Mary Bellamy

At long last, Tom and I are fully moved into the new cabin. On Friday, we had friends over for a housewarming party to celebrate living in sin - and in splendor!

Here's a shocker: I still don't have a digital camera. So there aren't any photos from the housewarming. However, I did recently unearth an ancient disposable camera, and so I present to you Mary's Pictures, 2003-2005.

In chronological order, here is a photo of me taking during a hike at Angel Rocks in September 2003. This was taken just weeks before the Log Incident, which henceforth shall be capitalized. After the trip, the camera went MIA....

...until the summer of 2005, which heralded the arrival of Jacob and Gretta Stone, formerly known as the QIRs. Jacob and Gretta came from Doylestown, PA, to spend the year in Fairbanks. Their arrival should have meant I'd leave the community, but instead I got a new cabin. Isn't life funny sometimes?

A few months ago, the cabin was still in progress. Stop turning your head around trying to make sense of the picture. It's the ceiling drywall in the kitchen being put into place. It's right-side up, I swear.

These disposable cameras sure take bad pictures after a few years, but I know you wanted to see the outhouse floor after Tom repaired it. I mean, who doesn't want to see more pictures of my outhouse?

The squirrel-proof toilet paper holder he built is pretty cool, too. But you can't really see it in this picture. Trust me, though, it's squirrel-proof.

After the cabin was structurally finished, the cosmetic work was left to us. And since plain blue walls are pretty boring, I painted a small orange grove in the arctic entry, courtesy of ReadyMade magazine, which you should subscribe to right now.

And there you have it: another painfully slow journey through pictures. Now let me go borrow a digital camera from the UAF library so I can get you real pictures.

GCI finally came out to Hidden Hill yesterday to hook up our private line. The guy looked at the main box and said "You don't have a dial tone. ACS will have to fix that." So, in about 10 days, ACS should come out to look at things and try to get the line set up so GCI can come back and hook it up. Isn't competition in the marketplace great?

I've been unable to download any e-mail for Mushing for about 2 weeks, so I decided to hook the computer up to the main line and get my mail off the server as quickly as possible. It turns out it's not so quick to download mail when you can only connect at ... wait for it ... 26.4K! I think there must be some verrry old phone lines at Hidden Hill, because that's kind of ridiculous. To add insult to injury, I'm not sure if we have any option other than dial-up. The disadvantages of living in the woods, I guess.

Diwali is the Hindi festival of lights. The Hindi New Year, if you will. Living in Fairbanks, Alaska, I wouldn't expect to find much Hindi culture, but the UAF Namaste India Club hosted a Diwali celebration at Hutch on Saturday evening. Tickets were hard to come by, but I snagged two. After getting gussied up in a sari and a salwar kameez, Susan and I set off for the evening.

I wasn't aware of how many Indians were in Fairbanks until we arrived at Hutch. Students lined the hallway greeting us with "Namaste," and more milled around inside the hall. An hour of entertainment was scheduled prior to the buffet, and it included singing and dancing. We especially enjoyed an 8-person dance routine that began with a folk dance and ended with a dance to a small part of "Maahi Ve." The men and women dancing seemed to be channeling their inner Shahrukhs and Aishwaryas. We also greatly enjoyed an East-meets-West dance by a young man that included moonwalking and a little bit of "Billie Jean."

Of course, as soon as the buffet was opened, Susan and I hopped in the line. Chana Masala, Lamb Korma, Palak Muttar, Gulab Jamun....I could go on. The only option for Indian food in Fairbanks is inside Pizza4Less. According to Susan, you now have to call 2 hours in advance at dinnertime, and they may or may not be cooking that day. Fairbanks take note - we need an Indian restaurant.

After dropping Susan at home, I wasn't ready to shake the Diwali spirit just yet. Instead I settled into the loft and watched "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam." While I normally enjoy Bollywood, this one didn't really work for me. Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai play the two star-crossed lovers. Although they're both normally fine, their performances lacked in this movie. Salman relied on taking his shirt off a lot, which I certainly didn't mind, though I would have enjoyed a little less of the "talking-to-my-dead-father-in-heaven" bit. Both characters were headstrong and bratty, and it was hard to feel any passion from them or understand how their relationship evolved.

As is often the case in Bollywood films, the lovers were kept apart by a cruel twist of fate. In this case, it was Aishwarya's arranged marriage to Ajay Devgan. Naturally, she doesn't love him and mourns the loss of Salman. The movie took an unexpected twist when Ajay decided to help her reunite with Salman. Although I'm normally not a fan of happy endings, I would have preferred it to the moralistic drivel that concluded this movie.

Despite all the unenjoyable aspects of this movie, it still made me happy. Why? The dance scenes. With lyrics by Mehboob and a group of choreographers, all of the dance scenes were lavish, colorful affairs. Nit-pickers will also appreciate that all of the scenes in "Italy" were shot in Hungary, and all of the "Italians" were speaking Hungarian.

I am now going to talk about my cat. If you don't care to read it, please scroll down.

We moved the cat in last night. For those of you who don't know Nibbles, she is a needy and annoying animal. It's a good thing she's also very cute. If she had a cauliflower ear, matted fur and one leaky eye, no one would put up with her. However, she was blessed with a charming little face and some freaky thumbs.

Before I retrieved her from the Stones' apartment, I put up brackets and shelves to create "steps" alongside the ladder so she could get herself up to the bedroom. I learned long ago that cats can go up ladders. They can also come down them, but it is often much less graceful, involves a big fall, and hurts their feelings if you're really stoned and laugh at them. I decided to bypass that with the shelves.

After being moved into the 8th house in her 10 years, she was a little freaked out and kept searching for a place to hide. When Tom left, I attempted to show her the shelves by moving her from shelf to shelf. Not happening. So after dinner I went upstairs to watch some TV. After about 20 minutes of crying (seriously), she decided to give me a heart attack by winding her way up the ladder. Nice trick, cat, but how are you going to get back down? I decided to show up the shelves again, but after I put her on the first shelf, she freaked out and tried to jump across the opening. Bad move, as she has no front claws and her back paws missed the ledge. Fortunately, I was there the catch her and toss her back into the bedroom. She decided to go hide in Tom's shoes and think about things for a bit.

We eventually got her downstairs. That is where the food and water is, not to mention the litterbox. We, however, sleep upstairs. Or at least we tried to. Nibbles resumed her position at the bottom of the stairs and resumed crying. We tried to keep silent, lest we agitate her further. After a while, she fell silent, then we heard some scrabbling. I'm not sure if she used the shelves or the ladder, but she got up to the bedroom and decided to hide under the shelf at the end of the bed.

At some point during the night, she got herself back downstairs. Since the noise woke me, I'm guessing she descended in a rather spectacular fashion. She also got herself back upstairs again. It seems our little feline can be taught.

Now if only I could figure out why she's got a shaved spot on her stomach...

Yes, I work at a university library. Things are a little different here than at the borough library. I'm hidden down on the second floor (actually two floors below ground level), but there are signs pointing to my office indicating that patrons can find help in my office. This however, does NOT mean patrons can help themselves to whatever is in my office. Such as the young man who just walked into my office, walked over to the coat rack, grabbed a hanger and said "Can I have this hanger?" Yeah, that was a big fat NO. He tried to tell me I didn't need my hangers and that he would bring me another one, but I stood firm. "Unfortunately, I can't give you a hanger." He left muttering nasty stuff under his breath. Don't piss off a librarian - we have hangers and you don't!

