Author: admin

It’s the sound of national Democrats salivating over our Senatorial race. Alaskan Democrats, meanwhile, stick their heads cautiously up from the foxholes and wonder if that light in the distance is truly the sun or a cruel trick being played on them.

There are jobs you do for money and there are jobs you do for love. It has been my luck in life to do more of the latter than the former.

There are times when I am working with kids in the state system that I wonder if I’ve stayed too long at the fair, if I should maybe consider retiring based on sheer fatigue caused by the realization that while I may win the occasional small battle or skirmish, the war will go on.

But whenever I’m feeling like I want to hang it all up, I think about

In the primaries that occurred last week, Alaska Republicans voted for a Senate nominee who thinks we should basically end all government spending and a House nominee who is one of the kings of pork. Am I the only one who thinks that’s a little schizophrenic?

For the Oscars, I wear a tiara while sipping a smart cocktail.

For the Emmys, I wear a clean babushka while sipping sugar free juice.

And that’s the way it will remain until NCIS or CSI gets the recognition it deserves.

Today I bring Captain and CB for their favorite thing in the whole world… getting their beaks and nails trimmed. I will need to be careful the rest of the week so that they never get a chance to rip my face open as an expression of their great joy.

As far as I’m concerned, summer arrived at exactly the right time in Anchorage… after the hot weather and before the snow. I can walk without beating back mosquitoes, the sun is warm but the breeze is cool and the whole world seems big, alive, clear and clean. I watch birds getting ready for their trip south, geese practicing their take offs and landings, all our little brown birds storing food for winter, my Stellar Jays putting down impossible amounts of peanuts to stash all over the neighborhood… yep, this is definitely the way to do summer… and even as

Last year, it took me about two days to realize that the noise wasn’t the wind shaking the flue in the chimney. When I finally opened it, a bird fell into the towel I held in my hand below the flue. I put the silly little Stellar Jay outside, gave him some peanuts and a dish of water to wash off the dust while he regained his composure. He finally flew off looking fine.

So this year when I heard the noise, I knew exactly what it was. Only I forgot that I didn’t have the flue shut and, because

The latest polls show that the majority of Americans think the war in Iraq was a failure. This should probably not come as much of a surprise to anyone. Once Bush and company stopped beating the drums of war and actually started one, even the most devoted partisans of his policy could not find the WMDs that were our supposed reason for being there. And despite some deliberate obfuscation by his administration, most Americans eventually came to realize that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and was, in fact, one of the most deliberately non-religious governments in the region.

If you read popular literature or follow popular culture, you definitely get the idea that every girl goes through a period of ripping wedding dress pictures out of magazines and fantasizing about what her wedding will be like while planning all the details in her teen years.  Am I the only one who never did this? I feel so stupid sometimes because it seems as though I’m the only person in the world who never even imagined doing that.

Maybe it has something to do with my distinct lack of taste in clothing and lack of interest in acquiring any