Getting out of Skagway in approximately six hours...of course we'll only be a town away, but it's still a big deal. Allison, Walkarusa and I are headed to Haines for the Southeast Alaskan State-Fair...and to eat some calzones, which is what I'm really excited about. Ferry leaves at 6 right as I get off work, oh yeah.

Last night was Sheila’s 23^rd birthday. We had a fire going outside and lots of booze and to make a long story short it ended in Sheila puking all over her bed, which is right below mine, and Bob, the 50-year-old employee who lives with us, peeing on one of our couches. So yeah, now the trailer smells of puke and urine. So great.

I luckily didn’t drink too much last night because I’m so worried about not getting sleep and by 10:30 I called it a night because I had to work at 5:30 today. Either way, I definitely woke up when my room began smelling of puke.

The whole thing with Bob peeing on the couch was hilarious to me when Sheila told me that he got up this morning at 4 am, walked over to the couch and started peeing on it. She was sleeping on a different couch beside it. He was still so drunk that after he realized he wasn’t in the bathroom he tried to go back to his room or something and ended up in my room, waking me up, before realizing he was still in the wrong place. And our trailer is not that big. But I don’t think it’s hilarious anymore…well okay I do, and I am still laughing out loud when I think about it…but now one of our couches, the most comfortable one on top of that, has piss all over it!

My mom went to Lollapalooza this weekend or so she claims on her blog, but we all know that my mom can’t stand the heat…or standing…or huge crowds of people…soooo yeah. Still jealous though mom.

Headed to some slideshow about South Africa tonight and the local library. I’m going there soon enough so I wouldn’t mind learning a little more about it and getting pumped up.

The suns out at the moment...time to bike home.

Peace out.

i can't help but wish i was at Lollapalooza this weekend...

I’m excited to go home. Allison just told me that Walker is making stir-fry with peanut sauce for dinner. I get excited too easily. But I’m in love with peanut sauce and ever since I found out that the Vegans know how to make I’ve been bugging them to.

Okay, but get this…yesterday I got to walk around on top of a glacier. It rocked my world. I took a helicopter out of Skagway and it was about a fifteen-minute ride to the Grand Canyon Glacier. The ride was amazing. The second we lifted up above the ground I had a goofy smile on my face. We were flying over glacier after glacier and were so close that you could see their blue hue and the red snow that forms up on top because of algae (our tour guide explained it all). I never realized that glaciers look so much like blue foam, but that’s seriously what they resembled.

When we got to the glacier we got to walk around for about thirty minutes while a tour guide explained everything that we were seeing. We were standing in this canyon surrounded by glaciers and on top of that, there was this path of melting snow that started with what looked like a natural spring and it formed a stream of crystal blue water through the glacier we stood on. It was just too crazy for me to be walking around on snow in the middle of summer. I took way to many pictures, and because I was alone I was taking stupid ones of me with the ice in the background. This 65-year-old woman saw me taking pictures of myself and was intrigued to the point that she too wanted to try it so I taught her how to hold the camera properly and to try to avoid the “double chin syndrome”. I got a kick out of it.

But yeah, I got to do the whole glacier/helicopter thing for free. Working in Skagway, I sort of have a connection, well my coworker does, and it was all arranged for me the day of. Good deal.

I heard Sufjan Stevens on the radio here in Skagway today and was blown away. This radio station only covers three towns and a few thousand people at the most and yet they played a song off Sufjan’s new album.

Our cables out back at the trailer. Bummer.

Oh and yesterday I was hanging around the trailer and had propped the door open because I burned my lunch and this random dog just walks in. And it really creeped me out at first because I was home alone and I didn’t notice it right away and to look up and see this husky dog just staring at me was startling. It turned out to be a really nice dog and it started following me around the house, so of course I got out my camera and took pictures of it, it finally recognized that I wasn’t feeding it and walked out. But then I realized how adorable it was and that I wanted it to come back some time, so I called it back over and fed it a shitload of turkey. Good times. I get a kick out of the most random things.

K. Time for the bike ride home.

Hope all is well.

I'm out of my acid reflux meds and I'm gagging up a storm...please mom, send me my drugs!

