OMG THIS IS AWESOME. Wow!! (No one says "Mt. Denali" though LOL.) Amazing and special <3

I also can't wait to see this movie:

Christopher Nolan, who also directed Interstellar?? YES PLEASE lol

( April 22: Fibonacci in Nature )

I can't believe today is the last day of the sixth season already! (At least it's a longer episode to make up for it lol.) That went by fast. Let's see how crazy it's gonna get.. :P

( spoilers )

THAT EPISODE WAS AMAZING. For once I feel happy and pumped up after watching it, not emotionally torn apart lol

Today's weather was crazy (thunderstorms ftw!) but I'll post about that tomorrow after I stop squeeing about Game of Thrones LOL

( List three of the most wonderful things you have ever experienced )

I GOT THE JOB!! Mike said he was proud of how much I've grown and was very happy to hire me. This is a dream of six years come true..getting paid by the Literacy Council itself! OMG so happy haha. My main duties will be answering the phones, cashiering/helping customers and training/working with volunteers..and I can still volunteer and clean books and stuff. How perfect is that?? It's 10 hours a week and $9 an hour (Mike said at my review in December I can ask for a raise though haha). I start August 1. The other new Bookstore Associate started today too..she seems really nice! Mom and Nina were both super happy for me (I'm so glad Nina helped me get it!). YAY :D :D

( 18. Do you drink soda more often than milk? )

Today's trivia: When a male honeybee climaxes during sex, his testicles explode and he dies

There's this book, K2: The Savage Mountain, that other mountaineering books I've read have mentioned. I keep wanting to read it whenever they mention it (I'm surprised I haven't read it yet!). It talks about crazy events like a guy getting a blood clot in his leg and his teammates trying to carry him down the mountain..they set his litter down and then he died in an avalanche. Just recently a book I was reading mentioned the book again..I thought about buying it from Amazon but though "eh..maybe it'll come in to the bookstore someday." Well..today I was looking for more books to price..and there is was!! OMG haha..it's even signed! That's not even the first (or second!) time that's happened haha! It still makes me giddy and shocked no matter how many times that's happened. :P I've been wanting to read it a long time..yayy! The prices I found on it were super expensive, but I gave it to Jackie (she sells books online) to try and find a lower price. That bookstore is so awesome :D

( 5. What are your most important interests? What do you like about them? )

Would you rather be forced to laugh in the most inappropriate situations or have to say everything that is on your mind? Laugh

Today's trivia: The Philadelphia Zoo, which opened in 1874, is America's oldest

Yesterday we drove to Denali..the weather was so gorgeous! When we got on the ridge we could see McKinley in the distance..yayy! (Also Hayes, Hess and Deborah on the opposite side of the range..epic!) When we got there we got our bus tickets and boarded. I don't know what was up with our driver, but she didn't want to spend a lot of time at anything..annoying. Finally I have seen the mountain from the park!! The driver kept saying how lucky we were haha..only 30% of visitors see the mountain in the summer. The bad thing about such a nice sunny day is you don't see as much wildlife. We saw a whole bunch of caribou for some reason. We didn't see ANY moose though..wow, that's unheard of haha! There were also a couple bears in the distance eating a carcass, and mom saw another through binoculars eating a caribou. McKinley looked so epic though..I know I've flown around it and stuff, but seeing it from the park that close is just different. It just looks so HUGE..wow. It was nice seeing where the mountain should be when usually it's cloudy. I love how pretty everything looked in the sun. By the time we got to Eielson Visitor Center clouds had gathered around the mountain and you couldn't see it very well..boo! We stayed awhile there and went hiking around this little trail. There was another that went to the top of this 1,000 foot mountain..it looked very tiring. :P We took another bus back to the entrance..our driver didn't talk at all except to say how long we'd be at a rest stop and stuff..weird. After we got back we went to a couple shops (I got 30% Club pins and shirt..yayy!), had dinner (there was a drink on the menu called Sex on the Nenana..love it haha!!) and drove home. I'm glad I finally got to see Denali on a nice day!

