That one time I tried to kill Travis

I was 95% certain for about 10 minutes the other day that I killed Travis.  Normally, before he leaves work everyday he sends me a text that he's leaving.  And I ALWAYS pay attention to the time.  This day I was being ambitious. Being a wonderful fiancee I had laundry going and I was trying to finish making a calzone and berry crumble before Travis got home. At some point I realized I had completed all my chores. Everything was cooked and the dishes were cleaned and put away. The laundry was done and folded. I started to wonder where Travis was.  I looked at my clock and realized he was a full hour late. An entire hour and a forty five minutes had gone by without me noticing my fiance was not home.  For a second I wondered if I had somehow blacked out an hour or been abducted by aliens or something.  I have not been so shocked in a while. And clearly my phone would have only 2% battery that lasted long enough for me to try and call Travis before it died.  Then I had to wait ten minutes for it to charge enough to even turn on and reach Travis' voice mail.  I knew immediately that he must have flipped his car down off of one of the sharp turns.  He was definitely lying at the bottom of the hill with no way to call for help with his broken arms and legs.  His only hope was that his loving attentive fiancee might notice when he wasn't home and would call for help. Pffffft. I went straight to the neighbors in a total panic as I knew Kim was home with Sven. But then of course there were no cars available on yurt hill, since our other halves were either at work or dying in a ravine. So I had Kim ask Beth to come home for a Travis finding trip. Luckily by the time I arrived home to grab my phone for the trip Travis managed to get the "Got a flat tire in a dead spot" text through.  I immediately poured myself a strong drink to congratulate myself for not killing my fiance. Travis came home expecting an extremely angry Miriam (a fair assumption as one of my pet peeves is un-returned texts and call that lead me to assume people are dying) but instead he's been capitalizing on the whole, "Thank God, you're alive!!" thing for a while. I'm just extremely grateful that my phone died before I called the police and told them I accidentally killed my fiance.

Some Things Are Bigger In Texas

Like the cockroaches.  Oh. My. Goodness.  Megan came to pick me up from my hotel this Saturday morning for some girl time bonding and catching up.  While we were having lunch Megan noticed an alarmingly large cockroach wandering about the room.  Needless to say, table after table started jumping up and lifting things up off the floor. It was a horrifying way to track the cockroaches progress around the room.  And just our luck the roach was finally intercepted and squashed right next to our table.  I can't even pretend I didn't have a shameful response of lifting up my feet and freaking out pretty hard.  But I felt ok about it since everyone else did it first. The waiter who smashed the cockroach got a round of applause.
We also went shopping before this horrifying cockroach incident and as one of the many salesladies came over to help.  The conversation went something like this.
Megan: "We are both brides and both getting married this next year!"
Me: "We both have our dresses, we are really excited. We are getting married in the spring! "
Saleswomen: "To each other?"
Megan: "Oh no, not each other. Though weirdly enough both our fiances are named Travis."
I'm not sure the saleswoman quite knew what to do with us.  I'm not sure how legit we sounded. And just to clarify, we went to the Galleria.  It was gigantic. And we barely went anywhere inside it.  Basically it was a giant mall with plenty of stores I wouldn't feel comfortable going inside without dressing nicer.  Like Chanel, Coach, and Tiffany's. And its has its own ice rink, it is that big.

Texas is way too warm and humid.  I can stay outside for about ten minutes before I go running inside.  But at the same time, people keep the buildings way too cold. It's rough.  Though I do think if I had to pick between dry or humid heat, I'd go with humid.  I've also been told not to go outside because the mall next door is the "Gunspoint" not "Greenspoint" mall.  Feels like Greeley to me. I should probably make another shank.  The other uncool thing about Houston, the driving.  Everyone is aggressive and the traffic is awful despite the 14 lanes.  And forget about trying to find your way anywhere.  People keep asking where I am and I can't really give tell them anything specific.  I also got to see my aunt, uncle, cousins, and meet their triplets!  They were adorable. Very easygoing as three year olds go.  Plus about three times as cute.

