Purl, Interrupted

i pretended to go to rhinebeck, and all i brought back was this lousy dog

Karrie is having a contest! Not every one in the world got to go to Rhinebeck last weekend and engage in stash expansion. Karrie, for example, was stuck in stupid California. And I was stuck in Anchorage, in the cold, and working. So Karrie had the brilliant idea for a photo contest based on all the great yarn and stuff that we *didn't* get at Rhinebeck.

She writes: you* should try it. Post a picture of your pretend Rhinebeck loot and a bit about it. Leave me a comment or a trackback by Friday, October 27 and my favorite one entry chosen at random will win some handpainted yarn (see prizes here). What are you waiting for? Get pretending!
*By “you” i mean someone that didn’t get to go to Rhinebeck. the lucky knitters that went surely got some new yarn, and don’t need any pity-yarn from me.

Intrigued enough by this idea to dust off my camera (shocking, i realize) and play along, here is my loot.

As you can see, I totally scored at not-Rhinebeck. I got several kinds of funky self-striping sock yarn, some self-striping silk blend manos, a few ounces of white alpaca roving, some dyed roving, beautiful grey cashmere, some peach baby cashmere, several skeins of handspun yarn (I wonder who the talented craftsperson is!) and an exotic, one-of-a-kind handcrafted lazy kate. Pretty good, eh?

But wait -- there's more! Not only did I pick up lots of great yarn and roving, I also picked up a new fiber source!

NOW how much would you pay??

and that's why you should get a flu shot

family health update: the member of our household who did not get a flu shot has a high fever and is doing a lot of throwing up. the member of our household who did have the good sense to get a flu shot is home from work today making chicken noodle soup for the one without any common sense.

snow, redux

oh, and the snow from earlier this week did actually turn into real snow. not a lot, just enough to cause about a billion dumb traffic accidents and to make it scary and difficult to walk around on the sidewalk in normal shoes. thankfully, (1) i finally investeed in "studded tires" for my car (sadly, these are not at all like the james-bond-villian motorcycle studded tires) and (2) UAA gives all faculty members a free pair of grippy-spikey things for your shoes, and TK was happy to give me his pair rather than take care of me after I break my collarbone falling on the ice. so i'm feeling pretty weatherproof, thus far.

this morning i learned that truman could really use his own pair of spikey-grippy things -- he went sliding down our street with a very surprised look on his face during our morning walk.

pet adoption, alaska-style

Ever since we started planning to adopt Truman, I've been addicted to the Anchorage Animal Control website, where you can check out their list of pets available for adoption. My love for this webpage, and our fair city, has grown immeasurably since I noticed earlier this week that there are currently two chickens available for adoption. As with the dogs, cats, and occassional ferrets, they have posted the chicken's pictures, in case the prospective adoptive chicken parent is looking for something in particular.....

snow!

terry called me at work today to tell me there was snow on our street. several of my coworkers pointed out that i would have already known that if i'd bothered to look out the window during the day. sadly, i was facing the wrong way (back to the windows) during a seven-hour experience i like to call the LONGEST MEETING EVER.

i've been helping out a little bit on a very long trial which is, thankfully, in its final week or two. however, i've put in a few long days lately reading stats and economic analyses. actually kind of interesting stuff for the long dormant policy wonk in me. but still makes for long days.

two related bits of knitting non-news: (1) one of the reporters covering the trial was knitting in court the other day. doesn't the judge mind? doesn't her editor? i guess things are different up here. i'm really just jealous, b/c i'm pretty sure i'd get fired if i tried knitting in court. (2) tk noticed in the paper that there's a "chicks with sticks" group meeting at barnes & noble at 6:00 on monday nights. for the non-alaskans, barnes & noble is directly across the street from my office, which really means i have no excuse at all. once this trial ends, i'm going to go scope it out.

wait -- this was supposed to be about snow. sadly, it was a bit of a non-event. just a very light dusting. still, very pretty. now we need to get truman a christmas stocking to hang by the fire!

happy saturday

another sunny day in the great north. tk is out of town for a final fishing hoorah before the rivers ice over. secretly this is just an excuse for him to drink whiskey, smoke cigars and play poker with steve, rob and andrew. not sure why they think they have to drive to the kenai for this, but whatever.

so it's a quiet weekend at home for truman and me. this morning we slept in, then went to the dog park, then to dog class, and then to my office. fun times were had by all. when i got up i thought it had snowed last night, but i think it was just really heavy frost all over the ground and trees. truman was a little alarmed by the change, but he adjusted after a few minutes.

