Checking in from the chilly north

Sheesh. I've almost forgotten how to post a blog item.

Anyway, we sent Maeve back to college Friday night. We ate dinner at the restaurant she's been working at all summer. She seated people at the tables, a delicate balance of staying on the good side of the waiters -- they want all the tables they can get, but they don't want too many so they avoid disgruntled customers. The restaurant is called Ginger. Maeve, right at the front entrance, is asked many times every night: Are you Ginger? It's family owned and fusion-Asian with Indian influences. Will they make it here, land of moose stew and salmon? We'll see. But they were good to her all summer and we had a great send-off before her all-night flight back East.

Pete has been on night cops since he returned, murder and mayhem, up to 11 p.m. every night.

I've been launching interactive initiatives. Stuff like prep sports up the wazoo with lots of user-generated (read: proud parent) content -- fairly low-hanging fruit, actually; and some video editorials, and learning the web site from folks too busy to teach it to me. Many hours of frustration. I think I'm gonna restart my old blog and describe the current events inside one small northern newspaper.

Above and below are a few recent pics.

The raspberries are real, in my backyard, but just about spent now.
Maeve is on a hike we took up Bird Ridge her last weekend intown, you hike straight up but turn around in your tracks for a great view of Turnagain Arm. We stopped up top to eat our stash of cheese and triscuits. Those are Peter's knees in the gray pants on the left, and I'm behind the camera....Ummm, some wild flowers. The dog Clare, who did her fellowship year in Anchorage.

Re-entry has been serious and hard. But we're glad Maeve is doing fine. It's good to be back near my brother Kevin, here in Anchorage. But the winter, she's a comin'. We hope for a pretty September. We miss you all! Making travel plans.

I had a dream...

The other night, we all went back to the Fellowship, except this time we went back to high school...

Knights and food

So today, Justine, Kale and I got a treat, we went out on a restaurant review expedition with Seattle Times restaurant critic Nancy Leson. Nancy is a hoot, always an entertaining meal partner, even if she weren't buying (courtesy of the Times). I'd post a picture of her, but then I'd have to kill you. (we jealously guard her anonymity, so she can review restaurants without getting special treatment.) I'll post a link to the review when she writes it in a couple of weeks. We ordered tons of food, it was all beautiful and very tasty, although the service was a little spotty. The busboy took our order, forgot it and then sent over a real waiter. It was one of those moments where you think, "kid, if you knew who you were serving right now, I think you would have written down the order..."

Mini Knight reunion!

So Justine came up to see us in Seattle tonight! She's sitting next to me as I write this. It was kind of like the old days, we ate a lot of food, drank some wine, talked late... Tomorrow we're all going to get up and go to the Creamery for a malt... OK, I made up that last part... but we will get a coffee. We think it's perfect that Justine's first trip for work was to Seattle.

Last outpost pulling out

Hey there Knighties -- it's after 1 a.m., and Car and Moll and I just finished stacking all our stuff into the garage. We load a truck tomorrow night, and then move back to Walnut Creek Tuesday morning. It's been fun here, but I'm ready to go home and be with my house again.

I'm also actually looking forward to knocking out some stories, even in this ever-frightening atomosphere. I've been visiting my pals from the Chronicle, and everyone is either freaked out or depressed. I'm going to try to cheer them up. Been down this road before, unfortunately, and I learned that all freaking out does is get in the way of doing the work - and of enjoying the work. It's doesn't help anything. So it's a waste of energy.

From the bits rolling in over email, people seem to be acclimating OK into their usual worlds again. I wish you all the best of luck!

For those who didn't see my desert pix via email, attached above is a photo of me and my brother Chris and his 17-year-old son Spencer at Pyramid Lake in Nevada. It's a wonderful desert lake in the middle of an Indian reservation; we had a blast swimming there. Great way to cap off my Fellowship year.

Take care, everybody. I look forward to more news from youse!

Hello from Alaska

We had a gorgeous weekend July 28-29, which had been preceded by many many days that were cloudy and overcast, if not downright rainy. Here's a few pix of our customary Sunday walk in the woods with dog Clare on one of the rainier weekends. That's Pete up ahead. I'm shooting from beneath an umbrella.















This black sky presaged the arrival of days and days of rain. The sky was almost this dark for about three days straight, only the streets were wet, too.

















But that didn't last, and finally, back in the park where we dog-walk, we enjoyed some gorgeous flowers. This garden is in a public park and dedicated to a boy who died running in the mountains of Chugach State Park at the age of 17. A vigorous mountain runner who slipped and fell, and died. His parents keep up this garden in the public park. You can often see his mom out there weeding. He's been dead probably 10 years or more now.
















In other news, Peter has been practicing the piano after we got it tuned (and is doing that right now, even). I've been riding my bike to work, 15 miles round trip every day. It's a very pretty ride. I ride on black-topped trails that go along Cook Inlet, Westchester Lagoon, and finally Chester Creek greenbelt. I only have to cross one busy street when I get to my newspaper. Below is Westchester Lagoon on a recent Friday evening on the way home from work.

















Here is a self-portrait of me on my bike at Westchester Lagoon. This reminds me of photos Ruichun showed me from her Stanford photography class when they were assigned to do a self-portrait. I stole her good idea.

















Kale will appreciate this next picture. (Because we talked about how hard it is to move back into your house and take possession of it again.) As soon as we moved home Peter had to change out our garbage disposal. About the third day, it went out. Kaput. As you might imagine, this is NOT something Peter likes to do.
















Here's Maeve, reading a book on the couch inbetween jobs on a Sunday. Mornings she makes lattes at Kaladi Bros. Coffee Company; afternoons and evenings she seats people at a new restaurant in town called Ginger. So the couch and a book are a welcome retreat....

hi gang...

Is anybody reading the blog anymore? I'm wondering if this is a good communication tool for us, or if we should just stick to e-mail. Kim family is doing well, I think we appreciated all the time we spent driving up here and getting settled, seemed good to just be together and watch Kale's belly get bigger. I've started work, second week now. Imtiaz had a story in our paper my first day back, and my co-workers were teasing me: That guy's already writing stories from Islamabad, what's taking you so long?

I think it's surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of things, I'm working in a new job, on the web site, in charge of the features pages. Interesting challenge, and I'm working really hard to apply my d.school training to the job. I've got postits up all over my desk, and I think people think it's a little weird, but that's good, right?

I asked one of my bosses to find a room somewhere in the building where I could really get in and get messy, paint the walls, throw silly putty around, whatever. They found me a room down by where the old, mothballed presses are. I'm looking forward to taking it over and using for a kind of training they've never seen before at the Times. We'll see how it goes.

Hope everyone's doing well, take care and keep us posted!

Doug