Amazing

This is just so cool. I love the steam rolling off the mountain, the flows coming down the mountain. So amazing. There is a new night time camera for Augustine, which I haven't tried yet, but that is supposed to show the heat and the hot flows coming off the mountain at night. If you click on the webcam picture, then it will offer the night camera there somewhere. Its dependent on weather of course, but I hope to get to see something. The link to the page is on the top of this post, if you click the "Amazing". Hope you're all well. Love ya. Alicia

More Volcano!

I love these two picures. They are from the 24th, and in them, pretty much right in the center you can see the flows that came down the mountain. That is just so cool to me!! We've gotten to see the mountain a few times over the last week or two, since the weather is a little better now that Spring is coming. Although, it did snow today, so spring is taking its sweet time to get here. :) Oh well, I'm sure it will be all the better for having to wait for it.

I have been spending some time this week working on plans to open a catering business with a friend from church; Autumn and I went to high school together. So that has been keeping me busy. We've been looking around trying to find a good location. We have been to look at two places, both of which would take as much to fix for our needs as it would take to build a new setup just how we wanted it. We still have a couple of options left before we have to decide. We have a few "contracts" already, so that is great. Mostly this summer we will be starting with making baked goods to sell. Fun! We have some really good ideas for what we want to do.

Other than that, not much is going on around here. We've been having fun learning how to use Ebay. I've been looking for jewelry, and we've been buying/bidding on a set of books that dad has been wanting. They are about the man-eating leopards and tigers of India. So that has been fun for all of us to poke around and see what we could find on ebay. Wow - anything you could possibly ever think of needing is on ebay. Its amazing!

Oh, I should have explained in my earlier post what vintage meant to me. I would say it means pretty much anything before the 1960's or so (maybe early 70's, I'm not sure). Mostly I like stuff thats earlier than the 60's, from the 20's-50s-ish or before. Its not really a hard and fast rule, but that's kind of an approximate guess to me. I'm still just learning. :)

Well, we love you all and hope you're doing good! Alicia

My New Hobby

Ok, so I added a new hobby to my list. I am starting to collect costume jewelry (mostly what is termed "Vintage"). I've been spending time on ebay looking at all the cool stuff there is to get. People up here don't have that kind of stuff to sell at estate sales & auctions, so there isn't anywhere else to get it. I just have this fascination with it. SO - if you any of you have any that you ever want to get rid of, think of me please!! I promise I would give it a good home. :) Its so fun. Love it!

Still snowing here. snowing, and snowing, and snowing. SIGH. Other than that, not much new. Love you all! Alicia

Augustine, the dirty mountain

Sorry if you're getting tired of the augustine pictures. Its all still so cool for us. We can't see the mountain from our house, but we can see it on the way to town. So we rely on the "professional" pictures, mostly these on here are from the on-island webcam. I love the silouhette of the sunset picture.

Its a bona fide jimmycane

Wow - what a winter storm we are having today! Our driveway is completely drifted shut, chest deep. Our nice neighbor came this afternoon to plow part of it out, but within 2 hours it was completely closed again. Its nuts! Its been blowing so hard at times we haven't even been able to see the road, or the back yard. Its incredible. Sure glad we didn't have to go anywhere today. I wanted to put a picture of the drifts in, but its blowing so hard you wouldn't have been able to tell where the drifts even were, so I just ran back inside.

Other news this week: I got quoted in the Anchorage Daily News!! We had that shooting here in town a couple weeks ago. He was a drug dealer, wanted by the US Marshalls, and they cornered him at the airport, he pulled a gun and started shooting, and ended up killing himself after he had been shot by the cops several times. But, the local people went on a rant about how the cops should be fired and basically ran out of town on a rail for shooting this nice, drug dealing, wife beating loser. So I wrote a letter to the paper that said we needed to give our cops the benefit of the doubt and that it wasn't their fault that the criminal pulled a gun.

Well I sent that to the local paper, and the Anchorage Daily News picked it up and used it in their story about the shooting! Which I thought was pretty cool. The whole article in on the Anchorage Daily News website, from the March 17th Edition, in the Kenai section, if you wanted to track the whole thing down. But, here's the quote: "Letters to Homer's two weekly newspapers have been similarly divided. The first week's letters expressed outrage at the bust gone bad. The second wave of letters sprang to the defense of police.
"I trust that they did everything they could to keep as many people as possible safe," wrote Alicia Carper. "And, if you don't like that, then just remember this -- it is their right and their job to defend themselves and the community -- even if that means using deadly force."" The letter was longer, but that's the gist of it. I just thought it was cool!!

Then dad finished his project this week, so that is exciting. He has several other things on his plate too to keep him busy working for the next little bit.

Mom and I are going to be going to Anchorage the last week of the month. We're going to go and just enjoy some time in the big city. Should be a lot of fun.

Blake and Johanna took a quick trip to Las Vegas for a week. It was their 10 year anniversary, and the completion of a long project Blake has been working on at work. Glad they got to go and have a trip!

Well, we're just busy trying to stay warm. Sorry I don't have more interesting pictures to post! I'll try and get a picture of the drift when it calms down a bit out there. Its pretty impressive. We love you all! Alicia

Finally, A direct View

Today we finally got a good personal view of Augustine. It has been too hazy since it started erupting for us to get a good view. It really stands out in the ocean because all the land and mountains around it are solid white, but it is brownish-black. The Indians used to call it the Brown Mountain because that's how it looks when covered in Ash.
So when we went to town, it was just the mountain and then when we came home, it was erupting, so we pulled over and watched it sending its plume of ash and steam up. It was REALLY cool to watch.