Ooo and I finally got my field excursions packet in the mail from Semester at Sea. I plan to read it all day today at work while I guard the yellow line.

Hoping to do a helicopter tour around the glaciers tomorrow morning since it's my day off and I can potentially get a free ride if there's an open seat.

Shout to out Shirl-girl Kozak...and her interest in my blog! Hope you enjoyed Oh Brother Where Art Thou!

off to work.

So I’ve made it through my first month in Alaska as of Monday…go me. Had my first 16-hour day on Tuesday and am still alive. Actually, I have to work 68 hours next week which will be interesting. Allison and I just bought lots of food since we all work a longer week than usual next week and want to be prepared.

As I had the day off today and Allison was off by noon, we rode the White Pass train up to the summit. So basically we rode it through the mountains for three hours. It was alright I guess and I got to do it for free since I’m sort of a White Pass employee, but if I had paid $100 like everyone else on the train, man would I have been disappointed. Allison and I basically fooled around with our cameras and took way too many pictures of each other. The scenery was really beautiful but we’ve already driven up around that area so the shock value wasn’t really there this time. And as one of my coworkers told me I would…I slept on the ride back. The tour guide on our train car turned out to be from Stockton, IL though….which is crazy.

Last weekend Allison, Walker, and I rented a car and drove up to Altin, B.C. There was an art and music festival up there that we were dying to go to. On the ride up we pulled over at every “Welcome to…” sign and scenic spot we saw, and there were quite a few. The drive was gorgeous, especially the part of it that went through the Yukon Territory.

So anyway, Altin was awesome. We camped for two nights with some friends from Skagway we had met up with and saw a lot of great music. I bought my first bluegrass CD…well actually Allison did, but I’m totally burning it off her.

Atlin is such a small town that there was only one restaurant other than this outdoor café a woman had out of her home…and we ate at both. Surprisingly there was a street thrift market kinda thing going on for the festival and I had quite a few good finds. We made it out to Lake Altin while we were there too but didn’t swim much as the water was even colder than when I experienced when I was in Maine and the mosquitoes were loving us too much. Both nights at the festival I had the opportunity to flail my body to live music, which I always love. There was this one band that basically consisted of this 20-year-oldish girl who could play the fiddle like none other and then she started tap-dancing at the same time…it rocked my world. On both of the nights we were in Atlin, major jamming sessions were going on in the campground, it wasn’t until the second night that I was aware of it though. So after Walker and Allison crashed I went to explore and there was this circle of at least eight different people playing stringed instruments (fiddle, banjo, guitar, upright bass, etc.) into the morning. It was so cool how one person would start a song and everyone else would join in with their instruments, each taking turns with vocals and what not. I was one of the many people outside of the circle watching in awe.

But yeah it was a good time, and there were so many people up there that we knew from Skagway too which helped.

Everything is going well here. The other day when I got off work I was filling out my time sheet and my boss walked over with a beer and set it in front of me. I got a kick out of because I’ve never had a boss care so little that I’m not 21 yet. Work is repetitive here but I listen to all eight hours of battery power on my iPod each day and it gets me by. I’ve found that Fall Out Boy really keeps me awake and happy. Also to get by at work I talk to the staff on the cruise ships that also have to stand outside. I tried talking with this guy from Slovakia yesterday but he couldn’t figure out what I was saying because I talk so fast. He told me I’m very pretty but that I talk like liquid, Allison usually calls me marble mouth, but this liquid thing, I like it. For 45 minutes the two of us tried to talk to one another but I was laughing too much because I couldn’t figure out what he was saying either and it was a horrible cycle of me laughing and talking and then him really not knowing what I was trying to say.

So yeah, works hasn’t killed me yet, I get a little annoyed when older employees act like I can’t do aspects of the job without help, or think they have more of a say than I do because I have less “life experience”, but that’s an ongoing issue that I don’t want to get into. I got a kick out of the fact that one of the guys here at Cruiseline Agencies thought Allison and I were twins. He kept telling Allison, "That's crazy...so you're not identical! Because you really look like you are!" So then he thought we were fraternal twins. Finally Allison was like "James, Annie is three years younger than me."

Mom has lost twenty pounds since I left!

And Amy was voted the queen of her camp’s luau, which is awesome. Supposedly she’s having an awesome time there.

