Bleah

Y'know...things aren't that bad, so why do I feel so lackluster and unmotivated? I have so much to do, and can't seem to get going. This is most frustrating.

Full Board

Returned from the Bristol Bay Native Association Full Board of Directors meeting yesterday afternoon. Although the majority of the meetings went very well, there was an attempt to circumvent procedure and introduce a resolution to the board that would have specifically targeted the Pebble Prospect. The portion of the resolution that was "too specific" in nature was struck, and the resolution passed. It irks me that those adamantly opposed to development would do anything to advance their views, regardless of the forum. I believe that the "fight", as it were, has just begun, and we haven't seen anything yet.

Busy Day

There was a lot of activity around here today. The optometrist from BBAHC was here, Ralph, Jeff, and Marlo from BBNA came up for our monthly Council meeting, and Nancy & Elijah came home!

We had a great meeting, I think the BBNA team presented well, and some very insightful questions were asked. All in all, it went better then I expected.

My cousin Josh was in today, so I've included some pics of his departure.

Q'uo!

Throttled back

I just found out that Starband has started enforcing a 3.4 GB transfer limit, so now if I hit that limit within 7 days, they throttle us back to less then 100 KBS. Ridiculous! So much for "unlimited access"! I can't even get the advertised speeds, and they're throttling! I put in a call to our account manager, complained and he put in a memo on our behalf to leave the settings where they are, without throttling.

The wind is whipping out of the southwest, at around 40 mph. I actually like it when it's this windy, always have. Pretty dang cold though. We have 14 mph here, and the wind chill is -8.

Dad left for Anchorage this morning. He's has some medical appointments, and Mom is heading in on Thursday to be with him.

Miss my family. Elijah had his braces put on this morning. He's pretty psyched about the whole thing. More then likely because Brandon has them. He's not to thrilled about the list of foods he isn't able to eat anymore, though.

I've included some pictures of our day. Enjoy.

Q'uo

Winter Blahs

I don't recall ever experiencing "cabin fever". Of course, spending most of my time outdoors, skating, sledding, hunting, and generally goofing off probably staved off any occurance of that particular malady. Now there never seems to be the time for all of that. Hence, my dour attitude lately. I keep looking at my countdown clock, and wishing it were in single digits. I find myself gazing longingly at the image on the TV...white sands, sparkling water...it's not until I realize that the "girls have gone wild" that I snap out of my reverie and change the channel.

*Sigh*

I need a vacation.

Q'uo

Is anybody................out there?

They made it out...house is so empty without them...this is going to be a looonnng week! Oh well, Nancy needed the break, and Elijah was so looking forward to swimming. They keep calling to check on me, "how ya doin' Dad?" "sure doesn't feel the same without you", etc. Nice to be missed...but the truth is, I've been traveling so much, I'm not too broken up about staying home and chillin'. Can't believe I just used that word! LOL! Word to your...oh never mind...who am I tryin' to fool? I stopped being "with it" 'bout 10 years ago! :-/

I'll tell you what, there's not a single day that goes by anymore when I don't think of turquoise waters and sugar-white sand beaches! C'mon vacation! Daddy needs a change of latitude! I think my family in Albuquerque is getting amped about this as well. Can't wait to see them all.

Q'uo

Snow...white stuff...powder...cold, wet, miserable etc.

Okay..I've been trying NOT to complain, but this is getting old! I can't believe it's still coming down, and according to my "cruise timer", I still have approximately 57 days to go before I can really relax! Oh well....gotta hang in there...must think warm, sunny thoughts!

Nancy & Elijah are leaving for Anchorage tomorrow (hopefully) and will be gone for approximately 5 days. Reckon I will be foraging (see heading for Moms for dinner) for a few days.

New 'Puter

Got a new tower, spent most of yesterday setting up. Now, I know that the few "nerds" out there would laugh at my taking most of a day to set up, but it was a bit more complicated then just taking it out of the box and plugging everything in.

First off, it's a Dell Dimension 9150, the processor is a 3.0 Pentium 4 dual core, with a 800mhz FSB and a 2MB L2 cache (945P chipset). I've got 2 Gig DDR2-667MHz SDRAM, 160 GB HD, ATI Radeon X600 HyperMemory video in a PCIE configuration, onboard 7.1 Surround Sound, and a truly tool-less case. It leaves me plenty of room for expansion; 2GB more of RAM, bigger video card, 500GB HD, 3.4 Pentium 4 processor.

