29 April 2008

Life philosophies via poetry

I aim to live my life in the vein of this snippet from the poem, Ithaca by C.P. Cavafy (happy birthday to him today, b. 1863). Wise words best not forgotten (and very useful when setting out on a large and daunting project....stay tuned for more info on my foray into amateur woodworking!):

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge …
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

25 April 2008

springtime is here, i don't care how much it might snow....

it's april in homer - we woke up this morning to snow snow snow, but it cleared up by mid-day. of course the forecast for tonight says 2" of snow likely, and 100% chance of precipitation tomorrow (a mix of snow and rain). excellent.

but this time the unseasonal snowfalls feel like they may be okay. i might just make it through without losing a bit of my mind...

this has been a busy busy month so far! starting things off, kaya and i got a new roommate - jen. she works with island restoration - i.e. eradicating mammalian invasive species on islands, in this case rats out in the aleutians. she's a great roommate - i really don't think i could have asked for any better.
my lil' brother made an appearance shortly thereafter and stayed with us for just over a week before he headed up to fairbanks to start rookie training with the smokejumpers up there.
i can't even begin to describe how incredibly great it was to spend time with chris...i didn't get many pictures, but here are two that give a decent idea of how a lot of time was spent.
a few days after chris left, emily & ella drove a bazillion hours from valdez to hang out with kaya and i for the week. we had a great time - playing on the beach, eating good food, runnin' with dogs along the spit, and clammin'!

my one day off we actually left homer (i was pretty excited about this..) and headed north up to clam gulch and ninilchik to try our hands at diggin' for the ever-elusive razor clams. we had some issues with the tides, and some issues with needing food (issue resolved by eating gargantuan breakfast-for-lunch in kasilof), and some issues with digging/racing after clams. in the end it was determined that emily is a clam-diggin' fool (who would-a guessed?!) , and we were victorious with two clams - one for the each of us. i am really really quite excited for more clamming when the tides get low again. unlike clammer emily, i actually love to eat the things. perfect!

ella and kaya enjoyed themselves, though ella wasn't so sure about the bouys in the water nor the digging operation.




and on the way home, emily cracked herself up (and admittedly me as well) with clam puns.
these are our clams:
clamentine and clamella

we just hope they don't have clam-mydia