RIGHT BACK INTO THE FIRE

So, I went from being on vacation yesterday to back to work and doing OT tonight. We have a big deadline coming up and stuff just had to be done tonight. There was no easy transition back into the working life.

I had bahn mi from DD Mau as my OT meal. I’ve ate there a lot so it was dependable as usual. I got the hell outta work well before 10pm as I didn’t want to get caught in the fireworks crowd.

I’ve done OT before where I was downtown and didn’t leave before the fireworks ended. That was a huge mistake.

Anyways, I hope OT doesn’t continue for too much longer. To think I was at a remote, scenic lake just a few days ago.

YOU CAN’T FIND THAT HERE

For my trip to Alaska, I chose to stay in the downtown area. The only other reasonable alternative was a newer neighbourhood in Anchorage called Midtown. Midtown contains a lot of restaurants, malls, and office buildings but it felt like a suburb more than a place for a visitor to get the real feel of the city. After my first couple of hours walking around downtown, I knew I had made the right choice. There were plenty of great restaurants and all nearby to the wonderful Anchorage Museum, Ship Creek (with so many salmon), and the iconic Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.

I did, however, notice some quirks about downtown Anchorage starting on my first day. I made a stroll through the Fifth Avenue Mall. There was a Starbucks at the mall, which itself is a fairly normal thing to see in a mall, except there was a huge line of people waiting to get their coffee. It was about 4pm in the afternoon, which is a weird time to see people queued up for java. I went on with my day.

The next thing I noticed was when one of my friends got a bad case of heartburn after dinner one night. We were back at the hotel and we were trying to find some antacids for his condition. Our hotel was fairly crappy (that deserves its own post) so it didn’t have a lobby store so we had to go looking elsewhere. My friend and I then realized we hadn’t seen a corner store or a drug store anywhere in all of downtown Anchorage. Usually when you travel to the US, there’s a Walgreen’s or a CVS on every other block. We didn’t see any of these. There wasn’t a 7-11 or similar type store in all of our exploration of the downtown area. I then went on Google Maps and saw none of those type of stores were anywhere close to us. We’d have to travel outside of the downtown core to get to a drug store or convenience store.

I thought about it a bit and then I realized downtown Anchorage is devoid of large corporation type businesses. The Starbucks in the mall was the only Starbucks in all of downtown Anchorage. I didn’t see a McDonald’s or any other giant fast food place. In a way, that’s great because most of the businesses are then unique and run by actual people rather than a massive corporate entity. On the other hand, we couldn’t easily buy sundries of any kind at all while we there. I’ve been to many cities in North America and I’d be hard pressed to find a time where I couldn’t get a package of Tums if I needed one at 9pm on any given night but this was a problem in downtown Anchorage.

My friend got by without his antacid but it sure would have helped that night.

I HAVE RETURNED FROM ALASKA


Greetings loyal readers! I have returned from Alaska safely and without being eaten by any wildlife. It was a very action packed trip. I am very tired but I’d like to post at least one memorable photo. It’s a 360 photosphere, so I unfortunately had to use Google+ to share it properly. If you click on the image above, you’ll be able to see an awesome 360 degree panoramic image of Crescent Lake. I took a very small float plane to this lake where the pilot landed and allowed us to explore for a short while. It was a breathtaking view. I’ll have more to write about in the next few days.

BACK IN A FEW DAYS

I’m leaving for my trip to Alaska tomorrow morning. For once, I booked a reasonable outbound flight as the scheduled departure is around noon. This means I won’t have to either stay up all night or get a miniscule amount of sleep before waking up.

I’ll have free wi-fi at the hotel, so I might write the odd post here or there. I’m hoping to get a few photos of the wildlife for you, my loyal readers. In any case, I’ll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming.

CALLED ON ACCOUNT OF WEATHER

Tomorrow was supposed to the studio-wide summer BBQ at work. The whole studio was supposed to go to Stanley Park with family and guests for a wicked awesome summer time and sunny BBQ complete with a whole, giant roast pig. They even arranged for transportation in the form of a bus to take us from Yaletown to Stanley Park. Unfortunately, the weather calls for upwards to 20mm of rain tomorrow. In light of this, the BBQ was called off and delayed pretty much at the last minute before the end of the business day.

It’s rather unfortunate as lots of people had been looking forward to the social event but I guess there wasn’t a lot of covered areas in the chosen spot and the organizers were afraid people would just get wet and be miserable. It was the right call to make. We did find out, however, the event has been re-scheduled for the end of August. There’s no guarantee it won’t be rainy then as well but let’s hope for the best.

POSSIBLE RIDE ALONG

So I might jinx this by just even writing about it but over the weekend I set forth some plans that might allow me to go on a police ride along in the near future. I’ve wanted to participate in such an activity for years but wasn’t sure how to go about it.

I don’t want to go into the specifics but an opportunity came up this weekend and inquiries have been made. It still may lead to nothing but at least the right parties are now involved. I’d like to keep the particular policing agency and jurisdiction under wraps for now (and possibly forever) as I’m not sure special favours might need to be called in for this.

Even though it still might not happen, I’m extremely excited about this. I’ve watched the show COPS for years and it would be such a thrill to actually sit in the police car during an officer’s shift. Let’s make this happen!

BUT WHY?

But why?

A few weeks ago, a co-worker and I were leaving work, headed for the train station. Outside at the entrance, we found a small group of people taking a picture of the building. They were specifically posing in front where the building number and street name is. The entrance is quite nondescript. It is literally just a number and a street name. It’s not even a famous address. If you Google that address, you just get links to building management company.

So why would these people take a picture of that? I don’t know. Fans of the studio? Didn’t seem like it and if they were, they’d probably be better off taking photos of the giant UFG sign on the tops floors of the building. Maybe one of those people share a name with the street name? Scavenger hunt? I’m still confused by the whole thing.