7.16.2002
hey... is anybody still out there? In an attempt to jumpstart conversation I will relay some recent experiences.
My grandma came up for a visit. She just went to the airport scant moments ago. It was an odd visit. She is getting older by the minute I think. We went up to one of our old mining camps, and she complained about the road and the fact that my uncle was driving too fast on it (he wasn't) the whole way. My Uncles kids were screaming in the backseat the whole time... enough to make you stick a red hot spoon into your eye. Kids fighting is a cyclical thing. Play... giggle... tease... cry... silence... play, and on and on. Ad infinitum, or perhaps more precisely, ad nauseam. Anyhow...
By the time I got back I had to run someplace far away and just enjoy the silence. I ended up cruising around town blasting my metallica CD just because. I know metallica is the antithesis of silence, but it worked.
Last night, we went to pikes landing, which was a swankier than expected dining experience. It served to remind me just how far down the social food chain I reside. It actually wasn't that bad, I guess... it just took a few minutes to get used to. I am used to packing a quarter pounder into my face by myself in my car, as opposed to actually consuming food in {gasp} public. There was the usual people there... the guy who was by himself (who goes to a place like that by yourself?) who stirred thoughtfully at the things in his glass. The dating couple in the corner. I noticed she only opened her mouth to talk a couple times. Seemed like her date was controlling the conversation she chewed and looked straight at him, but rather blankly. There was the scantily clad wannabe social climbers (remember this is Fairbanks, AK. NOBODY should be scantily clad in Fairbanks) who 80's'd' up their hair and put on something tight and sexy because it was a night on the town. Some things would have been better not seen...
There was also a really cool painting of the northern lights... this was perhaps one of the best paintings of the lights I have ever seen. But not THE best. I am in posession of THE best. A Northern Commercial Co. calendar from 1960 (the ancient past in Alaska) which has a painting of a guy by tent watching the lights over a mountain range. MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE THERE. one of the most satisfyingly lonely pictures I have ever seen... but I digress.
In all it was a good evening, but spendy. I don't care, food should not cost 23 dollars a plate.
Then today. I went on the riverboat discovery. It was a surprisingly good trip. I was all prepped to listen to the sappy, political correctness-addled talk that my uncle had warned me about, but I was pleasantly surprised. Tales of its sappiness were largely exaggerated. It was factual, but at best partial, in its description of a "real alaska native village'. There are the many multiplied negative sides of the village that can only be experienced by living there.
A for instance. They told me on the boat that Susan Butcher's (big time dog musher) pack of over a hundred race-trained dogs eats 80,000 pounds of fish in a year.{insert awed wows here} The village of Ruby (where I spent much of my formative years) has 188 people and consumes in excess of 80,000 pounds of beer a year. And that says nothing of harder drink, and believe me, there was plenty of that. Or food for that matter. But the people paid to see a very sanitized picture of Alaska, and that is what they got.
But now, the party is over, I am told. Work work work.
School suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
Sleep... Data...
jeff
My grandma came up for a visit. She just went to the airport scant moments ago. It was an odd visit. She is getting older by the minute I think. We went up to one of our old mining camps, and she complained about the road and the fact that my uncle was driving too fast on it (he wasn't) the whole way. My Uncles kids were screaming in the backseat the whole time... enough to make you stick a red hot spoon into your eye. Kids fighting is a cyclical thing. Play... giggle... tease... cry... silence... play, and on and on. Ad infinitum, or perhaps more precisely, ad nauseam. Anyhow...
By the time I got back I had to run someplace far away and just enjoy the silence. I ended up cruising around town blasting my metallica CD just because. I know metallica is the antithesis of silence, but it worked.
Last night, we went to pikes landing, which was a swankier than expected dining experience. It served to remind me just how far down the social food chain I reside. It actually wasn't that bad, I guess... it just took a few minutes to get used to. I am used to packing a quarter pounder into my face by myself in my car, as opposed to actually consuming food in {gasp} public. There was the usual people there... the guy who was by himself (who goes to a place like that by yourself?) who stirred thoughtfully at the things in his glass. The dating couple in the corner. I noticed she only opened her mouth to talk a couple times. Seemed like her date was controlling the conversation she chewed and looked straight at him, but rather blankly. There was the scantily clad wannabe social climbers (remember this is Fairbanks, AK. NOBODY should be scantily clad in Fairbanks) who 80's'd' up their hair and put on something tight and sexy because it was a night on the town. Some things would have been better not seen...
There was also a really cool painting of the northern lights... this was perhaps one of the best paintings of the lights I have ever seen. But not THE best. I am in posession of THE best. A Northern Commercial Co. calendar from 1960 (the ancient past in Alaska) which has a painting of a guy by tent watching the lights over a mountain range. MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE THERE. one of the most satisfyingly lonely pictures I have ever seen... but I digress.
In all it was a good evening, but spendy. I don't care, food should not cost 23 dollars a plate.
Then today. I went on the riverboat discovery. It was a surprisingly good trip. I was all prepped to listen to the sappy, political correctness-addled talk that my uncle had warned me about, but I was pleasantly surprised. Tales of its sappiness were largely exaggerated. It was factual, but at best partial, in its description of a "real alaska native village'. There are the many multiplied negative sides of the village that can only be experienced by living there.
A for instance. They told me on the boat that Susan Butcher's (big time dog musher) pack of over a hundred race-trained dogs eats 80,000 pounds of fish in a year.{insert awed wows here} The village of Ruby (where I spent much of my formative years) has 188 people and consumes in excess of 80,000 pounds of beer a year. And that says nothing of harder drink, and believe me, there was plenty of that. Or food for that matter. But the people paid to see a very sanitized picture of Alaska, and that is what they got.
But now, the party is over, I am told. Work work work.
School suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
Sleep... Data...
jeff
< 02:10 >< /j >
