Free Food Day

Martin Luther King Jr. had a lot to say about freedom. Lincoln got himself shot for his ideas. Freedom itself spawns back even past our first president, George Washington. He didn't know it back then, but his upbringing, presidency, and guidance lead to a remarkable day. That day is today, what I now call "Free Food Day".

Earlier my boss overheard me saying "I'm a grump and I'm gonna go get something to eat". This inspired her to join me in my quest for the munchies. With the "You Fly I'll Buy" law in full effect, I headed off to Subway to order a copious amount of food to fill my belly, all on the bosses dime.

Later that afternoon another coworker dropped by and handed me a Snickers bar. I asked "Wow, for me?" and learned he was on a diet and I'm obviously the type of person that eats candy a lot. Here's some more free food.

I'm thinking of a flag pattern and maybe a float design to honor this great day. Any suggestions?

Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

This is a pretty valid commercial. In Eagle River, the small tiny commuter town just outside of Anchorage, I've already seen several cyclists almost get splattered on the road at one of the few intersections. This is one of the problems of living in a state where the pedestrian has less rights than the drivers.

I almost got creamed a few times in Eagle River at that particular intersection. Not a car moving, nobody going anywhere, then out of nowhere somebody decides score a few points by running me over. Thankfully I heard them coming and zipped out of the way. Instead of zipping I would have much rather been focusing on the cars on the other side of the street who, while still stopped, could just as easily pop their car forwards in an attempt to trip the light.

Thats Silla!

No really, Silla.

I stumbled into that after searching for 595 (for some reason this number is part of the current theme I'm using on blogspot) on Wikipedia and saw it was the birth year of General Kim Yu-shin of Silla. I have no idea who that man is at all but lately I am all sorts of nuts over history. I've been contemplating learning as much Latin and Greek as possible just to understand ancient history. This is mostly thanks to a few books I have been reading lately by Larry Niven. He has quite a gift for referencing the past in books set in the very distant future. I've been turned on to quite a bit of Arabic history lately through his books The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand.

So whats so interesting about this word Silla? Nothing really. Except it can also be spelled "Shilla" which is the ambiguous name of the new white dog. We spell it "Shila" though.

Just my little Wikipedia journey today. One of at least twenty more. I'm pretty sure XKCD: The Problem With Wikipedia says it all.

Photos of American Eagle festivities @ Eagle River VFW

I was hoping to find, and eventually did, photos from yesterday at the Eagle River VFW. Thanks alaskan.explorer for posting some beautiful shots. See American Bald Eagle. My favorite is this one.

It's a Beautiful Day! (tm)

It really is a pretty day. In fact its been a pretty weekend all together.

Yesterday Skyefoil and I went to Beach Lake to walk the dogs. We found the Beach Lake geocache which was 30 or so percent around the lake than where we parked, we walked over the lake for most of it. Sam was of course a good doggie the entire time. Shila, sigh, read all about that here.

The clouds of Saturday were erased from the sky to let the sun shine through on my Sunday. I really should be working today. I have several jobs :(. Instead I decided to get out of the house and take shila on a geocache hunt. We took off, I bought some new sunglasses cause somewhere in Anchorage I lost mine, then I totally missed the turnoff to go to the cache trailhead. I knew I had to go down to the Eagle River VFW and turn around, I pulled into their parking lot and realized suddenly that there were dozens of people with huge cameras pointed up at some trees. I pulled off to the side before I interrupted anything and took a look. There was a similar amount of eagles up in some trees. I immediately thought about the irony of a bunch of eagles having an air show above the VFW post. I also thought maybe they had been baited to be there by old geezers with nothing better to do. The eagles swooped all over the place and chased a few ravens around, huge cameras with huge lenses were snapping away. Shila could't care less concidering how much she hates ravens. Eagles must be out of her scope of things to pay attention to, maybe the rewards are outweighed by the risks :)

We jetted off to the geocache site which also turned out to be an awesome dog walking trail very close to my house. One day I will detail it on http://www.alaskadogparks.com/ in the near future. I own that domain and plan on doing something with it sooooon.. very sooooon.. I hope everybody will be happy with the results.

The cache was Texas Goodies and was located near a trail following Eagle River (the actual river, not the whole town). Shila and I got to sit on a hot rock on the edge of the river and enjoy the pretty scenery with me, she got a yummy chummie for being such an obedient little girl and sitting there with me when I needed somebody to share the moment with. I can't wait to show Skyefoil before it all thaws.

Thats a wrap!

My tribute to the F word

Lets see how long it takes me to just plain spell it out.

Today, I think I may have dropped the F-Bomb at least 20 times. This is somewhat reminiscent of the movie I watched last night, The Matador, where in a particular scene one of the leads wives mutters the the Big-F a few dozen times in one lengthy sentence.

Last week sometime I fell on my knees from a standing position. I turned on some ice while walking the dogs and my feet went behind me, thanks to a wee tiny ice slope I wasn't aware of. My knees caught my fall. I'm pretty sure my F-bucket was to the brim when that happened. My right knee took most of the damage and it has hurt a hell of a lot ever sense.

This morning I managed to trip on the way up the stairs. Looking back it's pretty easy to trip when you have to move a curtain aside (which we use to keep top floor air on the top, bottom floor air on the bottom), jump to avoid kamikaze cats, and run to the door to stop your dog from barking. I made it half way when a similar scenario was forced upon me today - sadly no cats were involved which makes me feel kinda stupid but I was incredibly tired, still am. I hit my left knee really hard on the edge of the top stair which has a metal edge on it. I didn't immediately realize what happened until I noticed I was on my knees, in pain, and now my only good knee was my newest bad knee. F-Roll please. I cursed so hard the dogs shut up, the cats hid and the neighbors probably thought about moving to a less ghetto neighbourhood.

I rolled around on the ground and did a self check to occupy myself and keep my emotions at bay so I wouldn't end up crying like a little girl. Knee, Check, Pain, Check, Can I stand, Check. "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFuck that hurts".

I let the dogs in, since I was right next to the door and all, and they ran inside to see what was the matter. Shila's really sympathetic toward pain. Actually she just likes it when you roll around on the floor which gives her incentive to look like a good, loving, lick happy dog. I called my sports injury person, yes climbing stairs is a sport, and they are gonna take a look at it later today. I can't wait to feel them prodding their fingers around behind my kneecaps.

Why me? I ask. I feel as though some sort of Knee Reaper is stalking me after I narrowly escaped knee death a week ago.

Thats enough of me being a cry baby. Hows everybody else?

* In honour of Jen, I'm using references. One of my nephews a long time ago decided "Fuck Bucket" was a sweet word to use. I think it had something to do with my sister or I exclaiming "Fuck It". Mind like a sponge right? He made a little song out of it and rhymed it with bucket.