I finally reached my breaking point yesterday. Naturally, it has to do with the cabin. It's hard to pinpoint any one thing that was so bad, but it just all kept piling up over the months. When I got back from bellydance rehearsal and found out some things still hadn't been done, I went over the edge. I could almost feel a tic starting up under my eye, so I just threw my head back and began screaming. Tom was caught a bit off guard. I then proceeded inside and crawled up into the loft bed, where I proceeded to have a good cry.

After calming down and drinking a fair portion of wine, I felt a bit better. Miraculously, Don showed up then to work on the floor. Not only did we get all the tile down, but he finished the carpet. And today several Quakers rallied after Meeting and brought the refrigerator down to the cabin, then moved both dressers to the site and got them up into the bedroom. I started waxing the new floor to seal it, and the man making our ladder showed up with it. So in less than 24 hours, we got the floors finished, the ladder delivered and the refrigerator running. I guess crying and getting stoned worked out rather well for me.

Things have been moving along rather smoothly at the cabin. By Tuesday, Don and I had picked up the carpet, padding and the refrigerator, and he had most of the carpeting in place, if not finished. He also got a jump on the tile floor, starting to figure out a layout and prepping the plywood. But when I came home on Thursday, something about Don seemed a little bit different. Probably because his leg was broken. Just a guess.

He'd been limping at the beginning of the week because of an industrial accident at his job the previous week. It involved improperly secured scaffolding, a great height and a big jump to the ground. And it apparently fractured his tibia. Or maybe not. The doctors disagree, and he'll have to get an MRI.

Not to be self-centered, but it is my blog. This puts me in a bit of a spot. You see, some of the Quakers have been not-too-subtly hinting that they want their room back for meetings. But I can't exactly move all my stuff to the cabin until the flooring is done. So I'm going to try to hide on Sunday to avoid their prying eyes. Tom and I are trying to work out a management-and-labor arrangement with Don where he can sit in a chair and tell us what to do. Maybe we'll even give him a little table and a beer. But one thing's for sure: We need to get that floor done.

Tom has been in plays for the past two Halloweens, preventing me from getting him all gussied up for the holidays. But not this year.


This year I got us all dolled up as Sonny and Cher. Our friend Brandon was at the FDA showing of Dracula Monday night and snapped a few pictures of us. Come to think of it, complete strangers were also snapping pictures of us. And someone put an ad in the fbx square for Tom. And those catcalls we heard as we crossed the theater to find our seats? Well, I'm pretty sure they weren't for me.

Next year I get to be the girl!

Tom and I faced the prospect of spending our first night in the new cabin last night. We'd been staying in Jacob and Gretta's apartment while they were Outside, but they returned yesterday. The TOYO was on the fritz again in the main cabin upstairs, which meant we couldn't sleep in my room, so our other option was to sleep in the loft in the main cabin. We opted to end our vagabond lifestyle and start settling in. It helps that Don started laying the carpet last night.

We folded the mattress in half, tied it shut, and used a sled to get it down to the cabin. Once we'd managed to get it up into the loft, we got it onto the bed platform and dressed it up real pretty in some sheets. We snuggled down for the night, hoping to sleep like babies. Early this morning, I started to see the flaw in our plan. It was cold.

The TOYO was set well below 60 degrees F after it was installed because we were not living in the cabin yet. I turned the heat up to 65 degrees F over the weekend, but that wasn't enough to warm the cabin up yet. There's a ventilation fan that should pull warm air up into the bedroom from downstairs, but the downstairs air was still cold. Plus, I should mention that at 11:30 a.m. today it was -11 degrees F on some thermometers. All of which made for a chilly morning.

Tonight, we'll try keeping the setback on the TOYO turned off and maybe turn the heat up a little. Just to be safe, we'll also bring my space heater down to the new cabin, too.

Nancy came over and helped Tom and I build a bed in our cabin yesterday. Not just any bed, mind you, but a giant, hulking, massive, behemoth of a bed. It's for a queen mattress, so it's about 5 feet wide, but we attached the platform directly to the walls, so it's about 9 feet long.

Underneath the bed, we installed two shelves on the long wall, and Tom put up two dowels on the short sides to serve as a closet. This would so much more sense with pictures, but you know I'm not that far advanced in my technology. Shit, I still use an outhouse for the love of Pete! And you want me to get a digital camera? OK, we'll compromise: I'll take some pictures tonight and get them developed soon.

Today we pick up some carpeting remnants and the refrigerator, plus finish moving stuff out of Tom's apartment (or our city place, as I like to think of it. Goodbye, toilet! Goodbye, shower!). Our tenuous link to free carpeting has disappeared, as the bank seems to have foreclosed on the house which contains said carpet. So we buy!

I've been tense and irritable lately. I thought it was just some sort of female hormone thing, but Tom finally called me out on it the other day: I'm worried about moving in with him. It's true: when I think about living with him, fear clenches my gut. What will happen when I need my alone time? How will I handle having to sleep with him every night? Is he going to mention it every time I bring home new clothing? Am I going to have to start being tidier?

Don't get me wrong: I love Tom with all of my heart. I don't think anyone else could be more right for me. Especially since he's been putting up with my freaking out over this. I can get a little...snappish when I'm upset. I'm just scared because I've never lived with someone before, and it feels like this is a big step toward commitment with a capital "C." Which is weird because I don't think I'm scared of the commitment to Tom, just of the commitment in general.

It doesn't help that we have to get everything out of his apartment by tomorrow and the cabin isn't quite ready yet. It still needs a few things. Like flooring, a refrigerator and lighting. All in due time, I guess, but I'm not paying rent on it until I can actually move in.

And to top it all off, I can't even call my sister to express my panic because she went to New Hampshire for the week. I need someone to talk me off this ledge!!

Now I'll have that song stuck in my head for a while. My point was that the heat is hooked up and on in the cabin. Last night Phillip and James hooked up the TOYO, and it is running just fine, though it does need one new chimney pipe.

As a thank-you, I invited Phillip to stay for dinner. I'm not sure what he was expecting, but he seemed quite pleased. I served a mixed lettuce salad with roasted pears, blue cheese, toasted pecans and a raspberry balsamic dressing. The main course was a lasagna of portobello mushrooms, mashed potatoes and goat cheese with a basil-scallion sauce. For dessert, I made a hazelnut-pear torte with vanilla bean ice cream. Yeah, I posted that just to make you hungry.

Now that the cabin has heat, we can get ready for flooring. Don is busy putting in new flooring over at Aliy Zirkle's kennel, but hopefully he'll be able to work on it this weekend. Nancy and Jay will be helping us build the loft bed on Sunday. At this rate, our housewarming party may not be premature after all.

Today is the day I officially broke out the long underwear. It's actually not that cold - about 20 degrees F - but I think it's time. For that matter, it may be time to give up the illusion of moving into the cabin anytime soon. I should probably dig my winter coats out of storage and start wearing them.

I am a creature guided by Circadian rhythms. Even more annoying, I am a morning person. Not one of those people who wakes up early, has a cup of coffee and then faces the day. No, I like to bound out of bed (when not snuggling with Tom, the ultimate de-motivator). I'm bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, chipper and LOUD. Statistics show that people want to strangle me in the morning a full 57% more than they want to strangle me in the afternoon. But dammit, I like the mornings! Which brings me to my problem: Alaska sucks.

I find it increasingly hard to get up early and face the day when the sun won't show up until, say, 9 a.m. Actually, I'm not even sure what time the sun is rising lately because I work two stories underground at the university library in the morning. As a result, my body gets confused every winter and I don't know when to wake up. I moved here in January 2003, which was a shock to my system. In January, the sun isn't up until around 10:30. Even worse than the sun coming up late is that it then has the nerve to set in the early afternoon. If it isn't difficult enough getting up in the pitch dark, you then have to try to stay awake at 8 p.m. when it's already been dark out for several hours.

