A magical realism book: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Mar 31-Apr 5). I wasn't expecting glaciers in this book!

A book about forgetting: What Rose Forgot by Nevada Barr (Apr 5-8). Another great book by her! The main character was so funny lol

A book that's published in 2021: An Extravagant Death by Charles Finch (Apr 10-13)

A book set mostly or entirely outdoors: Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan (Apr 14-18). I saw his story on I Shouldn't Be Alive as well..amazing endurance he had!

A book featuring three generations: Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada (Apr 18-21). This book was WEIRD..like a human had sex with a polar bear, and one of the polar bears wanted to be married to his keeper, and then wondered what it would be like to have sex with a seal. Just..WTF??

A book whose title starts with "Q," "X," or "Z": Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang (Apr 22-27). Entertaining and horrifying, and made me wonder how humans have survived this long :P (one of the "cures" for a headache was to press a hot iron to your forehead, which usually ripped the skin off. Pretty sure that would just make it worse LOL. I'll stay with Excedrin :P)

An Afrofuturist book: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Apr 28)

A book in a different format than what you normally read (audiobooks, ebooks, graphic novels): The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse (ebook) by Alan Bradley (Apr 29). Way too short!! Flavia is one of my favorite literary characters, she's so funny and sassy :P

( the topics )

The Tanana River at Nenana broke up at 12:50 PM yesterday! My guess was at 2 something..at least I got the right day :P

May 1. Has a random person ever asked you for your phone number? Yeah, guys on the street I pass..yeah, that would be a NO lol. I wish they would just leave me alone!

A novel based on a real person: Had We Lived: After Captain Scott by Richard Jopling (March 26-April 1). Yay, a novel about Cherry! <3

A book with characters who are twins: Changelings by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (April 2-6)

A book set at sea: The Karluk's Last Voyage: An Epic of Death and Survival in the Arctic by Robert A. Bartlett (April 6-10)

A book about or involving a sport: Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox (April 11-18). I can't believe she went swimming at places like Glacier Bay and Antarctica..that's the LAST thing I want to do when I go to places like that lol..brr!!

A book made into a movie you’ve already seen: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (April 18-22)

A book recommended by someone else taking the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (April 22-28). Good thing there's a group on Goodreads dedicated to the challenge..it made this topic much easier lol. I'd been wanting to read this one, and was excited when I saw that someone recommended it..I didn't like the ending, but the rest was pretty good

( all the challenge topics )

In the Heart of the Sea was CRAZY. Why? Here's a list lol
Most of the people on the ship were greenhorns (newbies)..awesome, let's go whale hunting! Haha

Their ship almost sunk in a crazy storm, damaging a couple of important whaleboats

One guy went ashore at the island they were at and decided to start a fire for a prank or to be funny or something..but there was a drought, and he ended up burning down THE ENTIRE ISLAND!!! These sentences are burned into my brain: "When they weighed anchor the next morning, Charles remained an inferno. That night, after a day of sailing west along the equator, they could still see it burning against the horizon." Wow. Hundreds of animals died, and it's believed the fire led to the extinction of the Floreana Island tortoise. That's..wow. That guy must have felt so guilty D:

A huge whale rams and sinks their boat, and the men drift around the ocean for a couple months..their boats were attacked TWICE more, once by a shark and once by an orca. They refused to sail the "short" way to islands that they thought were inhabited by cannibals. The island they did land at was a coral atoll, where the only fresh water was a spring that was under water most of the time, and they quickly ate the island's animals. They also found skeletons of previous people that were shipwrecked there. Still they refused to sail to the islands that would have helped them...which led them to become cannibals themselves after their food ran out (ironic situation was ironic). They actually killed one guy (the one who drew the short stick) so they'd have something to eat. Wow. A ship eventually found the survivors gnawing on the bones of their shipmates. That's one crazy story!!

