When I was in high school I read Into the Wild, a story by Jon Krakauer which has gained quite a bit more attention and recognition since it was made into a movie of the same name. I read the book on the tails of another Krakauer book, Into Thin Air, and frankly remember being pretty underwhelmed by the Christopher McCandless story because the story of an Everest tragedy was so much more compelling and used such powerful imagery. This is not totally surprising because Into the WIld is something of a biography, whereas Into Thin Air accounts the author's personal experiences. How could a huge personal ordeal so traumatic that the (ostensibly normally sober) author had to get high after getting off that mountain (something that obviously really stuck with my sheltered sixteen year old brain) compare with a story that was merely researched, observed from a distance? But I digress.

So when the movie came into theaters last year I didn't rush to see it. Now that I live in Alaska, I looked at the story as another cautionary tale of how, yes, Alaska can kill you. These cautionary tales are good. There are a lot of ways in that something that would be pretty trivial elsewhere - like forgetting your hat when you're only going to make a quick run from your heated garage to get a gallon of milk, or, say, making absolutely sure that you're not walking in between a mama and baby moose on the way to your car through a darkened parking lot - can cost you your life up here. It's good to remember things like this and to not be unprepared. And surely, if you were to sum up the many mistakes that Chrisopher McCandless made in one word, you would come up with "unprepared." There are a lot of people who view him as a tragic figure (except Alaskans, of course, who take a different tack on it, of course), but I can't say I was every really one of them.

Last week I was doing a shift of vampire hours so I decided to rent the movie to help pass the night. And I'd like to say that my perspective has changed a little in the ten years since I read the book. Now that I'm out of high school and am a denizen of this so-called real world, y'know, I can relate to McCandless' point of view and his thoughts of our modern society. I've had many of the same thoughts myself. What I can't agree with is the extreme to which he took those thoughts. I'd like to stress that for the loved ones who may have felt their blood pressure rise when they read that - I promise that I will not just up and leave and go move into a bus in the middle of interior Alaska and die. That said, I understand the need to feel like you're living life the way it is actually supposed to be lived - not working a meaningless job so that you can accumulate more material goods (I swear that I am actually a happy person even though I don't own an iPod). I think I've made it pretty clear in my infrequent postings here that I am dissatisfied with the way of work in modern society and I think everyone would just be happier if we were working with our hands in jobs that actually produced something concrete. I think that Mr. McCandless would give a "hear, hear" to that but would probably take it to an even greater extreme - he might even object if I owned a sheep and made my yarn from the beast and dyed it with plants from my garden, because all of that requires the acquisition of some material goods. I'm not opposed to owning material goods, I'm opposed to our society's gross "need" for stuff.

But here's the thing that got me about him, a slight hypocrisy in his philosophy: while he was living as a supertramp he was perfectly happy to live off or live with those who had the material goods that he rejected. He worked for farmers who owned outrageously expensive farm equipment or lived with hippies in RVs. He was still spun into the core of the fabric of the society that he so vigorously rejected. Even when he was living in the Alaska bush, he was living in a something that was an expensive material possession. He wasn't truly living off the land - he had industrially-produced shelter and (possibly) an industrially-produced means of generating heat. Even the gun he was using was another piece of metal. If this guy was trying to repudiate everything about our society, he should have been using things he had made with his own hands, living on the land, not on a bus. Does anyone else find it odd that he would take an expensive piece of steel wrought in a foundry with him into the wild, but not a $4 compass?

The inability to see such inconsistencies undoubtedly cost him his life. If he had been less rigid and more thoughtful, more critical, he would have seen that it made no sense in his philosophy to take a gun but not a compass or a map with him on his lone Alaska adventure. He would have understood that in being truly free, it made no sense to live in a bus, and he would have been more able and more willing to be nomadic and live where food was.

He was so blinded by his passion that logic totally escaped him and he could only see in black and white. As I said, while I sympathize with Christopher McCandless' ideas I can't reconcile his extremes, because ultimately they got him killed. In the end, he was not so extraordinary or so brave - he's just another example of natural selection in the Alaska bush.

Yarn.

I know I'm not the first knitter to proclaim the stress-relieving properties of the craft from the mountaintops, but when I'm stressed I crave simplicity, and really, it doesn't get any more simple than just holding a really wonderful hank of yarn.