( pics! )

Yesterday we got up earlyish, had breakfast, then drove to my apartment so I could get my hiking boots and stuff. Mom's coworker Troy (who relieved her at Northway) and his wife Ashley met us there. We all got in his truck and he drove us there. The smoke in Fairbanks was REALLY bad..probably the worst it's been..ew. At Eielson AFB we saw this huge smoke plume! I was surprised, it hadn't been like that the day before! I later read the fire had grown and was now over 40,000 acres! They're saying it's zero percent contained..they're working hard but it's proving hard to work with..yikes! Thankfully we left the smoke behind after we passed Eielson. It was gorgeous, I was so happy seeing the snow covered mountains in the distance. <3 We went to the bathroom and had lunch at a lake near the glacier..there were these birds that seemed unhappy we were there and we saw a dead baby bird on a rock. Its mom was standing over it and a couple birds were standing nearby..they got angry at us if we got too close. Aww, they were in mourning! :( One actually divebombed Ashley, it was funny haha. We continued to the glacier down that crazy rocky road haha. We parked and started hiking! It was chilly but fine when you were moving. This hike was better than the first time I hiked to it since then I had just started Paxil and was feeling sick, plus I was disappointed I couldn't walk on the glacier. I was much happier this time haha, though it was still really annoying and hard walking over rocks the whole time. I was curious to see how much the glacier had receded, and it definitely had quite a bit..aww. :( As we got closer we saw a bunch of people on the glacier! We talked to one guy and said if you went around the bend you could get on the glacier from an ice bridge..yay! (Why I couldn't walk on it before, the ice bridge had melted) He said it was a lot of walking though. Another guy said he got up on the glacier and there was a nice view and it was well worth it. It was definitely a lot of walking..I think it was over three miles just to get to the face of the glacier. But we all made it and crossed the ice bridge to the glacier, fulfilling my dream of like 4 years to walk on it. :D It was pretty cool, and not even that hard to walk on! I got some fresh glacier water (yummm) to take home. We wanted to crest the top of the glacier but we soon saw that distances are deceptive and you'd probably have to hike a long way..the glacier is bigger than you think! We had already hiked so far and not everyone was comfortable going further, so we turned back. I was not looking forward to the long hike back haha (my feet were killing me!). Buuut we made it back fine..I'm surprised how well I did! Mom called it glacier fever haha. I was definitely proud of myself. I was sooo sore though. It was AT LEAST a 6 or 7 mile hike, maybe even 8. Woww. We drove back (Alaskan problems..putting your sun visor down at 10 PM :P), had dinner at Delta Junction and drove home. Luckily the wind was blowing the smoke somewhere else. My feet and ankles are quite sore today haha..but it was certainly worth it. :D Now pics, they're pretty awesome! (I borrowed mom's camera haha)

( gulkana glacier, oh my! )

Mom called me yesterday and said Terry (the guy who owns that horseback riding business in Chisana) called her at work and said that if we could get a flight with 40-Mile Air on their mail run (it's super cheap that way) and fly into Chisana, he would take us horseback riding and flying and stuff for FREE!!! How awesome is that?! Mom said we'll try to do it in July. Sweet!!

Yesterday at work a mom and her daughter came in..they said they didn't come in often and I asked where they were from and they said Salcha (around 30-45 minutes south of here I think). Then the daughter was like "you bought bread from me last week!" (We were on our way to Northway and she was selling bread on the side of the road) DUDE haha..I didn't even recognize her! Usually I'm good at that. So funny..Alaska is small!!

Right now at the museum at the university they have an exhibit commemorating 100 years of the first ascent of Denali. There are artifacts like diaries (!!) and a camp stove and stuff. OMG..I must go!! That would be so awesome to see!

( Day 13: Favorite animal/creature )

Would you rather drink liquid found leaking from a garbage bag or chew on a hairy substance found between the cushions of your couch? *shudder*

Today's trivia: Early railroads had only a single track between destinations. Problems arose when a train was met by another going in the opposite direction or was about to be overtaken by a faster one. This dilemma was solved with the creation of sidings, short lengths of track built parallel to the main line where one train could pull over while the other went by. The train had been “sidetracked,” meaning that, for a time at least, it wasn’t going anywhere, which is where the term originated from

I got the math test back today..I missed a couple but I think I got partial credit cause he took off just one point. So with the extra credit I got a 104!!! OMG I never do that well in math haha. I think having my own private area helps too. The extra credit was a word problem taken right off the online homework..it stuck in my head and I remembered how to do it! Woww. I HAVE MATH SKILLZ. Haha

They caught the guy behind that explosion on Saturday..he was at the airport about to leave the state. Apparently he had 300 pounds of explosives he wanted to get rid of. Out of all the millions of acres in Alaska he chose to do it in a populated area? Smart :P