i don't know what we're going to do when the dog park gets all snowy and icy. i'm actually seriously considering buying a pair of snow shoes so i can walk around with him. how cool would that be? pretty cool, admit it. but that's a little ways off still.

tonight i'm going with my friend catherine to see ladysmith black mombazzo in concert! yeehaw. i've never seen them perform. in fact, i don't know if i've ever really heard them outside the paul simon concert. but it should be pretty great.

it's a funny thing about living up here -- whenever there's a national act that comes through town, you pretty much have to go. in san francisco or minneapolis, there's so much live music and other stuff going on that we rarely ever took advantage of it. we probably go to more stuff like that here than we did there. curious.

anchorage has two pretty good organizations that bring live music up here -- whistling swan, for folk, and the anchorage concert association for bigger acts. last weekend we saw man of la mancha, which was a lot of fun. we also had tickets for, but had to miss b/c of a wedding, soul singer bettye lavette. my friend jeannette tells me our seats were great and betty rocked the house. ugh.

coming up we'll see bill staines, lucy kaplansky, adrienne young, the duhks, and some other shows. it's good to have things lined up through the winter. our other winter plans include:
* an overnight in girdwood (home of AK's olympic-class ski resort) for my firm's holiday party. we've never stayed at this place (Alyeska), but it's supposed to be very posh. and as an added bonus, they offer middle-of-the-night wake up calls if the northern lights come out. how cool is that?
* a week in phoenix for christmas. nothing says holiday spirit like the desert, but all my siblings will be there and i couldn't say no to a week out of the subzero temps.

anyway, that's the news from up north. i'm working on a trial right now, so doing a lot more work than much of anything else. not sure when that'll let up, but overall my hours are still more reasonable than those of my friends who lawyer it up in the lower 48. or maybe i'm just trying to make myself feel better....

catching up

so where to begin on catching up on a month's worth of blogging.

why not talk about the weather, which is a state passtime. fall is basically over here. it was beautiful but way too short, which is pretty much the norm here. the changing leaves were really pretty in the woods behind our house -- lots of golden leaves, very dramatic. now most of the leaves are off the trees and it's the ugly season before the snow.

i hear it's snowing in minneapolis today, whereas we have had a week of unseasonably warm weather. the early fall was cold and rainy, but chinook winds brought us a couple of windy 60-degree days this week that were a really nice change from the cold and dark.

and boy has it been getting dark. which may be one of the reasons i haven't blogged in so long. after i got back from seattle i really struggled with exhaustion for a few weeks. i'm now starting to shake it off, but we're losing something like 45 minutes of light each week, so it's been a rough adjustment.

speaking of seattle, i went for a work training (the national institute for trial advocacy deposition skills workshop, which, for any knitting lawyers out there, really rocks) and also to get a second opinion on my shoulder. that was an interesting experience. the surgeon i saw disagreed with my doc here about the basic diagnosis -- both agree the joint is ruined, but seattle guy didn't think it was the bone-death disease, which would mean that i could have surgery to fix it immediately.

seattle guy said the only way to confirm the bone death diagnosis would be an MRI, but he didn't believe that was the problem. so when i got back, my doc here (who i think was non plussed about having his diagnosis challenged) ordered an MRI. and (drumroll please) this round goes to alaska orthopedics, as the MRI shows bone death.

the good news, i guess, is having a definitive answer. it's also good to have a baseline so we can go back in a few months, do another MRI, and see how it's progressing. the bad news, of course, is the whole bone death thing. plenty painful, and can't be treated for an indeterminant period of time. so ... the shoulder news is basically no news, or at least no progress.

meanwhile, to satisfy peter, here is the news on tk: he's teaching a full load of classes at UAA, still trying to pretend it's fishing season, biking to work in the rain, looking forward to ski season, getting killed in fantasy football, becoming a better poker player, still asking to buy a gun, and still not allowed to buy a gun.

so that's the update from the last frontier. i'm going to try to be better at blogging, and maybe even at knitting, although it may have to wait until trial is over.

worst blogger ever

when terry's friends start emailing me from the meanest city in america about the lack of blog updates, it's a sign that i need to do some blog updates. this is especially true given all our exciting news of late.

(apologies in advance, here, to karrie. i know that everytime i say "exciting news," karrie thinks that's code word for "baby," but no, that's not the exciting news. sorry.) ;-)

anyway, although there's no baby news, the first bit of news is about a new family member. right after i got back from my trip to seattle in september, tk and i adopted a 5-month old black lab puppy named truman.

boy is he fun. he enjoys string cheese, going on walks, eating bones, napping, chasing leaves, going to the dog park, and eating c.d. boxes.