Our 2011

After addressing some technical difficulties, we hope that our little video is up and running now. Fingers crossed.

I know I haven't been very active on the ol'blogaroo lately. Updates include SO MUCH SNOW. So far we're having the third snowiest winter ever recorded at a running total of 123.7 inches. 132.8 was the previous record.

Since I don't have anything new to post, I've been meaning to get this up here for a while. I thought now would be a good time since we're well into 2012. Please don't feel like you need to watch it. It's about 16 minutes long, but I have a feeling there will be a couple moms who are interested enough in us to give it a gander.

For Christmas this year Paul and I decided not to get each other presents. So of course I did a sneak attack and made this video for him. Don't worry, he snuck attacked me and gave me a couple of bowling balls which he later pawned.

Untitled from Shug Rigg on Vimeo.

Paul's Corner-Quotes from Antiquity

Paul is taking a Comparative Economy Political Science class this semester. To me, this sounds like barf. To him, it sounds really fascinating. Great. The first day of class his teacher brought in a stack of books “the length of his arm” to read this semester. He loves them. (That statement might not be entirely true.) He wants to share some quotes.

Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse
(This is from a discourse between Socrates and a man named Ischomachos.)
Ischomachos then speaks. ‘And yet once, Socrates,’ he said, ‘I saw she had applied a good deal of white lead to her face, that she might seem to be fairer than she was, and some dye, so that she would look more flushed than was the truth, and she also wore high shoes, that she might seem taller than she naturally was. “Tell me, woman,” I said, “would you judge me more worthy to be loved as a partner in wealth if I showed you our substance itself, didn’t boast of having more substance than is really mine, and didn’t hide any part of our substance, or if instead I tried to deceive you by saying I have more substance than is really mine and by displaying to you counterfeit money, necklaces of gilt wood, and purple robes that lose their color, and asserting they are genuine?” She broke in straightway, “Hush,” she said; “don’t you become like that; if you did, I could never love you from my soul.” “Haven’t we also come together, woman,” I said, “as partners in one another’s bodies?” “Human being say so, at least, “she said. “Would I then seem more worthy to be loved, “ I said, “as a partner in the body , if I tried to offer you my body after concerning myself that it be healthy and strong, so that I would really be well complexioned, or if instead I smeared myself with vermilion, applied flesh color beneath the eyes, and then displayed myself to you and embraced you, all the while deceiving you and offering you vermilion to see and touch instead of my own skin?” “I wouldn’t touch vermillion with as much pleasure as I would you, “ she said, “Or see flesh color with as much pleasure as your own, or see painted eyes with as much pleasure as your healthy ones.” “You must believe, woman,”’ Ischomachos said that he had said, ‘”that I too am not more pleased by the color of white lead or dye than by your color, but just as the gods have made horses most pleasant to horses, oxen to oxen and sheep to sheep, so human beings suppose the pure body of a human being is most pleasant. Such deceits may in some way deceive outsiders and go undetected, but when those who are always together try to deceive on another they are necessarily found out. For either they are found out when they rise from their beds and before they have prepared themselves, or they are detected by their sweat or exposed by tears, or they are genuinely revealed in bathing.” ‘
“By the gods,’ I said, ‘what did she reply to this?’


On the Poverty of People’s-Montesquieu
There are two sorts of poor people: some are made so by the harshness of the government , and these people are capable of almost no virtue because their poverty is a part of their servitude; the others are poor only because they have disdained or because they did not know the comforts of life, and these last can do great things because this poverty is a part of their liberty.

On the Commerce in the Various Governments-Montesquieu
General rule: in a nation that is in servitude, one works more to preserve than to acquire, in a free nation, one works more to acquire than to preserve.

Sheep

On Monday we decided to get out of town. We went for a drive down Turnagain Arm to Girdwood for some of the most violent sledding of our entire lives. The scenery was great and the sledding aftermath was incredibly painful. Today my elbow didn't work at all. This picture is from the drive, not the sledding.

When I first moved up here for my internship, my supervisor Diana told me that Alaska was 15 minutes outside of Anchorage. Love it. Every time we drive down this road, we assign a value or prize to different animal sightings. If anyone sees a bald eagle, they get a quarter. Dall Sheep are ice cream. Bears are a cheeseburger or something like that. Belugas are a five course dinner. (I wish.) Every once in a while we have a nice spotting. Sheep are pretty rare and usually high up, looking like white specks that are probably snow.

Well, this Monday we hit the sheep jackpot. We found this little family just a ways up from the road, right at a pull-off.

I liked that we could see their tracks up to their nice cozy nesting place.

On our way home after our kamikaze sledding incident, we rounded a corner and this little gipper was trotting along the road.

He got off the road pretty quickly. I enjoyed watching him scamper through the snow.

Here he's thinking about going home.

What We Do In The Winter

Last year mom gave us a candy thermometer for Christmas. Thanks Mom! This year Paul gave me a long longed for yogurt maker for my birthday. Thanks Paul! Combine the two and what do you get?

Delicious yogurt.

With all the Christmassing going on around here, I took a slight hiatus from making bread. With the new scale and meat/bread thermometer from Paul's parents (Thanks Jeff & Kathy!) I made my best batch yet!