The Tanana River officially went out at 1:18 today! My last guess was yesterday..it had been so warm I thought it would have gone out sooner! It's been cooler the last few days though..yesterday and today I woke up to snow!! Go home weather, you're drunk. :P The tripod tipped over yesterday, but didn't stop the clock. There was a lady live streaming the tripod on Facebook last night and today..she was like "you guys know you're watching me watch ice melt?" LOL. She was filming when a bunch of ice snagged on the rope connected to the tripod, which was enough to stop the clock. She was totally freaking out haha..she was like "I GOT IT ON VIDEO!!! I WAS THERE!!" haha. I hope she does it next year, it was fun to watch lol

( april 28-may 1 )

Today's trivia: JFK donated his $150,000 presidential salary to charity

Today mom and I drove to Nenana (about an hour away) to see the tripod on the river for the Nenana Ice Classic before the river breaks up (it would have been cool to see it break up, but that would take some crazy luck lol). The watchman said he thought there was a day or two to go before it broke up. I have two guesses for today, tomorrow, and one for Tuesday, so hopefully it'll break up then haha. I love this game :P

This morning Denise called me in tears saying Becky's son Keith got high and then trashed the bookstore early this morning. He's been having issues, but I was still shocked to hear what he did..he knocked over bookshelves, tore down the camera wires from the ceiling so the camera couldn't record him (which luckily failed, they have a video of him. He was crawling on the thin pipes by the ceiling to get to the wires!), threw books everywhere, smashed plant pots and a glass cabinet, destroyed the water cooler, etc. Amazingly enough, someone was riding by on their bike and heard a crash, and called the police when he saw what was going on. Keith had barricaded himself in, but opened the door when he saw the police and said everything was fine because he worked there (WTF). The police eventually got rid of the barricade and Tased Keith, but it still took three officers to get him down and handcuff him. Wow. Becky's out of town, so that makes it even worse for her. As bad at it was though, it could have been worse..the sprinkler system didn't go off (he could have set it off since he was crawling around up there) and he didn't set anything on fire, which would have been a total loss in either case. There's a lot of clean up to do, but we can rebuild and replace what was damaged (as Cherry's friend Wilson said, "things must improve"). Mom and I stopped by after we got back from Nenana..a lot had been cleaned up already, but the pics Denise showed me were awful and sad..why would he want to destroy our awesome bookstore?? I hope he gets some help..wow (he's in jail right now, and definitely not allowed at the bookstore anymore). We will rebuild!!!

( some pics of the tripod )

( pics for april 29 and 30 )

1. When you were seventeen, how did you spend most of your Saturdays? Probably by going online, laundry and maybe doing homework lol
2. What was your high school locker like? I don't know, I never used it :P
3. When did you last have to replace a missing screw? *shrugs*
4. What was the last thing you drank out of a Thermos? Water?
5. Do you still possess anything you created in high school (say, an elephant lamp that lights up when you pull the trunk)? Just like random projects and stuff..

The Tanana River at Nenana officially went out at 2:25 PM today! It was weird though, the tripod had been leaning over the last few days, and last night it fell completely and went downriver some, but not far enough to stop the clock..apparently the tripod has to go 100 feet downstream for the wire to trip the clock. We'd been obsessively checking the webcam at work haha, it was amusing. :P I think my guess was around 2:47..aw, so close!! I think that's the closest my guess has been to the actual time..crazy haha

( 26. Promote a blog that makes you happy )

FAIRBANKS — The pie that is the $363,627 Nenana Ice Classic jackpot is getting cut into smaller slices every day.

As of Monday morning, there were at least 24 tickets that had this year’s winning time — 3:48 p.m. Alaska Standard Time on April 25 — in Alaska’s richest guessing game, and there likely will be more. Workers still had thousands of tickets to sort through, Ice Classic manager Cherrie Forness said.

Wow, lots of good guessers haha. Kinda annoying having to share it with others I would think haha. Still better than nothing though :P

Marjorie said the person who lives below me will probably get evicted next week. She always has guys and drunks and who knows what over at her apartment. I tell her to be quiet and like 10 minutes later she's loud again. Yesterday she said she was sick and asked me for some wine. Ummm..I don't think that'll help lol. I feel kinda bad for her (especially since she's in a wheelchair) but she doesn't seem very considerate..

