Top Ten Tuesday: Books!!

This is a total aside from my Alaska postings but I had to mention the 10 books I purchased about 2 hours ago at Borders. Unfortunately, Borders is closing their doors; going out-of-business. Make no mistake, I'm not tragically upset about the fact that they have gone out of business (although I don't like to see anyone fail). I am more upset when I think about the hordes of small business owners and privately owned bookstores they put out of business once they came gallivanting into town.

That said, the grief didn't overcome me to where I couldn't swoop in and make a few purchases.

I start my doctorate program next week and, although I haven't seen the list of required reading yet (I'm not bitter and frustrated that I can't get a head start) but judging by the 50 books on the recommended summer reading list, I am feeling a bit concerned that the workload from the required reading list won't lend much time to leisure reading.

I have already bargained with myself that if I read one chapter of "required reading" per night (textbook reading, blech) then I'll reward myself by a chapter of leisure reading. So, to dangle the motivational carrot in front of my eyes, I bought myself a few new reads; 10, in fact. It was purely coincidence that I bought 10 on a Top 10 Tuesday. The truth is that I planned to buy 8 because you were given an additional discount if you bought 8 and, well, after I reached 5 I lost all self control.

• Eating Out by Annette Natow & Jo-Ann Heslin:(You'd think they could have picked a better title, LOL) It is a book of nutrition information for every imaginable snack-food and restaurant.
• The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America by Hannah Nordhaus: Okay, so with this book I totally cheated. I've already started it. I couldn't wait another week. Over the summer I became OBSESSED with bees and bee-keeping. Lucky for me my step-father, Dan, keeps bees so it's not magical thinking that I feel I can use the knowledge about bees to help "keep bees." Bees are truly remarkable creatures and, believe it or not, we as humans owe them a debt of gratitude for perpetuating life.
• The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After by Melaine Gideon. "A disarmingly honest take on marriage and motherhood by a woman who realized she was sleepwalking through life when she decided she needed to do something about it" sounded really interesting to me. I thought, A.) Who doesn't sleepwalk through life, sometimes? and B.) What's her secret to living "intentionally?" Do tell, Melanie; I'm all ears.
• Whalehead Nation: Creating and Keeping an Environmental Ethic in Children by Scott Mercer (signed and dedicated copy) as someone who firmly believes that nature plays a huge role in my personal physical and mental health this is right up my alley. Plus, it gets better, the author writes mostly of NH, ME and MA.
• Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things) by Abby Sher- Is supposedly "a brave and exquisitely written account of obsessive-compulsive-disorder..." We shall see about that, won't we?
• Walking Wisdom: Three Generation, Two Dogs and the Search for a Happy Life by Gotham Chopra (yes, Deepak Chopra's son) Basically, a book about spirituality and how he (Gotham) draws on things taught to him by his amazing father, his own son, and (of course) man's best friend.
• The Trouble With Black Boys... and Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education by Pedro Noguera. This isn't one of those guilty pleasure books but more of something that might help inform my one-thousand-page ramble of bullshit doctoral dissertation.
• America the Edible: A Hungry History from Sea to Dining Sea by Edible Richman Adam Richman- Isn't he just so clever with his title? This is a book about his travels and eats (yet another way for me to stalk this tasty morsel of a food-lovin' man!)
• Dissertation and Thesis from Start to Finish by John Cone & Sharon Foster- Blah, blah, blah.
• Citizen U.S.A by Alexandra Pelosi. I picked this up as an after thought because, well, if there's one thing I love more than Adam Richman, it's the red, white and blue. It outlines (via photos and personal stories) how amazing it is to be an American and what we take for granted on a daily basis. This book is phenomenal. I encourage you to view it on Amazon.com, which will allow you to "peek inside.

So, there they are, the 10 books I purchased-- 8 of which I'm actually looking forward to reading/using. I could always count this post as my Oui for tomorrow too because I paid $13.56 for all 10. Yep, under $15!

