One Year - Part 1: Looking Back

Today marks exactly one year since I came to the island to stay. Goldfish and I were reflecting on all that has happened since that night a year ago when our friend Elaine picked up us at the airport and dropped us off at our new home with a huge pan of home-made lasagna for us since she knew the galley was closed for the day. Some things are kind of funny, in hindsight - we were planning on not having a vehicle and just riding bicycles everywhere but we quickly discovered walking Chico around the neighborhood was really not very fun, for Chico or for us, and we needed to get him away to areas where he could run free for an hour or two every night. Now we have an old beater GMC Jimmy for getting into the remote areas, a Honda Element for everyday dog taxi duty, and a motorcycle for maintaining good mental health. So much for sticking to bikes . . . . .

I started this blog out here and now as of the next post I'll have posted 296 times in the past year - not every day like I would have wanted, but not too shabby with the work schedule I keep. I've tried to stay true to the idea I started out with - my target audience is my family, my Dad sitting down to his Mac Book over a bowl of cereal in the morning in Maine, my sons in Anchorage and North Dakota, my sister in Idaho and my brother in Maine. I don't take pictures of the Deadliest Catch guys I see around town (but I have made some wonderful on-line friends that are fans of the show, and I finally broke down and watched it this season); I don't talk about work much, both because of non-disclosure rules and respecting the privacy of my friends.

Even though I got married this year, Goldfish remains Goldfish, even as a wife, because I respect her privacy as well - she didn't sign up to become public property of the thousand or so different folks that read this blog on a regular basis. I try to see things through a different perspective but pictures will always be here because I like them, more than any other reason, so there will always be too many pictures of boats and eagles. I am completely un-apologetic about the picture quality; I use cheap digital cameras because I like to tuck them in my pocket, shoot pictures in all kinds of weather, and not worry about breaking the equipment. Sometimes the pictures are really not very good but they are an honest un-retouched look at where I've been within the last week or so and what I've been doing. Both Goldfish and I use the blog archives as a diary of sorts, to check dates on things like when the salmon started running, when I went to Seattle last fall, what dates Zack visited, when did we have to fly Chico to the vet in Anchorage - it's handy.

On the eve of beginning my second year on the island I'd like to thank all my friends who are readers, both for your kind comments and for the blogs you keep that I love to read when I get time. I like to thank Goldfish for being patient with me and sharing a wonderful vision of the future with me. And I like to thank Chico for always being up for an adventure, no matter what the weather, and without whose dog-ged persistence in treking all over the island in search of the perfect poop spot every night I would not have taken many of the pictures that appear on this blog!