Pupsickle

This is long and rambly, and probably darned boring, to boot. I’m trying to get back into the swing of blogging, as I’ve been really busy and rather sick lately, and just haven’t been posting as much as I would like to. Thanks for bearing with me!

It’s freezing here, literally! It was 38 degrees F when I got up this morning, and it is supposed to get down to hard frost temperatures this evening. Yuck! I thought it was summer, but the wind blowing through town today feels like it’s coming straight off a glacier. Bone-chillingly cold. I’ll have to cover my plants tonight.

You might notice that my sidebars have been condensed. My husband, kind man that he is, put in a script that allows you to expand them if you want, to look at my blogroll or archive or what have you. What do you think? If you don’t like it, leave me a comment and I can expand them again.

In other news, my older dog Bobby is a bug eater. That’s him, Bobby Bug Eater, right there in the picture, snacking. He chased a timber beetle all over the yard (they’re blind, or at least seem blind, since they fly into things all the time), and when he finally managed to catch it, he ate it. EEEW! I suppose there are worse things for him to eat, he could be coprophagic, right?

Ian has had a rough go of it these past few days. He found out that his last remaining British relative died (his mother’s family is from the UK), and we’d really been hoping to visit him and get to know him better in the near future. Ian’s worked so hard at cultivating a relationship with this man, a great uncle, and I think it was very difficult to lose him. He’d had some problems in the past with the family on this side of the pond, but he’d had a change of heart these past few years. Ian has really tried to make him feel welcome and loved, since we were the only family he had left. At least it was a peaceful passing, and he knew that there were people who cared about him, even if we do live on the other side of the world.

Next week he’ll take the first of two tests that he needs to finish his IBEW apprenticeship this Monday. He’s already worked his 8000 on the job hours, and he’s finished with his 5th year of school (7 weeks per year) as of this past Friday. Now all he has to do is take the NJATC’s test (Monday) and the state licensure exam sometime later this coming week or the next (whenever they schedule it), and he’ll be a Journeyman Inside Wireman. He’ll probably go to work for the local utility company as a turbine technician, a maintenance job that is a bit more permanent (though less lucrative) than the on-again off-again nature of construction work in Alaska. I’m so very, very proud of him.

He may be stressed and super busy, but my husband has not lost his sense of humor. While in the craft store yesterday (his least favorite place in the whole wide world) looking for a strawberry planter, he told me he was “Cindy Lou Who” and I snapped a picture of him before he realized what I was doing. That look on his face? It’s the realization that I’m going to share the fact that he’s a goofball with on the internet.

Yesterday we ate dinner at Bamboo Panda, the best little whole in the wall Chinese restaurant in Fairbanks. It’s Ian’s favorite place to eat out, and they serve enough food to feed you for a week. It was delicious, and it made me crave other asian food.

Today I’m making pad thai pak (vegetarian thai noodles) and gai pad grapow (basil chicken) for dinner, and I’m excited! We picked up a big bag of locally grown basil at the Farmer’s Market, and I’m going to our local asian food market for fish sauce and dried chilies later. Yum!