Monthly Archives: July 2013

Summer Fun

Soldotna Progress Days, and the weekend was busy!  Saturday was beautiful and sunny, and was a hectic day of fun.  Janek and I started by sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the parade.  It was exceptionally nice this year, and really long.  We were sitting by a nice woman and her nephew, who was just a little older than Janek.  These two boys got lots of candy from the parade floats, and generously shared treats with each other. Next was a bazaar at the senior center, then a huge festival at the fairgrounds and the rodeo. Experience the simplicity of joining สมัครสมาชิก UFABET ง่ายๆ as a member, with a straightforward registration process that opens the doors to endless possibilities. In the evening, Janek also wanted to go to the car races, but I was exhausted by then.  Even though Cheyenne was still suffering from food poisoning, the vet called to say it probably wasn’t serious and that she’d get better. He said since she still wants to eat and drink, it’s a very good sign. The poor dog waited patiently in the car with only one mishap.

Sunday morning Peter took Janek out with him on the boat for a couple of days fishing, so I had quiet time to do some computer work.  The house is uncannily quiet and empty without him.  But Cheyenne seems to have finally recovered so we can go out walking again.  In spite of my goal to sell this house and simplify my life, I am glad that I’m here for family this summer.  My daughter Dara and her family will also be coming later in August and with Peter’s family here it will surely be a very busy place.  After everyone is gone in September I’ll need to think about future plans.  At the very least I need to have the driveway extended into the adjoining property this fall and develop a nice parking pad for our rigs.

Fun pictures from this week — One night we went out to visit Peter on the boat when they came in from fishing…

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Captain and First Mate

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The great blue fishing boat Uff-Da

After some serious rain, and even a storm with thunder and lightning that I have never seen here, we got gorgeous sunny weather again.

The favorite activity at the festival for all the kids was the bouncy obstacle course provided by the Alaska National Guard. I think Janek would have kept doing that all afternoon.

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This year Janek was brave enough to join the six-and-under children chasing the calf with a money-winning ribbon on its tail. After a lot of chasing, the ribbon fell off, so every child won a $1 bill. Janek had also gotten a plastic egg at the parade with $1 inside, so this was a good day money and candy for him!

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He loved to watch the young calf riders, the first child was only three years old, he did pretty well and Daddy kept a hand alongside all during the ride.

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I was surprised to see a woman in the chainsaw carving contest this year!

She looked like she really knew what she was doing!

After we came home, Janek and Cheyenne both loved playing in the lake, and I had to laugh at their goofy antics.

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Website server hassles

What a struggle I have had with my website server!  I guess that happens to everyone once in a while, but for me it’s been a long time and I’ve forgotten how frustrating and complicated it can be.  Yesterday Janek went out again with Peter on his fishing boat so I could devote uninterrupted hours to figuring out what went wrong.  For some unexplained reason, my website hosting service duplicated everything on my site, and suddenly it refused to upload pictures or update files.  It took a dozen messages back and forth before they found the problem.  But happily by then I learned that I could upload my entire old website to Google Drive and have it work from there.  So now it is in the “cloud” and I don’t have to pay for hosting it any more.  Unsurprisingly it now has some very strange URLs, but at least they work.  The references are on the home page for this blog, but I’ll post them here too.  Especially I realized that the wonderful photo galleries were somewhat buried in the site, making them too inaccessible.  What happy memories these bring back for me.  The link is the third one below:

https://googledrive.com/host/0B_vgHkwCsRnYb05oeUxDYTlJUVk
– For three years while in the Peace Corps and a while afterwards, I maintained a website that includes a lot about life in Romania, my family in the United States and Germany, and includes a lot of wonderful photographs from Europe and Alaska. Naturally there are some of my personal observations about culture and philosophy.   You can even learn to make traditional Romanian food like Christmas sweet bread and Cabbage rolls.

https://googledrive.com/host/0B_vgHkwCsRnYb05oeUxDYTlJUVk/weblog.html
– To reach the journal pages and an index to find entries listed in the left column.

https://googledrive.com/host/0B_vgHkwCsRnYb05oeUxDYTlJUVk/galleries.html
– Many photo galleries from 2006-2010.  For most of these, just click on the photo and it will move on to the next image. (Some may not work on every device.)
Check out this one, from Romania in the 1970s:
https://googledrive.com/host/0B_vgHkwCsRnYb05oeUxDYTlJUVk/photos/galleries/Romania%20photo%20show%20from%20the%2070s/index.html

https://googledrive.com/host/0B_vgHkwCsRnYb05oeUxDYTlJUVk/Loren%20Lake%20B&B/llindex.html
– The OLD website for Loren Lake B&B, which I managed in my Alaskan home.  This site has many photos of Alaska and my life there, including my family history and homesteading as a child and “living in the woods” as a young mother.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kristinalaska
– Many photo albums to share.

Thank heaven this problem has been solved, and now this online journal has enough room for at least a couple more years of grandmotherly ramblings, travel notes, memories and friends.