Fortunately, Alaska has a good way of keeping you awake in the winter, and that's the cold. You don't think the cold can wake you up? Try going to the outhouse at -30 degrees F. And that's on a warm day. You'll be singing the praises of blue foam on when it's -50 degrees F. (Yes, I am going to keep writing the temperatures in AP style, because I'm a dork precise.)

However, before you go thinking Alaska is a horrible place, here's a list of why I stay here each winter:

• Aurora borealis Known as the northern lights. They're there in the summer, too, but you can't see them. Because it never gets dark.
  
• Cross country skiing I don't know why I never tried skiing before I moved here, but it's great to throw on a pair of skis and take off into the darkness after dinner. This year will be even better, because the new cabin was built near over the top of the ski trails.
  
• Sauna It's just not as much fun in the summer.
  
• Mushing Totally not a plug for the magazine. I may not mush, but I like being able to watch the races.
  
• Moose They're around in the summer, but hunger drives them closer to us in the winter.
  
• Chena Hot Springs Like the moose, Chena is also there in the summer. But so are 276,982 tourists, which makes for a mighty crowded lake. In the winter, all you have to worry about are Japanese couples fornicating.
  
• Bragging rights Hey, I don't see you peeing in an outhouse at -50 degrees F.
  

Besides, summer will come back eventually.

Sex worker Camille Cabral, representing French prostitutes, poses next to a European Union flag after a press conference organised by the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), at the European Parliament in Brussels, October 17, 2005. The ICRSE wants to end the criminalization of the sex industry and give prostitutes the same social rights as other workers.

For the love of God, this woman's face should be enough to convince men to get their sex the old-fashioned way. With alcohol and lies.

Maybe this one will take.

You know, I'm going to leave the whole "J" name thing alone. Jedidiah. Dammit! I tried.... I'm also going to try to mention that it takes a man named Jim Bob to believe that it's perfectly natural for his wife to breed this much.

No, my main beef with this story, with this family, is that they're really screwing up the whole "zero population growth" thing. I mean, it's all well and good for me to say I'm not going to have any kids. I'm not adding to this world's population issues. But when Ms. Prolific Uterus here says maybe 16 isn't enough, it really stymies my efforts, and leaves me no choice but to go out and kill 16 people. Possibly 17, depending on how fast Jim Bob can impregnate her again.

In honor of your nuptials, I have changed the color of my text. Maybe now you can read it. Or maybe you should've just figured out what was wrong with your computer, as every other computer didn't seem to have a problem with it.

And in honor of your special day, I give you a very special blog quote:

I know I haven't been posting much lately, so here's a little look at why I've been so busy:

Tundra Caravan workshop with Aziza; hafla Saturday night
Chena Hot Springs with Aziza (never pass up a chance to lounge around a hot springs rock lake with an amazing bellydancer)
Rehearsals for Fleur du Mal burlesque show
Sold-out performances for Fleur du Mal at the Point After. We had to take out all the tables and we still turned people away at the door!!!
Photo shoot for new Tundra Caravan troupe photos.

On top of all that, I was sick the week leading up to the workshop, and we've still been working on the cabin. The drywall is all up, mudded and taped. We started painting this week and have a first coat on everything except the ceiling. Tom now admits that all of my color choices were great, but he still won't agree to my fabric choice for curtains.

Is this fabulous or what? He says it's too dark and brown. Pshaw.

For a color update, here's what we've got so far:

Arctic entry inside and out is Sonata, a light blue. Sonata also graces the triangle of wall above the kitchen.

Downstairs is Day Spa, which is supposed to be a very light blue. It's pretty much just white. Boo!!

The bedroom is Mystic River. From my experience growing up near the Mystic river, this should be a muddy brown. But it's a lavender/purple.

The bedroom ceiling will be Enlightenment, a creamy pale yellow. The other ceilings will be plain white.

The loft bed, ladder, arctic entry door and anything else I can think of will be Plum Raisin, a dark reddish brown.

You know what would be even better than these descriptions? Pictures. Which I will get done and up here ASAP.

I do hate the throw around quotes from Blue Oyster Cult, but:
History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man
This story, to be fair, has nothing to do with Godzilla. But I predict that things will go awry due to a wacky series of events. The virus will be released upon the world, and Freddie, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy will have to hop into the Mystery Machine and investigate. Eventually it will turn out that old Mr. McGrady just released the virus in order to scare away the real estate developers who want to buy his farm and build a WalMart. And he would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Researchers Reconstruct 1918 Flu Virus

ATLANTA - Scientists have made from scratch the Spanish flu virus that killed as many as 50 million people in 1918, the first time an infectious agent behind a historic pandemic has ever been reconstructed.
Why did they do it? Researchers say it may help them better understand — and develop defenses against — the threat of a future worldwide epidemic from bird flu.
Like the 1918 virus, the current avian flu in Southeast Asia occurs naturally in birds. In 1918, the virus mutated, infected people and then spread among them. So far, the current Asian virus has killed at least 65 people but has rarely spread person-to-person.
But viruses mutate rapidly and it could soon develop infectious properties like those seen in the 1918 bug, said Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
"The effort to understand what happened in 1918 has taken on a new urgency," said Taubenberger, who led the gene-sequencing team.
The public health risk of resurrecting the virus is minimal, U.S. health officials said. People around the world developed immunity to the deadly 1918 virus after the pandemic, and a certain degree of immunity is believed to persist today. Also, in previous research, scientists concluded that modern antiviral medicines are effective against Spanish flu-like viruses.
The virus recreation, announced Wednesday, is detailed in the journal Science. The completion of that gene sequencing was announced in the journal Nature.
The virus was made from scratch, but based on a blueprint from Alaska.
Taubenberger's team sequenced genome information recovered from a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost in 1918. Then, they shared the data with researchers at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Using a technique called reverse genetics, the Mount Sinai researchers used the genetic coding to create microscopic, virus-like strings of genes, called plasmids.
The plasmids then were sent to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where they were inserted into human kidney cells for the final step in the virus reconstruction.
"Once you get the plasmids inside the cell, the virus assembles itself," said Terrence Tumpey, the CDC research scientist who assembled the virus. "It only takes a couple of days."
About 10 vials of virus were created, each containing about 10 million infectious virus particles, Tumpey said in an interview with The Associated Press. More may be created, he said, to accommodate researchers' future needs.
The virus particles are being stored at the CDC, and there are no plans to send samples off campus, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, the agency's director.
However, the genetic information sequenced by Taubenberger is being placed in GenBank, a public genetic sequence database operated by the National Institutes of Health.
Scientists need access to the research as they try to develop vaccines and antiviral medications against potential future pandemic agents, said Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science.
"We carefully considered the implications of publishing this research and concluded that the knowledge we're gaining to potentially protect public health far outweighs the risk of working
with the virus," Kennedy said.
The Spanish flu of 1918 was a terrible pandemic. In a few months, it killed more people than any other illness in recorded world history — an estimated 20 million to 50 million worldwide,
including roughly 550,000 in the United States.
In severe cases, victims' lungs filled with fluid and they essentially drowned in a disease process that took less than a week. It was known for being particularly dangerous to young adults, a group usually less susceptible to flu complications than younger and older people.
A flu virus has eight gene segments. Taubenberger and other researchers previously had published the sequences of five of them, but they accounted for less than half of the virus's total
sequence. The new work completes it.
The three new segments appear to be crucial in explaining how the bird-based virus became adapted to humans, Taubenberger said.
Tumpey also confirmed the 1918 virus's avian-like characteristics by injecting it in fertilized bird eggs. It killed the eggs, just like the Asian bird flu does. Other modern-day flu strains that are
human-based don't kill fertilized bird eggs, he noted.
The researchers also refined their focus on one gene, the HA gene, that encodes the hemagglutinin surface protein that help the virus attach to cells and multiply. The 1918 virus is deadly with the HA gene, but when the gene was replaced, it was not virulent, Tumpey said.
The virus's genetic properties may explain why it was able to settle deeper in the lungs than most current flu strains, causing the drowning condition, he said.
Virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo called the work important.
"We need to understand why this virus was so pathogenic," he said.
He also noted that Tumpey's work had to go through a variety of scientific reviews and approvals — a process Tumpey said took about three years.
"If there was any concern about safety, the experiment would not have been approved," Kawaoka said.

