sunset

living room

the back yard

deer!

This is an honest-to-god deer swimming out the back of the boat.

Whoa. Who knew they could swim?

Boat life

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update coming soon!

wahoo!! internet arrives on the boat tomorrow!! and then its back to my regular blogging ways:). indeed, i have pics of the boat, videos of our recently running water, & even some sea lions having a very nice time chasing fish off the edge of our boat. all coming soon!

ah, the pain & join of anticipation:)

electronic toothbrush

so i finally caved in & went with my dentist's recommendation: i bought & am now using an electronic toothbrush.  happily, i was able to find a much more affordable model than i had thought possible.  so i'm just into it & learning how to make sure toothpaste doesn't fly everywhere.

and, whoa, the 2 minutes built into the functioning of the brush is a lot longer time than i expected!

boats & the like

okay, so it turns out my last blog post was vague, at best. here's the low-down on the boat. we're moving aboard at the end of the month! so greg is working very hard to make it ready to go while i spend time blogging:). we put down some new flooring & greg's working on something electrical. and i'm shopping for a used full-size mattress that will fit!

part of the reason for the live-aboard life is because i've been accepted to phd school at northwestern and am going to go. wahoo! just call me a wildcat. (which is funny to me because right now i work at WSU, whose mascot is a cougar...and wildcats are kind of related to cougars, right?)

g's going to stay here, at least for the first year. so living on a boat that we bought out of foreclosure will be much easier than having two rents!

that's right, ladies & gentlemen, i'm going to be a midwesterner again.

the real question is: will i change the name of this blog again?

house boat? yacht?

G tells me this is a yacht.  I say, well, we're going to be living on it...it's a houseboat.

oh my gosh

oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

so.  this morning (early, like 7am), g goes across the street (we live across the street from a grocery store) to get some cream for his coffee.  on his way back, he noticed a purse near the drive-by post-box.  friendly, he picks it up & brings it home.

for me, this is the stuff of movies or television shows--mystery bag, mystery person, all left up to unsuspecting neighbors to figure out!

the bag looked like a teeny-bopper's, so i was surprised to find her id card say she was born 2/27/1926!  very hip for an almost-83 pisces. and her jazzy cell phone was much cooler than either greg or mine's.  creepily, was able to google her name & get her landline, which we promptly called...no answer.

(and, okay, okay.  i couldn't resist.  i did look a little bit through her bag...just one of the two pockets.  she had all these $2 bills. for the grandkids?  and a really great flashlight.  and every single piece of identification she must own.  holy cow.)

a few hours later, a woman called looking for her mom. so i explained the situation & she came by to pick up the purse.  i asked her her mom's birthday, just to be sure.  creepy or smart of me?

apparently, all the sisters are worried about their mom since no one has heard from her all day (maybe because she lost her phone?) and she was supposed to be on something called a "discovery tour" and was to leave her car parked at shopko.  another sister was on her way to check on the shopko parking lot.

mystery ended...for me.  but i wonder if something will show up in the olympian later??

wet day in oly

today was a wet day.  it didn't rain at all, but sometimes it doesn't matter--the air felt heavy with water and the moisture weighed down on town.  sort of like walking around in a cold, brisk cloud.

i actually accidentally spent most of the day inside.  we have the final draft of our manuscript and are re-reading it for little typos the publishers might have missed or any last-minute little changes.  so wild to see it coming together.  what's sort of funny is that when j & i started this project, we figured it'd take a year...max.  not so, friends; but its definitely happening.  

anyway, so i sort of came out of a haze around 4pm and realized i hadn't been outside since my run. so i hustled out the door for a walk and was unprepared for how cold & wet it was!  definitely wish i had remembered my mittens since i was trying to talk on the cell phone at the same time.  my hands got cold!  but it was lovely to be outside in the last moments of daylight.  

por fin!

ladies & gentlemen.

i would like to introduce you to the newest member of our little family: the red couch!! (check out this blog post for commentary on the process this couch involved).

rainforest driving

this morning I was driving through the southern end of the olympic peninsula for work...west out of olympia, almost to aberdeen (that's right!  aberdeen, wa; not sodak!), turned north at brady and ended up at mary m. knight elementary in elma.  it was a long drive; much longer than i expected and i had to stop once for directions since google maps led me slightly astray.   but it was lovely. 

one of the things i missed in alaska was driving. the 40 or so miles of road we had in juneau just didn't do it. no fun. i know the environmental impact is disgusting and i think i do an okay job of not driving unnecessarily.  so perhaps it was the combination of those two things, along with the glorious morning in the rainforest, that made this morning's drive quite beautiful.  

washington state...its hard to beat.

the countdown begins

folks!  i cannot believe it...i am a month away from 29.  as is my custom, i have entered the birthday countdown.  feb. 25 is less than 30 days.