Alaskan Vacation: Anchorage

I think I neglected to mention (or perhaps I didn't) that we elected to do a cruise-tour vacation package through Princess Cruise Lines. What this basically means is that we booked ourselves to go on both a cruise of Alaska and a tour to cover the land portion of our trip. Often people don't realize that many of the well-known Alaskan towns are islands (Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway) thus they are impossible to reach by land. Further, other towns, (Denali/McKinley and Anchorage) are impossible to reach by sea so, to get the full experience, we did both land and sea. Perfect!

After our brief stay in San Francisco we landed in Anchorage (and retrieved our luggage, which arrived the day before we did). We immediately headed off to book ourselves a hotel; we had been traveling for about two days, hadn't really changed our clothes, and we were struggling with the four-hour time difference.  If you remember correctly we hadn't booked ourselves a hotel in Anchorage because we feared we would miss our connector flight (which we did). Our tour didn't officially start until July 2nd, so we had yet another day to kill until we were whisked away on the pre-paid portion of our vacation. We found the least expensive hotel we could book (after of course, I consulted the bed-bug registry). This hotel was quite comical and had very interesting... character.

Let me just say that I wouldn't recommend the hotel if you're looking for luxury. We were looking for something cheap, as we planned to go immediately to sleep, and we were due to check into our 5-star hotel in downtown Anchorage early the next morning when our tour officially started. This hotel was the kind of place where you'd expect to get a knock on the door by "C.S.I." Okay, so I'm exaggerating, it wasn't that bad but, we don't often stay in hotels (we opt for B&B's or rent small houses) so this place was a bit dodgy (and the bed folded out of the wall!)

I have to admit; one of the strangest things about Alaska was the position it is on the earth. Because of its location, the month of June/July gets about 21 hours of daylight. The other 3 hours are twilight. It NEVER gets dark. Ever. You can literally read a book outside 24-hours per day. So, on top of being a New England native AND the 4 hour time change, it was really weird trying to sleep in broad day light at midnight!! That took some getting used to.

We had a lot of fun exploring Anchorage, Alaska's biggest city (boasting a smaller population than many of the bigger New Hampshire towns.) One thing that really struck me was the size/quality of the flowers/greenery; I can't even begin to explain how beautiful the foliage is there. Due to the amount of glacial ice melting, creating a significant amount glacial silt in the soil (read: really high levels of nitrogen [the main ingredient in Miracle Grow]) plus add almost 24 hours of sunlight/photosynthesis, the flowers and greenery are giant sized. It really was something to see. On one of our tours the guide said, "we just grow our flowers really big here because we want to make tourists feel badly." The average size of a cabbage is about 20 lbs. (!!)

We did all sorts of touristy things in Anchorage: Went to an enormous farmers market/craft fair, ate way too much, went sight seeing (toured the Ulu Factory, and the start line of the iditarod) and walked and walked and walked.

The hotel associated with the tour portion of Anchorage was the Hotel Captain Cook (I accidentally kept calling it Captain Hook) and let me tell you, it was luxurious! It was the kind of hotel that has those gorgeous bathrobes for you to wear! As a matter of fact, when any celebrities come to town they always book themselves in the Capt. Cook. Everything about that hotel was AMAZING!

One of the highlights (for me) in Anchorage was Humpy's. Now, the food was amazing but, the main reason I wanted to go there was because it was yet another stop on the trail of Adam Richman (Man Vs Food [my boyfriend xo])!

Anchorage was such a cool city. It was so strange to think that it is the biggest city in the State of Alaska yet smaller than the city I currently live in! The people were so accommodating and the city was so clean; it just really felt like another world. We were there a total of 2+ days before we were whisked away to the McKinley Princess Lodge!

Wednesday Oui: Alaskan Cheers

We are slowly making progess with getting our thoughts together enough to blog about our Alaskan Vacation. While I will say part of the lack of blogging has been laziness on my part, it is also extremely difficult to blog about this trip-- not for emotional reasons, but logistically. There is so much to document and so much to share. I had decided long ago that when we did blog about Alaska, Aaron would help me. Now, don't expect to hear from him via written word but, he is helping me to put our trip to paper. Like I've always said, as much as I appreciate people dropping by this blog, it's mostly a place for me to do my "record keeping" so I want to make sure, with this vacation above most, I don't miss a detail! Not an easy task!