Two people have now come into my office and said that the snow is sticking on the ground. I work two stories underground, so I cannot confirm it at this time. It did snow in August, but so far no snow has been sticking in the lower elevations. The hills along Chena Hot Springs Road had a light dusting of white yesterday, though. Is it time to accept that another Alaska winter has begun?

Dutch Reporter to Use Heroin, Pot on TV

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A field reporter for a new Dutch television talk show plans to use heroin and other illegal drugs on the air during the weekly program on issues that concern young people, producers said Wednesday.
The announcement of "Shoot Up and Swallow," scheduled to premiere as a late-night show Oct. 10, sparked an outcry.
Even in the liberal Netherlands, where marijuana is sold and used openly, the proposed drug use by reporter Filemon Wesselink is illegal.
"This is dangerous and it sets a bad example," said Pieter Heerma, spokesman for the governing center-right Christian Democrat party. "We're going to ask the justice minister for his view on what the law says about this, and his view on the dangers and risks involved."
Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes said it was not immediately clear whether Wesselink could be prosecuted. Possession of any amount of heroin is illegal, but in practice police usually do not arrest anyone with less than a half gram of the highly addictive narcotic.
"The actual taking of drugs is a health problem, not a criminal act, though it's obviously hard to take drugs without possessing them first," Hommes said. "In any case, it's not something we endorse, and doing it on television is undesirable."
The show's in-studio host, Sophie Hilbrand, will interview guests about drug use and abuse, while Wesselink appears in segments taped in the field as he experiments with drugs and liquor. Another reporter, Ties Van Westing, will do segments about engaging in sex acts, but not on camera.
For one episode, Wesselink, 26, plans to smoke heroin, said Ingrid Timmer, spokeswoman for the show's producer, BNN. For others, he plans to go on a drinking binge in a series of pubs and to take the hallucinogenic drug LSD — on his couch under the supervision of his mother.
"It's not our intention to create an outcry. We just want to talk about subjects that are part of young people's lives," Timmer said.
The Netherlands is known for its lenient marijuana policy, under which the sale and use of the drug in small quantities are not prosecuted even though technically illegal. Other drugs, including heroin, LSD, cocaine and Ecstasy, are outlawed, and dealers are prosecuted. The legal age for consumption of alcohol and tobacco is 16.
According to the Trimbos Institute, a Dutch group that monitors international drug use, the Dutch are about average among industrial nations.
It says 6 percent of Dutch have used marijuana recently, compared with 8 percent in the United States, 8 percent in Britain and 9 percent in France. For cocaine, it was 1.1 percent in Holland — and rising quickly — compared to 1.3 percent in the United States, 1.5. percent in Britain and 0.3 percent in France. Comparable data for heroin were not available.
BNN has drawn viewer complaints for previous shows, including one that included a segment on how to have sex in a nightclub.

It's got nothing to do with the intriguing Inuit movie. It's got everything to do with Tom and the Equinox Marathon.

Tom has been working hard and training all summer for the marathon, which follows a particularly grueling trail to the top of Ester Dome and back. Some call it the second-toughest marathon in the United States. Part of the course runs along Goldhill Road. Since Hidden Hill is about 3 miles from the finish line, I decided to gather a crowd to support Tom. We met with chairs, barbecue and keg in Susan's driveway and settled in around 10:30 a.m. to wait for the runners. We didn't have to wait long.

We were joined at various times by James Savage, Gretta and Jacob Stone, William Walters, Scott Bell and his daughters, Melissa Hart, Ian Burcroft, Nancy Fresco, Jay Cable, Jen Wenrick, Don Crow, Margaret Friedenauer, Justin and Sofia, two women we didn't know and two guys who stopped their car to see if they could have some beer, then gave it to their friend who was running.


I had made signs to encourage Tom, since I was sick and couldn't yell much. We clapped for all the runners until we saw Tom coming down the road. Then we started yelling and cheering. He was about 20 minutes ahead of his projected schedule, and looked like he was in great shape. He called out to us as he went by, but didn't stop for a hamburger or a beer.

Melissa lent me her fancy digital camera so I could head for the finish line and capture Tom in all his sweaty glory. As the clock ticked steadily closer to 4 hours, Tom appeared out of the woods and headed for the finish chute.

At 3:46:32.5, Tom crossed the finish line in 22nd place. He was in suprisingly good shape considering what he'd just put his body through. After numerous congratulations, I left him to shower and headed back to the party.




With only Bob Eley left to root for, we started offering up beer to the runners along with the water and Powerade. Only 14 people took us up on the beer offer, and none would go for a kegstand. Bob Eley passed up the offer of a beer and finished the race in 6:57:47.1, a great time for someone who was not exactly active until a year ago.

I hope Tom plans to run the race again next year, because we had a great time encouraging all the runners. I'm grateful to all my friends who came out to help support Tom, and I'm incredibly proud of Tom for blowing a lot of the competition out of the water in his first marathon. Way to go!!

Did that get your attention?

Wis. Librarians Pose for Sexy Calendar

WAUPACA, Wis. - Projecting an image very different from that in which librarians are usually portrayed, six area library administrators have produced a sexy calendar they are selling to raise money for their libraries.
The idea for the "Desperate Librarians" 2006 wall calendar came about because Craig Lahm is retiring after 32 years of running Kaukauna's library, and his colleagues in the Outagamie Waupaca Library System wanted to come up with a different kind of gift.
Twelve of them decided they would use photographs of themselves to make a simple calendar that they would print at a Walgreens. But after the librarians took their idea to Countryside Photographers in Seymour, they decided to professionally produce a calendar and sell it as a fund-raiser.
That's when six of the 12 librarians bailed out. But five middle-aged library directors and a 32-year-old assistant each put up $200 and posed provocatively, using oversize books to cover what their clothes usually do.
Proceeds benefit the public libraries in Weyauwega, Clintonville, Marion, Seymour and Manawa as well as Waupaca.
The women appear to be naked in many of the photos, but all were at least partly clothed during the shoot, said Ellen Connor, Manawa's library director.
The six who took part in the project posed for two months each.
Connor said the women knew their idea was offbeat, so they decided to put up their own money, rather than ask their library boards to foot the bill. But they all got permission from their boards to participate and agreed to donate any profits to their libraries, she said.

As part of my indexing work at UAF, I've been working on the 1974 issues of the Pioneer All-Alaska Weekly. I came across this in the police blotter and, well, I just found it interesting.

25 bears?

An Anchorage man reported taking seven bears in defense of life. The man said he and a companion had shot the seven bears at Dot Lake where he said 25 bears had attacked him. He said he didn't know whether or not he wounded any bears.
Troopers investigated, reporting they searched the area and found no sign of bears - that they found only some empty rifle casings and some trees had been shot up.
The troopers concluded the men were either having flash backs or were on some kind of drug trips.

Ah, Fairbanks during the pipeline heyday.

LOST

For anyone who's been living under a rock, Lost is an ABC television show that started last year. It tells the story of 48 plane crash survivors who find themselves trapped on an island with many secrets of its own. Sound like any other stupid plot? Well, it's not.

