I think it was around 5 below this morning and Ben and I went skate skiing. Smith lake was great, no one was there (except moose and moose tracks) and we snuck Pella on too.


Ben soaking up the sun

Balshi had a great dinner party last night, his brother makes olive oil in spain and it is sooo good that it was in this month's wine spectator! Now we all have a friend in the olive oil business, his name is Balshi and his brother lives in Fairbanks, AK.

This is Balshi dancing with Stacia after the wine, champange and scotch...it was a fun night with good food and friends.


Martin testing the infamous olive oil, properly with a plastic spoon.

These cold clear nights (not that cold only -10F)are great for viewing aurora. We are on campus for the picture going to see Warren Miller's "off the grid", not that popular here and only 7bucks. The northern lights probably looked spectacular away from the lights of the student rec center....but cool none the less. (you can also see the combustion process here, a source of NOx pollution oxidizing to form N2O5 that reacts on the aerosol surfaces to form HNO3,nitric acid...PhD stuff, pretty exciting huh?)


stacia, julie and balshi, stacia is back from her three week, denver, durango, moab mountain biking trip....

amazingly efficient

20minutes after surgery we are at Dark Horse Coffee in Anchorage, having an excellent mocha. The drugs have not worn off yet and I am becoming very efficient at this surgery thing. Dr. Jon, Nurse Jon and surgery assitant Jon were all in the operating room. Since I was somewhat awake durinig the pulling and replacing of the tubes, I gave them all nick names. I seemed to be amusing, but in a few hours I am sure I will think, What was I saying?....we are headed back to Fairbanks in an hour or so, the most icy the roads have ever been. Ben has to do all the driving so he is loading up on coffee. Dialysis tomorrow morning and back to what we consider normal life in Fairbanks. Pella is on vacation again at Julie's and am sure she probably won't even want to come home.


At crafty alaska girls night the other day, Audrey's friend Chrissy made home lip balm for everyone...how cool is that? I am lacking in my the alaska craft, make everything yourself department. The house she was sitting for traps animals and makes baby booties out of the fur. I don't think I will ever get that sophisticated, but I have made some breads with blueberrys and cranberries....man can I bable in this state. I will blog more later instead.

back to Anchorage..

every good stretch for dea seems to be punctuated with something bad lately. she was able to get out on the tele skis this past weekend, gave a wonderful public presentation on her phd material yesterday, had a good night out with 'the girls' last night...and today we are heading back to the hospital in Anchorage.

her subclavian catheter, which is used for her dialysis, is infected. it needs to be removed and another 'installed'. she's not looking forward to it, but she's tough.

we'll be back in Fairbanks on Friday. thanks to Martin for letting us crash with him tonight. off the the big city...

The cross country skiing is good with the snow, but the tele skiing....not yet. Julie, Dan, Ben and I had a great time trying to ski and sled.

Heading to Moose Mountian...


Julie full speed ahead.


The dogs thought the sledding was great. We tried to take each one of them for a ride.


It was a ruff week of dialysis, but you'd never guess from this picture!
Shredding the Moose at 6pm, Dialysis at 6am. It is quite the life I lead right now.

some news

5 below this morning on the walk to the bus, the streets are snow covered, the snow is falling- i love winter in fairbanks!

our blood tests from mayo came back OK. we have one area that still needs another test to have the final confirmation if ben can be a donor. we hope to know more by nov. 9th.
dea

julie, ben and i went for a walk with all the dogs at creamer's field. the snow is finally coming down!

ben trying to bench me.

caz and sky picking on pella

saturday

dea had a lot of school work to do, and i've been intching to get in a trip north, so i packed the dogs in the car and drove up the dalton today.

the roads were covered in ice by the time i got to Hilltop, and it didn't get much better all the way to the Yukon River.

the road was desolate, except for a dozen or so semis. the dog's and i had a good trip, but i was hoping for some more folks on the road.


dan's out of town, so i had Sky with me today. this is Pella finally fighting back.


Sky on the Yukon.

i've posted more photos over at my other blog...

julie and audrey picked me up from dialysis and we had a girls desert night.
as you can see from the picture caz is recovered from her surgery.

fiber optic outage

today in fairbanks we were without phone, internet or television. some tv stations are still out, but the internet is on. also no visa credit cards, it was an interesting day of cash only. rumors are the flood in valdez and someone cut a cable? the call in radio shows were saying "well if someone were to call in they would ask..."

yesterday ben, pella and i went on a hike to angel rocks, still no snow! the low horizon sun cast long shadows and we are enjoying the sun before it is gone this winter.



testing the self timer.

we also had all of our blood drawn today and overnight to mayo clinic. we should know more about the possibility of a kidney transplant by the end of the week. dea

pie and potato turkey fry bonfire

tom trainor and sarah (tom is a prof. from chem dept.) had their first annual pie and potato bonfire party last night. the idea was to bring your favorite pie or potato dish. there was some great stuff from minced meat and moose meat pie to potato salmon croquets...and my favorite potato chocolates!

the bonfire, it is finally in the 20's and good temp for a bonfire, but our snow is lacking.


spudka girls! ( spudka vodka is made from potatoes,obviously by the name)
dea

we had some friends over for dinner last night, i cooked everyone a nice dinner. it was a nice end to to a weekend of hiking in this warm spell we are having! ben also found out well street gallery excepted him to do a full show in Feb. 08, so that is exciting!

today was a ruff day on dialysis though i am just now getting around. i guess given that i have kidney failure ruff days are to be expected sometimes and i just think about getting thru the day rather than a million other things like usual. ben of course was very supportive and now i am up and ready to do some work! -dea

all dea

tonight after dialysis dea said, "I want to cook a nice dinner tonight".

