles.  hopefully this isn't a sign of what may happen in those races.

 just more icicles.

 anchorage with sleeping lady in the distance.

 liked the reflection of sleeping lady in cook inlet. like i said, not too many photo ops really on my route.  blossom is tired after chasing her tennis ball for a few hours.

 anchorage...beautiful day out there.

 this tree trunk had some cool colours on it.

 oddly a few of my favorite photo's of the day.  got a few more loaded on my shutterfly account. i still have the rest of january to load and last years iditarod shots.  no idea how i missed those.  i try to be good about getting them loaded onto shutterfly and onto a dvd disc. want to keep ahead in case the computer crashes..they always do one day.  loads of pictures on this blog, plus these photos automatically go into a picasa account i guess.  at least if the computer goes or the house burns down it's not a total loss that way.  have known people who just lost all those memories from a fire.  you can't get that back.

 had hoped to maybe go out for a ski this evening, but i got lazy and crashed.  two more nights of work and then my stretch off.  still not sure what i should be doing to get ready for the new job or what schedule i will have.  maybe i'll try to call in the next few days and check in.

off to pay bills.

a day of pink...

 or so it seems.  this is what happens when you wake up late. the sun sets so fast around these parts that there is that lovely pink glow.  i woke around noon and the sun of course was just over the housetops in my neighborhood.  still such a strange thing...the sun just coming up over the horizon and then slipping back down.  this was my favorite photo of the day.  i took blossom to point worzonoff and then over to lake hood to walk a bit.  i'd never done the beach access here and was curious.  the tide looks to come up super high but was going out when i went.  that just meant that there was ice everywhere.  it was pretty, but not much of a walk like the other beach access points in anchorage.  that is sleeping lady in the background...otherwise known as susitna i believe.

 yesterday i managed another trek to university lake. the temperatures had been lovely and warm in the 20's the other day.   i worked on that igloo in just a fleece.  yesterday the temperatures dropped back around zero or less.  no more work on the igloo has been attempted.

 anchorage from the viewpoint.

 the other thing hindering my igloo progress is soreness...who knew igloo making was so much work.  i didn't notice in my igloo building glee, but yesterday i woke up sore!!!  feeling better today, but man i must have worked harder than i knew.  watched a you tube about igloo making.  the natives can get one built in like 30 minutes.  they fit the cut ice together nearly perfectly...amazing.  other yahoo's building igloos smashed snow into the holes.  the eskimo's have to holes. what little i did took me like 2 hours.  so clearly i suck at igloo building, but i still had a good time before i realized how bad i was doing.  ignorance really is bliss!!

 the planes from the main airport in anchorage fly right over this point.  pretty cool watching them right overhead.

 tried to get some shopping done the last two days.  packing and mailing will be a different story. i do have a few things ready to go, but one i got ready will wait til after christmas as that brother and his family are off to california for the holiday.  better to not mail stuff to an empty house.

 rio managed the dog park yesterday, but i do tend to avoid taking her these days when it gets super cold like this.  just doesn't seem like much fun for her.  she's delicate!

 today i just managed REI...of course, i think i bought more gifts for me than for others.  that is how christmas goes some days.  hehe

 you can see a bit of the pancake ice out there.  large flat slabs that slowly pass by you.

 after my little trek down the hill i drove the "restricted" road behind the airport.  didn't drive it for years as i moved here the year sept 11 happened and i guess that was the year they put up the restrictions.  apparently that didn't last too long.  so the next four are from that short drive.  last year this is where lots of owls were spotted...none seen so far.

 the chugach range in pink

 things we do so we can locate fire hydrants in the event of a fire.  looks kinda festive i think.

 pretty view in the rear view mirror.

 trees on the road headed back to town, i turned off and cruised over to lake hood.  in the summers it's buzzing with float plane activities...in the winters many planes sit idle while other planes just get their floats changed over to ski's.

 have wanted to get there when the sun is setting. i was slightly late for the actual sunset, but the pink hue was pretty anyway.

 i think blossom enjoyed a more hardy walk.  we didn't get too many miles in though.  saw a few moose out. they were between trees so i wasn't going to try for photo's

 the little float plane spaces often have little huts that people have built over the years to store their plane gear i'm guessing.  some of them are pretty cute.

 having a bit of the mikes hard winter berry.  so tasty.

 was lazy this evening after i got home.  settled in to play with the new ipad.  went through facebook pictures and loaded them onto it, then selected a few photo's for the ipad screen and set up the keyboard.  i bought a case with a keyboard.  those always come in handy.  since i was spared the original cost i figured i could splurge!!  got that working.  yeah me!! i'm not very techie.  better than some i'm sure. fun looking through old photo's.

 the roads around there are shared with the local planes.  one crossed as i was passing through.  they have the right of way.

 a few other walkers out there.  it's a nice place to walk.  i really should get out there more often.  so many great places to walk in this town.

 just a few plane shots.

 watched the last two weeks of "the big bang" had to catch up.  always funny. sunday mornings are great for relaxing late in bed reading the paper. i do always wake up at 8 as the dogs seem to have this uncanny way of getting me awake for their meals.  i tend to return to bed though and get in an extra hour or two before my day really starts.

 the moon is up high.  it's higher than the sun even at noon it seems.

 liked this shot of the empty floats.

 these were with the rebel.  denali was readily seen at the point worzonof today.

 the little mountain next to it is hunter.

 liked the graffiti on the big water thing.

 denali again dressed in pink and another shot of sleeping lady below.

 lots of pictures of the victims of fridays school shooting.  happy to see the papers focus on the victims and not the lunatic.  one report said he was home schooled due to aspergers.  i suspect something a bit more than aspergers was going on.  such a sad event....those poor families. guess when school does start again the kids will be sent elsewhere.  read there is an empty schoolhouse not too far from town so they figure that is where they will go.

 if this were another country those kids would have no other option but to return to the same place, where it would remain bullet ridden and a constant reminder of the day.  for many though, they have to look past the day to day violence that comes with life in their war torn nations and strive to get the education no matter what obstacles seem to be in their way.

 one issue i find that exists in our nation as opposed to others is a loss of respect towards education and all that goes with that.  it seems i'm always hearing of some destruction at our local schools.  it would help if teachers were given the respect and power they deserve in the classroom.  it seems lacking.  i'm a proponent of kids being required to wear uniforms to class and to be taught to treat their education as a job.  may help with what also seems like withering work ethics.

 clearly, not saying these are related...just saying.  we seem to have gotten away from understanding the value of an education.

this school act was a random act.  who knows what was going through the kids head, we never will know.  we can beat ourselves up trying to understand, but the truth is some people just flip out and if guns are available they will use them.  some guy apparently flipped out in china on the same day, but he only had a knife available.  not sure if that is the truth...should go look it up on bbc or something.  i'd heard it was younger kids as well.  sometimes it gives me some peace to see that these things actually do happen in other nations as well.  it's not just america....people be crazy everywhere.  still...i hate when people with problems take them out on innocents...kill yourself, kill the people who made you crazy if that be the case, but leave everyone else alone.  my compassion is overwhelming i know.