saying goodbye to halloween

 gotta love Halloween.  it's  a no stress holiday.  just party, goofy outfits and candy.  can't go wrong there.  2 parties tonight.  that doesn't happen very  often.  guess there was a baby shower as well today.  missed that one.  this is me with my paper doll costume.  it was a hit.  of course, it was discovered that most people under a certain age have never heard of or seen paper dolls.  haha....still a fun costume...and easy

 rio has been opting out of walks.  yesterday blossom and i went to university lake.  it's been trying to rain and successful at times.  mostly i've been lucky with the weather on my walks.

 not much to take pictures of, but these reflections were nice.

 blossoms toy was quickly taken by a dog who's owner was jogging and not paying attention to her dog. lucky i had a spare.

 went to a bridal shower for holly from peds last night.  fun seeing friends i haven't seen for some time.

 the game that night was to creat her wedding gown from toilet paper, paper towels and tampons.  lots of fun. all i did was make her tampax bouquet.

 today rio stayed home again.  blossom and i looped around out at north bivouac.  ran into a few trail friends.

 again not many pictures.  my party pictures were not that great either.  but fun anyway. indoor photography is not my best...well especially with my little camera.  don't want to be bothered with the big camera's and don't want to be a bother...better to just take snap shots and have fun.

 liking that i can stream net flix through my television.

 last night i streamed a movie my friend had told me about.  "happy people, a year in the taiga".  it was a documentary.  russian trappers.  the trappers seemed happy enough, not sure the other people in the village were.  the natives in it were for sure not happy.  they were only mentioned as basically drunks who can only do menial labor.  so not a very positive spin on the russian native culture.

 there were a few interesting tidbits.  they handmade their own ski's for cross country.  really seemed more like a cross between cross country skies and snowshoes.  pretty wide, not too long.  cool to watch how the guy selected the wood and cut it a certain way and then had to thin it and bend the tip.

 another interesting thing they did was took birch bark and burned it, the tar/sap stuff that dripped off of it was used to protect against the mosquito's.

 was debating hitting the hockey game tomorrow. it's pretty early though, like 3 i think.

 tonight is the night to fall back so at 2 am it becomes 1 am again.  so happy i'm not working. it makes the usual 12 hour shift into a 13 hour.

 loved blossoms reflection out there.

 we are still having totally mild weather from the usual.  still in the 40's i think, rain instead of snow.  there was a bit landslide that a covered a big section of the denali road in the national park.  the warm weather has allowed them to clear that up.  it was pretty big, but nobody was hurt.  that part of the road is closed for the winter.

 last year this trail has been frozen over by mid october.  still all wet.  i'm sure it will cool off soon.  winter never skips alaska that is for sure.

 lots of lichen out there

 these big leaf looking things and that hairy stuff above are lichens

 not many leaves with any colour left in them out there.

 the monday walk could be a full house this week.

 another strange lichen below.

 was trying to watch one of the dvd's i'd gotten from netflix but i finally clued in that the cd was busted.  will send it back.

 the rest are from the two parties i attended tonight with friends. the first one i just heard about from everyone else.  guess it was posted in peds.  the hosts did a nice job decorating and it was at a hotel with catered food.  thanks to the wellmans.

 above is linda and sharon who is in from the east...welcome home sharon!  below is sandra and carrie.

 carrie was a beaver and her tail took out a few drinks on the table.  it was quite large.

 this one loaded sideways, but it's really the only one i have of me in my costume that you can see the whole thing.

 these guys got together and got their zombie on.

 we tried to get control of the tail all night.  haha.

 amy and i...

 amy with lucy and below with carrie and one of hers.  lots of star wars outfits.

 sharon having fun being a zombie...gretchen had no idea she was about to get attacked by the undead.

 now she's going after the other undead....can you become undead twice?  not sure.  i'm not well versed in the zombie rules

 she was a wild girl out there.

 sharon with our hostess.  she looked cool in her outfit as well.  i think it was queen of hearts.