For starters, the first season focused on 14 of the survivors. Yes, 14 main characters. Despite the huge number of characters, nearly every one was fully developed, usually through a combination of island scenes and flashbacks. Some you love, some you hate, but you'll get to know all of them.

The island itself can almost be considered a character. Like the survivors, it has secrets. Early on, viewers learn there's something large and dangerous that lives on the island. There's also a polar bear and mysterious transmissions from a French woman.

Even if you've watched the entire season, watching it again is a new experience. Once you know a character's background, you can see new meanings in the way they act and react.

But the proof is in the pudding, so I put the DVDs on in the main cabin Monday night. Jen, Don and I started watching, then William wandered in and got caught. After 3 episodes, I tried to draw the line, but William and Don were demanding more. Tuesday night William returned, and Jen and Don soon wandered in. Savage derided us, then sat down, then started asking about the different characters. Again, I stopped them after 3 episodes.

Wednesday night I had burlesque rehearsal until 10:30, so I spent the night at Tom's and stopped by Hidden Hill to change in the morning. Don was not happy to see me. It seems William came over again Wednesday night, and the first thing Don said was "She's not here." Since the DVDs were locked up in my place, they couldn't get their fix, and they were jonesing. Bad.

I've promised more episodes after dinner tonight, but I'm not sure if they can handle this. They're screaming for 2, 3, 4 episodes a night now. What am I going to tell them when Season 1 is done and we only have 1 episode a week for the new season?

One of the best parts of Mondays is reading the list of births in the local paper. Many an extraneous 'n' or 'y' appears in those names. This week featured the following monikers and my best guess at the sex of the babies:

Lillian Katelyn: girl
Konnor Vincent: boy
Aurora Berlin: girl
Jenna Raelyn: girl
Chay'ne Michelle: girl
Gideon Lehui: boy, perhaps
Cheyne Lucas: boy
Ryder Carson: boy, maybe
Kylar Rain: girl
Colt Augustus: boy
Kierra Naomi: girl
Serenity Divine: stripper, I mean girl
Amaya Naje': girl

I found this article yesterday, which proves that odd names happen around the world.

British office complies list of odd names
LONDON - Horatio Hornblower is an odd name, but consider his siblings: Azubia, onstantia, Jecoliah, Jedidah, Jerusha and Erastus. Rene Jackaman, archive assistant at Cornwall County Record Office, found all those names after coming across a real-life namesake of C.S. Forester's fictional naval hero in county census records.
The Hornblower name has been on record for centuries.
Inspired by that discovery, staff and researchers at the Cornwall Record Office compiled a list of more than 1,000 unusual names found in censuses as well as in births, deaths and marriage records going back as far as the 16th century.
"My all-time favorites are Abraham Thunderwolff and Freke Dorothy Fluck Lane," she said.
Other discoveries included Boadicea Basher, Philadelphia Bunnyface, Faithful Cock, Susan Booze, Elizabeth Disco, Edward Evil, Fozzitt Bonds, Truth Bullock, Charity Shilly, Gentle Fudge, Obedience Ginger and Offspring Gurney.
Levi Jeans was married in Padstow, Cornwall, in 1797.
Other remarkable duos in the marriage records included Nicholas Bone and Priscilla Skin, joined in wedlock in 1636; Charles Swine and Jane Ham in 1711; John Mutton and Ann Veale in 1791, and Richard Dinner and Mary Cook in 1802.

Tom decided to work on the outhouse yesterday. Probably because I volunteered to be the one, to, um, scrape and level the shit in there. That's the job he definitely did NOT want to do. We started ripping out old boards before I had to go to burlesque rehearsal. After my rehearsal (OK, after the kegger I went to after my rehearsal) Tom couldn't wait to show me his handiwork.

May I just say he kicks ass? I didn't really want to use the outhouse at all before, but he put in a new floor, added supports under the deck, fixed up the foam seat, put up a squirrel-proof toilet paper holder, cleaned out all the mess, replaced the broken boards and hung some record album art. The outhouse is now a pleasant place to sit and read for a while. Pictures to come. Shit leveling to come, too. I'm trying not to think about that....

While looking for information on bird feet baskets (don't ask), I learned some new proper terminology.

Bird, Flipping the is written Middle-finger gesture

I've recently applied for a job with the borough library, and I do hope I get to show off my useless knowledge if I get an interview.

I've been slow on updating the blog lately. My only excuse is that it's autumn. Autumn inevitably makes me depressed as I realize that another glorious summer has passed by, and therefore I am one year closer to death.

After a busy Saturday of burlesque rehearsal and bellydancing at an outdoor Renaissance wedding, I decided to take a break on Sunday. Tom and I headed out for the White Mountains and hiked out on the Wickersham Dome trail. It was overcast, which kept most other people away, but it didn't rain much. The colors are as glorious as they get in Alaska, which is still nothing compared to New England. In Fairbanks, there are birch and aspen trees, which turn yellow. No trees turn red, but some bushes on the tundra do. We found several blueberry patches that were still quite tasty, so we spent some time collecting berries.

My attention is now focused on the rest of the month:
* Equinox Marathon - Tom will be running on September 17, and I am hosting a party, since my driveway is only 3 miles from the finish line. Unfortunately, the race starts at 8 a.m., which means I've got to rouse some people and get them out there for the barbecue and keg by 11:30-ish, when he should be passing us.
* Dance workshop and hafla - I am stuck in one part of my new choreography. I need to finish it so I can get everything nailed down. This is why I don't like choreography.
* Burlesque - Fleurs du Mal will be performing the weekend after the hafla. Which means I need to create another bellydance choreography, plus learn all the other routines I will be dancing.

I got back the roll of film I had developed yesterday and began to flip through them. Lo and behold, some of the pictures were from back in early June! So here's a little trip from June to August.




A man, a platform, a dream: Tom surveys the start of our new home. It was just some slabs of wood back then.


A few days later, framing went up for a wall.



And the next thing you know, you've got four wall framed! It looks small, but remember there will be a second story.



Tom has been a very dedicated, if not experienced, builder. He especially excels at painting, since I refuse to climb up on scaffolding to do it. I'll make up for it by painting the interior. Purple.


There's some sort of tradition, possibly Norwegian, that builders must put up this small tree on the roof when the roofing is done.



This interior wall will be part of our Arctic entryway, and will also hold the circuit box.



If you look past the grinning Tom, you can see that there are no exterior walls in the second story. Nor is there a ceiling.



Ahh, what a difference a few days makes!


In order to get electricity down to the cabin site, a big ditch had to be dug from Savage's cabin. Tom's foot is in the picture to give you a sense of scale. Bear in mind that's a size 15 foot. The ditch was two painful feet deep.


Normally you can see for miles. But then the smoke from wildfires rolled in. Unlike last year, it rolled back out after only a week or so.



We prefer to smoke ourselves the old-fashioned way: In the Hidden Hill sauna! Savage destroyed the MacGyver stairs this summer, so I am building new ones.



There's a family of grouse that hang out between Savage's cabin and the building site. They're not smart, but they're too fast to become dinner.




For right now, I'm living in a room upstairs in the main cabin. Fortunately it's a big room.



Unfortunately, I live in it with all my stuff, so it's also a very messy room.

Chinese Try to Get Chimp to Quit Smoking
XI'AN, China - The handlers of a smoking chimpanzee in a zoo in northwest China are trying to get her to kick the habit.
The 26-year-old female chimpanzee has been smoking for 15 years. Her mate died recently, which caused her to smoke even more.
Now, the chimp's keepers are worried about her health as a result of her intense smoking. So, they're trying to give her milk instead of cigarettes.
She started smoking years ago by picking up butts from tourists.

