Not sure if this will develop much past the list phase, busy on other projects so maybe this is just a placeholder but for myself, here is the 2011 books read list. The order is only how they sit on the pile as I review them… Maybe I’ll rearrange them generally by order of enjoyment, high to low.

Loved–
The Japan Journals: 1947 – 2004 — Donald Richie & Leza Lowitz
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll — Avlaro Mutis
The Death Ship — B. Travel
Life — Keith Richards & James Fox
Just Kids — Patti Smith

Liked–
Misadventure — Millard Kaufman
An Object of Beauty — Steve Martin
Idiot America — Charles P. Pierce
Finding Mars — Ned Rozell

Neutral
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Diaz
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
A Full Life in Sitka, Alaska — Martin B. Strand Sr.
Jokes Told in Heaven About Babies — Lucy Thomas

Okay
History of the One-fingered Fastball: A Baseball Memoir, 1950-2010 — Ron Rau
Faster — James Gleick
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning — Laurie Lee
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee

It’s young and budding but Jessie started a biz this year. Focused on airplane and other research services. It’s been many months in the making but there’s finally a kernel of a website up for Northern Science Services if it takes off maybe we’ll have to amend the incorporating documents to do work in the tropics, too… On a related note, we’re young owners of an IFR gps for the plane, too. Plans for next summer include doing something like this:

This is us next summer. Hello fishing!

So that will be pretty neat. Can’t wait to fly to weird places and go fishing. It’s a long time till summer though and once there’s enough snow on the ground we’ll be putting the skis on. I’m kind of looking forward to maybe doing some ice fishing…

Is it winter already? I started this post a month ago. Shoot! Anyway, good fun summer. Spent fourth of July with a squadron of F16 pilots on the Chena, that was a kick in the pants. Most of the funnest summer things were work related but not all. You can see our end of summer flight to Girdwood was a good time, too. I’ll try once again to get a bit better with the posting of inconsequential garbage because it’s winter after all!
Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve been sitting on for a month:

Flew by Denali on the way to Girdwood in September. Nice time to be out!

Wind plus ice is a bad combo!

Just catching the color as they were a-changing.

Couldn't pick a better day for flying!

Okay, maybe one final one for today. I need to get the books off my chest so they can go back to their place on the shelf rather than in one lumpy pile. Good year for reading. In 2009 reading was limited to vacation and air travel. This year I did more at home, so nice. Plus I pretty much enjoyed everything (that I was able to finish). So what did I read? In roughly calendar year order:

How Doctors Think — Jerome Groopman — I don’t know, came across this a few years ago on a business blog suggestion list. I guess I just prefer how I think over these doctor people. Reading this book maybe made me feel like these doctors he writes of are more limited in their thinking than he realizes. But, to think that I had to read the book so there is that I suppose. Glad I don’t think like a doctor though. (Vacation Book)
The Sun Also Rises — Earnest Hemingway — Revisiting an old friend here. Nice contrast for me, this book with us on the west coast of Kauai pretty much middle of nowhere Hawaii in the blazing sun. (Vacation Book)
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian — Wallace Stegner’s posthumous love letter to John Wesley Powell. Liked it but it was a meaty read. Started it when we were on Kauai but then put it down until the October Boston trip… then put down again… finished over Christmas break. It’s a long dense bit of book but the early part was neat focusing on the exploration rather than the grandiosity of the West and what foresight Powell had etc. (Vacation book, from J’s library)
Dave Barry does Japan — Dave Barry — P suggested this as mandatory reading for my trip to Japan in March 2010. It’s a funny little book. Feels a little awkward but definitely a classic for Japan touring. (Work travel)
Under the Banner of Heaven — Jon Krakauer — Sort of a book about Mormon fundamentalists and such. Was kind of a follow up for me from the Powell book where there is documented speculation about maybe early Mormons massacring settlers passing through Utah once upon a time. Friend A picked this book up and passed it on after I became curious about the rest of the story. Pretty much a cover to cover read. (work travel book)
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich — Alexandr Solzhenitsyn — Read this sometime late winter. Dug it. (winter book, J’s library)
Cruising Paradise — Sam Shepard — Collection of short stories from J’s Nebraska library. Fast and tasty this one I burned right through it. One bit of trivia: Jens Lekman’s song ‘Your Arms Around Me’ (the avocado slicing song) is a riff off Shepard’s ‘More Urgent Emergencies’ in this collection. Looking at the book again though, just fond indistinct memories. (home/winterbreak book, J’s library)
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #29 Generally, a short story collection where the goal is to celebrate writing or something. Some good nuggets in this one. Been in J’s library unread for a while. I was totally into it. (winterbreak book, J’s library)
Superbad Stories an Pieces — Ben Greenman — Fair to middling. Kind of an erratic read like an album that isn’t solid start to finish. But, I liked it. (winterbreak book, J’s library)
Zeitoun — Dave Eggers — I had this on my want to read list for a while but I could never remember the name when J would put in the McSweeney’s orders. So, it took a year or two to get read. Totally enjoyed it. It’s all about this dude semi-surviving Katrina and the aftermath with the twist that he’s originally a muslim from the middle east with a sucessful small business in New Orleans and the havoc that comes in part from being so complicated. Total page turner and mind number because it’s just unbelievable as the pace picks up the cards he’s dealt. (winterbreak book)
Big Dead Place — Nicholas Johnson — An unlikely choice. I aimed to stretch myself a bit more 1) reading books we already had in the library this year (plane purchase…) 2) pick up odd ones that I didn’t think I’d like from J’s collection for a bit different than the usual (mainly this). This book is totally in this category (the other J books on this list were in this category but the ‘different’ came from a… different direction). I was pretty skeptical going in but I enjoyed it. It’s all about life on Antarctica and the dumb rules & regulations and the stupid stuff people do working in and around all that. An intentionally abrasive read I’d imagine for some but… having spent more time on the slope than I care for there were plenty of echoes of similarity. So, rather than a window into the a lifestyle few are lucky enough to participate in it was more an affirmation of the zaney direction an organization can take with overzealous obsession with safety and regulation. (winterbreak book)

So I think that’s basically it. There might be a book or two missing and I have this problem of which 2011 Christmas books I read before the end of the year (only a couple months back and I already can’t remember) but I’ll post them to the 2011 list. In general, 2010 came to conclusion and I was happy with the state of my reading. Feels nice getting back into the book business rather than just catching up with garbage internet to fuel my need to read anything as long as the words stream past my eyes (a hereditary disease).

Figured I might just keep my momentum up a bit longer. I’m on a pretty decent run of goodish music live. A sampler below. Saw some group called the Devil Whale over the weekend. Also a good time. I went in not thinking it, just going for an okay but it was good and that’s nice. I’ll toss a picture up of them once I get it off the camera. Kind of strange that over half of these shows were in Fairbanks. What do you think, is this an example of the weak economy, bands are having to tour in demographically smaller areas or is this touring becoming a larger chunk of the band revenue? No idea but I like that we’re getting better stuff than ever before!

It was a while ago but I celebrated a week of halloween in 2010. Here’s a sampler. On a trip to Boston in the fall the fam and I went to a wig store and a costume shop. Loved every minute! Anyway, got my firs honest to goodness wig. The lady at the store tried to talk me out of it, her dad was encouraging and R was also nicely supportive. Here it is seeing some daylight back in Fairbanks.

Do I look wise or what?

How about this badboy?

Pretty nice how accented my nostrils are in that second photo.

I figured, since I’m on a roll here I’d revisit some older things. To bad the posting order has the newest first….