 as i said, loads of kids and they seemed to be having fun.

 had never been to this hotel for a party, but this fountain was pretty sweet looking.

 on to tiff and aarons place.  below amy, holly and lil lucy...

 when i arrived tiff's one dog was quite disturbed by my costume for some reason, so i removed it.  i fitted onto nate later...seemed like he would enjoy it.  clearly he did.  he was having a tough time playing beer pong with it on though so i undressed him.  haha!!

 everyone seemed to be having a great time out there.  a bit chilly outside but they had a fire going on the deck.

 carrie and i tried to beat these guys at beer pong. i started out strong but lost it in the end and carrie got stronger as the game went on. we lost...alicia and holly remained unbeaten!!

 loved this one of amy.  hehe.

 lucy even got into playing with sandra's brain.

anyway.  lots of fun out there!!  i'm about ready to turn in for the night.  alaska has more than one type of wildlife!!  enjoy your extra hour of sleep...i know i will!!

Happy Halloween...

 oh and a few bear tracks from my walk with friends the other day...rovers run.  they are still out there.  this guys was pretty big from the looks of it.  above is a malemute footprint inside the bear print.  love that you can see the claws digging in as well.

 we followed these tracks for some time.  i must say i was pretty calm about it all.  no doubt because there were 4 humans (one was a baby, but still ) and 5 dogs as well.  not likely we'd run into it.  i was happy that i was chill about it considering my brush with death by grizzly back in september.  i think amy was a bit nervous, mostly because that maternal protective instinct probably kicks in. no actual bear sighted.  kinda cool to see all those footprints. clearly from my last post you can see that it rained a lot so these were probably just a few hours old, if that.

 baby malemute...blossom is trying to show her who is boss before she gets bigger...right, like that will happen.  she's still looking pretty good for a dog of 8 years.

 i am currently on call.  so hard to say no to that, especially on halloween night.  not that i was all set to dress up and head out for the night, but i do have fun dressing the dogs up and letting them answer the door for all the trick or treaters.  pretty warm out there tonight by alaskan standards.  a few raindrops but not really enough to be bothered by.  probably got 20-30 kids.  i always shut it down by 8:30 or 9pm..when the teenagers start to show up.  i handed out candy along with leftover funky eye wear and plastic fingers and stuff...the kids seem to enjoy that.

 2 nights of work.  the emergency room was booking the other night.  at least it seemed to be in the section i was in.  you team up with some people way better than others.  this girl isn't my favorite.  one of those miserable type people who act nice to you but bitch behind your back . i don't take it personal, especially in her case as she bitches about everyone.  i'm not down there very often, but i have actually left breaks early twice because i happened to be on break at the same time she was and all she did was bitch. i like to relax on my breaks so seemed wiser to just return to work and try for another break later when the break room was less noisy.

 it was also a good reminder that i'm float pool now and so i could easily be blamed for things.  my float pool comrade tried to warn me but i didn't listen.  i let him know later that he was so right.  thankfully, it seems like i'm not the only one who noticed that this person bitches to everyone  and her bitching was reported right back to me so i could defend myself.  still a good reminder that i'm not going to always be seen as part of the team now that i'm in the pool.  

 everyone else was nice and helpful. i no doubt made a few mistakes...hell i know i did.  the patients were all well cared for the charting was a bit less cared for..so i may hear about that later.  er is fun though and i do enjoy working down there.  it's a great change.
above is my costume for the weekend coming.  i think it came out decent.  we shall see.  easy enough anyway.

 the dogs dressed up for halloween tonight.

 the night is early and i may still get called in.  will probably crash soon and see how that goes...usually as soon as i think that though the phone rings

 my next night i was in the adult icu and they had put me down as a preceptor.  that means i do very little actual work and mostly am there as a resource.

 blossom looks pretty tired after helping me answer the door so much.  i think she had fun though.

just a quick blog tonight.  the on call thing.  good night and hope you all had a fun and safe halloween night.  spiraling down to the holiday rush now..nothing can stop it.