But what if she's lactose intolerant? Or what is she gets hooked on the milk?

Last night was the kick-off of kraft*nite. What is kraft*nite? A group of ladies getting together to work on craft projects. But this isn't your grandma's knitting group. Far from it.

Inspired by Craftster, we're looking for a few like-minded individuals who want to get in touch with their crafty side, while staying subversive. As Craftster says, "No tea cozies without irony."

My renewed interest in crafts began last fall, when I started planning a Christmas gift for my sister. She's a cross-stitcher, and while I had experimented briefly with cross-stitch when I was younger, I usually teased her about her "Old lady" hobby. Then I found Subversive Cross Stitch. When I realized I could show her up in my own little way, I began working on a Candy Ass cross-stitch for her. It was either this or make her a sofa-sized cross-stitch of the last supper. Just as long as I was showing her up, I was happy.

When we talked on Christmas Day, I had to admit the truth: I had found the cross-stitching ... soothing. I soon found another cross-stitch project to embark on. I designed and made a pattern based on the movie Freaks for some friends who were moving back to town. Next I tackled record bowls, with moderate success. I continued to sew clothing all the while, but soon picked up my old high-school habit of reconstructing granny dresses.

Now it's a few months later, and I've gathered friends and friends of friends to join me in crafting. Last night Susan Godwin, Melissa Hart and two of Melissa's friends, Melissa K and Devin, came out to Hidden Hill to work on some projects. Melissa K brought a knitting project, while Devin brought along a kit of fingerpaints. Susan was working on repainting a mirror frame to better fit her goth tendencies.

Melissa H and I were using our awesome MH powers to silk screen T-shirts. We used a technique I found on the Internet that involved making a screen out of an embroidery hoop, tulle and Modge Podge. This technique met with some success, but I hadn't counted on how annoying it would be to cover parts of the tulle with Modge Podge. The lovely font I'd chosen for our logo (Cooper Black, a lovely rounded serif font, in case you care) came out rather pixelated due to the nature of the tulle screen. Nevertheless, our shirts rock.

We've exchanged e-mail addresses and have discussed future kraft*nite project ideas. Toothbrush bracelets? Liner note coasters? Anything's up for grabs at this point. I've posted our plans on Craftster, and Melissa's got a notice in Square. Kraft*nite is here, and it's growing.

It's no secret that I'm a strong advocate of outhouses. Sure, they can get a little stinky, and there's always a high risk of spider encounters, but they are a lot easier on the environment. I didn't realize just how much water they save until the toilet in Tom's apartment stopped working. The cold water wasn't working in the building, so we had to fill up the tank with hot water from the tub to flush it. It took 12 liters of water to flush one toilet. 12.

That's a lot of water. I usually do other things to make sure I'm cutting down on water use, such as turning off the water while I brush my teeth and using the drained pasta water to wash the dishes. Now I've realized that I'm saving countless liters of water every time I sit on that blue foam. Plus, I don't feel so bad about the occasional long, hot shower.

Nun's wild dancing earns her a reprimand
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian nun's acrobatic and indecorous dancing with a missionary during the Catholic World Youth Day in Germany over the weekend earned her a reprimand from her mother superior, a Belgian paper said Tuesday.
Daily Het Laatste Nieuws showed pictures of a dancing Johanne Vertommen being held up in the air by the missionary, and then clinging to him with her legs wrapped around his body.
"I wouldn't do this at home but at such occasions I get carried away by the enthusiasm of the group," the 29-year-old told the paper later.
"My mother superior raised the issue today: she thinks I should watch out a bit and bear in mind that I represent our community," Vertommen said.
Pope Benedict attended the celebration at the Marienfeld, outside Cologne, in the presence of some 700,000 people.

I've got a million naughty Catholic schoolgirl comments running through my head, but I'm not going to share any of them here. I'm trying to keep from going straight to hell, though that may already be a foregone conclusion.

The cabin is still progressing. On Friday, Robert and I put in the front door and the two windows in the bedroom. A while ago, a ditch was dug from James' cabin and the new electric and phone wires were buried. Steve came out Friday and finished hooking the wiring up to the cabin. Now we need Jim Cheydleur to do the interior wiring, which is in the works. We've discussed lighting and outlet placement, and he has a plan that's ready to go.

During Meeting on Sunday, Tom and I went down and worked on insulating the bedroom ceiling. Several people came down after meeting to help out, and the bedroom and living room ceilings are now insulated, sealed and hung. There's even a kitchen window in place.

I apologize again for the lack of pictures. I'm filling up another roll and will get it developed as quickly as possible. And may I just say once again that not having a digital camera sucks.

Survey Finds Fewer Drug-Free Schools
WASHINGTON - More teens are saying there are drugs in their schools, and those who have access to them are more likely to try them, said a Columbia University survey released Thursday.
Twenty-eight percent of middle-school-student respondents reported that drugs are used, kept or sold at their schools, a 47 percent jump since 2002, according to the 10th annual teen survey by Columbia's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
The number of high schoolers saying drugs are at their schools rose 41 percent in the last three years, to 62 percent, the survey said.
Twelve- to 17-year-olds who report that there are drugs in their schools are three times likelier to try marijuana and twice as likely to drink alcohol than teens who say their schools are drug free, the survey showed.
"Availability is the mother of use," said Joseph Califano Jr., the center's president. "We really are putting an enormous number of 12- to 17-year-olds at great risk."
Most of the teens surveyed — 58 percent — said the legality of cigarettes has no effect on their decision to smoke or abstain, and 48 percent said the fact that marijuana is illegal doesn't affect whether they use or don't use the drug . Meanwhile, the survey found teens who viewed drugs as morally wrong were significantly less likely to try them, as were those who felt their parents would be "extremely upset" to discover drug use.
The report found that teens who confided in their parents were at much lower risk of drug abuse than teens who turn first to another adult.
"If this survey does anything, it really shouts to parents: You cannot outsource your responsibility to law enforcement or the schools," Califano said. "I think when parents feel as strongly about drugs in the schools as they do about asbestos in the schools, we'll start getting the drugs out of the schools."
The survey also found that teens who say they watch three or more R-rated movies in a typical month — about 43 percent — are seven times likelier to smoke cigarettes and six times likelier to try alcohol than teens who do not watch R-rated movies.
The correlation between R-rated movie watching and the risk of substance-abuse remains even after controlling for age, the report said. This was the first time the annual survey asked about R-rated movies.
"There's no question the correlation is very strong and it obviously wants further study," Califano said.
The survey was conducted by phone and involved 1,000 randomly selected teens aged 12 to 17 years old and 829 parents. Twenty-six percent of the teens said someone nearby could hear their answers. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the teens and plus or minus 3.4 percentage point for the parents.

OK, I don't want to shock anyone, but kids do drugs. Are these numbers accurate? Probably not. Do I believe that 28% of middle-schoolers know people in their school who use or sell drugs? No. Those kids are lying. And do you know why they are lying? Because doing drugs is cool. Bottom line: that's the problem the anti-drug czars are facing. Kids know that doing drugs is a sign of being a mature rebel. And being different is fun! Of course, most kids choose to be different in the same way, but that's neither here nor there.

Do you want to know how to keep kids from doing drugs? Parents should talk to them. Oh, not about the dangers of drugs or the joy of keeping clean. They should talk about all the drugs they did back when they were Brianna or Connor's age. Wax rhapsodic about smoking pot, dropping acid or shooting heroin. Get a far-off look in your eyes and sigh a lot. Nothing will scare a kid straight like thinking they have something in common with their parents.

