it's all about timing

i saw all those cruise ship tourists wandering around last week, having spent thousands of dollars on their flight and floating hotel and extra tours, and i was happy to know my mom and little sister were getting such a great alaskan experience for way less. we took them boating on this beautiful sunny day and spotted 20 whales - a few of them being close enough to scare my mom a little - and a porpoise. we picnicked on homemade mango salsa and chicken pad thai in the middle of the channel, absorbing beautiful scenery. we cavorted around shelter island, exploring tidepools and collecting things for eliza to show her friends back home. they saw herbert and mendenhall glaciers, walked around the shrine of st. therese & perseverance trail, and rode up the mt. roberts tram. we spotted 2 bears - a mama and her cub - 50 yards away while taking a short walk behind my house. my sister got baby ducks to feed from her hands and even her head (p got naughty and sprinkled cornbread in her hair and told her to lie down). we saw waterfalls and mining museums. we ate sushi, king crab, salmon, & halibut galore. we drank bubble tea and ate fudge. my mom shopped at our freezer and took home over 30 lbs. of wild alaskan king salmon and halibut for the cost of a wax container. my sister played with gullies and hermit crabs and sea cucumbers at the touch tank in the aquarium and learned how to cast at family fishing day at twin lakes. they sure picked the right 4 days to be in juneau, and then they took the good weather with them. it's overcast skies and rain for poor j, p's friend, who's visiting from dry heat new mexico.

less than 2 weeks until ja to the maica!

More Reunion Pictures

These get bigger if you click on them. But I mean, they get REALLY big.

City of Angels

I had a family reunion in LA this past weekend; over 100 relatives showed up!

Seafood extravaganza: I had lunch with my aunt and uncle from Hayward at this place on the Redondo Beach wharf area. We ordered: two lobsters, clams, oysters, conch, sea urchin, smoked fish, two loaves of bread, a Corona 40, and shrimp/octopus ceviche. It was awesome.

The reunion was a blast. We danced to campy music all night, one of my uncles disco'ed like there was no tomorrow, and my mom boogied to "It's Electric!" My little sister sang the national anthem of the Philippines, "Bayang Magiliw", and it made my grandmother tear up. Another cousin-in-law is a ballerina and did a dance for my grandma, and she started tearing up doing it. I looked around at my family and felt so proud and so happy to be with these people, and it was such a beautiful evening, and I want all my days to be spent with family close at hand. Although my grandma kept asking me in frustration, "Why Alaska???"

Early Sunday morning, after the party and clubbing with my cousin and before the 5a.m. cab ride to the airport, I was alone on a hotel balcony thinking about this city where I dreaded coming just a few days before. This city and I have a history together. This was the place where I had given up a perfect scripted life for one of failures and pain and yet of small miracles and joy. (the good fight? i fought it. the solution i sought it. mistaking illusion for solid.) I felt like after 5 years, we could now come to closure, so we had a little chat, Los Angeles and I.

"I treated you badly, I know, and I'm sorry for that.""Yeah, it's okay. I said a lot of hurtful things about you for a long time."
"No worries... You're a good person."
"Thanks. You're not such a bad city yourself."
"Well, take care you. Don't go breaking too many hearts."
"You too. Those girls who like you are a fragile lot."

And then we kissed the long day goodbye.

Free Willy!

Thinking about: "Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough." ~J.W.

My sister, her husband, & I went whale-watching at Auke Bay yesterday and had an amazing time. The boat driver's name was "Captain Larry" and he smelled like a week's accumulation of bad tobacco and no showers. Because they picked me up half an hour late, we were the last to board and had the only available seating left: right behind Stinky McStinksalot. My sister and I invariably wound up spending most of the time on the outside decks while my brother-in-law obliviously stayed inside.

So the tour guide began by talking a bit about the wildlife and differences between humpbacks and orcas. For example, did you know that orcas in the wild live up to 90 years old whereas orcas in captivity live less than 10?? It's all fun and games until precious sea mammals die 80 years younger.

The guide told there's only about a 15% chance of seeing orcas on any given day, but then we ended up seeing like 6 of them so I'm wondering if he gives this shpiel all the time so tourists get giddy and overtip when they do show. Regardless, it was incredible to see them. They even got pretty close to the boat. Of course, what everyone on these things really want is to see the whales do something amazing like breach the water and do flips as if such behavior were common and natural because Sea World spoiled us when we were 7. And I'll tell you when they ARE most likely to do something like that: the moment your eye muscles start quivering from staring at your digital camera too long waiting for said event so finally you close your eyes for a moment, relax your hands and let the camera drop to the side. Then bam! The whales just performed a quickly executed Roy Rogers dance number and by the time you get your camera perfectly focused and zoomed to take the picture, all you catch is a little bit of their tail as they dive back beneath the surface. So yeah. That's my story of why I'm about to have 10 photographs of tails in various underwater-return.

Caterpillars and Missed Flights and Whales, Oh my!

We had a table set up for Mendenmall's Back-to-School Event today from 10-2, and we drew very low interest--mostly (in my opinion) because right across from us was a blow-up giant caterpillar playland for kids. You can fill out boring paperwork... or jump in this!!! We didn't stand a chance.
I was really excited to wake up to today since my sister and her husband are arriving. But then she calls me, and they had missed their flight from Seattle to Juneau so instead of seeing her for dinner, they won't even arrive until 10p.m. Shucks.
That's okay since the 3 of us are booked for a whale-watching tour tomorrow! I've been really excited about it for over a month now, but then I read this crazy "whale of a tale"! Which, besides sorta freaking me out, serves to remind me how very, very far away from Cincinnati I am, where the closest thing to a beach is the polluted Ohio River, and the nearest thing to a killer whale might be the mutated catfish who get angry when you swim in their toxic watering hole.