Allison wants to get out of Skagway, some days more than others. This job is getting to her, especially since we’re not making quite as much money as we had planned to. She keeps changing the date that she’s leaving Alaska to earlier and earlier.

I’m getting way too excited about Semester at Sea, I lay in bed wide awake some nights.

I haven’t talked to many people back home…I’m truly sorry for not returning calls right away. Off the subject… I’m in love with the song “How We Know” by the Thermals, so Millie and Kari, you should both download it. Also “Coin-Operated Boy” by the Dresden Dolls.

And after getting really jealous about Sammy Joe in New Zealand and getting even more excited about SAS I’ve decided that I want to travel more and see the world and all that jazz. Work for a summer, travel, repeat. That’s what I’m thinking right now for after college…do Peace Corp. too to mix it up a bit. I feel selfish going to different countries just for my benefit and not helping others or something along those lines, so I’ll have to figure out something. Sorry, I have a lot of free time at work and I just pace back and forth thinking about way too much. Most of the time I just think about how I’ll never do my hair like that woman and I will never switch to the kind of pants of narrow at the ankle when I get older. Hmm.

Anyway, life is good. The longer I’m here the more people I know and the more I don’t mind going to work. One month down, one to go.

Hope all is well in the Midwest.

So last night at our company 4^th of July party there was a garbage can loaded with beer, Alaskan Amber to be exact and word was that they were going to be really strict about the under 21ers drinking, which sucks for me. The thing is though that everyone here in Skagway assumes that I’m at least 21. So to test out whether or not I could drink free beer I asked my boss if he had bought any diet soda, which I knew he hadn’t. When he told me no I shrugged it off saying “Eh, that’s okay, I’ll just have a beer.” He gave me no reaction meaning that yes, I could drink. And seven beers later I was feeling great.

It’s the 4^th of July today but I’m not celebrating it at all. I did that last night with the whole company party and town fireworks. It was such a good night. I worked until 6:00 pm and as soon as I got off work the barbeque started. There was so much meat! I’ve been eating vegan so often and I was in heaven. As I said earlier, I got to drink openly with my boss and all my older coworkers too, which was really awesome for me as well.

After the barbeque a crew of us walked into town for the street dance which totally reminded me of the outdoor dances in downtown Galena. We all stood around watching the little kids dance away until this one song came on that mom used to sing to Al and I when we were little. In our drunkenness we went crazy dancing. Walker, Sheila (my roommate), and some of the other people I worked with joined us in our twirling around and flailing our bodies. I’m in too big of a hurry right now to give lots of details but the whole dance and boozing it up session we had with our coworkers was so much fun.

We headed to the docks for the fireworks eventually and propped ourselves up on the huge logs the board the shore to watch them. Fireworks are so much prettier when surrounded by glaciers. Ahhh so yeah. I had to bike home at the end of the night and Allison was drunk and ditched me. I refused to go fast because I was so drunk. Back at our trailer these two guys were just chilling at our picnic table, waiting for their ferry to leave at 4 am so I sat down to talk to them because the bathroom was in use and one was very very cute, ha and yes I did take a picture.

K I’m just rambling now.

But I do need to tell you about how Allison had to work at 5 am this morning and how she woke up and apparently was laying in bed and yelling, “I quit! I quit!” because she had gotten no sleep and had a 12 hour day ahead of her. Ahh I love my sis.

Things are good in Alaska. I work a lot. And barely talk to anyone from back home which sucks.

Ooo I saw my first family of otters yesterday morning when I was doing an dock sweep at 5:30 am! And right after that I saw a seal and it kept swimming closer and closer to the dock. My favorite animal around here though is Chutny, a ground squirrel that lives by the Railroad Dock. He’ll come up to you and hop on your lap just to get food from you….so adorable.

Allison is going to kill me, I told her I’d be right behind her when she left the office a half an hour ago. Have to go help make dinner.

I feel boring when I write these blogs because I leave out things that may or may not be offensive. Eh, fuck it.

K. It’s the 4^th of July and I’m wearing long underwear a fleece and a windbreaker, doesn’t seem right. There’s so much I want to write about but I don’t have the time or the memory!

Peace out.