Boring Blog Entry

No spectacular glacier ice photos, or cute dogs, or wilderness adventures today. My gentle readers will try to curb their disappointment...

Julie spent the past three days in pain with a bladder and/or urinary tract infection, so she camped the better part of the weekend on the couch in pain. She was able to get the on-call doc to get her some antibiotics and pain meds on Saturday, now hopefully she is on the mend. Even so, she did a ton of stuff around the house. I am such a pussy when I am sick, compared to her...

I have been fighting a bronchitis for at least a week. Whatever cold I had two weeks ago morphed into a lung problem, and my co-workers got the full aural concert of coughing and hacking from my cubicle last week. Funny, hardly anyone stopped by to chat...

I actually awoke this morning being able to breathe thru both nostrils and have had nary a cough for a few days now.

Julie has been working hard to lose weight before her June deadline, when the reconstruction surgeon will decide if the donor site will be her gut or her trapezius muscle on her back. If she can lose enuf, they'll take from the tummy area. That way, the surgeon can throw in a tummy-tuck at the same time as she gets the new boobs. She continues to lose, but wishes it was faster. She lost another 3 lbs the last week, and she wears more and more clothes that I've never seen before... She is doing a great job.

My Julie is also doing an inspiring job of getting us to the gym. Three or 4 days a week, working out a good hard hour each time. I am there with her, when not sick or firefighting, but she is the driving force.

Julie also wishes that her husband, who apparently is addicted to food, would support her better. Given the density of the situation, I decided last Monday that it was time for me to start a systematic approach to my own weight loss. Once I started counting the calories and watching the carb to protien ratios of what I was eating, I am starting to see a way forward now. I calculated my base metabolic rate, subtracted out the calories needed to lose 2 lbs of fat per week, and am now limiting myself to 1950 cals a day. There's a pretty useful iPhone app called LoseIt! that we are both using now to track exercise and food.

Nothing like the brutal honesty of a bar graph to let ya know what's going on...

A week into this and I have lost 5 lbs, albeit the "easy" 5. The 'clean' math of calories-in and calories-expended appeals to my engineering brain. And I hafta admit it now, I did eat too much. Crap, I love food... I can still eat the things I love, just less now, and I have to pay for it. I reckon everyone has to grow up sometime and eat like an adult. Now is my time.

Spent Saturday morning at the Fire Training Center again, still learning to pump (operate) the apparatus. The Chief admitted that our 'engineering' class was too big, there's like 10 of us, and it is obvious that there is a bit wider spectrum of learning achievement across the class than anticipated. We have been going Saturdays for more than two months now, and we seem to progress at the pace of the slowest. I get impatient because I am doing the expected calculations in my head, on the fly, and the kids can't seem to keep up. I am having fun, regardless, but the weather is getting ever nicer and very soon it will be time to play outdoors on Saturdays instead, and then this class really needs to be over!!

When I was promoted to Fire Lieutenant last year, I was given three expectations from the Chief: certify as an Emergency Trauma Technician (ETT, or about three-quarters of a basic EMT); certify as a Fire Fighter, Level II; and qualify as an Engineer. The engineering class is the last of these goals for me to finish up. Soon I will be able to pick and choose how I want to get 'smarter, ' and what training commitments I can fit into my busy schedule of work, wife and wild...

Lastly, I enjoyed changing 2 gallons of lube oil on Sunday. No vehicle maintenance is easy anymore... cut my left thumb and two fingers struggling against confined spaces. Well, OK, the fore finger was actually cut trying to remove an oil filter wrench socket from the manufacturer's packaging... as I said, nothing is easy anymore. And then there was the mess on the garage floor... sorry, Babe, I'll sweep up the kitty litter tonight.

Like I said in the title... boring.

KML

Does Where Ya Live Determine How Happy You Are??

I have been thinking alot lately about life here in Juneau and how 'being' here influences how I feel...

Am I happy because Juneau (as a place to live) has qualities that make me happy?? Certainly.

Would I be as happy living somewhere else?? I would hope so.

Am I just a happy person?? Geez, I hope so.

People speak and write frequently about their negative experiences of Juneau. We hear it from folks here now, folks who used to be from here and are now somewhere else, and folks whose history with the city probably isn't longer than 12 hours...

A blog I follow (http://arcticglass.blogspot.com/), written by Jill Homer, a talented writer and long-distance winter bike enthusiast here in Juneau, has given some insight into this young woman's decision to leave Juneau for Anchorage. Why should I care about her decision to move?? Why did I take her deliberation personally??

