Moved

New window

Former favorite seat
(at Aunt Lyn's house)

I live with my brothers now in a fourplex downtown. Although an exact “horizontal” and “vertical” are a bit relative in this apartment, the location is marvelous. It's only a few minutes walk to the transit center. We started off using the former tenant’s leftover wireless connection but today, as Paul was in the midst of a flight demonstration on the other end of Skype, the internet froze—freezing Paul with his arms mid-flap—and finished. From now on, we will be relying on the local coffee shops for all emailing, blogging, facebooking, researching, skyping, and posting. I have already started a tab at the familiar Midnight Sun Cafe, home of the town’s purest breakfast sandwich and worthiest chocolate chip cookie.  

Plane taking off a runway just behind the hotel and Lake Hood. Paused my bike ride home to watch and marvel.

This window must be open, I said hopefully to myself as I lifted the yellowed blinds from the dusty glass. Shut tight. Light despair. I retreated carefully over the broadening pile of unpacked and unplaced items to my new bed where sleep alludes me, dismissed by the creaking feet overhead and the outer noises of city and train.

Night two in the new apartment: hopefully it will be filled with less half-awake dreams and more unconscious darkness.

Gushing Green

This day, these days, are incredible. The temperature has been floating between crisply enlivening and breathtakingly comfortable. I wish today’s peace that comes from the warmth of the endless sun and the scent of gushing greenery could be measured and packeted.

I wait eagerly and search timidly for the friend constantly and expectantly prayed for; just one young woman to grow with and to learn from here in Anchorage. But today, I am content with the silence and the sun.

May 21

May 25

May 27

May 28

An Afternoon in the Lobby

Dallas' High Five Interchange

*This post was drafted at work but revised and posted from home.
You can tell the hotel is full. People move like the High Five Interchange before my station in the hotel lobby. It is the second time I have been asked to fill in at the concierge desk. Because the concierge clerks' job is to sit and wait for the bored, lost, or curious guests to approach, I spent the first several slow hours researching hikes in Anchorage and the surrounding areas. I made a beautifully detailed Excel Spreadsheet…which vanished when my heel caught on the power cord. Since then, I've channeled my chagrin at misplaced productivity towards people watching. The entry of cobalt blues, hard whites, and blinding yellows offered a gratifying diversion. The guests for the wedding reception in the ballroom on the third floor wandered in (and out) for several hours and have been stomping unrestrainedly through the two floors above me since the ceremony ended at 5:45. Later in the evening, a boy and four small girls in white cupcake dresses  bounced out of the elevator with their escort, Grandma. "Grandma doesn't have any dollars!" chimed "Sunny," the blond. Grandma confirmed, "that's right and they are dancing for dollars up there now."
The cupcakes are having much more fun in the hotel's revolving door anyhow.

When I came home, Aunt Lyn said there were letters for me in the kitchen. I jumped a little as a reached for them, suddenly noticing the bodiless shrimp rearing up at me from her note: HI MK we missed you today. —the Shrimps. After last year's shrimp gutting experience, I can't say I feel the same way. I was happy to skip right to the pasta, the part where we just eat them.