The part that took longer was that I ordered this fairly "bare bones", so I had to install two Plextor burners, a CDR Premium, and a DVDR PX-708A, an additional 2.0 USB card (the tower only has 7 USB ports and I require more! :) I'm thinking of dropping in the Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum Pro sound card I have, because you can disable the onboard audio in BIOS, which is a really neat trick. Gotta admit though, the 7.1 sounds pretty sweet for onboard audio.

After that, I had to spend the afternoon installing the many device drivers for my three printers, CD tower, and flat-bed scanner. I started to install and restore the data to the mulitude of apps I use, but ran out of time, guess that's next on the agenda.

Q'uo!

Musicale

The Musicale went very well. We had a great time singing and seeing old friends.

There was a twist to the whole trip. My dad was hospitalized with congestive heart failure and anemia. I spent two days longer in Anchorage to be there for my mom and dad. Dad was discharged from the hospital yesterday, and we all came home today. Bumpy over Pile River Valley, but not a bad trip all in all, considering it was in a 207.

Good to be home.

Q'uo

Traveling, traveling, traveling..

Got stuck in Anchor Town a day longer due to high winds in Pedro Bay. Have not felt like writing much this past week. Came into the office on Monday (even though it was Presidents Day) not to work, but check email, etc. Long story short, my computer fried. Microprocessor went the way of my svelte form and gave up the ghost. Now, I'm forced to order a new tower! ;-)

Heading back into Anchorage for the Musicale, playing guitar for the group. After that, it's Dillingham around the first week in March for the spring Full Board meeting of BBNA. The fun never ends. Wife is getting more then slightly perturbed that I'm still traveling, and the subject is the catalyst of more then one spirited, um, discussion.

Finally sold the van! So glad that headache is gone. At least we got our money out of it!



Q'uo

In Anchorage

Made it to Los Anchorage today...wasn't sure if I was going to make it...wind was over 50 mph when Tim picked me up. Quite the flight...but I've had worst.

Very sad news today. Charlie was found. I do so wish it had been on a postive note. But....there's a reason for everything...keep his family, especially his son and daughter, in your prayers.

Not feeling like writing much more tonight.

Q'uo Charlie...rest well.

Prayer Request

I'm asking for prayer for someone who is missing here in Pedro Bay. No one has seen him in five days, and we're fearing the worst. None of the signs we're seeing are leading to any conclusions that end well. Still, there are those that have lasted longer, so...please pray. And if the end result of the ensuing search is negative, pray for his family.

I'll be in Anchorage from tomorrow until Friday, and will be posting from there.

Chin'un

Snow....again!

Y'know, I thought it was a unique phenomenon. We got some real, up to your knees snow! I figured we were blessed to have received as much as we did. Then a couple of days ago, it warmed up and started raining. Figures. That's par for the course in Pedro Bay, as far as weather is concerned. Lo and behold,last night it started to snow again! 10 hours later, we have what you see in the picture. Crazy. I went down to Rushin' Creek to pick up the Sanners for church, seein' how their suburban is on the fritz, and managed to drop most of the rear end into quite the muddy little creek. Took a loader to pull me out. Ahhh..what is life without a few bumps in that road? Builds character? Nope. Patience? Uh huh. Life is what it is. It helps to define your spiritual character. And keeping your tongue in check in front of the pastors wife when your truck is leaning into a creek really helps definition! :-)

Q'uo

Travel

Traveled to Dillingham for a BBNA Executive Committee today. Weather was a bit touchy, but managed to make it home this evening. Not a whole lot going on today, but do feel like I'm catching a flu....thanks SJ! LOL

Need some sleep.

Q'uo

Age punctuated!

You didn't see a post from me yesterday because I was laid up at home.