Surreal picture

I just thought that this image from the Augustin Island webcam was so surreal - the greys and mists. Very cool.

Not much going on today, just got back from church, and now mom and dad are watching the NCAA Basketball selection show. They love college basketball.

Funny furry guy

I love this picture of the cat snuggling up to mom. With this new chair that she has there is room for him to sit alongside her, and snuggle. He's pretty much a mama's boy. :)

Right after I took this he glared at me for bothering him while he was with mom. Funny guy!

One of the other funny things he does is snuggle as far into your face as he can get. He has nightmares (still) and when he wakes up he needs held (and I mean right now!) so that he can tell you all about it. Especially if you're laying down he'll creep up until next thing you know he's pressed up against your face. He's a real character. :)

I'm not sure which picture will be on top when I post. The one with mom in the purple dress is where he has just woken up and needs to chat and snuggle.

Polka, Polka, Polka

So we get this TV channel called Rural Free Delivery TV and they have all kinds of really odd shows on there and one that I like to watch is the Big Joe Polka Show. It is really funny and campy and drives Alicia and Brian nuts when I make them watch it. Anyway, last night (in the middle of the night, of course) I was watching it and the host, Big Joe, mentioned something about "Polka promoters" and my life flashed before me and I realized I had finally found my true calling in life. I think we could put in a wood floor in the barn and bring in Polka talent from the midwest and have Polka/ salmon bake nights to attract the tourists. There is some resistance from other family members, But all true artists face opposition, so I am willing to suffer for my craft. Just wanted to keep everyone up to date on our lives. Charlotte

Volcano magic

I think that this is the coolest picture of the volcano. It was taken today, during our big wind storm (still going on), and all the misty looking stuff is the ash blowing around from all the wind. The volcano has slowly started being active again, building on the lava dome, and starting to have activity again. It has been having a really low level eruption since saturday, but that hasn't meant anything for us. Even if there had been enough ash let off to reach us, the wind has been blowing out of the north, and would have blown the ash the other way from us. But so far, so good.

Dad has been busy busy working on his project. He had to get a new guy to help him today, his other help went back to his full time job (he works up on the north slope oil fields, two weeks there, two weeks home). Dad has another good helper now though, he was really really pleased with the work Dave does.

Other than that, we've just been doing our thing. Mom and I have been working on scrapbooking the pictures from my college graduation. To make a kind of difficult memory more fun to do, we've made it a challenge. We had double prints of all the pictures, so we divided them equally, then we bought a package of fun spring type papers (perfect for Hawaii stuff) and we're each working on our albums at the same time, using the same materials as our base, just to see what we can both come up with. Its been really fun so far, and we've only done a few pages. I'll try and post some, but they are 12x12 so kind of hard to post, but I'll try. :) Its kind of like an "Iron Chef" scrapbooking challenge. Fun! Most of you probably remember that we had some "issues" with our last Hawaii vacation, so we're trying to make the memories funner. So far, so good.

I guess that is my phrase for the day - so far so good. :) We're plugging along, and doing pretty good. We're so grateful to have this work project for dad.

I do have to say though that I am having a hard time shaking off this winter. I am SO READY for spring, but it keeps snowing, and blowing, and snowing more. Just when I think spring is here, it runs away again. So I'm struggling a bit with that. But I'm sure that spring will be here eventually. It has to be. Right?? RIGHT???? :) Someday the snow will leave and I can wear my flip flops again -they're calling to me.

Well I guess that's everything. Sorry I don't have more pictures. Its hard to think of pictures sometimes. I guess I could post more pictures of the cat or something. :) We love you all. Alicia

Drama, drama, drama

We had some huge drama here locally tonight. There was a fatal shooting at our airport!! A man that was wanted by the FBI for child kidnapping (that's what we've heard so far anyway) rented a car, and then it was discovered that he was wanted, so they lured him back to the airport, under the guise that they were going to upgrade his car, but when he got there, the cops went to talk to him, and he opened fire on them, and they returned the fire, and killed him. It's still a really new story, it happened about 6pm tonight. Our Bishop, and his wife, and friends witnessed the whole thing, they were standing out in front of the airport. So, it was pretty exciting. We're just glad more people weren't involved. The airport was full of local high school kids that were headed to Italy for a choir trip. I included the link, if you click the "drama, drama, drama" title it should take you to the local news station web page. If there isn't anything there, you can go to www.adn.com, but I'm not sure if you have to register for that or what. But anyway, that's our big excitement. It involved all the local law enforcement people, troopers, and some US Marshals. Big stuff!!

Then we also found out the Grandma Marilyn is in the hospital and not doing good at all. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her doctors as they try to get this figured out, and get her feeling better!

It looks like our volcano is getting active again. For the last few weeks it has been deflating after all the explosions, but today they said that it looks like it is starting to grow again and build pressure and it will probably start being active again soon.

It was a beautiful sunny day today, cold but beautiful and sunny. Dad is still working in Homer on the barge, but they're having some trouble working on it, because everytime the tide comes in the barge floods with at least a foot of water. Welding is done with really high levels of electricity, so its not really something you want to do standing in a foot of water! Today he got to come home earlier and watch Duke, so that is good, he loves to watch them play.

I think that's all that is new with us today. We still love you all! Alicia