( Day 25- Your Favorite Large Animal )

Today's trivia: The largest swimming pool in the world is at the Chilean resort of San Alfonso del Mar. It's 0.629 mi long, 115 ft deep, covers 20 acres and holds 66 million gallons of water. It uses a computer-controlled suction and filtration system to suck water in from the ocean at one end and pump it out at the other

It's time again for the Nenana Ice Classic! They put up the tripod this weekend. I bought my tickets yesterday..here are my guesses:

Apr 17, 4:35 PM
Apr 18, 11:02 AM
Apr 19, 12:47 PM
Apr 20, 9:58 AM
Apr 20, 1:22 PM
Apr 22, 6:19 PM
Apr 24, 3:52 PM
Apr 29, 2:17 PM

I did some kinda early guesses, but this winter has been pretty warm. I hope I'm not too early haha

( Day 30: Five things you can’t live without )

Would you rather carry a 70 pound backpack for 10 miles or a 30 pound briefcase for ten miles? Hmm..maybe the backpack

Today's trivia: Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests, was invented in 1965 by Stephanie Kwolek, a researcher for the DuPont Company

FAIRBANKS - Tom Waters did it again and this time he doesn’t have to share the prize with anyone.

The 55-year-old Fairbanks man won the Nenana Ice Classic for an unprecedented third time it was announced on Tuesday, more than a week after the Tanana River ice at Nenana went out.

The Ice Classic received almost 280,000 guesses for this year’s contest and Waters was the only one who correctly guessed the ice would go out on April 23 at 7:39 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, giving him sole possession of the record $350,000 jackpot in Alaska’s richest guessing game.

Waters wasn’t surprised when Nenana Ice Classic manager Cherrie Forness called him Tuesday to tell him he was a winner. He contacted Ice Classic officials last week because he knew he held a winning ticket.

What did surprise him, however, is that he was the lone winner.
( winnar )

Wow..that guy is super serious about winning haha. 29 hours to fill out his tickets..that's so crazy haha

Would you rather run a half marathon in wooden shoes or bike two hundred miles with no seat, just the post sticking up? Bike..I'd find something soft haha

Today's trivia: Reading an average Chinese newspaper requires the knowledge of 7,000 Chinese characters

Ooo..they now have a webcam pointed at the Ice Classic tripod in Nenana! (http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/) It'll be exciting to watch it when the river breaks up haha

Last night I dreamed I was riding on a moose..kaaay then :P

( Day 61 - School class picture )

Would you rather meet your greatest hero and vomit on them or in trying to meet them, be arrested and publicly accused of stalking? Vomit on them..

Today's trivia: At room temperature, the average air molecule travels at the speed of a rifle bullet

The Tanana River officially broke up yesterday at 4:24 PM! There are *22* winners!! Woww haha. The website lists where the winning tickets were bought..some were from Fairbanks!

I go to San Diego tomorrow! I'll have Internet when I'm there..hopefully there will be good weather flying down. Yaaay haha

( abby climbs into a drawer.. )

FAIRBANKS — The jackpot for the Nenana Ice Classic will be a record $338,062. Now, it’s just a matter of time before a winner — or winners, as is usually the case — is decided

How the jackpot will be divided remains to be seen. The ice on the Tanana River at Nenana was measured on Monday and it was still 39 inches thick. The river is frozen solid from bank to bank, Forness said.

“There’s water on top of the ice but it’s all snowmelt,” she said. “There’s no holes or anything yet.”

Forness predicted it will be “a week and a half anyway” before the ice goes out

I better win. ;) Haha

( Day 42 - A picture of you listening to music )

Would you rather live on the planet Neptune or on Venus? Venus..with lots of air conditioning haha

Today's trivia: Sloths give birth upside down (slowly)