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The unpacking continues! Unfortunately, so does the snow.  We woke up to 3-4 new inches of snow on the ground and it's been snowing all day.  This is now what the weatherman says:

And yes, in case you were wondering, of course we live on the Hillside.  Even Andy is displeased with the snow at this point.  Thank god we bought a ton of wine on Friday.  12-18 inches? Seriously? Ugh.

Today has been a day of meeting new friends.  First of all, we met our neighbors! They have a cute dog named Bandit that is Ripley's age, but perpetually looks like a puppy (and Ripley LOVES HIM).  I need to get a picture of him...or steal him.  The neighbors also have a cute 6 year old boy who was dying to check out our swingset.  Of course we invited him over to try it out whenever he wants. (I have a feeling he'll be over here a lot!) They seem very nice and we hope this becomes a place where we actually hang out with our neighbors!

We also had many visitors today.  First were the Jehovah's Witnesses.  They had some excellent literature for us:

Doesn't Jesus seem awfully...white...in this picture? He's practically a ginger.  We enjoy his multi-cultural entourage though.  Andy said he reminded him of Gerard Butler.  I didn't really see it until we flipped the flyer over:

Jesus has been hitting the gym! He really DOES look like Gerard Butler in 300.  And these comments are a perfect example of why Andy and I are not generally welcome in most churches.  

We must have really been putting out the heathen vibes today because then the Baptists came by.  When I looked through the window, I saw two young guys in white shirts and black ties with name tags, and I was sure they'd be Mormon! Since I've always respected the fact that Mormons are like postal workers in that they go about their business no matter the weather, I was really nice to them at the door - even though they stopped by while I was enjoying a glass of wine and watching a "Say Yes to the Dress" marathon on TLC.  I even stayed nice to them when I realized they were Baptists (nothing against Baptists, but I was actually hoping they'd be Mormons).

Their literature was less exciting:

The text makes it feel like they knew we just moved in.  Is the USPS selling demographic info about people who request address changes now? Not cool, postal service, not cool.

Check out the inside!

I don't know that this is necessarily our crew.  There are just no words for my reaction to that picture.  Or there might be, but if I say/type them then I'll really be in trouble with God.

Well I think I offended plenty of people with this one.  I'm going back to my wine and TLC marathons.  Andy and I did a TON of picture hanging today.  I plan on doing another post later today or tomorrow to show all of the progress.  It really feels like we live here now!

First Weekend of Spring

When I think of spring, I think of this:

source

It's supposedly springtime around here, too, but there's no daffodils around to let anybody know about it.  

Today it looked like THIS outside: 

How come everybody wants to visit us in the summertime? Nobody wants to see Alaska between October and May for some reason! :)

Despite the snow (which is melting off the deck right now even as it comes down, so it's not as horrible as it might seem), we're having a great weekend.  Monday is Seward's Day which means that for these two state workers, we get a three day weekend.  Thanks for buying Alaska, William Seward!

Today we're hanging around the house continuing to put stuff away and make this house more of a home.  We've both been pretty under the weather for the past two weeks and spending most of our spare time getting the rest of our crap out of the OLD house, so it feels great to finally be productive at home.

Ripley continues to keep watch.

Fro remembers that she missed our furniture, especially the coffee table with the weird bar at the bottom.  Perfect chin height!  (Why is it that both of them find the weight of their own heads so unbearable?)

The cats would LOVE to go outside.  It's fun to tease them with a tiny window to freedom:

Desperate!

This is Zeus' "stop teasing us" face (please ignore the camera strap):

Fro also enjoys the dining room table.  Many chairs to sit at, and a great view out the window.

Here's the view she's checking out:

Redpoll! The previous owners installed an awesome bear attracter bird feeder, outside the dining room window which the cats LOVE.  Fro spent hours staring at birds today and lunging at the window. 

As mentioned before, Ripley also loves the windows.  He was pretty disappointed that we spent most of the day organizing our stuff and not catering to his every whim, so he just looked out the window with his saddest face on.  To our defense, we took him to the high school to play frisbee this morning, as we also did three other times this week - a trip that involves a 2 mile roundtrip walk plus frisbee fun.  I cannot tell you how much happier we all are that we can take him out by foot and not have to jump in the car to go play.  The walks are doing all of us some good, too.  

