I have another new job!

Well, I no longer work for URS. It was a great job and there were a lot of great people that work there but I was offered and took a permanent job elsewhere. I now work for Dr. Sedwick as the front desk receptionist. He is an ENT and Facial Plastic Surgeon. There are a total of 5 of us that work there (including Dr. Sedwick), so it is a VERY different situation than I have ever worked in before. I only work about 32 hours a week and am making the same per month as URS. I will have the option for insurance coverage and at the end of my first year will have 2 weeks paid vacation. I will also benefit from profit sharing at the end of the year. I know it seems crazy to have changed jobs after only one month but since I was not given any guarantees of a position at the end of the temp position I felt like I needed to take a sure thing. Plus did I mention that I only have to work about 32 hours a week!!!!! Oh, btw, the office is less than 1 mile from our apartment and the latest I have to work on Friday's is 2:00 and the doctor is thinking about shortening the hours on Friday this summer.

This past weekend Kevin and I and our friend Mattea went to Seward. We got a special deal on a whale watching cruise, a night at Hotel Seward (very nice) and tickets to the Wildlife Conservation Center. Unfortunately we didn't see any whales on the cruise but we did see lots of other wildlife. We saw porpoise, mountain goats, bald eagles, sea lions and sea otters. We also saw several dall sheep on the way back home. We had an awesome dinner at the Italian restaurant in Seward and the hotel was much better and nicer than we expected. From the looks of it outside we thought we would be characters in the next Stephen King novel. It rained most of the time we were there but we still had a LOT of fun.

 The marina Mountain Goat Porpoise More mountain goats          Bald Eagle

 Sea Otter Sea Lion              The boat we were on The not so scary hotel room Dall sheep

I have a job!!!!!

After a lot of applying and several interviews, I now have a job. In fact, last Tuesday I was offered two different jobs. The first offer came late morning from Holland America/Princess Tours. I had a 2nd interview on Monday for a Tour Sales job working on the train. The job would have been a lot of fun and had some great benefits but the pay ($8/hour), hours (60+ a week) and no weekends off were not ideal. The second offer came in the afternoon from URS Corporation. URS is an Environmental Engineering firm. The interview was set up through a staffing firm that I got hooked up with week before last. About 15 minutes into the interview the man asked when I might be able to start. I said as soon as possible, and he said how about tomorrow. The job is starting as a temp position as a receptionist through August. Due to a recent merger of two different companies the two offices in town will be brought together into one building in August. At that time, there is a possibility of a promotion as they will no longer need a second (me) receptionist. They have promoted several receptionists in the last several years into positions where they work on specific projects. They also talked to me about helping with the design layout for the new office building and they were very excited about my ability to run AutoCAD. Even though it is starting as a temp job, I am so excited about the possibilities for the future. The job is pretty easy and is going well so far.

I also joined a gym a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully I will get back down to where I was at the end of last summer. Of course, once to that point, I hope to keep bringing the number down. The winter without work was not very good for me.

75th Annual Anchorage Fur Rendezvous 2010

Friday Feb. 26 was the kick off of the 2010 Fur Rondy. For those of you wondering what in the heck the Fur Rondy is (as I did) here is a description. I summarized this from the rondy history description in the official rondy guide (http://www.furrondy.net/)

In the mid 1930's when Anchorage's population was about 3,000 people, Vern Johnson (the father of the Fur Rendezvous) and his friends decided to establish a 3 day festival to coincide with the time the miners and trappers came to town with their winter's yield. The first festival was held Feb. 15-17, 1935 and was more of a 3 day sports tournament including: skiing, hockey, basketball, boxing and children's sled dog race down 4th Ave. It is also a good way of getting people out of their homes durning the long cold winter.

The Fur Rondy fur Auction has been a staple of the Festival since the beginning and the Festival was named in honor of the economic importance of the Alaskan fur trade. The fur trade was Alaska's third most valuable industry in those days, so incorporating the industry into the celebration was a logical idea.

We of course could not pass up this opportunity to participate in the long standing traditional event, so here is a little bit about what we did.

We started Saturday morning off by getting downtown about 8:30AM and finding a good parking place. Our first stop was at the Pioneer Pancake Breakfast which is a fundraiser for scholarships for descendants of Alaska's early pioneers. Our next stop was just outside the door of the Pioneer hall to watch the 5k Frostbite Race and Costume Fun Run.

While watching we purchased an official Fur Rondy pin and button set to keep ourselves out of the Keystone Jail.

Next we made our way across the next block to a perfect viewing spot for the Rondy Grand Parade. We enjoyed watching all the military representatives, old cars and tractors, the Rondy Royalty and local businesses and radio stations.

After the parade we went back to the car to warm up with a little coffee and watch the start of the Rondy World Championship sled Dog Race. The mushers participate for 3 heats of 25 miles each over the course of 3 days.

Mid-afternoon we enjoyed watching the Outhouse Races. There were 37 teams that built outhouses, attached ski's to the bottom and raced in pairs down 4th Avenue. The outhouse has to have a sitter and 4 pushers/pullers for each heat.

Later we watched the fireworks from our parking place on the fifth level of the C St. garage.

In between these major events we also took a stroll around the snow sculptures,

watched a blanket toss (a Native Alaskan past time) and the Big Air Demo.

 

On Sunday we went back downtown for a hysterical event called Running with the Reindeer! Participants pay $25 (goes to Toys for Tots) and where costumes and run down 4th Avenue with a herd of reindeer.

