Amazing stories

Not too many amazing coincidences and hilarity enters my life in such rapid succession. But these two recent stories I just had to share.

This past Wednesday after I was released from prison, er, work, my husband and I had a late night out, even though I needed to go to work the next day. I was going to have some time to sleep in before my very late shift for our first evening with open doors to the public, and Logan and I haven't had any days off together since I started working more hours. So we went to a restaurant in Palmer that we were introduced to by some friends of ours, open 24 hours with decently priced yummy food. It's called the Valley Hotel and it's the coffee shop inside. We lovingly call it "The Valley Ho." (One friend called it the V-Ho, but her boyfriend called it the Valley Ho by mistake. We couldn't resist keeping that name.) When family and friends come to visit, we will certainly take them there, as the food is really good.

Anyway, we also drove the half hour to Eagle River because their movie theatre was the only one in town playing "Crank: High Voltage" with Jason Statham. It was a kick in the pants. It crosses many shock lines, and I don't just mean electric ones.

Anyway (two), we've had absolutely gorgeous sunny weather lately, thanks to a high pressure system in place over Alaska. (Californians curse that high pressure, Alaskans revel in it, especially after last summer where there were only 4 warm days that reached 70 degrees.) The roads were completely dry, which made the grooves in them from winter tires seem more pronounced, as there was no snow or puddles of water to obscure them.

Just for fun, Logan, my insane chauffeur, decided to take his hands of the steering wheel, as the tires were well settled within these deep grooves. I didn't realize how deep the grooves really were ... until we approached a corner and the car TURNED ITSELF. Without Logan's ever touching the wheel with hands or knees. I don't think you can even do that on Highway 80 in California! (I could be wrong, but we never did.)

The car cruised around the corner all by itself without any assistance, and straightened out to boot. At the next corner, the grooves lessened, so Logan was not able to repeat the experiment, but once was enough for me. It just shakes me up to see him drive without either hand on the wheel for any amount of time, let alone THAT long!

So that was pretty funny and amazing, at least to me. Almost seemed like a magic trick at work. "Nothin' up muh sleeve ... Presto!"

And now for something we hope you'll really like ...

So by now you've probably read that we are getting a new puppy, a Newfie named Uffda. We did a lot of research on all the different breeds, trying to decide what kind of dog would be a good match for Bruno and also have the kind of disposition we want. I know there have been demands for pics of the puppy and of the new house, and I'm working on that. But here was an amazing coincidence that Logan pointed out to me today.

We bought an older model Toyota Landcruiser not long after we moved here. We needed two vehicles and one of them needed to be a truck for going camping and such. So we bought the most decent one we could find. It had a sticker in the back window which we didn't pay any attention to and never bothered to remove.

Today Logan was out in the garage with his exercise equipment, sweating away, when he looked out the window and happened to glance at the back of his Landcruiser. And noticed what the picture on the sticker was.

It was one of those black and white silhouette pictures of a specific dog breed. When people own a type of dog, they can get this sticker showing what kind of dog they like and/or own.

This sticker was a Newfoundland.

Isn't that eerie?!