This Is Not Pennsylvania!

It took five days, but finally, Friday night at 11, I turned on a light in the living room for the first time since we've been here!  Oh, I had used the lights in other parts of the house, but the living room has a wall of windows.  We never bother to pull the shades down; so there's enough light coming in until about 11 to do whatever you want to do, including reading.  Amazing, huh?  At least now I know I need to buy more powerful light bulbs!  Tomorrow is the solstice.  We intend to go out at 2 in the morning for a walk just to say we did it and to see what it's like outside at that hour.  We will not need flashlights.

There's a store here called Ulmer's.  It's like an old fashioned, expensive WalMart in that they carry a WIDE variety of stuff.  We have been there almost everyday.  It's not just the store of choice; it's the ONLY store you can find most of the dumb stuff you need to establish a household-----everything from wastebaskets to greeting cards to a clam digging auger-like thingy.  It's the place to go.  We're starting to establish relationships with the workers in there!

Then there's our post office.  But wait!  It's a combo deal, Folks!  You not only get a post office, but also a liquor store, a grocery/convenience store, a gas station, AND a bakery/restaurant!  What more could you need when you're in a hurry?  Between Ulmer's and our "post office", we're covered! Here are pictures of our post office/everything else.  Notice the signs and notice the clever drop box on the door inside the entryway.  Yes, that's the entryway!

I imagine I will be learning numerous new skills while we're here, but I already am committed to one-------making a great pizza crust.  To me pizza is the staff of life.  I get withdrawal after about two weeks.  We have found that the farther away from New York/New Jersey/ Pennsylvania you get, the lousier the pizza; so you can imagine what the pizza is like here.  To add to the problem is the price!  I have one word for it-----------YIKES!  So I tracked down some yeast (a dirty word to me in the world of baking), flour, a small package of pepperoni (worth it's weight in gold), and other required ingredients and made my own pizza for the first time in many years.  It was horrible!  But I will have fun continuing to try!

Perhaps you heard about a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in AK a few days ago.  The epicenter was only 90 miles from here.  Funny, we didn't even know it had happened until I got an email from a friend in Kansas wondering about it!  In retrospect, yes, we felt it but obviously not greatly. Apparently, even though it was of a size to do damage, it didn't because it was so deep.  Later in the week we had lunch with an acquaintance who has an amazing house on a hillside with the most beautiful view I've ever seen from a house.  They have earthquake insurance!

Where there are earthquakes there are volcanoes.  Our nearest active ones, Mt. Redoubt and Augustine are about 60 miles away and awesomely beautiful.  Every now and then (like a year ago) there's an eruption.  We can see them from Homer but not our house.  It's exciting to watch plumes of steam rising from those mountains during an eruption.

We have not yet been fishing because Nels wants some professional guidance at first.  He will be in DC all next week so we're waiting until he gets back.  The salmon are running, though, and everyone else here is fishing! This is Alaska, not Pennsylvania. We can't get chicken breasts at the ShopRite but we can get halibut!  Sounds tough, huh?