the winter commute

biking though the farm fields to work, lots of swans these days and the daffodils are just starting to poke out. in another month or so this place will be bombarded with people from all over the world biking and driving through these tulip, daffodil and iris fields. and this is my daily commute. i love my job, i love this commute. check back in a few months for more photos, i can't wait to see it myself.

Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express is the name of this weather system where wet pacific air gets sucked up and dumped on western washington for days on end. It's a bit more than normal this round and most of the area is in a state of emergency. More than 60 major highways are closed, ALL roads to eastern washington are closed.. it's craziness. at least it's 85 degrees warmer than fairbanks! the backyard, glad i don't have a basement.
why is the neighbor's yard perfectly dry and mine totally saturated?
the ditch on the edge of my yard. this morning there were pintails, mallards, and gulls <100 yards from my kitchen window.
my boss' mother-n-law took this photo off her front porch, just south of here.

Happy New Year!

a few photos spending the new year in NH and Maine...

Bryce's 5th birthday!
teaching abigail new tricks, yes table dancing!

AK weather in WA

this weather is pretty much unheard of for this area - over a foot of snow right here on the coast. I am absolutely LOVING it, like a kid with not just his hand, but his whole head stuck in the candy jar... 20 degrees and snowy and bright - does it get any better than that?

solstice

Audrey and I hosted a little solstice party at my house last night. Neither of us know many folks here, the roads were horrible... it had the makings for a lame night. But little by little folks showed up and it actually turned in to a fun little holiday party. Lots of bizarre little connections you would only find in a small town like la conner... Alex -Audrey's college buddy exboyfriend was here with his family who moved to la conner a year ago. Turns out he works with my officemate Jenny, who also came. Jenny's husband Chris went to high school with Scott - who I met through Yoga in la conner - etc. forgot to take photos (sorry mom) but i was very proud of my decorating - icicle arms and asparagus nose...

best batch ever?

the tradition continues...

sunday am

just shot this photo out the kitchen window while on the phone with my mom this morning. the abundance of Hawks in the Skagit in the winter is amazing, they seem to be on every single power line, but this is the first time I've had one on the porch. Sharp shinned? .

Deception Pass Dash

I went and watched this grueling 6 mi paddle race today through Deception Pass. Basically you have to sprint the first few miles to beat the tide, otherwise you're fighting the current through the Pass and it's pretty much hopeless. I wasn't up for it this year but it was fun to watch all the different boats (surf kayaks, outrigger canoes, etc) and I'd love to do it next year..
i think santa was a bit tired.

Thanksgiving - NW Island style

The holiday got off to a rough start around here - with Caz Z eating a full pecan and half a pumpkin pie off the counter Thanksgiving morning. So of course the pie fiasco led to your typical holiday emotional breakdown - which for me involves being ridiculously homesick for friends, skiing, and thanksgiving in DJ. But the day improved dramatically and I had a great meal/day with Steph and friends in Seattle. Then came back and spent a wet but gorgeous weekend on Orcas Island with Audrey. It was a great blast from the past, I hadn't been out there since I worked a summer there as a kayak guide in... 1993?? Am I really that old? Much has changed, but the island still has remarkable charm.

we did get out for a long hike, but with the wet weather we also leisurely enjoyed the great bookstore and coffee shop and got in lots of knitting. here we are enjoying the most decadent mexican hot chocolate you can imagine, stalling out before going back to a wet tent.

As homesick as I may be, I must say I LOVE the mornings here. After years of winter darkness in Fairbanks, having the sun rise @ 7 am here feels so decadent! This is our campsite, pretty sure we were the only ones camping in all of moran state park, not bad considering the unseasonably warm weather here these days.

we thought about buying this beauty for morgan...

the wet season is here

favorite past-time in the office this last week has been checking the hydrograph of the Skagit river. Watching the predicted curve shoot up into the phase III orange flood zone is exciting, when you're in a dry office. The Stilliguamish - one delta South of here - flooded heavily, further upriver flooded, but mt vernon was spared.... for this fall storm at least.


in other news... Auds is here for a month. I'm so glad to have a good friend around, and she's glad to have a comfy place to recover. She just had a surgery last week, she donated a kidney. It's been amazing to see this whole process. The surgery itself was no big deal by Audrey standards (and thanks to the drugs no doubt). but she's had some major complications from the surgery which were not anticipated and were a big deal. Just hanging out with her in the hospital during one particularly bad bout of pain last week I was so struck but what an amazingly selfless act she had made. Seems as humans we have this innate tendency towards selfishness, but really Auds just proved we're capable of so much more.

Howard (the recepient) is doing great. He started peeing within a few hours of surgery, is eating black beans... things he hasn't done in years. I've never been so blown away by the miracles of modern medicine. We all of course had wished Dea could have been the recipient but it just wasn't a good match. But Howard has a young daughter and Audrey's gift to her is no less than if it had been Dea.

election night, la conner style

a bit late, but a great story...
i was a bit disappointed election night. i walked down to the brewery to watch the results come in and see it live on tv. history in the making, how could there only 3 people at the bar? that is so la conner, dead. dead. not that i'm a big fan of crowds but i really wanted to be in grant park, not the la conner brewery.

so a few nights ago i went to a book signing event for a local author - tom robbins. (as in - Even Cowgirls get the Blues). He looked strangely familiar... If only I had known at the time that I spent a historical night with my neighbor Tom Robbins!

we have snow too...

but only high on the passes, really it's just fall here. certainly no fall colors here to rival new england or the tundra in the brooks range in August... but still the larches really are beautiful...



another great weekend hiking with Steph in the Cascades.

come ski the methow!!

why ski to mcgrath or ski to nome, when for the same price you can hop a quick flight to seattle, meet me and drive out to winthrop, WA where there's endless skate skiing on the east side of the cascades. Just discovered this cool little mtn town... it's warm, it's sunny, there's more daylight here, you can stop by one of several awesome bakeries on your way out, or the breweries on your way back into town... maybe this is what happens when you move south - am I getting softer, or just smarter? either way, you guys should come check it out. i hear there are cabins you can skate to...

seattle times

Not everyday that I get my photo in the Seattle newspaper!

back to AK

i had an absolutely fabulous weekend in Haines, AK for Caroline and Pat's wedding last weekend. It was a small wedding on their land just outside of Haines. They've built this gorgeous cabin entirely themselves - milled the logs from the property, everything. it is so detailed and beautiful, a labor of love more than any house i've ever been to. It was a powerful weekend - small group of great people, spectacular location, hiking, kayaking, eating, drinking... it left me incredibly homesick for Alaska.

it was an all the crab you can eat weekend, caught right off the beach...


"tent city" - we all camped out in their backyard - 30 acres of gorgeous SE forest
hiking up to the davidson glacier - just a few miles behind their cabin.

moving in

finally! the stuff i shipped has arrived from Alaska, and I am unpacking these days... it feels weird. found a real cute and charming house, in dire need of some tlc. renting for now, with the option to buy in 6 months... but my dilemna - would you buy a house in the floodplain??

no doubt the best part of the house is the kitchen window - looking out on an elaborate garden, and the Hedlin farm behind that (one of the farmers in my program at work, and I now buy all my produce at their farmstand a half a mile from my house). it also has a great sunroom, an awesome deck, 2 pear trees, an apple tree, grapes, and some really lovely 30 year old yellow carpet and mint green paint....