on my way home from our field site last night i stopped by julie's place for hot buttered rum halloween drinks. notice i am wearing my big down parka inside because she ran out of fuel!
luckily we had plenty of warm clothes from audrey's patagonia sponsorship, we all got some nice stuff. this picture is supposed to be of the "EE" on the old monitor heater in julie's cabin. she will have to get even more used to the cold, she is headed to Antarctica in a few weeks!
we wrapped up the weekend at Martin and Tawna's for brunch. there was great food, from eggs and salmon to french toast and berries. lots of good food this weekend that started at Kristen and Ned's for moose spaghetti. this picture is Martin showing us how the arctic yo-yo is played.
i gave it a try, but i was only good for a laugh.
i spent the weekend out at the field site. here is the met tower ben helped me install. only this was the wrong one, we took it down and installed another one that has two different wind speed and temp levels. ben says he wants on the payroll as an assistant to the Simpson lab, but participating in all this science should be payment enough :-)
Randy and I moved our instruments out into the field to sample air. It is literally in the middle of a hay field 20 miles outside of town on unmarked dirt roads. These are the shelves that carry our instruments and the computer hut, on huge skis in the background(double click image). This is last night and you can see the ground is mostly grass, our goal was to gather data before snow.
.....and today, ooops. it is snowing big time. at least i have my new 40 below boots, they are not the standard military issue white bunny boots, but they will do. It is pretty warm right now, only 19F, but being outside all night sitting around it feels much colder.
2nd annual potato, pie and turkey fry at the Trainor house. We definitely exceeded the max number of people you can fit in one room to eat. no one can miss the great food that comes to this event. This year Sara Petitio won both categories for her sweet potato pie and mushroom potato dish! most interesting was Tom Clausen's moose kidney pie.
Later in the night we headed to another famous party house, trevor's for game night. Lisa and I finally were able to hang out after being fairbanks blog friends(dorks, really), she and Dan are a hoot. We made it just in time for midnight round of balderdash.
We hiked part of the the Chena Dome Trail today. The first 3 miles take you up to the ridge where the views are awesome. A snow storm came in soon after this for our hike back down. The loop is 30 miles and we have not back packed the entire route yet, but soon.
Ben carried his 4x5 camera up to the ridge, we stopped in this blowing grass area so he could shoot a portrait. Pella of course ran around like nuts. Ben has 4 framed photos currently showing in a Detroit Art Gallery, pretty cool.
It was a lonely drive down the Parks on Wednesday night, as the stops are boarded up now that tourist season is over. I think Ben can do this drive with his eyes closed, this is the 4th surgery this year.
We stayed at the usual bed and breakfast, Glen knows us now so we get a good discount. The Copper Whale is right downtown walking distance to all the hip Anchorage spots. Glen also serves up a great breakfast here in the main lounge area with views of the ocean inlet.We still have no good news on the blood tests and we are still playing this waiting game. I am hoping at least with the new tubes I will have a few months of feeling better and no infections.
we decided it would be a good experiment to collect data from another site other than the IARC before going into the field. so i took one of our instruments home to run outside the window and collect aerosols. i would have collected more, but what you can't tell from this picture is the vacuum pump is just obnoxious. trying to get ahead before we leave for anchorage on wednesday.
The temps are in the 20's now and the snow is finally falling. We went for a walk on the UAF trails this morning. I have not been out to do anything exciting for a few weeks now, I have not been feeling well. We are headed to Anchorage week next for a another catheter replacement surgery.
We headed out to all the local hotspot galleries in Fairbanks this evening. Patrick had some photos hanging at the Annex outside of town.
Patrick with his photos of the northern lights in the background.
Wells Street Gallery was just packed. We saw a ton of people out tonight and some great art. This is where Ben is having his solo show in February, very exciting. Tonight was a juried show and all the top prize winners received raw meat. You gotta love Fairbanks.
ben and i drove up the dalton towards the arctic circle on sat. ben has another amazing camera, the linhof 4x5 that he borrowed from dennis. this is a nicer camera than we will ever own in our lifetime, the body alone is over 6 grand. ben was excited to shoot portraits of the crazy moose hunters coming off the Yukon River. it was a cold brown day, snow over the hills, but not down at the river. this is dave, he was down river 25omiles toward the bering sea with his family for 3 weeks at their moose camp. everyone is interested in the this camera and all the portraits ben shot, the people were totally into standing there for awhile.
pella and i hiked way down the banks of the Yukon River. we saw grizzly tracks, but no bears.
today was our 4 year anniversary. here we are taking pella for a walk before our big night out and modeling our woolly rhino wear(me-royal robbins,/patagucci and ben-horny toad/arcteryx)
we went to Lavelle's for dinner and here is ben cruising the downtown streets of the 'Banks.
we spent the evening at the grand opening for woolly rhino. our 2nd store to shop at in Fairbanks. our friend cheryl left Beaver Sports to open her own store. we modeled clothes and helped people. in return we got a great discount on the clothes and new puffy coats for the 40 below weather. here i am "helping". ben was a sales rock star and i think he met half the town tonight the place was packed.
on a more serious note, it is has now been over a year waiting for a kidney transplant and being on dialysis 3 days a week. i still have a positive attitude and i know things will work out someday, but i could not have done it with out ben. thanks best husband. love , dea
ben and i decided go cheer on the equinox runners this year even though i was not racing. we saw all of our friends running, enjoyed some brisk end of fall weather and Matias won! his time was 2:50 and that is great for this hilly, steep, rooty trail course. the equinox marathon has been around 25 years and is rated 3rd toughest in the country, come on up and race!
kristen, ned and anna. kristen and ned run the marathon every year. kristin was third for the women this year and she has won it in the past.
smiling trevor ran his first equinox marathon!
jackson finishing, showing his butt off, again. 
watching the finish.
another successful game night at ed's. it was cool enough for the wood fired stove and time for balderdash. we learned we can go the store and by kamtulicon, look at paintings with putti, and hope we don't run into a bedswerver.
trevor hogging the luv sac. 
pella had a great time visiting with Caz, even though julie is far away, 'cause ted is watching her.
this is my favorite picture of poor sky, the only one with out a boat on ed, dan, brian and trevor's alaskan adventure most people only dream of doing. check out ed's blog for the full story. (check out the alpacka rafts, packs out at 4lbs!)
ben's new toy. he borrowed this 8x10 large format camera from fellow photographer dennis. he has a light meter and film too. he has not been this happy since he met me :-) what a great weekend it was to be out shooting, riding and running.
setting up the glass for a shot, this camera is huge. the negative is 8 "x 10", hence the name.
we went to silver gulch brewery, way out in Fox sat night. it is so packed with people every day and night. this is the new beer tasting room, which is totally unfinished. construction lights in the corner, plywood floors and half finished is still hands down the nicest restaurant in fairbanks.
we headed out to sarah and greg's to watch the aurora later that night.
here is sarah looking overhead at the aurora from her chair. oops. 
the aurora was just fantastic last night, but my camera can not capture it. i would check out Patrick's blog for some awesome shots over the last few nights. lots of solar flare.