for those of you playing along at home...that was "I.." not "you should..", but "I want to cook a nice dinner tonight"!

dea is feeling increasingly better, with a gargantuan apatite. we bought a great cook book at gulliver's this weekend. i almost bought it a billion different times when i worked there, but it was in the discount bin of sorts this weekend for $10 so we bought it. dea has been crazy with it- cooking like a mad chef! her diet is pretty specific, and she's embraced the change.

so, tonight she had a taste for... seared tuna with mint and herbs, over a bed of mixed greens, and roasted sweet potatoes. needless to say, it was a spectacular meal! i'm used to doing the bulk of the cooking, but dea has earned a new job- she's much better than i am!

now, she's up at the lab doing research. her data can only be collected at night, so she took off to get some work done.


dea and her new read.


slicing a very rare piece of tuna.


while we're at it- last night with a mask. this is dea's "seriously, put the camera down" look.

a new Huff in the family!

Caden Benjamin Huff finally arrived today.



I talked to Cory a few times today, and sounds like Caden and Sharae are both doing well. check out their blog for more pictures (and great ones of Taylor from the past few weeks).

first snow! usually in fairbanks once it snows it stays everyday until june, but it is warmer this year than last.

when i took this picutre, ben did a full on model pose for me.

we started our anniversary at dialysis treatment. it takes about 4 hours total. this is what it looks likes, taking all of my blood and filtering it through a dialyzer(just like the kidney) and back in thru the catheter. ben and i did go to the vallata afterwards for a short dinner. he gave me a great card and he wrote:

"in sickness and health, alaska or outside, young or old, I will love you always." ben
how sweet is that? It was not the ideal anniversary being on dialysis, but that's life an we still had a good day.dea

when we arrived home we had flowers from stac for our anniversary, which is tomorrow!

ben and I are back in fairbanks. the surgery went well, besides that I am a little sore in the chest where the tubes stick out and the iodine will not come off(you see both in the picture, kinda gross)..I also did my first hemodialysis session in anchorage to make sure everything worked. It was similar to when my kidney's first failed and I was on dialysis, except the technology has advanced. It actually made me feel alot better today and now I will continue on with dialysis three days a week at the kidney center in fairbanks,until we find out more about another kidney transplant. we do have some good news though, ben is O positive a match to donate a kidney. we will know more after we decide on a kidney transplant center and so forth.


we did not blog much in anchorage, we only had coffee shop internet, but stac was down there for a wildlife convention. she gave us the raven, we named it Orso(good restaurant in anchorage) Audrey stopped by the dialysis center too, it nice to have their support.


this one's for my parents. they visited denali with ben and i when this strip was bussling with tourists. this is what it looks like from sept 15th on everything is boarded up even the hotels.

Hi all,
Ben and I are down in Anchorage for the weekend, I have not been feeling well. After our visit today with Dr. Tucker today,I will have surgey monday to put in a permcath(tubes to hook up to the machine) and start dialysis. Dialysis takes place of the kidney and I go three days a week until I have another kidney transplant, possibly 6 months. Though it is big news, we are trying to remain in fairbanks and for now take things day by day. we don't know if ben is a match, we just started testing today.

The good news is we get to hang out at Titlewave books and CDs today along with a stop at Skinney Raven Sports. We are also staying at this nice bed and breakfast on cook inlet, it is a great deal in the off season.

most of us are out of town for the weekend so we had pizza, salad and beer night at julie's cabin. since bow hunting off your porch for moose is legal in her neighborhood, the dogs found a moose carcas not far from the cabin and were banished to the cars(except turtle).

Equinox Marathon and Relay

The 44th Equinox Marathon was Saturday in Fairbanks. One of the biggest running races here and a 3rd hardest marathon in the US after Hawaii and Pike's Peak in colorado.


here is stacia on her way to cheer the runners, she calls herself the "exotic cheerleader". (she is available for hire at your sporting events!)


julie and audrey pre-race, they ran the entire equinox marathon, over 2200 feet of steep climbing and decending, mostly on trails.


here are dan and martin at the 3rd hand off in the relay and yes the Nitrate Radicals win again this year! Ted's team with Brian and Leslie put up a tuff fight. Martin and Leslie were within sight of each other near the finish.


Our good friend Matias and Mike Kramer in the lead of the race from mile 1! Matias put up a good fight and came in 2nd overall in the Marathon.


Julie finishing the marathon with all of us cheering behind. of course ben is shooting this pic.

Audrey, Ned, Curtis and Brad also had a great marathon. it was a fun day of cheering everyone on! dea

Pre-Equinox Marathon Dinner @ Ted's

the big equinox marathon and relay was this past saturday. it is a huge community event and this is our pre-race dinner. our 2nd year rivals sweet river trio and nitrate radicals competed head to head in the relay.


the morning of the race. i was not feeling that great, so i had a "pinch runner" at the last minute julia(UAF cross country runner :-) so this picture is part of the support crew for our friends racing the entire marathon and relay. stacia is pre-costume here..

fall is almost over, the sun is dissappearing, we are having some fantastic sunny weather in Fairbanks. this was on the way to the bus this morning, then I missed the bus!

cool super foggy morning yesterday.

we had a great dinner last night at matias's house sitting gig. we also watched a stage of the tour, a little late up here. jeff raced bikes in colorado so we talked alot of "back in colorado" stories...BUT the ben was excited because he is from IOWA, his wife and Jill too! so of course lots iowa talk.