For example, I'm working night shifts this week and it's been really tough on me. I can't for the life of me stay asleep until my alarm goes off. To top it off, my shift technically ends at 9am, but I have to give a brief at 9 and that's been going like an hour every day. So this morning at the end of my busy, stressful 13-hour shift I went to the post office and picked up the package waiting for me - seven skeins of the second-most luxurious yarn I've ever touched (I regrettably have yet to add qiviut - the hairs from the undercoat of the Arctic muskox - to my stash). I ripped the package open and on my drive home, I just held a hank of the yarn - in my hand, against my face, (almost) anywhere with a high concentration of nerve endings, and I felt the pronounced edge that had steadily been gnawing at me all night just melt away.

A more extreme instance occurred a couple of weeks ago when my parents were in town. I got home from work in a vile mood. I was so pissed off that I was getting even more pissed off at myself because I hated being so pissed off. Vicious cycle. I was so sick of myself after about fifteen minutes that I declared "That's it! I'm going to a yarn store!" So I went, just wandered around and touched all the wonderfully sheepy and other woolly goodness for a while, and came back home a happy and well-adjusted Staceyfish.

What can I say? I'm a tactile person and there's something so simple, so down-to-earth about a great skein of yarn. It's like it's my own private shrink (a shrink that should start paying rent because of the amount of space in my house that it is rapidly taking over, but a shrink nonetheless!). I can almost hear the yarn corner in my house calling me over and declaring "They call me Dr. Wool!" *

My new arrival and my favorite (semi) affordable yarn - Blue Sky Alpacas Royal

* I know Cory is laughing at me right now, but I can't think that without breaking into song. Which song? They Might Be Giants' Dr. Worm, of course!

If you know that you are, say, a moaner or a screamer, please please please don't have sex with the windows open. It's really not as much fun as you would think for your neighbors on either side to be in the middle of a conversation outside and to all of a sudden have to try to talk over your screaming orgasm. I can accept the fact that our bedroom walls are shared and that sometimes you wake me up out of a dead sleep while you and your husband are, ah, amusing each other. But I really really don't think that I should have to deal with the proof that you are indeed have a rollicking good time while I am in my back yard.

The Adversary was someone who was on the Buckner Masters Swim Team when I moved to Anchorage two years ago. She's the type of person who will either a) turn any conceivable comment around and start talking about herself, b) take any conceivable comment and turn it into an excuse to be extremely negative, or c) amazingly, take any conceivable comment and apply both a and b. She and her then-husband were having problems and she bitched about him constantly to people that barely knew her and had never met him (it is so telling about people's character when they do something like that). She is basically a thoroughly unpleasant person. Thing is, she is a very naturally talented swimmer, but she was so stuck on herself and thinking that her shit didn't stink that she was under the impression that she didn't have to work hard.

Apparently when I joined the team it upset the balance a bit and knocked some reality into her world. She is also a 400 IMer and when I joined the team she was faster than me. Well, if I have someone to lock onto I will and so I did and I used my dislike of her to fuel my own motivation. Before she knew it I was going faster than her in practice and I began to hear subversive whispers of "Stacey's going to beat The Adversary in the meet..." which was fine by me. If she heard those whispers and began to work harder in practice that just meant we were going to have a better race. I've always maintained that while I didn't like her, I always liked swimming against her.

Anyway, the meet came around and I beat her in the 400 IM - she maintained that she had a back injury but whatever. She had such a long list of excuses for slacking off in practice that I wasn't about to believe one that she whipped out come meet time.

Well she's not on the team anymore. I haven't seen her for a while and as far as I knew she had gotten a divorce and moved far away.

That is, until I got the psych sheets for the meet and saw her name in there. She has the nerve to enter herself in the 100 breaststroke, which she does not swim well... well, we'll see how that turns out. The thing that's really cheesing me is that she entered the 200 IM too - with a faster seed time than me - but didn't bother signing up for the 400 IM. I guess she just hasn't been working hard enough to train for that one, but there's no surprise there...

The only thing that's really bugging me right now about the meet is the 200 freestyle. I entered that because I like middle distance but I'm not particularly good at it. The Adversary is swimming it too and she always had a faster free than me - no surprise, everyone does. I'm a breaststroker and an IMer, not a freestyler. Anyway, ours is not a thickly populated age group, so if by some fluke she beats me in the 200 IM and the 200 free (notice how I'm not even entertaining the possibility she'll beat me in the 100 breast?) she'll win the high point award in our age group, which is unacceptable.

So yes. I'm a tad competitive. If I wasn't I never would have made it as far as I did in swimming. I guess the psych sheets have officially done their job....

Of course, right now I only get to see that in photos. I was scrolling through wedding photos today and came across this one and as I zoomed in I saw that bit of shiny stuff on his ring finger and I melted all over again.

That's one thing I hope I never get used to.