This weekend is the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race so we plan to go back downtown for that.

Long time no hear from!

Yeah yeah yeah! I am sorry it's been so long. I have just been neglectful. But thanks to a couple of reminders from my readers I am finally updating.

Christmas was a good time. Mattea (a friend from over the summer) came over and enjoyed the holiday with us. We had presents from our families to open and even a little something from each other. I unfortunately had a bit of a cold the week of Christmas so it was a very lazy time. We had good food and good movies and good company. We missed our family very much and we look forward to seeing the family next Christmas.

We celebrated the New Year downtown at the Fire and Ice Festival. The "square" downtown was turned into an ice skating rink and they had a stage set up with a live band and Hawaiian dancers. They even had a volcano that erupted every hour. They had section set up with fire dancers as well. It was really cool. It ended with a fireworks display at 8PM (midnight EST). We headed home after that and watched the re-run of Dick Clark's New Years Eve and celebrated again at mid-night our time.

The month of January has been fun, we have spent a day at Alyeska Ski Resort with our friends Bill and Kelly. Bill and Kevin skied while Kelly and I had massages. It was a fun day. We spent a couple of days sleigh riding too. Kevin had his first week of "on-call" at work. He will have to do this about every 12 weeks, where he spends Friday at 6PM until the next Friday at 8AM on call. If anyone at the base has an emergency during the weekend or overnight he has to go out and fix the problem. It went fairly well, he spent all day on Sat and Sun working and every evening had to go do a few calls but for the most part he was able to sleep thru the night with out any disruptions. We ended the month of January by buying a car for me.  I am the proud owner of a 1998 Dodge Durango!

February started well. The greatest part is that Kevin reached his 90 days at his job and with that came the Health, Dental and Vision Insurance! We have been carrying a temporary health insurance plan that was basically just enough to keep us out of major debt if a severe accident happened. So it is a good felling to have good coverage again. I had an interview for a job with Holland America yesterday. It was for the position of Tour Sales working on the passenger train that travels from Anchorage to Fairbanks and back everyday during the summer/tourist season. The interview went well. There are a lot of perks and good things about the job but the biggest drawback is that I would have to work every weekend which is when Kevin is off work. We have plans for things we want to do this summer and places we want to go visit so I don't think the job with Holland would rally work out for me. I will keep looking for something and hope that it will be schedule that will work for us. I do have the unemployment coverage til mid March so that gives me about 5 to 6 more weeks to find something.

I guess that gets everything caught up to the present. Hopefully I won't wait so long to post the next update. I am on facebook and usually keep good updates on there about everyday. Hope you are all having a good new year so far!

First Winter off to a good start!

The last few weekends have kept us busy and we have been having fun.

We spent Thanksgiving Day with our friends Mattea and Cynthia. We had a great meal and a relaxing day. We spent the weekend doing a little shopping and putting up the Christmas tree. We bought our ski pants and a few Christmas gifts too!

This week I bought the stuff and made a wreath for our front door. I ended up saving $5 by making it myself instead of buying a pre-made one at Wal-Mart.

This weekend we went sledding at a popular hill in Kincaid Park in west Anchorage. We had a blast. We also found a special deal on a Wii at Wal-Mart - purchase for $199 and receive a Wal-Mart gift card for $50! This is our Christmas gift to each other. Now we need to buy some accessories!

The view from the top of the sledding hill. Cynthia, Me and Mattea enjoying the day, complete with a thermos of hot chocolate. Me getting ready to go down the hill.

Kevin giving Mattea a push off. Me and Cynthia making snow angels.

Here's a video of us sledding. Mattea and her Aunt Cynthia are on the first sled and me on the second sled.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

A night out on the town!

Our night out just consisted of us going to a hockey game. It was our first Alaska Aces game and it was a lot of fun. They beat the Condors 7 to 1. We hope to get to more games this season.

The snow is here!

It finally snowed yesterday evening and night. We ended up with about 2 inches of snow as of this morning. Kevin was not really excited about driving to work in the snow this morning however, he knew he would have to eventually. He is just glad it didn't do this his first week of work. Hope you enjoy the picture.

Backpack camping into the Park

Here are some pictures from our backpack camping trip in Denali National Park. Our friends Montana and Holly went with us. We rode the bus into the park to the end of the road. At the end of the road is the old gold mining camp called Kantishna. We found an old road that we hiked up 3 miles to a clearing that over looked the Alaska Range including Mt. McKinley. We pitched our tents and enjoyed being out in the wild where the four of us were the only people in the world that knew exactly where we were. It was a fantastic trip and one that we hope to do again someday. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Here are some of the pictures we took on the bus ride out to Kantishna:
Some bears A golden eagle a fox The four of us at one of the stopping points along the road. That's Mt. McKinley in the back ground.

These two pictures were taken when we made a stop at Eilson Visitors Center, there were some antlers laying on the ground so we took advantage for a picture moment.

Along the road we hiked up to the clearing.

The four of us on the clearing where we pitched our tents. Holly went further up the hill and took our picture before we pitched our tents.

Our tents!

We had to go at least 100 feet away from our camp site to eat. That is one of the rules that you learn in the safety class that you have to take in order to be able to overnight camp in the park.

This was a rock cliff that we climbed up and sat on for awhile. This is where we took the picture (above) of our tents.

After set up camp we went for a walk along the ridge line. We found a huge blueberry patch along the way, so we stopped and enjoyed them.

This was the view from the hill top clearing.

When we woke up the next morning it was raining and VERY foggy, so we had fun packing up!