We no longer live in the cabin in the woods. We've become citified:
Indoor plumbing, heat, and no winter glacier to call our own. However, we
still have moose in the yard chewing up the hedges (and Halloween pumpkins)
and running off with the Christmas lights.
I'm still with the USGS Alaska Science Center studying sea otters and
Mike is out of school, plying his trade as a photographer
(http://www.asmpalaska.org/Members/ContiM/Conti.html).
The otter work is
wonderful. I'm in the field more often than not from March to August and
even into October. I never cease to be amazed at the world. Every time I
feel dwarfed by the immenseness of an ocean or mountain range, I think
about my mitochondria and sodium/potassium pumps and think that there's
nothing unamazing if you look closely enough. Umm, yes, we're in the city
now... so we can bike/walk/bus to work and have sold off the trucks and 83
Subaru and are a single car family. We get down to the lower 48 now and
again. This is a big "outside" year for us. We'll be in Erie, PA in
July
for a baptism and I'll be in LA for a wedding in September and Monterey in
October for a sea otter capture and in Albuquerque for Christmas. I ran
into Ellen Twiname (Deb Marai's predecessor) at an arthouse short film
festival. She had a film about hedgehogs entered, it was quite nice.
Ellen is, among other things, a snowboarding instructor at Alyeska resort.
I'm in the process of applying for my own job again (government) and
enjoying life as much as or more than ever. I promised I'd send this
letter today, though I'm a bit too scatter-brained to get any semblance of
focussed thoughts down in writing. I try to spend non-working hours being
mellow with our kitties, hiking, camping.....cloud-watching. I'm down to
about one and one-half feet of available desk space, the remainder covered
by stacks of "works-in-progress" and to-do-lists and to-be-repaired
equipment. So I'd better get "doing".
cheers and smiles to all, Kim