Well at least THAT'S over with

Just more or less finished our move to our new house. For those of you playing along at home, following our year in an apartment, we found a great house here in Anchorage, bought it with a minimum of travail and are settled for good.

These, of course, are famous last words. A good percentage of the time when we buy a house I think "This is the house they're going to carry me out of in a pine box." But then the taxes are get outrageous or the neighborhood goes to heck or something, and we're off again. However, at risk of feeling pretty silly in a few years, I think this is the house we're going to settle in.

I hope so anyway. As my last post may have indicated, I am pretty sick of moving. I don't know what I resented more, my own book-owning habit, or the need to get several thousand cardboard boxes to haul them across town. As it turns out, you don't really need to box everything up. You can simply haul it out in armloads and pack loose items in the back of your car. You will look like a rube, or an Oaky fleeing the approaching dustbowl, but if you don't care about that, you are free to proceed as you see fit. And we don't care, so we largely took the box-free approach.

Anyway, the house. It is a good size for two people who like to have a little room and a lot of books. It has a tiki room-compatible space, which is important. It has a washer and drier, which matters more than I would ever have thought it would - I just spent the last year fighting like a savage for the use of my apartment complex's 2 washers and driers. Best of all, here is the view out of our living/tiki/dining room windows...

and that's one of the reasons we moved to Alaska!

One more time

Boxes...surrounding me...cardboard...tape...
no escape
The Horror!

What goes around comes around

Especially when that thing is called "moving day".
Well, here we are, around a year from when this crazy adventure started. And, as at that point, we are in the process of moving. And, as at that point, I am hating to move. Fortunately, this move will be of a much smaller magnitude - across town rather than across the continent.
But still, there's the finding boxes and the putting things in boxes and the change of address cards...
AAAAIIIIIIIEEEEE
Ok. I'm better now.
So this is an opportune time to look back and evaluate the year. What have we learned, how do we feel about our decision to move here, what would we say to others contemplating the same move?
Well, we've learned not to step into a really dangerous looking "stream" of glacier runoff water. We have learned that polar bears are not as cute and cuddly as people think they are. We have learned that shipping to Alaska is ungodly expensive. We have learned that in this past year we have only really scratched the surface of Alaska, and there is a lifetime's worth of new things to see and do here. We have learned a lot more about geology now that it is so much more in action in the world immediately around us.
How do we feel about our decision? Pretty darn good. About halfway through the year we began to lament that we had signed a year lease on our apartment - we were ready to make the move permanent. The one thing that is hanging over our heads is that the PA house has still not sold. It is a considerable burden, but we are managing it. We'll be a lot happier if ( no, WHEN) it sells.
What advice would we give others planning to make this same move? Well, other people should probably do a bit more research than we did. Possibly come up here to visit and actually see the place before packing up all their stuff and moving here. If you are a real sunshine fan, the winters might get to you. Residents of the south might have a harder time with it than we did. We are happy with being here, but we have seen a lot of people going after just a year or so. Some of those are military families, who move wherever they are posted, but some come up here for other reasons, then just don't like it. Although we didn't heed this advice, look before you leap.
But Alaska really is a wonderful place - come here, you won't be sorry!
Now I guess I really should go pack some boxes.

The Tide is High...no, Wait, it's low

Every once in a while, something happens to remind me that that big bunch of water surrounding my new home city is, in fact, the ocean. Now, I am aware of this fact on an intellectual level. But really, it's just one of those things I am kind of getting used to. Since we're on an inlet, and I can see the other side of that inlet, it kind of fits in my mental landscape like just a big river or something.
However, the gulls have returned to Anchorage with a vengeance. We didn't see them at all this fall or winter (at least I didn't), and now they are all over the place, as ubiquitous as ravens and magpies. It was news to me that they-the seagulls-are migratory, but I guess they are. They are kind of neat to see, although I am told they fight my beloved ravens for territory. I guess there aren't enough discarded french fries in this town for the both of them. Or something. (I say that because I usually see these majestic creatures either in dumpsters or in fast food parking lots going after discarded food.) Every time I see one or hear them, I think "Now what in the heck is seagull doing this far from...Oh, yeah. That's the ocean right over there!" I have thought it enough in the past couple of weeks, though, that it's starting to sink in.
The other thing that recently happened is that I acquired a tide chart book. I did not intentionally acquire this item, it just sort of happened. As I was checking out at the liquor store in Fred Meyer's, right there at the cash register was a big stack of tide chart booklets! They were free, and since I am a sucker for free things to read, I absent mindedly picked one up. They kid working the register, sensing my nautical soul, then tried to sell me a bottle of Sailor Jerry's, which I declined. Anyway, the tide charts. Although I was aware of the existence of such things, I had never seen one before. It took a little while until I figured out what the little fish symbols were and why some figures were in blue and so forth. However, with a little study and a few hints from more seasoned Anchorites (Anchorigians?) I am pretty confident that I have it figured out now. Now that I have one, I am seeing the darn things all over the place. Were they always around and I just didn't see them, or are the new ones out for this year? Well, now I know, so I guess there you have it. The most exciting aspect of this new discovery is that now we have a reasonable chance of catching a bore tide, which is a much-talked-about event up here. A bore tide, as near as I can figure it, is a tide with such a big difference between the high tide and the low tide that there is a big picturesque wave when it happens. How big and how pictureque, I don't yet know. As soon as I catch one, I'll report back - stay tuned!