Mary Bellamy

Fairbanks has a few reasons to celebrate every summer. One is the solstice, and the other is Golden Days. What, you ask, is Golden Days? Well, to paraphrase the less-than-educated person standing behind me at Pioneer Park yesterday, Golden Days is when we celebrate Felix Pedro getting left on the banks of the Chena River and then finding gold about 113 years ago. Except Pedro wasn't the one left on the river. And it wasn't 113 years ago. But then, who really thought we'd find the brain trust at a festival, right?

But you know what we did find? Free hot dogs!
Here's Tom, who took a break while eating his four hot dogs. He started musing about entering a hot dog eating contest, but he let me down in a pie-eating contest four years ago. It's hard to respect a man who comes in second.
I only had one hot dog. Marvelous restraint. Plus, they were lukewarm.

But I digress. I really only talked about Golden Days so that I wouldn't blog twice in a row about the transfer station. I stopped in after work again today, because I'm on the hunt for some dining room chairs. First stop: Farmers Loop/Taku. No chairs, but the Transfer Station Angels were there. I heard one of them mutter that he should go into his dressing room before changing his mind and dropping his pants right there to try on some clothes. I can't complain about him too much, though, as he was the one responsible for this:
It's always nice when someone puts some effort into displaying the recycle deck goodies. The rest of the deck was in similarly pristine condition, but I had to get a photo of the refrigerator display case.

The Chena Pump transfer station did not have any chairs either, but it marked a first for me. I pulled in behind a guy in a pick up truck and quickly accosted him with a "Does that work?" question. The short answer was yes.
And so we are now proud owners of a 27" TV. It doesn't have a remote or a power button, but I'm not above sticking a pen in the hole every time I need to turn the TV on. Plus, we can buy a universal remote.

My visit to the Chena Pump transfer station was marred by odd noises from one of the dumpsters. At first I thought some guy was smashing glass bottles inside the dumpster. That would be weird, but I could accept it. However, he was actually leaning into a dumpster and smashing a window. With a hammer. I would have gotten a picture of it, but the dude frankly scared me, so I left him to smash and brought my new TV home.