I don’t know how I made it my entire life without being called for jury duty but here I am. August was my second time being on the call list here in Alaska but first time ever being seated on a jury. It has been enlightening.
I’ve always been willing and interested in serving as a juror. For me, it’s not only a civic duty but a faith based duty as well. Heaven knows that if I ever found myself in need of a jury I certainly would want someone (or 12 someones) willing to serve and not doing so begrudgingly, wishing they were somewhere else, and not giving their full attention and due diligence.
I found myself really examining my thoughts and beliefs and actually needing to reconcile a couple of contradictory beliefs. I’m thankful for the opportunity to see our justice system work, mostly the way it was intended to do.
Innocent until proven guilty.
It’s a catchy phrase that we toss around. But before today I never really had to dig deep and experience that reality from a position of judging facts. Questioning myself as to whether or not I truly believed that all those sitting in the defendant’s seat could be, should be awarded that right. Sometimes it’s harder than others.
It’s our right as Americans.
I learned a lot about how our local courts work, the process and people. It was interesting to be sure.
After three days of trial proceedings and the initial day of jury selection, I was invested in the process. Unfortunately I was one of the two drawn as alternates and I was excused before deliberations began. I was disappointed at first, then relieved that I didn’t have to sit in judgement over this person! It’s a heavy thing to be sure.
So next time when the jury duty notice comes around I’ll be ready, once again, to perform my civic duty.
The weather man said to tie down any loose items night before last as overnight Thursday & Friday would be a bit gusty. Remnants if an ex-typhoon they said.
It’s never a good time to have a wind storm when you have an overabundance of beetle killed spruce trees in your area. The wind set a steady tree swaying pace the entire day, kicking up a good gust fairly often.
The power was out for a large amount of Alaskans from Sterling to Willow yesterday morning. They had clocked some 70mph gusts up north. At around 7:20 am ours went out.
Time to fill the woodshed. First time we cut wood without Caleb here. 😥
We managed to cut up about a cord of wood yesterday between two friend’s properties. Thankfully these trees were already down and not a casualty of the storm. We do have one tree down on our place from the storm to dispense of. Overall nothing to complain about. Plus that should fill one side of the woodshed. Now to the other side.
This was the longest outage we’ve had since moving to this house. The biggest inconvenience for us being unable to flush the toilets. Trees were down everywhere, on houses, on power lines, on the roads. A good reminder for always being prepared. I need to figure out a water storage system for this house. And install a couple 12 volt LED lights. And finish that solar generator I bought all the components for a couple years ago. Also time to fix the generator pull cord… I need to make a honey do list.
Thankfully, those dedicated lineman worked overtime and restored our power at 3:21 am. About 20 hours, I wonder if we’ll see a difference on next months electric bill?
Fred Meyer must have been the only store in town with power since everyone was there shopping. It was worse than tourist season.
Yesterday was our “end of year” field trip. We’ve still got a few weeks left but a little early celebration never hurt anyone.
Before we boarded we spent some time exploring around the docks.
The Sovereign, a City of Seward tender. Lil Mister observing the suspension and breaking system of these old railway cars.Giant puffin mural.Carved sea otter benches.A cool old padlock, somewhere there’s a key to this heart…Spray foam fixes everything!The three munchkins with Dean & I reflecting.He’s so adorable.
Major Marine Tours out of Seward took us out for a 4 hour tour. (Glad it wasn’t three and the weather wasn’t rough.)
Captain Marcelle navigated the “Kenai Fjords 360” throughout Resurrection Bay like a boss.
First thing we see after leaving port are Dall’s Porpoises swimming with our boat. They look like little baby Orcas. They were quite amusing swimming and jumping out of the water, crisscrossing in front of the bow.
Once we were underway the Capt put this nav map up for us to reference. It helped keep our bearings for sure.
Then we saw a bald eagle perched on an enormous rock. We spotted a sea otter in Thumb Cove.
After traveling past Fox Island we saw some Stellar Sea Lions sunning themselves on Mary’s Rock. Captain Marcelle was terrific for getting us excellent views of the wildlife. We had a beautiful day, sunshine, 41-45° air temp and no sea swell! Simply gorgeous spring day!
We cruised past Barwell Island on the east side of Resurrection Bay, which has some WW II era bunkers. Then the best thing happened, another vessel alerted us to a pod of three Orcas just two hours into our tour! What an awesome inspiring moment!
We also experienced a mirage, called fata morgana, of Montague Island. It made the island look like a plateau instead of the peaked mountain tops it has. Once we changed position and could look back at the Island you could once again see it’s peaks and valleys. So weird!
Besides the abundance of wildlife that we saw and learned a few facts about (did you know there were 10 types of Orcas worldwide and three types that frequent our Alaskan waters?) we also learned about history (WW II, Russian exploration, President Harding and the Good Friday Quake) and geology when we passed some unusual rock formations of pillow basalt. It was quite the learning experience!
Our route was the red one. It would be nice to take the blue one some day!
We peeked into Carol’s Cove to observe 6 Harbour Seals on our way back towards the west side of Resurrection Bay where we had a great view of Bear Glacier. Lil Bit was excited for this one, she really wanted to see the seals. It’s nice to see them elsewhere, than in our nets stealing our fish! Then we spotted two coastal mountain goats on the sheer face of the mountain side! And another Harbor Seal in the water along the Callisto Cliffs.
Lil Bit observing the Harbour Seals with binoculars.There were 6 seals sunning themselves.
Nearly 4 pm and our tour is about over, what a wonderful experience! I love seeing the rugged beauty and bounty of Alaska. And seeing landmarks like Cain’s Head which we’ve explored a couple of times on foot. I think Lil Bit counted 8 species in total that we spotted today. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves! Little Mister was most comfortable on the bow feeling the wind rush through his hair. Thing 2 wasn’t in too many pics as he enjoyed the freedom of roaming about the boat at will.
I’m very grateful for the homeschooling resources we have with IDEA and the rich experiences we get to have thanks to their efforts. Trips like these would be out of reach for us without them.
It all started with getting that moose, losing our freezer drawer and needing to restock our lunch soup supplies.
But once I got started I couldn’t stop processing like a mad woman.
We had some pumpkins from fall decorations that kept well plus an extra one a friend gave us. I loaded a full canner, two cases worth, of plain pumpkin and then made a batch of pumpkin butter. Which is like eating pumpkin pie on your toast!
I had three turkeys 🤷🏼♀️ and some miscellaneous fruits from wildcrafting the last time Niki was here. Which I turned into Crabapple, rosehip & cranberry chutney. It’s so delicious!
With the turkeys I made 2 gallons of turkey broth, a few quarts of turkey bone-in meat and two cases of turkey veggie soups. And I even had a little bit left over to cook and eat for dinner. Along with the aforementioned moose stew, we have some great tasting lunch options now!
Since we’ve been trying to get better organized and had all our canning jars stored in one place the kids have been saying that we have too many jars. Ha. No such thing as too many jars! Now there are empty places on the jar shelves but no empty places in the pantry! What a great feeling!
(I canned a total of 13 cases plus a few singles over the course of the last 4 weeks. Time to restock lids and maybe buy some more jars!)
Shopping last weekend I scored a box of tomatoes at IGA so I made salsa and canned some raw pack tomatoes!
Alaska on my mind... 