You see, the night before when I stopped by my brother's house, I slipped on a board going up to his door, hyper-extended my knee the wrong way (is there a right way?) , then jammed it as I fell off the board into the convenient slush-filled puddle below, quite adequately adding insult to injury. Soooo.. as I hobbled painfully around the house, my thoughts, which were litigious in nature, were focused on my advancing years and seeming inability to respond in a "cat-like" manner to slips of this nature. However logic raised it's ugly head and reminded me that my "cat like" reflexes had gone the way of the dodo years ago, coinciding with the addition of a *cough* few pounds I'd added to my studly frame. Ah hahahahaha....knew I couldn't get through that with a straight face!

Oh well...life goes on...

Have a great day!

Q'uo

Waxing philosophical....

It was on a Sunday morning, 46 years ago today, that I entered this world. (Thanks, Mom!) In that time I've seen, and been, many things. Most of them wonderful, some of them not. All in all, my life (which, when compared to my Uncle Gus, is not so long) has been a good one. I'm blessed with a woman better then I deserve, and a wonderful son. A good job. Lots of family around me, and close friends that care. There's not a whole lot more that I could ask for. Life is.....better. You have to know me to appreciate that last statement. ;-)

Meteorologically (is that a word?) speaking, we got dumped on!! I'm guessing it was around a foot of snow that fell yesterday. Kept the guys busy plowing the roads and the airfield. That's my brother in the loader doing his thing. It's finally let up. Y' notice how I kept away from the weather until MUCH later?? Huh? Huh? :)

Mom & Dad are coming back today. Dad's eye appointment went well.

Have a great day!

Q'uo

Yeah, I know...they lost!

Bummer! I thought the Hawks really had a chance. I think being deflated by some very questionable calls had a lot of bearing on their game. Oh well, at least they made it to the Super Bowl.......and.........there's always next year!

My wife brought up a very good point. My blog seems to deal mainly with weather. In my defense, that would be because the main focus of this community in the last two weeks has been the weather. It permeates our lives right now because it's been so extreme! But, I will make an attempt to write about something other then the fact that it's snowing flakes the size of my hand, or that the visibility is zero zero. ( See pics ) The first is flash-less, the second is with flash so you can see da purty snowflakes!

We lost power this morning about 6:15. The skinny is that a line break somewhere on the east side of the village is the culprit. The guys are out troubleshooting as I type. Thankfully this didn't happen when it was -25F.

I've noticed that none of you, assuming there are SOME of you reading this, are not commenting at all. You can offer up your comments by clicking on the "Comments" links at the bottom of this post, or in the guestbook I've added to the right. I would prefer commenting on the main page, but will take any comment whatsoever! :-)


Q'uo!

Windy....village

Well, the wind has increased big time. Ron Aaberg clocked the speed at his place at 62 MPH at 4:449 pm. We've been seeing gusts around 45-50 mph here, with an average in the village of around 30 mph. Yeehaw. Don't see a whole lot of aircraft in the sky around Pedro today! Beauty part of all this is the continued increase in temps, and the apparent cessation (temporary as it may be) of eruptions from ol' Auggie. You know it's been cold too long when 32 F feels postively balmy.

I'm ready to watch the 'Hawks take their first World Championship tomorrow. That's right, I said it, the Seahawks WILL win the Super Bowl. :-P Should be a great game. Dunno if I'll have time to post until late tomorrow night, so enjoy the game, and grab hold of something solid if you're in Pedro Bay!

Q'uo!

Uh oh...

The wind and temperture have gone up. Temp is currently 20F, and the wind is out of the NE up to 25. That's okay until it switches around to the southeast. Here's hopin' and prayin' it doesn't! Talked to John Nelson in Kokhanok about the possibility of ash falling on them, so far, so good. If the wind does shift to the east over in the Inlet, they'll be the first to know it. :-/

Changed the countdown timer location, wasn't really wanting to copy the code to every post I made. Besides, it would look a bit weird having all those counters on one page. Oh well, live and learn.

Got invited to the Pippens for the Super Bowl. Nothing like watching The Game on a 42 inch plasma in 5.1 Surround!

Q'uo

Respite? Hello?

Still cold. Auggie still cranky. Can't believe that the temperture dropped again. -21F when I came in this morning, still is as a matter of fact. My electronic weatherman tells me that it's supposed to be 20F tomorrow....I'm having a hard time swallowing that!

However. 87 days until the Cruise!

Check out the day we're having!

Q'uo!