Anyway, to dangle a tid-bit (and a few pictures) as a preview of what's to come... here's a Oui to get me started.

Many who know us well know that Aaron and I (more so me) are not big drinkers. This vacation was no exception. While we were away for almost 20 days we kept track of our spendings on alcohol-- in just under 20 days we spent a hair over $100 on drinks. Now, considering most drinks are $5-$7, that's really not a lot per day.

That said, when we did get a drink we relaxed with it and savored the experience. Whether it was on the deck of our ship, balcony of our hotel room, or in a five star restaurant, we took our time. One of the nights we were on our ship Aaron ordered me an Alaskan Mudslide, himself an Alaskan Amber Ale, and met me on a private section of the boat where we had spotted humpback whales earlier in the evening. While looking out into the ocean, our conversation went something like this.

Jessi: Ohh, this is perfect. How lucky are we?
Aaron: (sipping his beer) Pretty lucky, I'd say
J: Heyyyyyy!! (holding my gigantic mudslide in the air) You didn't cheers me!
A: Yeah? (playfully) Well, you never kiss me goodnight.
J: You really care that I don't kiss you goodnight? (somewhat surprised because I actually don't kiss him goodnight, it has never been my style yet, I never knew it bothered him.)
A: Of course it bothers me that you don't kiss me goodnight. I'm deprived of at least one kiss every day of my life. It's horrible.
J: Well, (baffled) okay. I didn't know it bothered you. I'm sorry, Babe. (pause) So, let's cheers then. We never cheers. What should we even cheers to?
A: Here's to kissing me goodnight!


And since then, we cheers and kiss goodnight. Sounds fair to me. Oui?

Belated Honeymoon: Part I

We had originally planned to take this trip, as our honeymoon, in 2010. Unfortunately, we had an incident with a tree during an ice storm and, as a result, significant damage happened to our house. Further, Aaron's car was smashed by the enemy tree so alas, we had to postpone our dream vacation until 2011. We took the postponement, like we are trying to take many things, in stride.

After another year of planning, we left June 30th for the trip of a lifetime. I can't recall a time when I was more at peace, happier, and more relaxed than I was from June 30-July 16, 2011. I had just left my job, Aaron was on school vacation, the pups were tucked safely away with my mother, and our cats and house were under the watchful eye of my father-in-law. We were ready for a worry free vacation.

Because Alaska has such a diverse climate (and we were going to be spending time in Seattle at the end of our trip) we needed to bring an array of clothing to cover the different temperatures. We ended up using space bags. They really do work and enabled us to pack what we needed without bringing several pieces of luggage.

When we booked the trip we were due to fly right into Alaska. Our flight left from Boston --> D.C --> San Francisco --> Anchorage. Unfortunately, our D.C flight was delayed and we missed our connection to Anchorage. Even though we RAN from one gate to the other, we arrived just in time to see our plane leaving the gate... without us. This, too, we took in stride. We had known the connection time was a little tight and, if there was a delay, we would most likely NOT make our connector. Knowing this, we were one step ahead of the travel industry and packed everything we needed for an "unexpected" overnight in a carry-on bag.

Unfortunately, when we went to customer service to explain our situation they were SO rude. I have a pretty high tolerance for rude people but the associate who was dealing with our missed connection was so irritated that she was practically seething when we tried to explain our mishap. I literally had to walk away because if I'm pushed far enough I'll go for the throat and I really didn't feel like being removed from the airport in cuffs. We lodged a complaint against her at the service center and, to make up for her unacceptable treatment of us, we were scheduled for a flight the next day at 3:30 pm (it was exactly 24 hours later), they paid for our hotel (the Westin on San Francisco Bay!!!) and gave us money (vouchers) for food. We hadn't even booked a room in Anchorage that night, "just-in-case", so this actually worked out to save us a bit of money and allow us a night in a city I had never before visited.

We immediately left the airport and, even though we'd been traveling for about 7 hours, (having had to be in Boston for 6 AM) we still managed to squeeze a lot of sight seeing in. We checked into our hotel then set off for Fisherman's Wharf... where Alcatraz, a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and sea lions are found!

