Close encounters of the moose kind!

It might have been the same moose we were taking pictures of the other day, I'm not sure. Maybe she's a closet spotlight hog. (I'm so lame I don't even know if it was a girl or a boy moose. Of course, during this episode, I hardly cared to look that closely!)

Oh, wait. Maybe you'd actually like to know what happened.

Very simple,really. I was taking Bruno through the parking lot of the apartment complex to his usual potty spot. It's to the edge of the property where there's grass, bushes, and short trees along the fence belonging to one adjoining property. One is fenced, the other is not.

So as Bruno is doing his thing, I notice a big brown blob out of the corner of my eye. My first thought is, what's that horse doing over there?

When I finally pulled focus, I realized a moose was standing not more than 25 feet away from me in the unfenced yard!

It was ignoring me at that moment, busy chewing on nearby bushes. But then Bruno, that slow wit, stood at attention and wuffed.

The moose looked up. Oh, crap, I thought.

"Come on, Bruno," I whispered. "We're backing up, we're backing up." Luckily, Bruno followed along with me slowly and without protest.

Except that the moose started following me, too! He (she, it) was crossing the parking lot in the same direction I was heading!

As soon as I passed the stairwell, I picked up the speed. I didn't head up because Bruno had not finished his nightly business yet, so I dashed to the other side of the complex. Checking behind me, I saw the coast was clear.

The moment Bruno had finished, I headed back the way we came and saw one of our neighbors with her dog in the same area we had come from. I looked up and down and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

One thing I've heard over and over since we've arrived is how unpredictable moose are. How they can charge your car if you honk your horn. How if you and a moose play chicken on the road, you both loose.

I guess this one was just playing with me. Probably cutting me up to his friends afterward. "Boy, you should have seen her go, dragging that dog behind her like she's was trying to fly a kite! Ha, ha, ha!"

Attack of the Mooses!

Well, one moose. And it wasn't really attacking anything but the bushes in the area surrounding our apartment complex.

I felt like such a tourist taking pictures of him, but I took pictures of deer in California whenever I had the chance, so this wasn't any different, really.

Besides, moose are so cute! (Unpredictable and mean, but cute.)

I wish I had a better camera, though. I had this one zoomed all the way in and it still looks like he's way off when he was actually pretty close.

Finally, I live somewhere that's GREEN!

Looklooklook, green stuff! I forgot how beautiful green is!

That's Wasilla Lake in the background. (At least, I think it's Wasilla.) It's a short walk down behind our apartment complex. We've started walking the puppy there because we can let him off his leash and he doesn't disturb anybody and can run in crazy circles as long as he wants.

I've posted a bunch of pictures of Bruno on Myspace. Here's the URL for mine:

http://www.myspace.com/sparklecat_in_alaska

There's pics from my best friend's wedding and my kitties as well.


When the sun is out, it feels very warm here. The downside is that the wind has picked up again and the wind still has a harsh bite to it. When I'm outside, I alternate between wanting to zip up my coat and wanting to tear it off. This happens every three seconds.


But spring is here at last! Green things are starting to burst up from the ground like the police were after them. I was up really late recently (about 3 am) and I could see that the light doesn't completely disappear from the sky at night now. It's an odd feeling, but it's pretty neat, too.

People are coming in to the store now saying, "Oh, the mosquitoes are out in force. Stock up on the bug spray."


I think it depends on where you live because so far I've hardly seen any. And the ones I've seen are regular size. Nothing scary about them.

My parents are coming for a visit this summer and my mom was asking me what she should bring to wear. I told her bring a little bit of everything because I think we'll see a little bit of everything from the weather (except snow). I also said to roll her clothes rather than fold them because they take up less room and are less creased that way, too.

I can't wait to see how warm it gets this summer!

Nighttime in Alaska

This picture was taken from the stairwell of our apartment at around 10:30 pm. It's kind of blurry, but the colors are pretty.

And we've still got more than a month to go until the Summer Solstice. This was taken about a week and a half ago, so you can imagine with how quickly it changes what it must be like now. I was exercising at 10 pm last night because it felt like 6 pm.

One of my coworkers was telling me about how one summer he was out mowing one of his fields and didn't hear his wife yelling at him until he shut it off and came in for a drink. She told him, "Don't you realize that it's midnight?"

In other unrelated news, there's a possible change on my horizon at work. They're creating new positions called regional office managers. In a nutshell, I could potentially be in charge of the stores' office managers in Alaska, maybe even a few other states. Always available for answering questions, traveling to new stores or just to train new office managers, stuff like that. On top of my current duties as office manager in Wasilla, of course.

I think they're wanting to cut down on the amount of cross country traveling the field office manager currently does. If that's so, they better make Alaska a region unto itself. There is no cheap way of traveling in and out of Alaska!

I'm going to apply and see what it's about. Won't know until later in the month. The regions and the pay rate seem to depend on who applies.

Let's see. Any other interesting tidbits? Well, the local theatre is going to be doing The Spitfire Grill for their yearly musical. I'd never heard of it, but I jumped at the chance to buy the original cast recording, sold only by one theatre in New York. But it's got Liz Callaway of Miss Saigon fame. Unfortunately she's got the boring ballads.

Don't get me wrong. I adore a good ballad. And Liz has a gorgeous voice. But some of the solo songs she sings in this recording leave me a little flat. Of course, knowing me, all it will take for me to love the songs is to have to learn them and sing them for a few months. I'm wishy washy like that. The rest of the songs are lovely, very folksy and countrified without being country, if you know what I mean.


Now I'm starting to babble. When I'm not even making sense to myself, it's time to move on. I need to revamp my resume anyway.