The plane I rode to Texas on was larger than normal too.  I rode one of those dreamliners. I was already sitting on the plane when I realized I was on a dreamliner. It was just last week I was thinking about how I'd never want to ride on a dreamliner because I'd be paranoid about battery problems.  I resisted googling plane crash statistics on my phone and played with the tint settings on the large size windows instead.  I also found out I had a usb port and my own electrical outlet. There were almost forty rows with three sets of three seats in each row.  Which means like 330 people could be on that plane according to Boeing. So we sat on the ground for almost an hour during boarding.  Then, because I bring a trail of bad weather with me when I travel, we had to sit on the ground in Houston forever during a thunderstorm.  Naturally, once I trekked through the airport for miles I arrived to find my bag was mysteriously missing and I would not be refunded my 4 dollars I spent on a luggage cart.  Not that I cared about the four dollars, it was the principle of the thing. However, I was assured I'd be returned a quarter if I returned the cart.  Thanks a bunch.  Something like three hours of my life were wasted in the Houston airport.  My hotel is awesome.  You could fit a house or two in the lobby alone.   And I made a great first impression wandering in with no luggage in the previous day's clothing (I took the red eye from Fairbanks to Denver).  But United had assured I would get my luggage by nine that evening.  Luckily other Travis (Megan's Travis) was free to come rescue me and drive me for dinner and for buying a nice set of clothes in case my luggage did not arrive.  Shockingly enough, my luggage had not arrived by the time I went to bed at ten thirty.  Less than perfect air travel service but what can you do.

The next day everyone took shuttles over to the training center for class.  It was all intro and orientation the first day.  I met the last two Alaska guys I hadn't met yet and saw the other two I have already met.  There are 28 people total in our class, 7 of which are women (assuming I can count correctly which is not guaranteed). People are working all over the place, Venezuela, Thailand, Canada, Scotland, all over the US....I'm probably missing places.  And everyone's from different work and educational backgrounds.  Mines definitely over prepared me for hard work but under prepared me for socializing. This first week we've been learning the basic tests we use when running a mud check and we worked some basic hole volume problems. (See? that whole taking fluids twice was on purpose...) Next week we get to do mass balances (this also makes me pleased because the only test I ever got 100% on was a mass balance test). Overall, I'm really pleased how much I'm actually getting to do something related to what I learned while feeling so much less stressed than Mines made me feel.  But I'll have to decide if that's still how I feel after the first test!

Camping trip!

Today I was severely chastised for not writing in my blog. I could lie and say I've been crazy busy but really I just got lazy. Oops. In my defense I instead spent time harassing Travis into posting pictures of his trip to Cordova instead. I promise next time I'll write about my Houston adventures, but I'll forget camping if I don't do it first!

So the other weekend we went camping. And it was a pretty solid adventure. We went to little lost lake, the same place we attempted fishing last year. Last year we had no luck. We watched things jump in the water all day long with constant nibbles on the bait but never caught one. By about four in the afternoon I had the most horrifying thought that what we had been fishing for all day were actually frogs not fish. I remember Travis thought really hard for a second and then told me if we had been hunting for frogs all day we were never speaking of the incident to anyone ever again and pretending it had never happened unless we caught some frogs for dinner. Luckily, I didn’t have to eat frog legs for dinner and we had enough verified fish sightings to conclude we weren’t frog fishing.

This year the fishing was no better. Turns out, the lake is only about six feet deep. So this year it hadn’t even been stocked yet and there was nothing that survived the winter. We tried our luck in a nearby lake as we had purchased a handy two person blow up raft. Roxi had her own life jacket because I was not confident in her ability to swim. Travis tossed her in and she kind of splashed about and looked stupid so we were worried. I’ve been informed she can in fact swim this week which is surprising but even old dogs can learn new tricks! But, back to fishing. The water still had icebergs in it. Giant ice sheets through which Travis recklessly rafted, terrifying me. Though he claims I worried unnecessarily. As if I would ever do that……Once we vented further out we discovered the reason we weren’t catching anything. Everything was dead and floating on the water in a morbid fish death field.

