What's New

Well we survived January.  It ended up being the 4th coldest January on record for Anchorage.  Glad we were here for it. :)  The average temperature last month was 2.5 degrees.  It's amazing how warm we were feeling yesterday when it was 21 degrees.   Positively balmy.  We also were getting 5 inches of snow an hour.   Drew took advantage of it and went skiing of course.  He's decided it's time to buy a pair of fat skis though.  When I heard he hit a hard spot of snow with his skis and flew off them and down the hill yesterday I was all about it too.  Luckily he seems to have just got the wind knocked out of him, bit his tongue pretty hard, and had some soft tissue damage.  He should heal up just fine.

In my world Drew convinced me I needed to get rid of a bunch of clothes I don't wear.  So I did, but then we realized that about 90% of the clothes that I do where are black, grey, white, or off white.  Drew says if he ever sees a girl with a creamy coat he just automatically assumes it is me. (Maybe that's cause I own like, 4 of them??)  I don't really know how this happened, but at some point I just stopped buying anything with color.  So he decided we should go shopping together and get me some clothes that I liked and that weren't  neutrals.  We only had time for one store today but we did pretty good, 4 new sweaters and 1 pretty top for 67 dollars.  Yay for sales!  And only one sweater isn't a color...(come on, everyone needs a grey cardigan!)

What else?  We braved the cold last weekend and went out snowshoeing again.  We are finding that people don't do the summer trails in the winter here.   At least not often it seems.  Both times we have gone we have gotten really lost following moose tracks instead of the trail.  It's really hard to stay on a trail that you can't see at all though.  So we had some fun getting lost, seeing the moose we must have been following, and generally freezing my hands off.  I think it was -4 that day.  Sunny, but my hands couldn't stay warm.  So I upgraded gloves this month.  Hopefully mittens will do the trick.

Drew has been working lots on the motorcycle.  I think he is learning a lot.  Last year in Utah we had a major oil leak on our car that he tried to fix and failed miserably at.  This year we have the same leak...and he's going to try and fix it again.  He has a little more knowledge and a lot more tools this year, so I'm hoping he can do it.  We've got to keep our little '97 Camry going!

I've been working out "a lot." (A lot for me, that is.) I got a little pass to go to a gym in Anchorage for 3 months from Groupon.  It has been good to workout and I have been trying to eat a little bit better diet.  Drew only buys me one box of cereal a week and believe it or not I can actually make it last all week.  (If you know me at all you probably think hell must have just frozen over...)  It's been good too.  I am back to weighing what I weighed when we got married and I was doing P90X.  And it just feels better to take good care of my body.

The sun is back.  It's still more of a winter darkness, but it's not noticeably darker here than I feel like it would be if we were in the lower 48.  I don't stagger out of my apartment in the middle of the day when I have been sleeping after working all night, just to stand in the freezing cold and feel the sun on my face for a few minutes.   That's no longer necessary.  So I feel like the worst is behind us!

How's your winter going?