I ate Rudolph this morning

Reindeer sausage is pretty good.

Last night a guy from Seattle came in and boy is he chipper - what a personality. He's a salesman, so it fits. He's a VERY good laugher. One of those laughs that's genuine and goes on a lot longer than you think it will. Last night he must have been watching a REALLY funny show because it was nonstop laughter from his room. I find I rarely genuinely laugh out loud at the TV. This morning he was singing in the shower. It seemed like he was trying not to, but just kept doing it out of habit. I couldn't place what he was singing, though.

This morning the house was overrun with Texans. The chipper guy I was just talking about is originally from Dallas, though he lives in Seattle now. The other couple staying here is from Austin - I don't think I've mentioned them before. They originally came from Texas, lived in Alaska for 20+ years then moved down to Austin because the seasonal depressive disorder got the best of 'em. They're here visiting because their son had twin boys and they were baptized this week. The twins are 9 months and supposedly giant for their age. I keep meaning to ask Erica for Lilly's stats because Erica's children usually blow other babies out of the water in terms of size. As if that isn't enough Texans in one household, there is a woman, Denise, who helps Frenchy out with making breakfasts. She's a nice woman, originally from a town near Paris, TX that I can't remember the name of right now. She has lived up here for 3 years, I think.

We had a lovely conversation this morning about scoliosis. It was an interesting set of people to have the conversation. The chipper guy is a salesman for back braces, I've had horrible scoliosis and worn a brace for it, and Denise's daughter was recently diagnosed and is in the physical therapy phase of the whole deal. For those that don't know, when I was in High School, I started to grow (finally) and they spotted a touch of scoliosis. They measured my legs and one of them was actually longer than the other and they thought that might have something to do with the scoliosis. To help even out my growth they put a small lift in the shoe of the shorter leg and gave me some physical therapy to do, which is sort of the first defense in scoliosis. A short while later I went back for a checkup and the curvature of my spine was a degree or so away from surgery, which would mean they put metal in my back to straighten the curve. The other option was to get a brace and hope the curve didn't get worse and hopefully avoid surgery. I got the horribly uncomfortable piece of junk brace which I hated. It was like a girdle, except made out of a hard PVC plastic - oh, and it had these hard foam inserts they would adjust to try to correct the curvature of my spine which dug in as far as they could go in the soft tissue space between my ribs and hip bones. It was NOT fun. I didn't wear it nearly as much as I was supposed to. I once wore it on a plane, though, which was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. My back still has a bit of a curve to it, but it's not bad at all. I sometimes wonder if it was just something I had to grow out of.

As if I haven't jumped around enough with the timeline here - Last night we moved a shed from the neighbor's house over to the backyard here. All I have to say is that it's hysterical when several different men get together to do one task with no plan. It's such a power struggle the way they throw in their 2 cents in an almost haughty way. Maybe not haughty, but definitely in a superior way, and always backed up by a former learning experience or job or something manly. I wasn't really involved in that portion of the debacle, but afterwards the neighborhood men were standing around in our driveway chatting, which was also hysterical. I stood and chatted for a while. They were all marveling at how beautiful it was out (50 degrees and sunny) and were discussing how slowly the kings (salmon) were coming in this year. Two in the group had lived allover the place and had been to every state, but when they came to Alaska they knew it was the place to stay and have stayed for 30 years - it seems to be a common thing (I'm like a broken record with that one, I know). One was Frenchy and the other was her neighbor. He was in the Air Force for 20 years, which brought him allover the place within the country and overseas. He's now a longshoreman - he unloads and loads ships, a lot of the time it just means driving a new car off the boat. What a job, right?

It was an interesting night, possibly the most interesting part was when one of the neighborhood men tried to ride his kid's bike. It's a newfangled bike with shocks so if you hit the breaks really hard the thing lurches down and forward. Good for doing jumps, but not good for someone that hasn't ridden a bike in years. He was a bit too big for the bike so it was quite a sight to watch him try to balance and keep from revealing a plumbers butt all at the same time. Anyway, I really felt like part of the neighborhood. I have to run, but I might edit this later. . .

. . .and I just edited some stupid mistakes out. I forget what else I had to add to this, so I'll leave it as is.