So we ditched the water and went hiking. Bald eagles everywhere! We even surprised one walking up to a tree and watched it take off over our heads. It was really cool. Apparently, Roxi is an extreme hiking partner. For two miles she pulled with her legs spread as far as possible crouched as low as she could for more traction. She looked kind of possessed so we dubbed it the demon dog walk. I’ve never seen her do anything like it before. She's always proving what a weird little dog she is. Travis also made fun of me because anytime we found animal poop I had to stop and poke it with sticks to make sure were weren’t sneaking up on moose or bears.

The last day we were sleeping there we had neighbors. Not the good kind. These were the loud music blaring, four dogs barking and howling, people screaming and drinking kind. They moved in around eight without even a courtesy, “Sorry we will be loud tonight, feel free to drop by for a beer.” So by ten thirty we loaded the rest of the coronas into the raft and paddled out on the lake to relax. Even with the noisy echoes of our neighbors ringing through the valley we quite enjoyed ourselves. We stayed out until one and it was light the entire time. That’s the best thing about summer Alaska camping in my opinion. The mosquitoes were even as reasonable as blood sucking creatures can be.

As per usual, we had an "Only in Alaska" moment.  I don't know if it is Alaska exclusive but out there we have transfer stations that we cart our trash to. And there tend to be a lot of dumpster divers.  Enough that a dumpster deserves a courtesy glance inside before you toss in something heavy lest you crush someone hunting for treasures.  On the drive back home we pulled up to the transfer station in Salcha to drop off our camping gear.  The first thing I noticed was a weird old man, either pulling things out of the dumpster or ditching the extra truck on his trailer, no big deal.  The next thing I noticed was the poor, twisted little carcass of a fox laying directly in the middle of the gates to the transfer station.  It was giving me this look like "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."  I was pretty horrified. But just another normal day at the transfer station.

Neighborhood Gossip

Woohoo, Wednesday!  Wednesday is the start of Travis's (and therefore, my off time) weekend.  You could actually say that this trend started in college when both Travises and I would go out for drinks.  Wednesday night shenanigans, our excuse for avoiding the crazy and large Friday night crowds and a good way to make it through the week.  Now a day's it is just the normal schedule, Sunday through Wednesday is the work week.  Today we are going to head to the neighbor's for margaritas and burritos.  Neighborhood visits are always a great time to hear stories.  Here's a couple gems from the last dinner.  These two feature Colleen's children.

"Well this is awkward."

So we take a rent check over to Colleen every month but often we deliver it to her children.  (Or in one case Travis just walked in the wide open door to her empty house in the middle of negative temperature weather. He closed the door after he left. But we wondered about that one....)  On this particular month Travis walked up and knocked on the door.  He could hear people inside.  When no one came to the door after several knocks, he peeked in the window.  Suddenly, one of Colleens boys popped up, looking over from behind the couch.  Travis waved the rent check at him and tried to make it clear that he wasn't a creeper, just the renter.  At the point, Colleen's son came over and answered the door. Wearing nothing but boxers.  Travis just went with a simple, "Hey...so...I just wanted to drop of the rent check."  To which Colleen's son replied, "Well this is awkward...."  Indeed it was.

That Hot Firefighter

This story is one of my favorites.  Colleen has a daughter who just graduated high school this year.  I believe it was the month after or before the encounter with Colleen's son, we delivered rent to her daughter and a group of her friends.  At the time we felt bad because I stayed in the car and when he came back he said he thought he scared them.  And it seemed logical that a group of teenage girls alone at a house might be afraid of a strange man.  We forgot about it and thought that was the end of the end of the story.  Then Colleen told us the rest of the story.  Apparently, the girls were the opposite of afraid when it came to Travis.  They noticed his jacket which has his hometown's fire department name on it.  And they noticed how good looking they thought he was.  Colleen told us all the high school girls wanted to know who the hot firefighter was and became even more interested once they heard he had a really good real person job in mining.  I don't know which one of us girls laughed harder at this story.  Neither I, nor the neighbors, plan on letting him forget that he's the "hot firefighter" now.