We ate at a pretty amazing restaurant called Pier 23. It had a pin-up girl theme (which Aaron LOVED.)  Aaron noticed an advertisement that had my birthday on it so, of course, he made me get my picture under it.

Alcatraz! Right behind me. Just like that.

Golden Gate... see it?

These sea lions were everywhere. They were bellowing and making so much noise. I desperately wanted one but Aaron said no. Boo!

The Zoltar machine used in the movie Big. I was hoping to find that foot piano thing too but, no luck.

The next morning, with much of the day still ahead of us, we had an amazing breakfast then went for a walk along San Francisco Bay. It was a gorgeous day; the landscaping was beautiful and the palm trees were enormous.

                           

I have to say, I'm glad we missed our flight. It allowed us to take a break in the actual travel time (it's was about 14 hours total to Anchorage) and we got to see San Fran. We are definitely hoping to go back and spend a little more time there but, it was a great preview. I'm really proud that I was able to not even think about missing our flight (normally, a disruption would have severely upset me) BUT, when I left my job I vowed to not sweat the small stuff; at the start of our vacation I swore to do it and I'm still going strong!

(Don't be mistaken, however, when I returned home I let the airline know exactly what I thought of the way we were treated. Let's just say Aaron and I will be flying to North Carolina this November to visit one of my best friends... for free.)

Stay tuned for the rest of our journey.

Photographic Friday: New Beginnings

Before I start blogging about the AMAZING vacation Aaron and I only recently returned from (everyone is hounding me to get blogging about that. There are over 2000+ pictures to sort out! Give me a break, people!) I thought I'd post about something else that happened just before we left for Alaska that's pretty much a big deal.

As y'all know by now, I resigned from my position at my former agency. It was a very difficult decision to make and I have always "prided myself" on being a career monogamist; I will get into a job and stay in it FOREVER. Well, with my last job, forever came sooner than I thought. Around February I started looking for new opportunities. I, for one, wanted to have more free time, I was also thinking about pursuing my doctorate (the program I start this September) and wanted to pick up another teaching class at NHTI, where I'm an adjunct professor. Unfortunately, my current position wasn't conducive with any of those desires.

I was very picky with the places I applied to; they had to meet certain criteria. I knew I didn't want a "boss" nor did I want a schedule that was predetermined. I also wanted the luxury to use the types of therapeutic interventions I wanted to use and I really just wanted everything to be flexible. So, low and behold, I found a position that sounded pretty good and I applied for it (among a few other positions). It had been years, YEARS since I had interviewed or applied for a new job so I figured, if anything else, it would at least allow me to throw my hat in the ring and sand off some of the rust I'd acquired being a career monogamist. The interview at this particular practice lasted 2 hours and, when I left there, I knew it was what I wanted. It felt right and everything about it felt good.

It was about a month before I heard back and the time passing made me nervous. When I got the call asking me to join the private practice, I was elated... and scared. This was a huge change but it would allow me to make my own hours, my own money, and I had the option to decide how many clients I wanted to see, AND when I wanted to see them. I accepted the position and gave my notice shortly thereafter.

I have to say, there isn't anything I have found, yet, that I don't like about my new job. I plan to work about 20 hours per week, I've picked up another class to teach in the fall (two classes back-to-back, I'll be done at 12pm every Tuesday and Thursday) and I'm working toward my doctorate. Currently, I have two days per week off as classes haven't started yet and the amount of free time is such a new concept to me. My house is spotless, I've kayaked more this summer than all the past summers combined, and I'm devouring novels prolifically. I keep waiting for "the catch" and I don't think there is one. I can work as hard as I want to.

So, without further "ado", here is my new office. I picked out every piece of furniture and the practice was more than happy to buy them for me. I am beyond excited and really look forward to this new chapter.

You can't really see it from this angle but, my office overlooks a footbridge over a brook. It's a wooded area, good for bird-watching and I even have a giant Turkey (who I call "Salem") that lives in the woods and is seen from time-to-time.