Hopefully we'll get enough done this weekend that I can put some pictures of the house up on the blog.  We haven't painted yet, so the before and afters won't be super dramatic, but once we're more settled, we'll slap some paint on the walls.  I'm sure Andy can't wait!

Sick.

Oooooo-eeeeee.  Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, I have spent the last few days feeling like death warmed over.  I definitely haven't been this sick in years, and am just now feeling human again.  It wasn't the flu - just a really bad respiratory cold thing, but I've had periods of such horrible coughing that I WISH I was throwing up instead.  Thankfully, I seem to be coming around and I'm sure Andy is disappointed that my voice is back.  In all honesty, though, he did a great job of taking care of me while I was incapacitated, and so did the animals.

On Monday, Ripley decided I might feel better if he slept on top of me all day.

Then Fro got the memo:

Ripley really enjoys sleeping with his head in her butt.

Obviously taking pictures of the animals with my phone was all I had the strength to do while I was dying on the couch.

In non-illness related news, we're settling into the house nicely.  We have made it through most of the boxes and are more in the "putting away/organizing" phase rather than the unpacking phase.  Does anyone need 453,000 boxes?  Feel free to come and get them all out of our shed, it's not locked.

Fro has discovered the fireplace:

Zeus decided that the dining room table is a good place to roll:

If anyone comes to our house for dinner we promise to try to remember to change the tablecloth.

Ripley has a favorite spot, too:

I'm pretty sure that Ripley sits on the couch all day just looking out the front windows.  Usually he barks at children playing in the cul-de-sac (a nice way to make friends with the neighbors, huh?) or just watches the world go by.  There weren't any front-facing windows that he could look out of at the rental house, so he's been missing this view for the last year.  He's a happy pup now.  

In other exciting news, it seems like spring is creeping in.  We've had a lot of sunny days with the snow melting and over the weekend it got up to almost 50 degrees!  ....and then on Sunday it snowed 6 inches without warning.  As much as I love the snow, I'm ready for it to be spring again, especially now that we're at about 12 hours of daylight.  Thankfully it's already melting again.  

Okay, I think it's about time for me to take a bunch of nyquil and pass out before 8pm so I can make it through another day of work tomorrow.  I can't wait until I'm feeling normal again! 

Welcome Wagon

The unpacking continues!  I would post some pictures of the process, but who wants to see all the boxes in my house?  I'll post some pictures when we're done.  Or maybe after we paint.  Anywhooo...

Andy and I love our new neighborhood.  It's full of trees and, based on the tracks we find in our yard all the time, MOOSE! The other day we rolled into the driveway and a young one bounded out of the backyard and ducked into the woods.  Sadly I wasn't able to get a picture of him/her.  We'd also seen a couple running around on the neighborhood streets, but couldn't catch any of those on film either.  Early this morning we took Ripley for his first walk in the new 'hood, and we happened upon a VERY LARGE lady moose who was asleep and not very happy that Andy was shining his headlamp right at her.  I would say ever since we moved into this house last week, we spend about half our time in the house peeking out the windows and trying to spot a moose so we can get some good pictures.  Well about 30 minutes ago, just as it was starting to get dark (by the way, it is AWESOME that it's still light at 7pm), I looked out the sliding door at the kitchen and saw one! 

As large as he looks, he's actually pretty small...and pretty excited about the swingset.

The cats were absolutely fascinated.  

Sorry these pictures are blurry...it was starting to get dark and I didn't want to use the flash, and my tripod wasn't handy.

Zeus called Fro to come check out the friend in the yard.

After he ate whatever was by the slide, he walked under the swingset and went right under our deck! I ran to the basement to take pictures out the other slider.  By the time I got down there he was nose to nose with the window, but I couldn't get a good picture.  There was no way I was going to open the glass so I could use the flash.  I don't want anyone reading "Crazy moose-obsessed outsider gets trampled by moose in her own basement" in the local paper.

He was VERY interested in the shovel.  He kept licking the handle.  Gross.

He then slowly headed up the driveway, but got spooked and hauled ass across the neighbor's yard (I think he finally heard Ripley FREAKING OUT from our bedroom).

I love the moose! I love our new house! I'll post some pictures soon.

Iditarod!

Even though we're in the throes of moving and unpacking (more on that later), I had to run to town to watch the ceremonial start of the Iditarod this morning!

Andy had to stay home to deal with the cable man, which turned out to be a bigger job than expected because the house had NEVER had cable.  I took Ripley with me to get him out of the house and let him explore a little.  I did NOT let him watch the race, though.  Other people brought their dogs to the race and it just distracted the racers and freaked the people's dogs out.