See, I consider myself half from Oregon (living in Washington in a suburb of Portland will cause this sort of confusion) and it was a really, really sore point with me when Oregon passed a civil union ban during the last Presidential election. Its passage always puzzled me - the bulk of the population lives in the liberal western side and anyone who has wandered the streets of downtown Portland at night would share my befuddledment. Anyway, it would appear that the state is going for redemption now, which is awesome, because really, people, laws that restrict rights have no place in any constitution, be it a state's or a nation's. Granted, the law that bars access to marriage to people with matching fun bits is still on the books but at least cooler heads are trying to find a way around it.

So kudos to you, Oregon. You make me proud.

Don't get me wrong, I think the the way some guys wear their pants is ridiculous and god knows I gave my brother all kinds of unending crap when we were younger and he insisted on sagging. I'm all for guys actually wearing their pants at their natural waist, of all places. But putting it into law? That's an extremely slippery slope, if you ask me. It's not at all surprising that many communities are grouping it into the realm of public indecency, which in itself is an extremely subjective grouping. What's next? Are we going to ban people from wearing their hats backwards, or pass a law that prevents them from wearing them indoors at all? Are we going to ban wearing red shirts on Monday? Or are we just going to go after what is different and group it as indecent? Because, really, guys showing boxers is pretty tame compared to the way a lot of girls dress, and I don't see anything about that being legislated.

For me, that's really the crux of the issue: we, as a society, are apparently so offended by seeing the (still covered) backsides of some guys that we're willing to throw the book at them, but when a female dresses in a similar way - or in an even more aggravated fashion - what happens? I have yet to hear of a law that forbids women from wearing low-rise jeans that show their thongs or even their ass cracks. See, guys at least have the common courtesy to wear long shirts that for all intents and purposes render their skivvies invisible, but women are baring their backsides. Apparently, female plumber crack is the new black.

So I, a women who dresses pretty modestly - especially compared to a lot of other females in this country - am worried about the message that this sends to other young women. No no no, we don't want guys to dress in a way that shows an iota of skin, but girls, your bodies apparently mean so little to you and are so undeserving of respect that you are permitted - nay, encouraged - to flaunt every inch of it. Yeah, I get that the female form is supposedly more beautiful and all that. And guys, you should really pull those pants up, because you look absurd. But girls, that's a message you'd do well to heed too, because it's a lot harder for other people to take you seriously when it looks like you don't even have the ability to cover your own ass.

But as I was driving around today, it occurred to me that I've really been changing my life a lot recently, and it all falls under a theme more than a goal or resolution. It's pretty simple. Here it is:

Make more.

No, I don't mean make more money or anything. What I mean is stepping back, slowing life down, and creating more things myself instead of relying on someone else to do it. This means making more food, making more gifts, making more garments, making more things that will make life better or more beautiful.

Hasn't everyone heard that the fun is in the journey, not just the destination? Despite this, we're all so destination-focused that we completely skip the journey. We don't cook, we microwave frozen lunches. We don't take the time to make something for someone we love, we rely on someone else to put it on a store shelf. We don't make art, we buy crappy mass-produced posters. Let's spend some time on the process, on the journey.

As I said, I've been doing this a lot recently, and people apparently think I'm some sort of extreme nutcase - especially when it comes to cooking. And really, I can see their point. There is no sane reason for me to invest hours in the kitchen making something that I can buy off the shelf in five seconds. But here's the thing: even if my bread doesn't rise as high as I want, or say I let it ferment too long and it gets boozy, I will still get satisfaction and pride - and enjoyment - from the process of making it (and let's not forget that even if it's a brick it will still taste better than anything bought from a grocery store). Even if that sweater I knit is lumpy and uneven, I will have something that I can hold in my hands and proudly proclaim "hear ye, hear ye, I MADE THIS" (even if no one is listening). And if I give that loaf of bread or that sweater to someone as a gift, I have just told them that I care enough about them to spend real time on them, to embark on a journey on which they are they destination.

We have jobs where we stare at computer screens for hours at a time. We no longer can hold something in our hands at the end of the day, knowing that we have been truly productive. That's why I have shit for job satisfaction, and I know that I'm not alone in this. Going back to the roots of how things are done, doing it the hard way, and holding the product in my hand is my source of pride and this way - making and not buying tons of stuff to fill up my life - is the only way I know how to make up for our inherently unsatisfying American way of life.

And yet, even in Alaska, we are not immune from the disgusting trappings of excess,

I am talking about, of course, bottled water.

I mean, really, why drink pure water from a natural, local source when you could pay to have someone in a city thousands of miles away put their tap water in a plastic bottle and ship it to you? That's the American way, isn't it?

