IMG_2252

IMG_2252, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

I do not know that there is a tremendous amount going on right now, but I was threatened with dire consequences if I did not put of pictures of the baby.

Here is the baby.

Watching the baby

So I have come up with the idea of trying to take a picture of Brady every day for a calendar year. Now, I know this won't happen as I get sent out of town for work, so the idea is flawed from the beginning, but at least I have a goal. There are three pictures from today.

Stockade

Stockade, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

Brady is really starting to crawl now and fortunately Christmas provides quite a number of boxes with which to build a baby stockade. Our best efforts are largely in vain though, she figured out already that she can push the boxes out of her way and break free from the lonely confines of the "safe" area.

Christmas went as well as possible when so far away from family. We had a number of friends over for a Christmas feast. Sorry, but there were no pictures taken during the event.

Though there was some documentary evidence of mere and buddy checking out the new bedding.

And finally one more Bradana shot from Christmas.

Santa

Santa, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

Brady got to meet Santa for the first time today. She hit it off with him immediately. For some reason she seems to have a native trust for portly men with long hair and beards. I'm sure that is something that will serve her well as she goes through life.

The good news is that she did not ask for anything other than wrapping paper and the option to swap stuffed animals with the dogs at will this holiday season. I do not think that these modest demands will survive the year though. Oh well, take what you can get.

As always clicking on the photos will take you to their respective flickr pages where you can check out larger versions.

High Voltage

High Voltage, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

I wind up seeing a lot of interesting signs doing various jobs, most of which are rather explicit about their message. The funny thing is that there really wasn't any threat of high voltage in the area unless there was an electrical storm.

But, the weather is holding which is something that I really don't know if I should be talking about. There is always the chance that bad weather is just waiting to pounce on hubrous, but I'll take my chances. We haven't had any meaningful wind here the entire week which is absolutely amazing in as much as the area is completely flat and there isn't a tree within a hundred miles.

Though the weather up here is something that I've been thinking about more lately. One of the people we were doing a job for up here this trip is purchasing a few acres of land from his neighbor's property and we were subdividing and marking the new lot. His intentions for the land is to expand his suprisingly large organic farming operation. As we were finishing off the job he gave a quick tour around his operations and talked about the plans that he had for expanding.

The newest building is his farm is a small, unassuming looking structure that appears to be a small barn. He has maximized the utility of the building though and is hoping to have an almost entirely self supporting chicken farm with a composting system that requires very little energy to heat or power. The barn is three stories, the lowest completely undergound, a ground floor that houses the chickens, and then the enclosed hayloft. The entire ground floor has been surrounded by a rock wall save the main entrance.

The hayloft is used for the usual functions, storing hay and hanging dried herbs. There is a hatch in the floor for dropping the hay down to the chickens. The ground floor houses the chicken operation. Since the building is surrounded by the rock wall very little insulation is needed. The farmer ran ducts through the rock wall and channeled those ducts into both the chicken area and the basement. The rock wall stays around 31° in the winter, so he has to warm the air less than otherwise.

The basement also serves to supply the water for the chickens and irrigation for his crops in the summer. He dug a sump that is constantly filling up and he simply holds the water in a storage tank until he can use it. This area also is the home for ten plastic totes of earthworms that are working over the leavings from both his house and the chickens.

The reason those whole system is so damned amazing is that this is being done in an area where fresh foods, especially fruits and vegetables, are not simply prohibitively expensive, but require a tremendous amount of energy to simply deliver them to western Alaska. If you think about the amount of resources that is required to deliver a crate of lettuce from the field in California, or even further afield, to a village on the western edge of Alaska it really is not practical. However, if communities could begin to produce their own produce, the effects on the community and missed oppurtunity costs would be fantastic.

Alright, no more ranting for the night.

Pjonjar

Pjonjar, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

So I am out in the field yet again, this time to the frozen swamp that is Bethel. Bethel is the largest village in western Alaska, over 5,000 souls live here, but more importantly this is the major hub for all of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

I don't care for Bethel. It has almost nothing working in its favor as far as surveying work goes. Most of the town was surveyed by a person with very little in the way of professional ethics who was one of only 2 surveyors in the history of Alaska to have his stamp revoked. It is not at all uncommon to find one of his property corners dozens of feet from where it should be when you can find one of his corners at all.

Regardless, I am out here again with Ralph and the Pjonjar. The pjonjar is our gas powered jackhammer that we use to bust through the frozen roadbed and fill while searching for corners. This is one of the nastiest inventions ever. It belches oily exhaust while pounding away making a tremendous racket. Frost settles in very thickly in compacted fill though you have to use the pjon to get down through the fill.