29.  whoa.

4 jobs, 2 months

Since landing back in the Pacific Northwest, I have started four jobs and quit three.  Shew.  Not something I'm particularly proud of since it really accents a flakiness in myself that I like to keep more undercover than as a mode of operation.  

Back in November, I took a quick & dirty job as a cashier at Target.  Big Brothers Big Sisters then hired me as a part-time match support specialist...a job I was actually psyched about.  But when Foster Care at a local nonprofit offered me full-time for the part-time job I had interviewed for, I had to go with the benefits package.  All the while, I was still in the running for a job at Mason Co. Extension & the Squaxin Island Tribe.  They had a very slow process, complicated by weather and new management.  So when they finally offered me the job, I gave my notice to Foster Care...and put my quitting flakiness to rest.  For now.

So now I'm a Nutrition Educator for the federal Food$ense program--teaching communities & kids about affordable ways to eat healthy (bad logo, good probram).  That's right...I do some cooking for a living.  Scary, I agree!  I'm 75% out at the Tribe and 25% in low-income schools in Mason County (just west of Thurston County, where Olympia is).  

I started on Inauguration Day.  What a day for new beginnings!

confession

for the last two years of college, i drove three, sometimes four, hours from st. joe to watertown.  it is putting it lightly to note that the radio stations in those little pockets of Highway 23 and 212 are sparse.  my options generally fluctuated between james dobson-esque christian programming, classic music npr, or various country music stations.  

i grew up in south dakota.  like any self-respecting kid, i HATED country music growing up.  

but, friends, given the options, i regularly chose the country stations.

and, somehow, it became a part of me. i learned the music.  i know the words.  i remember the names of the big artists.  

so now, when greg is gone (he hates country as much as i hate his led zeppelin...thank god for the middle ground of uncle tupelo), i turn on my dixie chicks pandora station.  

yeah.  its true.  and i love it.  

back in the blogosphere. also...back in the country.

okay.  so here's a funny/dumb thing about blogging.  blogging is often used amid transitions, to keep loved ones abreast of current where-abouts, plans, etc.  but when i'm in the midst of a big transition, the LAST thing i find space for is blogging. 

i wonder when some phd student will write that dissertation about the psychology of blogging.  

which is all a way of saying...we're settling back into life in the u.s. its sort of sad not to be using my spanish and i miss my ESL students, but i'm trying to take deep breaths and let myself have time to transition (gawd, i'm so bad at transitions).

so i've started to notice there is a nice, wet smell to olympia.  it's sort of warm and wintery all at once.  i like it, especially on my morning runs. 

i really don't know how people run at any other time of day.  the calm hush of mornings, the lingering dew on the grass, the sleepy-eyed garbage trucks, and old ladies in bathrobes letting the dog out.  i mean, its a shame to live in an urban area and have to run on the streets, but it's also a great way to get to know the ins & outs of the neighborhood.

and wow!  is internet fast here in the lower 48!!  and cheap!  holy cow. 

she called me rubia!

It happens so regularly that I should stop being so surprised: something I think I know here in Argentina gets turned upside-down in a heartbeat.

Okay, so here’s the story. A week ago, I invited my students to get in touch with me if any of them would like to get together with me to have coffee and talk for an hour in English and an hour in Castellano. Yesterday, I had a little language exchange with one of my English students and two of her friends. Of course, it happened to be with my favorite student (and who, por casualidad, has the same name as my grandma—Ines), so I was delighted when she took me up on my offer. Anyway, she had described me to her friends as “rubia.” Well, “gringa” and “rubia,” but the “gringa” I expected!

“Rubia,” my friends, I would never have expected to be applied to me. I have dark hair and decidedly yellow-tinted skin tone. Rubia, I thought, was reserved for women with blonde hair and light skin.

Well. Turns out that Ines described me as “rubia” because of my blue eyes!

I had no idea that could happen.

change in plans

All right, change in plans. We’ve decided to head to Olympia at the end of the month—Sea-town on the 31st. So I’ll finish up at the school next Friday, Greg’s going to Buenos Aires for the weekend to visit our friend Brian from Juneau. Then we’re going to travel around a bit and head out of Santiago on the night of the 30th.

Jobs, PhD apps, bakeries…these sort of things have got us headed North. I’m already drawing up plans for Caracas☺.

Alaskans in Mendoza

Also, check this. On Monday, a new woman joined my class at school. Her name is Aimee and she’s from (drum roll please!!!)



Alaska.


She lives in Anchorage now, but was born in Kotzebue. I’ve been in Kotzebue, but only on a fly-through in bad weather.

Small world, huh?