Since he'd be sitting in the car for a little bit, I took him to the park by my office to play a little frisbee to wear him out.  All he wanted to do was use his head like a shovel and dig.

As we walked back to the car, we ran into an old friend - Anchorage's very own reindeer mascot - STAR!  I'm pretty sure she remembered me from last weekend.

Star lives in a pen attached to her owner's house at the corner of 10th and I downtown.  Also, she really is super famous in Anchorage.  I don't know why Andy didn't remember her.  According to the internet she's actually the 6th Star that's lived at this house.  One of the former Stars was murdered back in the 80s, which is why she's got such a protective house.  People suck.

The sign on her pen invites you to become her friend on Facebook.  Yes, she has a Facebook page.

After Ripley barked a bunch at Star, I put him in the car and drove over to my office parking lot and let him nap.  Off to the race!

The weather was not great downtown this morning.  It's beautiful and sunny at our house, but it was very foggy downtown.  Also there were approximately four billion people lined up to watch the race, which starts at the same spot where we watched dog races last weekend for Fur Rondy.  FYI, this is only the ceremonial start.  The "real" start is tomorrow in Willow, which is about 50 miles from Anchorage.  Maybe next year we'll go watch that.

See the flags on the sign?  They represent all of the countries that are participating in the Iditarod this year.  Yes, that's right, there's a Jamaican dog sledder.  Coming soon to a theater near you - Cool Runnings 2!  (In Andy's dreams) And I guess Alaska is its own country.

In the picture above, the blue building on the right is where Andy and I stood to watch last week's races.  When I walked by there today, the crowd was about 10 people deep.  There's no way I was going to stand there and see anything.

My coworkers told me that the best place to watch from was the 4th avenue parking garage, so I headed that direction.  Other people also got the memo.

By the time I walked up to the 3rd floor, I couldn't really see much because of the fog.  Time to move.

I ended up getting a spot across the street from David Green, Master Furrier.  This is one of 2 David Green stores on 4th Avenue in Anchorage, in case you can't handle walking a few blocks to pick up a fox pelt.

By the time the snowmachine police came, everyone crowded into the parking garage.

The first racer is always a ceremonial starter.  This year's ceremonial starter was the winner of the Junior Iditarod last weekend.  It's a 75 mile race for 14-17 year olds, it covers two days, and the racers have to do it alone.  Alaska kids are super hard core!

Then the racers were off!  Since this was a ceremonial start, a lot of them had friends and family riding in the sled with them, and some even throw candy.  Kind of like a dog sled parade.  They basically loop through town for about 11 miles and then rest up for the start of the big race tomorrow.

Unlike the dogs from the sprint races last weekend, these dogs were mostly husky mixes.  Also, they didn't go as fast down the track as the dogs from last weekend.  It makes sense, because these guys have to go over 1,000 miles!

After I watched a couple of teams take off, I headed toward the crowd and went to see if I could photograph any of the VIPs.  Apparently all of Alaska's congressional delegation (and some congressmen from other states) were present for the race.  Also the governor, the mayor, and some celebrities, too.  I didn't see any of them, so I settled on going to see the dogs getting ready to run.

All of the teams have a whole group of volunteers to help with the dogs.  Each dog has one person to hold it back, which they need because they are so ready to go!  When I walked past one team, one of the dogs took his handler out.  Poor lady.  It was super nice of me to put this embarrassing photo of her on the internet, too.

These dogs seem to be matched by color:

When I walked by the teams, most of the dogs were just waiting patiently by their trucks.  Several were kind enough to pose for pictures.

Many of the dogs were trying to figure out how to get under their trucks and away from the people.

Since I made the rookie mistake of crossing the road when they would let me (they close the crosswalks when the races start), I had to walk ALL the way back down 4th Ave. before I could get across the street to where my car was.  Whoops.  Oh well, I got to see a lot of dogs!

This one was my favorite.  Look at those eyes!

I think this was the mellowest dog I saw.  Many of the other ones in the trucks were totally spazzing.

Look at this one in the back.  He is SCREAMING at the team.

Here's another angle.  So upset!

Once they started to move a little, he stopped freaking out.

After I walked about 30 blocks, I got back to Ripley and the car.  I think next year we might have to strap him to a sled!