Well, I'm running late getting out the door, so I'll drop a couple more pictures and write more later.

Gross

Gross, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

Not a tremendous amount going on right now, but I was told that it had been too long since I added new pictures of Brady, so here they are.

Football Ham

Football Ham, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

So walking through the grocery store today I ran across two very odd food items. The first of which is the football ham. Now, I'm a big ham fan, but honestly if the biggest thing a food has going for it is a passing resemblance to a sporting good, that is not a good sign. It should be also noted that the packaging seems to be remarkably inconsistent as some of the "threads" have more detail certain packages. The biggest problem of course is that once the ham is removed from the packaging to be eaten the only redeeming value will be gone and you will just be left with an oddly shaped ham.



The faux bacon is the worst offender though. Seriously, when you became a vegetarian you lost your bacon privileges. This does not look anything like real bacon and I will put a crisp new 20 dollar bill on the line that it does not taste like bacon either. Bacon cannot be emulated. It is the greatest solid food in existence and there is no way to replicate it with soy products. Come back to the magical world of pork for your bacon. Oh yeah, a box of this junk also cost 5 bucks which would buy many more strips of wonderful bacon goodness.

Mugging

Mugging, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

As seems to be the case with this blog, I'm right around a week late in updating the thing. I do have something of a vague excuse though. I didn't have any meaningful access to my computer until Sunday and since that point all of my photo editing time has been spent on another project.

On Thanksgiving some two very good friends got engaged and as a bit of a present for them I did a portrait shoot on Sunday. By way of a shameless self promotion, head over to the Flickr page (you can just click on any photo that I post here) and check out a lot of pictures from the shoot as well as more turkey day shots.

We rented a house down in Girdwood again this year and along with about 15 odd people we celebrated Thanksgiving in style. I cooked a 21.86 lbs. turkey and there was much other foodly goodness to accompany the bird. The only problem was that the crawlspaces in the house all seemed to be infested.

Now for the obligatory goofy picture of mere and the baby.

Snack Time

Snack Time, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

Brady is actually having quite a good time with the whole eating experiment. One of the first things that she figured out after birth was that sticking things in her mouth was a commendable past time. I figure that makes a good deal of sense that as a species we would try to figure out this whole eating thing as quickly as possible.

Of course the downside of this real food process is that it as my darling daughter moves more toward real people food, she also makes real people messes. At this point though it appears that parenting is largely cleaning up after her.

Prom of the Living Dead

IMG_1775, originally uploaded by mkgillman.

Over the weekend we finally got to hold the Prom of the Living Dead. Some absolutely ghoulish costumes at the party.









Good times had by all.

First Halloween

Tonight was Brady's first Halloween so we dressed her all up and dragged her all around Anchorage getting candy that she will never, ever taste. You know, parenting thing has its perks.

Getting Out of Dutch

Made it back home last night. More later. Go SOX!

Just so it is known, Brady is not amused.

Work Shall Set You Free

Watching the weather out here and the forecast is getting nasty. There is a major storm that is coming this way and they are talking about damn near hurricane force winds. That would be a major crisis in Florida. That is normal fall weather in Aleutians. As such, I have been busting butt to get out of here today. All my field work is pretty much set and I am cramming all my junk into bags rushing to meet a plane.

Everyone learns things from their profession. I have learned how to cram all my gear into luggage in 10 minutes and run out the door to meet a plane that may or may not be able to make through the weather.

Update later, hopefully from Dutch Harbor.

They Say It's Your Birthday

Well, I must admit that I have often made disparaging comments about blogs and whatnot in the past, but I think I am going to give this a try and see whether or not I can address some problems that I have been having. First of all, it is difficult to keep in touch with friends and family while I am out and about through just email or Flickr. Secondly, I have often tried to keep track of the various happenings in my life, but have never been particularly successful at keeping a journal.


And what better time to start something like this then on my birthday?

That's right, it is my 28th year on this rock and I am spending it in a cluttered, flithy house in Atka, Alaska. For a bit of background Atka is an island in the western Aleutians, about 1,200 air miles west southwest of Anchorage. The village on the island is remarkably small, only 75 residents, almost all are Aleut natives. The climate is quite mild by Alaska standards, it very rarely gets much below freezing and never below zero.


I was tasked with a fairly straight forward layout task out here and am supposed to leave on Monday. That may not happen though as there is an impressive storm raging out here right now. The winds were fairly steady at 40 knots today and one gust almost knocked me on my face at one point. The winds are supposed to be picking up over the next couple of days, so the chances of getting out on time are slim or none.


Though, as you may be able to tell from the picture of the house, there is plenty of food here, so I won't starve to death.


I guess this is enought to start. We'll see if I can keep up with it now.