Last night I wandered over to Tamarack Knoll, the commune next to my commune, for dinner. It's always an interesting bunch of people over there. Nancy was cooking, and she invited her friend Karyn along as well. Carol, Jay, Margaret, Trusten and Robin rounded out the group. Our conversation seemed to focus a lot on drugs:
* did that house on our road burn down because it was a meth lab?
* is the house across the street from it a meth lab?
* Nancy always hated anti-drug school presentations that gave false information
* milk, not marijuana, is the true gateway drug

On a side note, Margaret, who also works in a library, seemed excited to hear that permafrost is now an official Library of Congress subject heading. No one else cares.

Completely unrelated to dinner: I got my hair cut yesterday. I decided to chop a good bit of it off. When I got home, my new wig had arrived, so I guess I have "fall-back hair" if I get paranoid about it. Savage decided that I looked like a hooker in the wig, jeans and halter. Sadly, he only offered me $20 to go to his cabin. I'm worth so much more than that. $25 at least.

Thanks goodness, Sean Coombs--I mean Puff Daddy--I mean P. Diddy--I mean Diddy has finally made it easier for all of his diehard fans (Hi Mrs. Diddy!) to figure out what to chant at his concerts. It took him four years, but now we'll all know what to yell during his concerts. Shut up and go back to New Jersey being my choice. (Note: I am aware that Sean Coombs aka Puff Daddy aka P. Diddy aka Diddy is not from New Jersey. It's just what I feel like yelling, 'kay?)

Diddy Drops the P.
"It's the era of Diddy."
So proclaimed the hip-hop impresario formerly known as Sean Combs, Puffy, Puff Daddy and now P. Diddy on Tuesday's Today Show, as he explained that he was changing his name once again.
The rap mogul last switched it up--from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy--in 2001, while seeking a "fresh start" after being acquitted on gun charges.
As for what brought about the latest change in moniker, the entertainer admitted that his previous name change left his fans uncertain of how to address him.
I felt like the 'P' was getting between me and my fans and now we're closer," Diddy said.
"During concerts, half the crowd is saying 'P. Diddy'--half the crowd is chanting 'Diddy'--now everybody can just chant 'Diddy.' "
He confessed that his unwieldy name was even starting to befuddle him.
"I even started to get confused myself--and when I'd called someone on the telephone it took me a long time to explain who I was. Too long," Diddy told the New York Post.
"One word. Five letters. Period," he added.
Of course, just talking about his new name isn't enough for the scene-making mogul, who's planning to throw his latest title a coming-out party of sorts when he hosts the MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 28.
"To be honest, the unveiling of Diddy, you gonna see that at the [Video Music Awards]," he told MTV News.
"You gonna see that in the entrance. You gonna see that swagger. You gonna see how I'm gonna navigate you through the journey. I'm gonna play my position, my role. The artists are gonna play their role. We're gonna have an incredible, incredible party."
As usual, it's been a busy year for Diddy.
In April, he announced a deal with Warner Music that gave the company a 50 percent interest in his Bad Boy Records label. Though exact figures were not released, it's estimated that Warner shelled out a cool $30 million in the deal.
Meanwhile, the multi-monikered one has also been dealing with various legal issues.
Last month, he settled a lawsuit with Random House over a $300,000 advance he received to pen his memoirs, which he never completed.
Diddy has also been battling his ex, Misa Hylton-Brim, over child support payments for their 11-year-old son, Justin.
After he was ordered by a judge in April to dole out more than $21,000 a month for the care of his son, the rap mogul vowed to appeal the ruling, claiming that Hylton-Brim was acting out of greed, rather than in the interest of their child.

UKIAH, Calif. - A Ukiah elementary school may not open in time for the new academic year because of an army of Norwegian rats that has invaded its garden.
Since June, local officials have poisoned about 60 of the rats that have taken over the garden at Oak Manor Elementary School, but the rodents have been reproducing faster than they can be killed.
In their latest offensive to overcome the rats, officials on Monday deployed smoke bombs, explosive gas, dogs and a bulldozer.
"It really is a war, no question," said Tony Linegar, Mendocino County's assistant agricultural commissioner.
School officials don't know yet whether the latest effort to get rid of the rats worked, so until they hear otherwise they plan to ship Oak Manor students to other schools when classes start on Aug. 29. Estimates of the number of rats outside the school range from 100 to 1,000.
The brown rats were discovered living in the school's compost pile and garden, which became lush and overgrown after students abandoned them during the heavy spring rains, school officials said.

I think my only question here is how officials decided that the best method to get rid of the rats involved dogs, smoke bombs, explosive gas and a bulldozer. I mean, I use a.44 Magnum to kill spiders in my house, but that's completely different. A woman's home is her castle, after all.

First pot brownies, and now a pot entree.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's long winter will just fly by for a herd of Russian cows which, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, will be fed confiscated marijuana over the cold months.
Drug workers said they adopted the unusual form of animal husbandry after they were forced to destroy the sunflowers and maize crops that the 40 tonnes of marijuana had been planted among, Novye Izvestia daily reported.
"There is simply no other way out. You see, the fields are planted with feed crops and if we remove it all the cows will have nothing to eat," a Federal Drugs Control Service spokeswoman for the Urals region of Sverdlovsk told the paper.
"I don't know what the milk will be like after this."
Drug use in Russia took off with the decline of the Soviet Union and police have been fighting drug smugglers -- often shipping heroin from Afghanistan for years.
Such large hauls are relatively common, although they are normally burned.

Please forgive the ABBA reference. On Friday and Saturday, Tundra Caravan performed at the Tanana Valley Fair in Fairbanks. With two different performances, we were all able to perform solos and a variety of troupe routines. Since this is my blog, the pictures are very Mary-centric. All pictures courtesy of Jacob and Gretta Stone.


Chandani (Teresa Ortego), Samira (me) and Zara Noor (Terri Massa) performing a sword dance. I struggled a bit with the sword, which only made Chandani and Zara Noor look better as they easily balanced their swords.



Samira, Myriah (Suzn Hanson) and Zara Noor perform Talakik, with choreography by Hadia. This routine is new to the troupe this year, but we all enjoy the lively steps.


Zara Noor and Chandani during a veil performance choreographed by Margo Abdo O'Dell. Margo was the guest instructor at the 2004 workshop in Fairbanks. She taught the troupe this routine, but we've added many small changes since then, tweaking the choregraphy here and there for different numbers of dancers.


Souzana (Susan Chapa), Samira and Myriah spin around the stage during Amayguena. I didn't think I was ready to perform this one in public, but the troupe said I was. They were right. The dance is a fun, Spanish-inspired number with lots of dramatic movements.


Finally, my solo! This is an original choreography I created after 6 months of Middle Eastern dance lessons with Zara Noor. I got to add in lots of veil work, shimmies and floor work. The dance is performed to "Salma Ya Salama" by Alabina. I've developed another solo routine since then, but it's a Bollywood number. It's high time I create another Middle Eastern dance solo. Tom has recommended Istanbul (Not Constantinople). I was thinking of something more serious, but that could work.

Our friends from Juneau, Tim and Jenna, came up for a visit last week. Were Tom and I happy to see them? Does a bear shit in the woods? Tim was proud to capture this image of a bear relieving itself alongside the road. I was happy to borrow pictures from them. Check out their pictures for yourself. Warning: A lot of the photos do not involve me and are therefore boring.


Jenna and I enjoy one of many evenings drinking and smoking down at the cabin site. I shamelessly brought them down there repeatedly so that I could get updated pictures more quickly. I like friends with digital cameras.


See? Work is progressing. In fact, there is now a roof on the lower section as well. I will try to invite someone else with a digital camera over soon so you can see.