Well, making up for some lost time, we went with a bundle of friends to these hot springs off the Elliot in early January. My money was heavily betting on a miserable trip start to finish what with it being January and kind of cold out. Turns out ixnay on that. We got super lucky on the weather. A warmish front was coincident with our visit so trail temps were 0 to 15 F. Not to shabby! How about the sled action below.  I have long had on my list the perfect hauling / riding sled.  For this trip I whipped this bad boy together.  Design criteria: tie down ropes you can reef on, good as a sled or for pulling, fast with the skis underneath for sledding.  Worked as advertised.  As you can see, twinkies were the fuel.  After my good luck with them running the marathon (a future post?) I packed a couple dozen for this trip.  Our attack vehicles for this trip consisted of three skiiers, two snowmachiners hauling most of the gear and two sledders.  I didn’t trust the snowmachines with my bottled beer (of course right, when in Rome…) so it all went in the cooler.   The post trip analysis on the sled setup is that it wouldn’t hurt to shorten up the pulling bars.  They were a touch on the long side.  Not bad but if they were shorter they could fit inside the sled and then I wouldn’t worry about them being available for stabbing me when I’m skiing in altarboy mode. Also, upgrade the rope to light wire rope to reduce wearing. And finally, forget the skis, snowshoes all the way. I was semi paranoid about being impaled by the skis, too. In front is the bike stereo. Now a dual-use (was that the phrase from the run up to the iraq war?) stereo. Normally it’s my bike stereo but for this trip it was the sled stereo. 12 volt battery + 12 volt computer speakers + ipod shuffle in waterproof deal. The best part was the tunes. I like jazzz when I’m out and about. So, Bill Dixon and Horace Silver. Not a bad way to go. There was other stuff but those guys & their bands were the highlight reel. Sled performance was generally good otherwise. On the new snow the first day it was pretty disappointing, basically no sliding to speak of. On the return though, some of the finest sledding of my lifetime. A 2.5 mile sled in two hops. It was great, saw all the crashes from the skier and P chasing after his sled occasionally.

I went for style points on this trip

The mode of travel paired with my love of bringing everything conceivable (24 fine seasonal jubelale beers to share) meant I was going slow and steady. Once I got over the inital Gurg! though it was off to the tortoise races. Had the worst charley horse of my entire life in the cabins at the far end though. It’s like I forget, a 10 or 11 mile hike, 1500 feet of elevation or something like that. Anyway, just sitting in there warming up and I go to stretch out the leg. The whole leg was one big charley horse. Yeow! I gave everybody a good yelp. J and everyone else had a good time though. We were out for two nights. So, a longer than average weekend. The tubs were great, the cabin was great, having wood precut was great. The trip out was fantastic in the sun aside from the two hill climbs. The way in is one uphill (basically) and two downs but on the way out it’s reversed. No way I was going to sled after dark on my rocket so I didn’t make good use of the two downs on the way in. On the way out, luckily towards the top of the first up I got passed by a bushel of snowmachiners. Narrow trail so I smashed myself into some brush (and got a bonus push) from from the dudes to make room on the trail for them. It was nice though. Here’s a little gallery of the return:

More Pictures Here and Here.

So took a while but here’s a bit of an update. We made the hopefully becoming annual visit to Hawaii (except for maybe next year when there are offspring to visit… that’s more up in the air) for more camping and all. It was nice, relaxing, sunny, read like 1000 pages or so in a few good books, baby sat some kid from Anchorage to just outside honolulu. His grandma’s were up in first class and it was all fun and games until it got dark. Then the tears started flowing. We traded with the grandma’s and were up front long enough for a moist wash cloth. Lame. Anyway, end point was Maui: third favorite island by a distance. It’s nice, just not really quite as much our thing (not that it wasn’t cool, just not as cool as the others..).

