Saturday, July 19, 2008

Isn't it ironic...

This kind of cracked me up a bit. But it's too true.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080718/lf_nm_life/gasoline_alaska_dc

Anyway, after that bit of levity (or lack of it, perhaps), I'll be posting here pretty soon about the things that people can do when they come up to Alaska for a visit. My husband's brother just left after a 10 day excursion here and we went out and took many pictures of our misadventures. I won't be able to post them all, of course (we took over 300!), but I'll post the ones that best illustrate our trips.

In the meantime, I'm still unemployed, but I did talk to the operations manager at one of the local fitness clubs here. It's so frustrating that my masters degree in kinesiology and second degree black belt all mean nothing in the light that I'm not "certified". This certification is just a brief reenactment of everything I studied for my bachelors and masters degrees. And it cost nearly $250 for the privelege of taking their test.

Sigh.

Well, I'm biting the bullet and getting it done. Got my CPR and First Aid cert a few days ago. I'm signed up for the test on the 5th of August.

And my parents are on their cruise, heading here to visit us! I can't wait!

Gotta go. More later.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Swords and Flowers

Haven't posted in a while because being unemployed, I don't have much to say. I spend a lot of time at home. Mostly cleaning up for the guests we'll have this month. First Logan's brother and then my parents and aunt and uncle.

But other than that, my life is pretty dull right now.

I've signed up for a CPR class so that I can take the ACE exam and get certified to teach group fitness courses.

I've applied for a temp teaching position at the local college. I hope that will get my foot in the door there and lead to a permanent position.

And a friend of ours gave me swords!

Yes, Heather has swords now! Yahoo, yippee!

He'd been trying to sell them and no one was buying. (People are nuts.) Since he wanted to get rid of them, he asked if I'd like to have them.

I was totally floored that he would just give these beautiful items away. I don't care what true sword collectors would say about them. I think they are absolutely gorgeous. Here's a picture of one of them, my favorite:



I also took some pictures of the flowers that are sprouting up all over the place here in the valley. These are just the ones in abundance at our apartment complex:



Normal everyday dandelions. But get a load of the stems on these suckers!



They look like they'd reach out and choke you if you got too close. "Feed me, Seymour, feed me!"




It alternates rain and sun here almost every other day, and what with all the daylight hours we have, we get a lot of green and some colors, too. It is beautiful here.