I care because a well-thought out decision that runs contrary to mine should provoke me to make an equally thoughtful re-evaluation of my own reasons and motivations. Julie and I moved up here in 2006: we did so for some profound and positive reasons. Part certainly involved a promotion and job transfer to a secure and financially comfortable posting. To Julie's immense credit, she left her job, friends and daughter in Portland and moved here with me sight-unseen. It was a change in our lives that we spent weeks discussing and weighing the choices. We gambled on the unknown and got on a ferry in Bellingham to start a new chapter together.

The negatives we are used to hearing about Juneau are pretty much these: isolation, crappy rainy weather, lack of growth, high cost of living, lack of good jobs for the younger folks, substandard medical care, a downtown whose soul has been sold out to the cruise industry, and a suburban valley whose conservative residents advocate development but never get it. Certainly Juneau lives under the Damocles sword of a threatened Capitol move, which should it ever come to pass, would truly cripple this place. And there are no roads out. This roadless isolation can start to chafe, like a small stone in the shoes of your soul... in my case after about 3 or 4 months from my last trip outside.

On the positive side: we have great jobs, and even better coworkers. Wonderful, caring neighbors. Significant and meaningful volunteer work (me with the Fire Dept, and Julie with her cancer and service organizations). Lots of friends and friends-of-friends. Stunning scenery and an abundant natural environment.

The isolation has some good consequences: greater self-reliance and pride in doing for ourselves; greater sense of ownership of what we have; a chance to live a bit more simply. I have never produced less household garbage and recycled more. Most of the seafood we eat is locally caught by someone whose name I know. I have to cook my own Indian food because there's no restaurant in town to meet my need. I don't have to tolerate billboards on the highway, or endless tracts of strip malls and fastfood. When you want something fancy or uncommon, it takes deliberation and forethought to procure, rather than just an impulse purchase. I want to think that I am more thankful for what I have.

Isolation removes distraction. I can spend my non-work time doing a few things I enjoy and value, rather than trying to do it all (just because the outside has 'everything'). I concentrate on being a safe and effective fire officer. I enjoy my outdoor toys. I walk 2 or 3 miles everyday outside with my dogs, rain or sun. I also can ignore the media hype and materialism we get from outside, because I have figured out that I can survive pretty well without 4th meal at Taco Bell, the wood fired grill at Red Lobster, the BOGO at Payless Shoes and saving at Kohl's. Come to think of it, we must be hopelessly out of step with mainstream America... and that is definitely OK with me.

I know that I turned away from the darkness when I met my Julie. Regardless of where we might have ended up, I know with every fiber of my being, that having this woman in my life makes me happy. The fight with her cancer drove home the need to celebrate everyday and never take life for granted. So, maybe Juneau itself isn't the key to my happiness. Perhaps it is just one more reason to enjoy this life. Juneau doesn't work for everyone: it didn't work for Jill. I want to think she'd agree that it works for me.

KML

Winter Not Quite Done, Yet

Snow, ice, coughs and colds.

When I lived in New Orleans, the general rule was that if you forgot your umbrella, then you were gauranteed to get caught out in a torrent. Well, it seems the universe laughs again... after a remarkably mild and minimally snowy winter, I decided a weekend ago that it was time to take the studded tires off the Honda so that we could keep the wear down. Of course, the following weekend we get near blizard conditions. The roads are icy and as slick as I have seen them here in Juneau, and it took nearly an hour this morning to get Julie to her work and then me to the Fed Bldg...

Add the hacking cold / crud that has been going around town this winter, that I (again, foolishly) thought I had dodged this season, but have now had for almost a week... Winter is not going down without a struggle.

Forecast says 1 to 3 more inches today... and I feel like crap, but not so bad that I need to stay home. Oh, happy day!!

KL

Finished Treatment One Year Ago

A tremendous accomplishment for Julie, seen here with Sean Parnell, the Governor of Alaska.

Last Friday was the one year mark from her last round of chemo. Surviving stage 4 Inflammatory Breast Cancer... two surgeries, three rounds of chemotherapy, nearly two months of radiation, and a year living in Seattle under the TLC of dear family and friends, and she is now disease-free.

We can't believe that it's been a year already. The port in her chest finally comes out this Thursday. One less reminder...

Julie will start the reconstruction process in September, just about two years since she lost both of the girls. Taking their place will be the "boobies of a 20-year old!!" She can't wait to not have to wear a bra anymore...

Yet another reason never to waste a minute. Life is too short.

KL