Holiday Wrap Up

A few final pieces of news before we put this holiday season to rest.  New Years Eve came and went with little personal fanfare.  A gin and tonic to bring in the new year and a lot of sitting around watching movies sums things up.  Many of our neighbors were "living it up" and the personal fireworks shows were fun to watch, but the fishermen setting off sea lion bombs (a glorified M-80 used in the commercial fishing industry to scare away sea lions) were not appreciated.  Having a steel hulled boat means each time one of these explosions happened it sounded like someone hit our hull with a hammer.

Harlequin Ducks

New Years Day we participated in the annual bird count, a local event that is part of the nation-wide Audubon Christmas Bird Count.  We didn't really see anything out of the ordinary for our area, although there probably aren't too many count areas that report bald eagles and ravens in the hundreds.  Heavy rain and 40-50 mph winds made bird identification challenging, but even with the weather like it was, it was nice to get outside for a bit.

Lastly, a holiday tradition in our family revolves around starting and completing a puzzle during the holidays.  This was mainly something for my dad to do and others to help, but just about everyone would put in some time to make sure it got completed.  I not only inherited my fathers enjoyment of puzzles and problem solving, but also some of his competitive nature, and when I went home for the holidays I would stay up late and do whole sections of the puzzle while he slept.  With just Nicole and myself here in Alaska, (the cat is no help at all) we are finding that puzzle building is slow, but we are still hopeful we may finish this one before I go back to work on Tuesday.  The picture to the left shows last years puzzle, a 750 piece puzzle of "one hundred cats and a fish".  This years 1000 piece puzzle seems even harder.