This article is super awesome! I'm jealous. :P I love the pic of Gilkey Glacier. I want to go to her presentation on Saturday..maybe she'll invite me to work with her heh ;)

( 155. Mutation )

Would you rather eat a bottle cap or a spider the size of a bottle cap? A bottle cap

Today's trivia: A third of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper

I'm back from Talkeetna! On Friday mom went to Laurie's house to load up the car with her stuff, Laurie came to mom's house to have breakfast, then we left. It was an uneventful drive down. Besides McKinley (which was cloudy then), I find the Parks Highway rather boring. I've driven the Richardson too many times haha..it's way more exciting. :P We got to Laurie's house, unpacked the car, hung out a little, then had dinner. We met up with another air traffic controller, his wife, a girl who played basketball with the controller, and another lady that I'm not sure what the connection was. I was rather annoyed..I was tired, hungry and it was really loud. Once I had some wine and food I was better though haha. There were cool mountaineering mementos on the walls (Talkeetna is the jump off for mountaineers flying to McKinley. I'd love to go in the summer when all the mountaineers are there!). Talkeetna is rather quaint. After dinner, we went back to Laurie's house, had more wine (we bought a bottle..Red Rock Merlot) and played Trivial Pursuit haha. Funn. After the game we went to bed

Yesterday I got up and when it was light enough started checking the webcams to see what the weather was at McKinley. It was clear over Talkeetna but I could see a thin layer of fog/clouds (depending on where the camera was) at McKinley. I was confident it would break up though. I checked later and..I was right! The clouds were breaking up and I could see the top of McKinley! I have good weather skillz I swear haha. ;) After breakfast we went over to K2 Aviation and they said once the pilot got the plane ready we could go flightseeing! Yaaay haha. While he was doing that we went over and checked out the flight service station where Laurie's gonna work (the guy from the night before was working then too). After talking with him we went back to K2 and went flightseeing! We opted for the Denali Grand Tour. :D (Don't worry, I saved up for this haha) One of the best feelings everr is taking off in a plane and seeing everything around you. THE FLIGHT WAS SO AMAZING!! Denali, Foraker, Hunter, etc were so clear and pretty!! Even the pilots were amazed. I could see in the distance it was cloudy over Anchorage and I heard it was snowing in Fairbanks. WOW haha. A good weather hole, just for me. ;) We got SUPER close to Foraker and other mountains..so amazing to see the detail!! Seeing all sides of McKinley was pretty awesome too. All the glaciers were awesome too..so cool seeing icefalls, crevasses, moraines. *drools* The mountains looked like ice cream haha. I took over 100 pics up there!! It was just amazing. <3 Laurie met up with us after we landed and had lunch and dessert at two different places haha. Ouch..I ate horribly yesterday. :P That just happens when you travel though. We also checked out the Talkeetna River (which had an AMAZING view of McKinley and co.), went to a gift shop, went back to Laurie's house and showed her our pics, then left to go back home. It was like 4:15 when we left! Oops haha. There was a nice mountain sunset though. The WORST part of the drive is after Nenana you just wind and wind through hills and you're so close to home BUT THE HILLS NEVER ENDDD haha. But we made it back to mom's house, unpacked the car and went to bed haha. Pics tomorrow or whenever I get them all uploaded :P

( 72. Mischief Managed )

Today I went to a vintage Alaska garage sale with Becky. This person has it once a year..I think she's been collecting that stuff a LONG time. There is SO much stuff haha. You would have to be there for hours if you wanted to see everything. I went last year too and it was FREEZING but today it was nice and warm. I really wanted to find a pic of Black Rapids Glacier (I didn't find one last year) and after looking through hundreds of pics I FOUND ONE!! And not just one, but TWO!! They're actually the same pic but I definitely took them both haha. It was like winning the lottery :D (I gasped when I found it..of course it was quiet just then :P). SO glad I have them! One is hanging in my office at work. :D Eeeee. I've been wanting one for a long time. I got other pics of glaciers too (for some reason there were a lot of Taku Glacier) and a $20 book on climbing McKinley but didn't want to go overboard cause I only had like $42 and didn't want to write a check cause I don't have much money in the bank. We couldn't stay too long cause Becky had stuff to do at work (probably a good thing..I need money for food too :P). Somehow I stayed on budget haha..it came out to $41 something! Nicee

So Charlene has been staying at the house since Sunday or Monday. Apparently she was kicked out of her house and has no money. Ryan said she's gonna stay till September. Uh..this might be weird/awkward :/

( black rapids glacier! )