We also found our bird feeder a little askew after this weekend's snow. I guess Anchorage has topped its all-time record for snow to date at this point in the winter. We have had more than double the average. This year so far we've had 81.3 inches with more coming! Ilove it! (Especially since sweet Paul does the shovelling!)

All the pictures are thanks to my Dad for our new lenses! Thanks Dad!

Happy Solstice

Just in case you're wondering, we're still alive. Today is the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow (the 22nd) is my birthday! Yep, I'm turning 21. Again. For the rest of my life.

Our life gets a lot less...blogable in the winter I guess. Mostly I would be posting pictures of Paul sitting on the couch doing homework or me sitting on the couch working on seminary. Not so picturesque. As the winter was settling in, Paul went on one more campout with the scouts.

We do still have some fun. Like doing dishes in the Christmas apron my mom sent me while I was in Georgia.

And making delicious pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving.

It must have been in October that we finally harvested our bumper crop of carrots.

After not emerging from our house in months, we finally trekked out to cut down our Chrsitmas tree. Our 2nd Christmas tree. Yup, we bought one on the corner from a guy without any teeth earlier because I didn't want to wait until we had time to go get one to start feeling Christmassy. So now we have two. I started out hacking at it with a hatchet. It was awesome to get out some winter angst.

Yep, you counted correctly...exactly 5 working lightbulbs on those two strings of lights.

This is my hot moutain man husband, complete with beard.

Mini Revolution

So, remember when Griff had her revolution? Remember how she stopped being addicted to checking her email and blogs? (I'm paraphrasing...hope you don't mind, Griff.) Well, I recently had a little tiny revolution of my own. Enough with the incessant checking of blogs and email. Let's be honest, I get an email from a friend maybe once or twice a week. The rest are travel offers and recipes from Saveur that I delete without even looking at them. Sure, it only takes a couple of seconds, but all day those seconds add up. I love the feeling of coming back from vacation and realizing that I've broken the habit of wanting to check my email, but usually I settle right back into it because there's always a computer around. Well, no more! I now check my email in the morning when I get to work and when I get home from work. By now, maybe 2 weeks in, I forget to check my email when I get home. I did it! I changed my life! I check blogs on Sunday afternoon, and it's nice because there's always something new to read from someone. Hooray for less wasted time in my life. Next step, smashing up all the computers in my life. Might have to wait for Paul to be done with school to accomplish that one. And I'm not sure my boss would appreciate that...

This new way of life, combined with approaching winter has resulted in the recent dearth of posts on my own blog. We're keeping busy as usual, but the things we are involved in are much less picturesque than in the summertime. Though I have decided that September is now my favorite month. I really love love loved autumn this year.

Here are some out of date pictures of the last month or so. A beautiful salad from our garden this year. I was really fond of the nasturtiums. They are edible flowers that have a peppery taste at first which is followed by sweet honey notes.

The biggest pea I have ever seen in my entire life. We had the best strawberry crop yet. They just kept coming and coming and they were so so sweet.

We were also happy with our first successful zuccini.

Paul cooking halibut and hot dogs for those of us with slightly less refined taste.

We had a pitiful blueberry harvest this year. We have committed a friend to show us his family's secret spot next year. But we can't post any pictures of that because it's TOP SECRET and his parents must never know. In fact, I hear he has to blindfold us on the way.

I made Razamatazz bars. This is a Griff recipe that she fed me when I visited her once in NJ. Amazing!

Paul left me to go elk hunting with his family in Colorado. They were super successful and got as many elk as they had tags for. He had fun with his family and came home and made delicious jerky. He's a good one.

While he was away, I invited some work friends over to make bread and keep me company. That night Chris showed up with a garbage bag full of basil from his parents. It was the most basil I've ever seen in my life. He and Gilia proceeded to whip up about a million batches of pesto that they left in my freezer. I was startled when I checked later and saw how huge the pile was. They started the evening claiming to be purists, but by the end of the night I had apple picante pesto, red pepper pesto and a loaf of pesto cheese swirl bread.

And then when Paul came home I had a nice little loaf of craisin orange bread waiting for him.

So now we're settling in for the winter. No snow yet, but it's a-comin. Paul's busy with school and I'm doing seminary so there is much less time for shenanigans. This is the time of year when all our picturues start to feature only the food we're cooking. Too bad we didn't get a picture of last night's salmon pickle dish.

Ah yes, the beginning of fall has come and gone, marked as always by...you guessed it...THE ALASKA STATE FAIR!

Remember when I hated fairs? And then I married Paul and he lugged me along to enjoy one of his favorite childhood memories. Every year I have enjoyed it more and more. This was the BEST FAIR EVER!!!! We stayed way longer than we usually do and STILL didn't see everything. We totally missed the kangaroos.

They had awesome shows this year.
BMX bike demonstration.


The annual favorite: Lumberjack Show




Circus Acts






Fun Activities for all ages.


And the Food. This food is why I start getting excited for the fair in February.



Paul with his Rhubarb Lemonade.



Me with the other annual favorite: A Denali Creampuff.


Next year my plan is to enter something in the contests. The other part of my plan is that I'm going to WIN!