Tom and I are proud to show our Alaska pride by supporting two local breweries, Alaskan Brewing Company and Silver Gulch. I am holding the Silver Gulch because my thrifty nature just adores their Free Beer Fridays. We took Tim, Jenna and Larry out to Fox for this experience. Then we followed it up with buck beers at the Golden Eagle in Ester. Quite the drinking tour.

If you want to be invited back, always do the dishes. Tim's mother taught him well.


Look! There's Tom and me! We were enjoying our open, airy bedroom. Robert will finish putting up the other walls soon, and then it won't be quite so open and airy. A lot warmer, though.

Tim does his best thinking on the pot, and our outhouse gave him a lot to think about. Why does the floor have orange carpet? Shouldn't there be a door for privacy? If I fall off the shoddy deck, how long will it take for searchers to find my body?

Don't worry, Tim, we'll fix up the outhouse before your next visit.

Tim and Larry enjoyed a visit to the Hammer Museum in Haines on the way to Fairbanks. Tim told us that it was really quite interesting. I'd say that we'll check it out one day, but, honestly, we won't.

You can take the kids out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the kids. Tim's cowboy hat also made an appearance at Chena Hot Springs, accompanied by a pair of pimp glasses. Tim sure does know how to stand out in a crowd of Japanese tourists.

While looking for a subject heading for a fatal dog mauling, I came across this:

Maul, Darth (Fictitious character)
also present was
Skywalker, Luke (Fictitious character)
but Skywalker, Anakin needs to be written as
Vader, Darth (Fictitious character)
likewise, Princess Leia Organa is technically
Leia, Princess (Fictitious character)

There are no subject headings for Chewbacca, Yoda or any of the droids, yet Lando Calrissian gets a listing.

Since I feel the need to prove that I'm really a dork, I took this a step further. Yes, I boldly went where no indexer has gone before.
Picard, Jean Luc (Fictitious character) I thought his name was hyphenated
Riker, William T. (Fictitious character) The T is for Thomas
Troi, Deanna (Fictitious character)
No Beverly Crusher, no Worf, no Geordi LaForge, no Data, no Tasha Yar.

Kirk, James T. (Fictitious character) The T, the generic Star Trek middle initial, is for Tiberius
Spock (Fictitious character)
McCoy, Leonard (Fictitious character)
Scott, Montgomery (Fictitious character)
Sulu, Hikaru (Fictitious character)
But no Pavel Chekhov or Lieutenant Uhura.

I'm not going to take this investigation any further because, quite frankly, Deep Space Nine was crap.

See, if you're passive, bad things happen to you. It's all about making choices and sticking to them. And on a side note, has the Associated Press been using some sort of voice-recognition typing program? It's the only reason I can think of that would explain why the second paragraph says Teddy Claire Akin (the name of someone who would kill a hitchhiker if I ever heard one) was charged with petit theft. Unless he also stole small pastries, in which case they should fry the bastard.

Cops: Man Invents Story to Make Wife Leave
OCALA,
Fla.-A man made up a story about killing a hitchhiker and burying the body in the woods in an effort to persuade his wife to leave him, authorities said.
Teddy Claire Akin, 28, of Ocala, was charged Tuesday with making a false report and petit theft. He was being held without bail.
Akin's wife, Felicia, called the Marion County Sheriff's Office Monday to report that her husband had told her that he killed a hitchhiker, authorities said.
Akin told investigators he had picked up the hitchhiker, who wanted a ride to Tampa. He said he hit the man in the neck, causing him to gasp and make a gurgling sound, when the two got into an argument over how far Akin would drive him, authorities said.
Akin said he dumped the body in a forest near a gun range and kept the man's wallet, which contained the license of Utah resident Dennis Legrande Allen, authorities said.
Deputies searching the area Akin described with dogs and an air unit failed to find a body Monday evening, Capt. Thomas Bibb said.
Akin eventually told investigators that he was going through a divorce and had hoped the murder story would make his wife leave him, said Sue Livoti, a sheriff's office spokeswoman.
"It seems he wanted to get a little attention and sympathy from his wife," Bibb said.
Akin told investigators he found the wallet on top of a newspaper stand. Investigators reached Allen in Utah by phone; Allen said he did not know Akin.
The sheriff's office would probably bill Akin for the cost of their seven-hour search, Bibb said.
"This was something that cost us a lot of time and energy," Bibb said.
A message left early Wednesday at the county public defender's office was not immediately returned.

Sausage Vendor Fights Lemonade Stand
SALEM, Mass.-A sausage vendor has given two Salem boys trying to make a buck selling lemonade a lesson in cutthroat business techniques. Police shut down a lemonade stand on Salem Common run by Dominic Serino, 9, and Ryan Decker, 11, on Saturday after getting a complaint from a local sausage vendor about the boys selling lemonade without a vendor's permit.
"He said we were taking business away from him," Serino told the Salem News. "The police came," Serino added. "They didn't want to kick us out, but I guess they had to."
Salem police said they had no choice but to evict the boys. Lt. Scott Englehardt said that while "it is ridiculous that little kids can't sell lemonade," they have to enforce the rules.
Sausage seller Jarrod Clowery said he regrets ever calling police, and added he's been getting icy stares around Salem. Clowery told The Boston Globe he just wanted police to ask the boys to move their stand to a different location where the two operations wouldn't be competing. The sausage stand also sells lemonade and pays $2,200 for a permit.
"I didn't tell the police, 'Listen, throw these kids out of here,' " Clowery said. "I am superapologetic. I just didn't want them to be within direct line of sight. It's a tourist area. We
spend big money for the spot."
But the owner of the sausage stand, Kevin Kefalas, was unapologetic about the incident.
"I'm not the bad guy here," Kefalas told the Salem News. "I don't care if kids want to make a little money, but why can't they go to Pickering Wharf? Why do they have to do it 40 feet
behind me?"
Ryan Decker's mother, Angela Decker, said the boys started selling their powder-based brew on the Common last summer and made a "killing" — $130.
After Saturday's eviction, the boy's relocated to a spot in front of Serino's house, just down the street.
"We got a few customers, but not nearly as much," Serino said.
The boys can't afford a license. But city's Licensing Commission chairman Harold Blake suggested it might be worth their time to come before the commission for a permit.
"We'd probably waive the fee," he said.

I think my main problem with this is that the "lemonade" is made from a powdered mix, according to one boy's mother. The only thing powdered "lemonade" should be mixed into is vodka. Make real lemonade, for crying out loud. And what's the the commission saying they'd "probably" waive the fee? If you want to waive the fee, that's fine. But just remember that these kids will then learn that if they turn their big eyes to you and start to cry, you'll give in. Never let children see you cave.

Last night Tundra Caravan, my bellydance troupe, got together after rehearsal to celebrate Terri Massa's birthday. I won't tell you how old she is.

In true bellydancer fashion, we gorged ourselves on chocolate cake and ice cream while watching bellydance videos and being catty when the dancers were off rhythm.



Once we got the timer on the new camera figured out, we managed a group self-portrait. Back row, from left: Barbara, Suzn and Susan. Front row from left: Me, Terri and Teresa.

My pinkish hair shows up much better in this picture. I will have to get some fake hair for performances.

Dillon says my posts aren't visible with my new blog skin. Coldfoot says this one is better, but not to stop working on it yet. He also said the last one looked like a porno cross between James Bond and LSD. I've resolved the comments field issue, I think. I'm also on the lookout for a better picture, as Dillon has ever so helpfully pointed out that I'm not that skinny. He's a catty one.

Though I liked the Pieces of Me template, others did not. So here is a new attempt at a new look. Maybe this one will prove more popular.