We arrived here on December 23rd. We left for SFO a little later than we had intended, and there were no spaces in the regular long term parking lot. We ended up in the overflow lot in the rain, worried that we’d miss our flight. When we arrived at the ticket line, it was moving pretty slowly, and we were still worried that we might miss our flight. Nevertheless, Sara asked a ticket agent a couple of times, and he reassured us that we would make it. We breezed through security.
The flight was easy. Between the four of us, we had five iPhones, three of which have no number. The kids kept themselves occupied with screens the whole way to Alaska.
For the adults in my family, we didn’t do a lot of presents for Christmas, but we did exchange stocking presents. For my Mom, we bought a bottle of Champagne, and I got a bottle of wine for Sara. My sister, my brother-in-law, and my Dad all got bottles of Scotch.
For Christmas, my sister made Alaskan Syrian food. My mother’s side of my family is Syrian-American. Alaskan Syrian food is sort of like regular Syrian food, but instead of lamb, it’s made with caribou or salmon. We had caribou kibbee, caribou roz and yukhnee, and salmon fatayer. We also had regular taleme bread.
On Christmas Day, I went running around my sister’s Douglas neighborhood wearing ice gripper overshoes, and I think that might be how I hurt my lower back. For a few days, it was hard to get up, and my lower back hurt, just above my hip. I joked that I was experiencing “butthurt.”
Yesterday and the day before, Juneau was a winter wonderland. I went cross country skiing at Eaglecrest ski area on Douglas Island. While I was skiing, my children and their cousins took downhill skiing and snowboarding lessons. The cross country skiing was great: the snow was better than any snow I’ve experienced in upstate New York, where my parents live, in recent years.
Today it’s above freezing, and it’s raining here in Douglas. The snow that fell in the past few days is turning into a yucky mess. It’s surprising to me that it’s so warm here in Alaska. We get about 6 and a half hours of sunlight every day, so out of necessity, people go out and do daytime things here even when it’s dark.
When it was a winter wonderland, I thought I might want to live in Alaska, but now that it’s soggy and gross, I think I’m happy to keep living in California.