Elise Sereni Patkotak

Today I spent the morning with a specialist figuring out where the hell the sudden vertigo I’ve been experiencing came from. Seriously, if I want the world to spin around like that, I’d rather do it chemically. And for those of you lucky enough to never experience true vertigo, let me explain it this way. Vertigo is to dizziness as a Clydesdale is to a pony.

As I, more rapidly than I’d ever imagined, experience all the joys of growing older, I find my normally cheerful disposition harder and harder to maintain. And for all of you out there on the floor laughing hysterically at that previous sentence, I do too have a normally cheerful disposition. It just is combined with a realistic view of life that creates an odd balance.

I have family actually coming to visit in February. Some of them are already pretty convinced that I lost my mind years ago and that’s why I still live here. If they arrive and find that Philly has more snow than Anchorage… if they arrive and find our sidewalks and parking lots and driveways are useful as ice skating rinks… if they arrive and see all the ugly stuff we usually bury under successive layers of winter snow… oh crap, oh crap. I’ll never get another relative to Alaska.

Wait… is that really a bad thing?

Please do not let Gibbs make out with or fall in love with any woman on the show. It interferes with my fantasies.

On the other hand, it’s ok to let Dekes from NCIS:LA make out with Kenzie. Given my age and his, even in a fantasy that’s gross.

These two stories ran on the same day in Alaska Dispatch. How can you not love a state that produces them?

1. Fueled by soaring stock market, Alaska’s net worth climbs to $103,000 per person

2. Nearly naked inmate flees Dillingham jail, briefly (Followed by this opening line… and remember, it’s winter in Alaska) A 20-year-old man managed to escape police custody in the Southwest Alaska village for a very short time, wearing nothing but underwear. He was captured when he solicited a ride from an off-duty officer.

The Alaska Ear has departed, gone off to sow seeds in her garden and enjoy life without political intrigue.  For those of us who turned to the Ear column first when our Sunday paper arrived, it is a sad day. Even if the ADN manages to find someone to take over the column, no one will ever be able to equal Ear’s humor and deadly accurate ability to call a spade a spade even when it’s trying to disguise itself as a heart.

Go plant your garden, D’Ear. You’ve earned the rest.