Chamber of Commerce Day

Dad always used to call those perfect Seattle days - temps in the 70s, not a cloud in the sky - "Chamber of Commerce Day," like, go out and grab the city's staff photographer, it's time to take pictures for the annual "Seattle" calendar.  Well, Thursday was Anchorage's official "Chamber of Commerce Day."  This is the day that tourists (and newbies like me) look around town and go, holy crap, this city is amazing and I want to live here forever.  Now, since it's currently dumping buckets and about 60 degrees outside (of course, because it's Saturday), I felt like this post would give me a reminder of how great my new city is and how much I really do love it here.  Also, I can tell you a bit about my new fabulous metropolitan lifestyle working downtown.  It's a lot nicer than the north Salem industrial park.

First off, I work in the second tallest building in town, just a few feet shorter than the Conoco Phillips building (the tallest building, obviously), which is a block away on the same street.  Pretty much all state workers work in this building, except for Andy, who works closer to the water.  It's nice to know that I have the same view as the guys getting paid by all the oil money.  Then again, as a state employee, that's basically where my paycheck comes from too.

Two tall buildings - mine is the silvery one on the right.  Also, I didn't take this picture, I grabbed it off google images. 

I work on the 2nd to the top floor and am on the side of the building that faces south and west.  I look toward our house and have an excellent view of the mountains and also the airport which I actually kind of like looking at.

Looking to the south

Looking to the west - the airport is off in the distance

To take those pictures, I stood up from my desk and walked three feet.  I don't have this view directly because I have my computer monitors in the way, but when I stand up to stretch or lean over to ask my coworkers 10,000 questions a day about my job, this is what I see.  It's pretty nice, especially since I've never really had a view before at work.

One of the things I like best about where I work is the location.  Not only am I roughly four blocks from Andy so we can meet for lunch (a luxury we never really had except for when I worked at Willamette), but Downtown Anchorage is really pretty, especially in the summer.  This park is almost halfway between my office and Andy's:

My building from the park

The park is, like the rest of downtown, FULL of flowers right now.  We see people out watering and tending to the flowers early in the morning every day, keeping all the beds perfect for the tourists, who, with an average age of about 70, really appreciate gardening (like Andy and me).  Also, you never really see them working during the day - it's kind of like Disneyland...the landscaping is perfect but you never see anyone doing the hard work.  We talked to a maintenance lady the other day and she said that they have over 1200 hanging baskets alone in about a 5 block radius and the staff takes care of all of them in addition to the planted beds.  It's a HUGE job,  but look how pretty!

Dahlias! My favorite! They don't winter over in AK, so I wonder if the city workers dig them up every year?!

The rest of town all looks like this - every vacant little bit of earth is just chock full of plants.  At lunch they also have concerts in the various parks and tons of food vendors out cooking and selling reindeer sausage and other goodies.  I love that Anchorage has such a vibrant downtown, and on a day like Thursday, when it was 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, it really was a "Chamber of Commerce Day." All the cruise-goers were loving it, and so was I.