Did several fun hikes in the national park plus this hike that went up towards some wind turbines, we didn’t get quite that high but there was hardly anyone on the trail being that the superbowl was going on at the same time although we did see this couple from New Jersey (they felt obligated to tell us). Otherwise, our hiking meshed pretty well with a lack of other people (we saw that couple again on the crater hike up in the National park but they didn’t recognize us). All our hikes were basically other-people free. Nice, not what you might expect. Partly dictated by circumstances though. The day we ran up the volcano to see the high part of the national park it was raining nonstop at the top. We sat up there in the car for an hour or so reading before heading below the cloud level. Kind of late in the day by then (we raced sunset on the way back up the trail) but it was a decent few hours hiking down into some crater that’s not a crater or something. Nothing much to see, we were below the rainy clouds but it was overcast and there was plenty of cloud action in the crater bit. Nice. On the south side of the park we hiked to some waterfall first thing in the morning. Not many out that that early. In fact, I was armed with a spiderweb stick because no big people had cruised through to knock them down. About a mile or so in though, I rustled up a bat with the spiderweb stick. Eventually J led the charge through dancing bat’s airspace. It was cool though, nice bamboo forest and the end point wasn’t to shabby, either. On the way back though I was nearly paralyzed to inaction. J noticed a tapeworm about 12 inches long (tapeworm or centipede, we remember differently not that it’s a contentious difference) on my arm. After pointing it out I didn’t know what to do. No way I wanted to touch that thing… but it was already on the ol’ arm.

Had some rad barbecue at somebody’s house in that neck of the woods. They just had the grill fired up and were selling plates of food in their driveway.

Back end of the trip we got a bit of snorkeling in. Better snorkeling by a longshot compared to Kauai (where the water was to dangerous for snorkeling). We hit up Honolua bay and some blackrock reef. One reason was to get some more action with my underwater film camera. I’ve been babying that thing with the orings and making sure it’s saltwater free. The problem is, only going snorkeling twice per year means I’m still figuring the thing out. Last year though I picked up some uncommon lens from R in town. It’s an above water only lens. I’m totally into that one. Shot 1+ rolls with it figuring it all out. All my lenses are unmetered so it was sunny16 rule of thumb all the way. I guessed decently for the above water stuff and was hit or miss in the ocean. All in all fun though!

More Pictures Here

So, we’re entering my favorite time of year: Winter. When all we do is eat! This is for the company picnic/ thanksgiving lunch. Black forest cake. I made this from scratch over the weekend for some friends. Also a longtime request from J. It turned out awesome. At the company there are folks with food allergies. So for the general public I went wheat-free chocolate. Bobs Redmill has a good mix it turns out. The last gluten free cake mix we tried was more like over done waffles than light moist cake but this one seems to be the business. So, on top of that these sour cherries, cream frosting & tlc of course. I diyed it with the cherries. Chambord, pear brandy went into the cherry syrup. The last batch was awesome, I’m guessing this one will turn out, too. Otherwise it’s been a conservative fall of old familiars. Made the maple buttermilk again… I was going for a darker flavor so added molasses. One could certainly argue to much molasses but it still turned out decent. J. got me an ice cream maker for my birthday after I mentioned less than occasionally over the pas several years how much I’d love an electric one. This time of year with the temperature below zero it’s easy to make ice cream. I’m making a vegan coconut/chocolate/ginger one tonight for tomorrow’s deal since there are some vegans coming, too. The last batch though, it was cold when I planned on ice cream but then the weather warmed. +15f isn’t cold enough to freeze ice cream though… So, I made this totally awesome caramel ice cream that didn’t ice. It made good leftovers though. Otherwise I’ve done maybe two blueberry ice creams (one at alaska day in boston and one back just after my birthday plus a couple vegan ice creams that have been respectable. So, that’s it. Stand by for more baking and there was an excellent summer that needs some supporting documents posted!

black forest cake

oh yes

final product

Came across this jalopy out at Silvergulch tonight. You can’t beat that strap for after market value add on the truck. Windshield wasn’t quite crack-free but suggested no particular reason for the added hood protection.