To further highlight the evils going on here, that plastic bottle made from fossil fuels will be used a single time and will likely be thrown away. Plus, water is very heavy, so you've got to expend lots of fossil fuels to get the stuff up here in the first place. All this does is increase our demand for oil, which, incidentally, increases it price!!! But hey, look, now I'm in tanget land!

I wish I could say that Anchorageites are the only stupid American consumers. But alas, you don't have to look too far for another similar case. My husband lives outside of San Francisco and gets his water from Hetch Hetchy, which is basically a second Yosemite Valley that they flooded to make a reservoir. Just like Alaskans, they are drinking water that is as pure as it gets, but Californians are stupid enough to buy bottled water too!

I've lived in many other places in the country and only one of them (San Angelo, Texas) had water that was truly too god-awful to drink . When I say too god-awful to drink, I mean that the water was so hard that the you could actually see mineral particles in the tap water and the area had an astronomical rate of kidney failure - and I still got my water locally, from machines that would do some crazy reverse osmosis process on the city water supply that made it taste just fine and dispensed it into gallon jugs that I re-used the whole time I lived there. But you know, if I ran out of the fancy-pants machine-dispensed water I still could drink the tap water. It certainly wouldn't kill me. Think of all the other millions, if not billions of people in the world who aren't so lucky. They would probably be super pissed if they found out that Americans snub their city water supplies and wash their cars in perfectly potable water while elsewhere, all those who are less fortunate have to drink is water that gives them dysentery. Ever play Oregon Trail when you were a kid? People die from that shit!

So seriously, engage your brain before you commit an act of utter wastefulness and remember, if you're going to bitch about the price of gasoline, you'd best pass on that bottle of Dasani you were going to buy at the gas station.

In Yosemite they have giant sequoias.

I got to hug one.

I can die happy now.

Happiness is hugging a giant sequoia!

With that, I'm not a big fan of Paula Deen. Shocker, I know, but she represents the worst of the Food Network: someone with no culinary skills beyond cream cheese but with mass marketability (which is why I'm not a big fan of most of the people on that network *cough* Rachel Ray *cough*).

I always joke about how Paula Deen adds a pound of cream cheese to everything. I never thought it was 100% literal, but....

She's managed to add cream cheese to....

... wait for it...

CRANBERRY SAUCE.

I couldn't believe it. That woman has got some serious cream cheese talent. It's talent she needs to keep to herself, but it's talent nonetheless.

Seeing is believing: link

Happy Thanksgiving menu planning to you all, and for god's sake, leave the cream cheese out of it!

Update: Ye gods!!! She's gone one step beyond cream cheese and - get this - DEEP-FRIED some cranberry sauce!!! That's just offensive. It's like a train wreck, I can't look away. And we wonder why Americans are the fattest people on earth....

About two weeks after she gets here I'm moving to a different place that will have more space. It has a basement so I'm going to turn it into a Doggie Playroom where she can stay while I'm at work (maybe with a doggie pal or two) and where we can do obedience and agility training. There is also a ton of open space behind the house and there's a huge park across the street. Can you say Chuck-It??? I know Sienna can!

I'm super excited about all of this - I mean, duh, it's Sienna... who wouldn't be excited? Hooray for the Alaska Adventure Dog coming back home!!!!

I had left my swimming bag at work yesterday and didn't realize it until I was halfway home. "No matter," I thought. "The building is supposed to be open 24 hours and it's on my way to the gym," and continued on my merry way, setting my alarm perhaps a few minutes earlier than I would have otherwise. Upon the commencement of that doleful ringing, I had a lengthy and tortured arm wrestling match in my head about how I should react to said alarm. Swimming won and sleep sulked off into the corner to nurse its bruised ego.

When I got to my car, I found it covered in...... Slush. Now many of you may not be acquainted with my opinion of Slush, so here it is: Slush has got to be the most god-awful weather phenomenon known to man. It's not rain, it's not snow, it's the horrible bastard child of the two that makes every other driver's IQ drop by 30 points, minimum. It's the cold splattery stuff that get kicked up and conspires to drench your poor, unassuming legs. It is, in fact, a harbinger of the Apocalypse.

So did I take it as a sign? Did I go back to bed? No, dear reader, in true stubborn, Moore-bred fashion, I did not. I got in my car, turned on the wipers, and off I went. The weather was ok for a few miles but grew steadily worse as I approached the pool, sleet and Slush (drat!) coming down thickly in silver-dollar sized bits, shutting down visibility.

And still I persisted.

