3 days of summer

After being warned by everyone it was coming, the rainy time has descended. Up until this past Thursday, it has been absolutely gorgeous here. There had been a couple little rain showers but Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week I took Hank to the beach after work around 8pm, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, basking in the sunshine with absolutely no wind and clear blue skies. Now that has changed and everywhere I go people ask me, "Did you enjoy our 3 days of summer?" Well, those days were unbelievably beautiful and I'm sure if they had many more of them, the entire US would want to live here. Therefore, I feel lucky I got to see them, and I understand it must be rainy and cloudy so it stays small and quaint. 

The drizzly soaking rain makes the ground so muddy and mushy that I decided if Hank was ever going to get out of the house again, I needed to invest in my first pair of rain boots. Around town, you see a ton of these giant brown and tan rubber boots called XtraTufs. While they are very "trendy" here, apparently they are not warm and they are not quite my style. Somehow everyone seems to pull them off well here with skirts, jeans, snowpants, camo, etc. but I just couldn't bring myself to do it if it meant my feet were also freezing. I went with some Bogs instead which are supposedly the 2nd most popular boot around and they even come in pretty colors. Sadly, I found some really pretty teal ones, but the one store that has them didn't have my size and I decided with rain forecasted for the next 10 days and the tendency for my feet to turn whitish-yellow in the cold (thank you Beckmann genes), I REALLY needed to stop wearing my tennis shoes to walk Hank. Therefore, I am now a proud owner of plain black Bogs: 

(Imagine giant, black, rubber and neoprene boots with handles to pull them on-the definition of stylish)

In addition to enjoying the summer days, I survived my first full week of work! It really was not that hard. My job is awesome and I get to see a ton of variety between the pediatrics, regular outpatient PT, and a dabble of inpatient PT. The days fly by, thanks in part to the interesting smattering of characters I get to chat (I mean treat) with all day. Due to HIPAA and the small-town nature of Homer, I can not share too many details but how many people can say they got to treat people that could be on at least 3 of the Discovery Channel's reality shows (Ice Road Truckers, Flying Wild Alaska, Deadliest Catch, Yukon Men: the Race for Fur, Bering Sea Gold, Survivorman, etc.) I get to hear some pretty great stories all day. Another interesting thing is the prevalence of the Russian culture. I have not had to use one Spanish word since I left Colorado and instead there are posters in our clinic with Russian translations of "run", "lift", "pull your belly in" and other PT words. 

While work has been great, I must admit it has been quite lonely coming home to an empty house. Grant went back to Colorado on Sunday and I was quite a wreck that night and the next day. I've been keeping busy though which helps and starting to make some friends. It is unbelievable how many people up here are from Colorado. I had dinner with one of the OT's that works at the hospital last night and wouldn't you know, she was bummed she was missing going to the Rocky Mountain Showdown today with her sisters. Yes, I had dinner last night with a Rams fan, but hey, you can't be picky 3,000 miles away. One of her sisters is an OT that works in Loveland and Longmont. Small world, or what? I had to go get finger-printed this morning for the hospital and the man doing it just happened to have graduated from CU and DU. One of my patients is moving back to CO after 30+ years up here. 

Sadly, with a giant 8' TV antenna on the roof, I am only able to occasionally get 1 channel so I will not get to watch the game today. Still working on the internet issue as well.

One more exciting Alaska thing to share, I experienced my first earthquake! I woke up at about 5am one morning shaking. I realized the whole house was actually shaking. Confused and still half-asleep, I thought hmm I wonder if this is an earthquake. Then it stopped and I fell back asleep and thought I had just had a really weird dream. Low and behold, one of my patients pops in the next morning saying, "Did you feel the earthquake?" Apparently it was more than a 4.0 but less than a 5.0. Now I'm questioning whether cracks in my ceiling were there before or not. 

I'm off to the farmer's market to get some giant vegetables. Trying to load up now so I can make it through the winter vitamin-deprived. GO BUFFS!