all is peachy

Wow, I didn't realize I hadn't updated this blog after Chris and Dante got here. Heh.

They arrived on schedule on March 1 at about 9:30 in the morning. I had picked up the keys to our new place the night before and moved some household items, such as a litter box for the cats and toilet paper and laundry detergent, into the house. My landlords were still moving out, which I knew would be the case, so I left everything in the garage.

I was so excited to see Chris and Dante. It turned out that a) they'd stored a lot more stuff back in Virginia than I'd thought they would and b) we had pretty much NO money, but we somehow managed to muddle through for the next few weeks. On my next paycheck, we bought a recliner and sofa for almost nothing, and a little bit later we bought Dante a bed (he slept on an air mattress till then). We still want to buy s a king bed for ourselves (and put the queen we're sleeping on in the guest bedroom) but we are in no hurry to do that. Oh, we've also acquired a ping pong table because we all love ping pong. I haven't been playing recently, but I need to get back to doing that because it's a lot of fun.

Our other major acquisition is a dog, a chocolate lab mix named Koda whom we adopted from the local Humane Society. She's a sweetie, aside from her penchant for eating everything in sight. I got a large, energetic dog because I want to be challenged to get in (better) shape, and she is definitely keeping me on my toes. I haven't managed to tire her out yet.

Chris is starting a handyman business here, and doing insurance surveys for a company based in New York, so he's keeping busy. Dante is enjoying the mild summer, and the fact that he can walk to the library and (some) shopping whenever he wants. So I would say we're all pretty well settled in.

We're having another beautiful (well, in my opinion) summer here - mostly cool-ish, lots of rain, but also some decent sunny and warm days. It actually got up in the 80's for a bit, which I didn't really enjoy, but it was only for a few days. In a way it was kind of nice, because one of those days was Knit In Public Day (yes, this is a thing) and so I was sitting outside in a strapless sundress enjoying the breeze from the ocean as I worked on whatever I was working on at the time.

So I've been here a YEAR and I am loving it just as much as when I first arrived. There are bad things about Alaska - the expense of living here, the lack of some things I used to take for granted, and so on - but just looking out the window makes so much of that worthwhile, even on a "bad weather" day. One of my friends tells me she won't believe I'm staying till I've been here for three years...TWO TO GO!

I will continue to blog here from time to time about experiences I'm having here that aren't like those I've had elsewhere, and stuff like that. Thank you all for joining me on my Alaska adventure!

pins and needles

It's now exactly ONE MONTH until Chris and Dante will be moving here, and I'm so excited I can hardly think.

The original idea was for them to rent a U-Haul, pack all our stuff (and the cats) into it, hitch a car trailer to it, and drive to Haines, AK where they would ferry to Juneau. Then Chris decided that perhaps taking the car wasn't the best idea, so he decided to sell the car (he hasn't done that yet but I know the woman we bought it from wants to buy it back).

Then I got into a minor car accident with my Toyota. Basically, the streets were a mess after a snowfall, and it was hard to see what was street and what wasn't at this particular intersection (it's an exit instead of a right turn). I was meaning to go straight but was too far over to the right and hit the exit/median instead. It wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been the exact right mix of darkness, street mess, and precipitation messing up my windshield. Nor would there have been any damage to my car if there hadn't been a sign for the exit that I hit.

The signs are designed to snap off when you hit them and they just spring right back up, so I'm not being charged with anything, and there were no other cars involved. My darling Toyota has a busted headlamp, a slightly dented hood, and a completely destroyed front bumper. A full repair job will be twice what I paid for the car, but just to get it street legal is going to take 2-3 weeks (no local parts) and $1,000. So there goes Chris's ability to rent a truck and drive (although it was looking doubtful anyway).

So now the new plan is that Chris is going to sell 99% of our possessions and he and Dante will fly out here. In a way, we're all relieved; the drive was going to be a huge pain in the ass, and I was worried about the  cats. In another way, I'm kind of freaked about jettisoning all our stuff, particularly since I will not be present for the process. But we do have a lot of stuff that we don't need, and doing things this way will actually give us a bunch of money left over to replace stuff that we DO need. Renting the truck would have meant we'd have pretty much no money when he arrived.

Not everything is going; some stuff will be shipped here and a very few things will be stored. And in one month, the boys will fly out here, and we'll all be together again.

In the meantime, I'll be taking the bus to work until my car is (somewhat) fixed. This week, my other roommate has been driving me, as he works next door, but he's going to be traveling for the next two weeks. Fortunately, there IS a bus that would not work on a permanent basis (it gets me to work an hour later before I should be there and I end up shorting my work time by about 30 mins) but which should be okay for a couple of weeks anyway.

I'm told that ditch diving is a rite of passage here, so I'm hoping that's the worst accident I ever have.

on the move

I've been quite anxious lately because Chris and Dante are arriving in a couple of months (I keep saying mid-Feb but that's actually when they are leaving VA; they'll arrive in AK a couple of weeks later) and I haven't known where we'll be living. It's really hard to find rental property in Juneau; we don't have apartment complexes like they do in the rest of the country. Apartments exist but they are intended for low or no income folks and have long waiting lists (and I'd consider it unfair to put my name in for that reason). On top of it, most of the rentals that do exist don't allow pets, and we still have two cats. So I was going a little crazy.

However, my "government boss" wanted to buy a house and rent out the current house he's got, and it turned out that his timing and mine coincide pretty much exactly. So on March 1, I'll be moving into a gorgeous (and fairly new) house in Mendenhall Valley. It's in a development where the houses are attached, but it's an end house with a fence around 3/4s of it, and the side that's attached is the garage side. We can walk (in decent weather anyway) to shopping, post office, movies, and the local library, and it's only a couple of miles from where I work. It's got three bedrooms and two full baths, and my boss had just finished building a fully wired workshop in the back yard. They're leaving all of the appliances, including the washer/dryer. They're fine with our cats and we can get a dog if we want. There's a ton of parking. There is no homeowners' association (YAY!).

I'll be moving in right around the time Chris and Dante arrive, i.e. March 1 (though I'm hoping I can at least start moving some boxes in a bit before that). The roommate I'm currently renting from would have liked me to be out sooner, but he had to go out of town until April, so he's actually benefiting from my continued presence since he's getting more rent, and I'll be out before he comes back. So it's all worked out, and I'm happy as a clam. 

...Do clams really have emotions?

Here's a picture of the house from the outside:

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