I parked outside my office, ran up to the door, and..... nothing. The door was locked, the way was shut (and with the way the day was shaping up, there may as well have been a grey wizard bellowing "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"). "Dammit!" I had my work clothes with me, but no shower stuff, no towel, and certainly, no workout gear of any kind, be it dryland or wet. That was all on the other side of the unyielding, evil, conspiring door whose stubbornness outstripped mine. I had no choice but to return home to get ready for work.

On the way home I consoled myself with the thought that on my way back in to work my favorite coffee shack would be open and I treat myself to a nice hot cappuccino on my way in. Well that dream got deflated in a hurry when I drove by the place to find the line spilling out from the parking lot into the oncoming traffic lane. SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE!?!?!? Is your coffee fix that important that you're willing to block traffic in terrible road conditions??? (See previous comment about Slush's effect on the human intelligence quotient.)

I returned to my office building (alas, caffeineless) less than two hours later. The Slush was no longer raining down like anti-manna from heaven, and I soon discovered why: it had a new strategy of all being on the ground.

I slipped a little when I got out of the car and very nearly had My First Moment Of Utter Grace (aka flat on my ass on the ice) of the season. Dratted Slush.....

I (carefully) made my way back to my building, doing the Alaska Shuffle all the way lest the Slush claim its first victim. Surely the office would be open by now... it would be inconceivable that it would still be locked after 7 o'clock.

Dammit! It was still locked. And the Slush had resumed coming down (or, rather, sideways, as there was a healthy wind going) and stinging me in the face. And there is no shelter in front of the office door. And I was really crabby and really tired because I had gotten up before 0-dark-thirty, hadn't swum, and had been foiled in my attempt to revive myself with a frothy, warm, tasty coffee.

Twenty minutes later the building was unlocked and I poured in, face even redder than usual from the wind and the Slush. In that moment I'd never been happier than I was right then about the fact that my section had, uh, requisitioned a coffee pot the day before, and I took the carafe into the break room to clean it out. I saw what looked like a weird dark coffee stain and went to town on it with a scrubbie to make it a fitting receptacle for our morning brew (we're professionals. We take that stuff very seriously). After seeing no results from a fit of scrubbing that would certainly have lifted rubbery scrambled egg residue from a stainless steel pan, I run a fingernail over the blemish and discover....

A crack.

Dammit!!! Not only would it leak that precious, precious coffee, the crack would most certainly be aggravated by the heat.

That's it!!!! I threw up my hands and give up, conceding my utter, complete, and total loss to whatever god was laughing at me at that very moment.

I should have stayed in bed this morning -- even if there had been gum in my hair....

It's just so... girly.

See, here's the thing.

...

I knit.

No, really! It's a good thing, for the benefit of humanity! I knit things to keep people warm! I knit for cancer patients! Really, it's ok!

Yeah. I still feel like I have to justify myself. Like I said, it's so damn girly.

At first it was just this thing I did when I moved to Alaska 'cause I didn't have a house yet and I didn't know anyone and I wasn't working much and I was bored and it was cold. A friend of mine had given me a handmade scarf as thanks for watching her dog for a week and I was all inspired and stuff and thought that making hats and scarves and other stuff like that would be, y'know, functional, not, y'know.... girly. Not... at odds with everything that I am. Nooo. Not at all.

So I bought a book and learned how to knit. I had dreams of warm hats and mittens and basketweave blankets. First things first though: I knew it was cold where Cory was stationed so I made him a scarf. Then my cramped-up hands put down the knitting needles and didn't pick them up again for a year. See, at around that year point, Cory came to visit and it was really freakin' cold. Yes, cold for Alaska, like -20 degrees cold. Cory had brought his scarf and I was really jealous of it because it was so thick, warm, soft, and cozy (yet manly.... c'mon, it's not like I made him a furry bubblegum pink thing). I knew I had to make another one... and so I did. It kept me occupied on three cross-country flights, and finally I had my own super-warm super-cozy scarf. And the knitting needles got squirreled away yet again...

Until this year around the time the leaves began to change, the days got shorter, and a chill crept into the air.... and I remembered my dream of the basketweave blanket. And it was weird -- it was like I had been able to shake off the knitting bug twice before, but now it was back and it demanded a substantial project. I started to scout for yarn and I branched out from crappy big-box craft stores... and I discovered the institution known as the Local Yarn Shop. It is on this that I blame my current obsession... once you discover the myriad of artisan yarns out there that are so beautiful and so soft and so personalized you just can't go back. My yarn stash exploded and now barely squeezes into three big baskets in my living room. I've got more projects -- and more yarn -- lined up than I could hope to finish in a year, and yet... well, like I said, it's a bug. An addiction.

Hi. My name is Stacey, and I'm a yarn fiend.