Me: Is there a fraternity around here called Alpha Kappa?

Travis: No....why?

Me: Because there seem to be a lot of people with AK stickers driving around up here.

Travis: You're kidding right?

ATVs, Yak Burgers & Sketchy Bars

This past weekend we decided to go rafting. So we called up a tour service and were told the rivers are still frozen due to this epic winter. So we decided to go four-wheeling instead. We drove down to Healy, right outside Denali park. Healy is a tiny little town (it really consists of a coal mine, a gas station, and a campground) but it has a great brewery, 49th State, that happens to serve my favorite beer ever. We had dinner there, I had a yak burger (really, yak!) and their wee-heavy scottish ale (that’s my favorite ever). Then we picked up serious amounts of 49th state gear. We had to get a stainless steel growler of the wee-heavy and a couple of glasses to drink it with. I got a nifty bottle opener, a sticker that barely fits on my stickered up Nalgene, and I of course didn’t make it away from the sale rack without a t-shirt. 

 But I’m skipping ahead. First we went four-wheeling. It was pretty entertaining overall. I prefer four-wheelers to forklifts. We also got to wear pretty sweet helmets but we skipped the plastic pants and plastic bags for the shoes that our tour guides offered. It was slightly touristy even for my taste but it was partially because we couldn’t go out on all the trails because the snow was finally starting to melt. Places like “Dry Creek” had turned into rivers. Like I said, overall it was still a lot of fun. We took some good pictures and saw a handful of moose. One was even in the middle of the path. It was decently muddy too. Our tour took us over a carpeted road. Apparently the person who built the road asked a bunch of businesses to donate old carpet. It keeps the road from being entirely washed out and every year and having to be rebuilt from the start every time. I also found out there is an active volcano close by. As in, “That mountain right over there is actually a volcano. We don’t know the last time it erupted or when it might erupt next but it’s all good, don’t worry.” We had to laugh a little when we stopped by one of “Alaska’s famous dry cabins.” Essentially it was a larger version of where we’d gone camping this winter. Except it had couches and a real bed. 

 On the way back home we made one last stop at a bar called, Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn. I’m really not joking, I even got a sweatshirt. It was a typical Fairbanks bar…..interesting people and decorations. You never really know what to expect. The last bar we went to had magic fire powder in salt shakers and people playing Twister on the dance floor. Skinny Dick’s had a fat little pug occasionally wandering about but mostly just snoring on the floor. There was also a karaoke deer, a giant bra hanging from the ceiling, and a lot of ridiculous gag gifts. The bathroom doors were so covered in stickers and confusing signage that I honestly couldn’t tell which was supposed to be which. But the people were chatty and friendly. A russian man even told us a terrifying story about lighting people on fire with tires.

T-300 Days Until Wedding Day!

Which is a tiny bit little less than ten months. I feel like I should have a lot more planned. Plus once you throw in Texas for two months, it isn’t relatively a long time. But Travis plans on sending me to the slope for the month or so before so I can’t freak out. So far we’ve made some pretty decent strides in planning. I found a dress and veils and picked out colors (lavender and navy blue). My dress has a solid amount of ruffles and poof and “bling.” Travis booked our venue and we have a general idea about catering and bar menu. We will be at the Perry Hotel in Petoskey, if you want to google it. My father is going to do the ceremony so I know that will get planned because I know where to find him. My mom is making me flowers and decorations. My aunt Kay is going to be helping with those on her visit current visit to Colorado, I’m sure. The flowers so far are really pretty. They are made out of different patterned navy and lavender fabric. It was the first project I’ve ever had any involvement in that turned out like the picture I had in my head before we started. Really the next big project is a guest list next for save the dates! Travis was going to finish our wedding website so it’s up to date to direct everyone to and include with save the dates. We even already have most of a registry made online because who doesn’t like shopping without spending anything? Major things still on the to do list….attire for everyone else besides me, cake, DJ, and I think that’s it??? I’m sure it isn’t just that. I think we also need to compile more traditions and rituals to include in the ceremony (or even reception). Anyone have any ideas on those?