I'm working as a Fish Culturist at Hidden Falls Salmon Hatchery in a remote spot near Sitka, Alaska! AM I CRAZY!? I'm starting to think so...

Thursday, March 22, 2007

SNACK EXPLOSION... CLEAN UP... ROOM 3

HEH Alright, I'm just gonna jump right into this before talking about work stuff.

I have received 6 BOXES this week..... 6! That's outrageously funny. I got 4 just today... Angie came into the kitchen and was like "Is it your birthday!?" heh nope... A box from Melissa, Stacey, 2 from Grandma Moser, Mom, and Hannah. Let me just say... I HAVE ALOT OF SNACKS! Allow me to give you a quick list I compiled... really, it's quite funny...

- 6 boxes of Nature Valley granola bars (not including the 2 I have downstairs!) plus a box of a diff. kind of granola bars... (Let me just say, I love them all, but those Sweet & Salty ones are AMAZING! I got 3 boxes of them... I was rejoicing!)

- 3 boxes of cupcakes plus 3 of the 2 pack Hostess cupcakes...

- 2 boxes of Fudge Rounds

- 2 boxes of Nutty Bars

- 2 things of Peeps

- 2 packages of Nutter Butter cookies (1 is a bag and 1 is a smaller pack)

- 7 BAGS OF JOLLY RANCHERS in flavors I didn't even know they had!

- Atleast 10 things of Ramen Noodles... I can't remember...

- Lots of random crazy hilarious stuff from Hannah

- Assorted other stuff like M&Ms, Mini Peanut Butter cups, 3 huge tootsie rolls, jelly beans, twizzlers, life savers, peppermint patties

OUT... OF... CONTROL!! There's no way that stuff will fit downstairs in my one cabinet so I'll be slowly replenishing my downstairs stock... if I don't eat it all upstairs first! heh THANK YOU everyone for sending stuff. If anyone else is planning on sending anything, feel free to hold off for a few... months? ha ha As I was putting my groceries away today, I was thinking, "MAN, I shouldn't have ordered this..." because I shoulda known snacks and stuff were coming. Oh well...

Anyhow, so on to the past 2 days. Well yesterday was the 1st day of spring and Mother Nature decided "alright... I'll give you some spring for god sakes!" and instead of a day of snow, it was a day of rain. And Scott, bless his fabulous heart, decided to give us the afternoon off! He called it a "rain day." So I spent the afternoon doing NOTHING... playing on my computer in my room. I even had the window opened in there for a bit! *GASP* Last night I was watching some tv kind of late but there really wasn't anything on so I flipped to the XM radio channels on the tv... they just play music with a blank screen. And I found THE BEST COUNTRY station! It was playing very brand new music... stuff I haven't even heard... I was so happy. So I sat there and read to some great country music! :-D

Today.... *I drop to my knees and fan my arms at Mother Nature*... WHAT A GORGEOUS MORNING! GAH... the sun was out... it had stopped raining... FABULOUS I TELL YA! I just kept grinning to myself thinking "MAN, this is why I came to Alaska!" as see a bald eagle land in a pine tree and I feel the warmth of the sun! I was down to one layer because it felt so warm! I morted some of the round ponds and then we fed them all morning. Meanwhile, the plane came in. I've decided that as much as I love the sound of the plane coming in, there's something about the sound of it taking off that's really cool. It's sort of cool to watch too.

Anyhow, this afternoon, though the sun went away, it stayed sort of nice for a while. At 3:30, Angie said it was 41 degrees. I fed the fish in the back and then helped Angie in the little incubator room do some stuff that was kind of interesting, though it meant I had to dip my fingers in 3 degree water! Not just dip, but hold them there for a little while. There are a few incubators there like the ones that we just ponded, but I think the fish are Coho... They only started to hatch 3 weeks ago and some of the eggs aren't even hatched yet. Anyhow, so in those incubators, they put a screen in that sits over the substrate that I talked about before. They put the eggs on that screen and when the babies hatch, they fall down through that screen and hang out in the substrate. But there were some bad eggs still on the screens and we had to get those out and just take the screen out period. Though it was cold at some points, it was kind of interesting because I didn't realize that was how they did it. Actually, I don't know if they DO do it that way for all those Chum we ponded... because alot of the substrate was clumped up by bad eggs. Whatever... HA

So that was the day. Now it's raining again. But tomorrow we have a day off for a "holiday."

William Henry Seward (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

As Secretary of State, he fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska which he finally negotiated to acquire from Russia for $7,200,000 on March 30, 1867. He had claimed that the United States must move westward. This translated into approximately 2 cents per acre ($4.94 per km²) for 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km²) of territory, more than twice the size of Texas. The purchase of this frontier land ("Sewards Icebox") was mocked as "Sewards Folly" and Andrew Johnsons "polar bear garden".

Currently, Alaska celebrates the purchase on Sewards Day, the last Monday of March.

Yeah, so technically the holiday is Monday but we are going to start ponding the Takatz chum on Monday. THAT means, I'll be heading out to Takatz pretty soon... probably next week. My schedule will be... (not necessarily THIS week but once things get going)

Sun. & Mon. - At Takatz with Adam
Tues. & Wed. - Still at Takatz, but with Dean
Thurs. - Back at Hidden Falls to work (just in time for Grey's Anatomy!)
Fri. & Sat. - OFF

Really, out at Takatz, all we are doing is feeding the fish, so we'll have alot of downtime. Sound be interesting. Anyhow, this was a LONG one... Thanks for stickin with me! :-D

SHOUT OUTS OF THE DAY - Grandma Moser, Mom, and Hannah! For the gifts! THAAAAANNNNKKKKSSSS!!! Oh Hannah, thanks for the things to keep me pretty for the fish! The hair ties and rain bonnet! Always lookin out for me! HA HA

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Atta Girl! You sound today like if you moved a few thousand miles north you couldn't be any more on top of the world that you sound like today! Life is good, huh? At least better. Love, DAD