Elise Sereni Patkotak

People like Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen never move here and people like Sarah Palin leave.

Taxes done, mailed and paid for the feds and every state that wanted a piece of me this year because of the sale of my mom’s house. Ditto corporation taxes… yes, I may be small but I AM a corporation. And for the 12th year in a row, I have been unanimously named Employee of the Year.

Life doesn’t get much better.  Well, I guess if I got a refund instead of paying it would be better. After all, GE made 15 billion last year, something like 5 billion of it here in America and they apparently paid no US

No matter how short a time has elapsed between snow falls in Anchorage, each time the next snow fall hits, Anchorites once again prove that they have the attention span of gnats and the ability to hold learned behaviors equivalent to that of most 12 month olds. No, wait. That’s an insult to 12 month olds.

Each time it snows, why do some Anchorites feel that maybe this time it won’t be slippery so they can speed and change lanes and cut off those annoying people who insist on driving carefully thus depriving the speeders of their ability to get

When we’re young, there is this whole layer of people above us who buffer us from death because older people are supposed to die first. That seems to just be the natural order of things. Periodically one of our generation has an untimely passing but we chalk that up to the vagaries of fate and go back to believing that we are pretty immortal because of that buffering layer above us.

Then our parents’ generation starts dying – slowly at first, then more rapidly – until one day we wake up to the unnerving fact that there are simply not

Have you ever noticed how North Korea stops being an imminent threat to our peace and stability whenever something happens somewhere else. North Korea simply disappears from the headlines as though it never really existed. But the minute things calm down in the latest hot spot and American politicians are afraid we might actually pay attention to how they are screwing us, suddenly North Korea becomes the biggest threat to our peace and prosperity since the hippies marched in DC in he sixties.

I may be walking in slushy ruts six inches deep and slogging through puddles that would drown small dogs but here in Anchorage, those walking conditions mean spring. Yea!

Why is it that the same dog who will turn her nose up at dried dog food (and you know who you are Blondie!) will grab a treat from my hand of the same smell and consistency and eat it as though it were ambrosia?

I was in there to buy my usual gross of paper towels, something you need when you have six parrots and a cockatoo, when I realized they have a liquor store section. Since I have only recently come to the art of the smart cocktail, I have never actually been in there before. Well, that’s not really true. I vaguely remember going in there once to buy a case of beer when some young cousins were coming to visit but that’s not a really sharp memory so it may not have actually happened.

At any rate, being a devoted Costco

Pajama jeans… it’s like the fashion gods have heard my plea. Pajama jeans, I say! And you can wear them outside. They aren’t just for bed. I know this because that’s what they show on TV and we all know that anything they show on TV must be true.

So all you fashionistas out there (you know who you are, Judy!) who have mocked my sense of style or lack thereof over the decades, my time has come. Pajama jeans! In my lifetime! I could not be more happy.

I hate that since the horror of the Bush/Cheney years America seems to feel that its only export is bombs and war. Of course, considering we’ve outsourced everything else to India and China, I guess war and weapons of war are the only export we have left. And what better way to show prospective buyers their capability than by using them in actual combat situations.