2007

Thanks to all of you who keep e-mailing me and reminding me that I’m way behind with my Blog. It’s nice to know you want to catch up. Once again, this year I’ve neglected to write often and now I find myself trying to catch up at the end of the year.

In January, I enrolled in an online HR class to study for the senior level HR certification test that I thought I would try to take in June. The class met once a week online from January through April. I didn’t take the exam in June because of the additional hours I was putting in at work, but more about that below.

In February, I officially got older !

Last day of March my brother, Rob, arrived. The company he worked for in California had declining work. He was driving all over the San Francisco Bay Area to do kitchen refacing and gas prices were rising while work declined. He gave notice to his job and the place he rented and moved to Anchorage. In April, he started working for VECO, the same company where I work. He works for the Construction group at remote locations in Alaska so he works rotational assignments in camp locations. That means the jobsite provides “a hot and a cot.” He gets a room, sometimes shared, and all meals provided. He works about 12 hours a day, goes to sleep and gets up and does it all again. The first time he was out for about 6 weeks and he was home for about 2 weeks. The next time he was out for about 8 weeks and then home for a few weeks. He’s hardly been ‘home’ here in Anchorage, but he’s been able to save up some money and since he was broke when he got here, his primary goal for this year was to work and save up some money.

Again this spring, the geese returned and I think the same 2 geese as last year made my back yard their home. I have what I call a bog behind my house, and the geeze love it because it's got little ponds for them. Last year Ken named my 2 geese "Do Little" and "Do Less." I'm looking forward to them again next spring.

In May, Ken and I took a long weekend trip to Homer. Long long ago, when I worked at Bechtel I knew some employees who were working in Alaska and they showed me pictures of Homer. And Homer has been on my list of places to see ever since. It is stunningly beautiful there. We were there before the tourists arrived for the summer. It was still a bit cool and not all of the summer shops were open but they were in the process of being unlocked and cleaned out in preparation for the summer. We stayed at Lands End Resort and had a great weekend. There were bald eagles landing right at the water’s edge to eat fish with people walking a few feet away from them. Took a 2-hour small boat tour (the boat captain and the 2 of us) around the area. Also drove all around town and up into the housing areas with great views overlooking all the mountains.

In May, we learned that VECO, where my brother and I work, would be sold. VECO was a family-owned private engineering/construction company, and here in Alaska it’s a pretty good-sized company. CH2M HILL is a Denver based company that has been around for a long time and is employee-owned. They were expanding into the Energy market, so they wanted the company and all the employees. Overall, it was a really good match with VECO. The due diligence started and I was working way more hours than I wanted to, but it was all very interesting. The sale closed in September, and now I’m a CH2M HILL employee. Except for a small corporate group, all of us are basically in our same jobs doing the same work we did before the sale. With all the work changes I’ve done, this was my first experience at being “acquired.”

In June, we rented a small RV, and I finally got a chance to see a bit of Alaska. It was still a bit early for the majority of tourists to hit the state, and we didn’t have any trouble at all finding RV parks nor did we find crowds anywhere. At the start, we drove to Whittier, which is slightly south of Anchorage, and caught a fast ferry to Valdez. The fast ferry is a catamaran style ship that can do 40-plus knots and only took three hours to get to Valdez. Normally it takes eight hours on the un-fast ferry. It was a very nice ship and a great ride. We spent the night in Valdez, and the next day headed to Tok. From there we went on up to Chena Hot Springs near Fairbanks, then down to Fairbanks where we had our most memorable moment of the trip.

We were stopped at a red light and were rear ended by a ditzy 20-something woman who was flirting with some boys in the median strip and not paying attention to the road. Our RV suffered almost no damage, thanks to our well-placed spare tire on the back bumper. The pickup that hit us, however, suffered some serious damage that collapsed the whole front grill including the radiator. No one was hurt and the police were called and found the woman did not even have a license and this was the second time she crashed her boyfriend’s truck. How nice! Not to mention that the insurance card she gave to the police was bogus and so far the process server hasn’t been able to find her so it’s doubtful that we’ll be able to collect $500 from here that we can’t collect from insurance.

After this minor distraction, we headed for Denali Park and spent two nights there. We managed to get a bus going into the park and took an eight-hour tour of the mountain. We saw a few sheep, and a couple of bears sleeping, but nothing up close and personal. The scenery is well worth the trip. Coming back to Anchorage, we ran into some heavy smoke from wildfires in the valley. We decided if the smoke wasn't too bad, we would stop and spend one more night in the RV just North of Wasilla. Overall, it was a pleasant trip, and we learned a lot about RVing and saw a lot of real nice RV's.

Jan Vreim, Donna Matonis and her friend Annette Reed visited in July. Jan flew up from South Dakota while Donna and Annette had been on an Alaskan cruise first and then stayed on at my house. They did some sightseeing while I worked, but we did take a one-day floatplane on a day trip to Redoubt Bay to view bears eating salmon in the streams. It was a rather cold overcast day at Redoubt Bay, so we didn’t see as many bears as we’d hoped. It was my first view of what is called “combat” fishing. A lot of small boats full of people “parked” in rows in the water near the shore fishing for salmon. They were blocking and preventing us from getting very close to the bears coming to the shore to fish, and a couple of the boats were so close I thought a bear would simply walk onto the boat and get some of their salmon ! The floatplane trip was really neat though.

My first halibut-fishing trip in Alaska took place in July. Gary Hunt and Bob Arquilla, two of the CH2M HILL HR guys from Denver, were in town. We got up about 2:30am and drove to Seward. It was a beautiful clear sunny day, though a bit cool. We went out on a small 6 person boat all day fishing for halibut and cod, had dinner in Seward and drove back to Anchorage. I’ll spare you to part about how I had to use the port-a-potty below deck and how I can’t go below deck without getting seasick. And poor Bob is fine as long as the boat is moving, but when the boat stops Bob turns a pretty horrible shade of green, and he was green all day while we were out there. It takes a couple of hours by boat to get out to where the halibut are, so once you are out there, you are out there all day. While we had dinner, our fish were vacuum packed. We brought ice chests, packed all the fish in the ice chests with ice, and headed home. After dinner and getting our fish, we were about 30 minutes outside Seward when Gary and Bob’s rental car got a flat tire. Bob called AAA and we had someone from Seward come change the tire. This delayed us and we got back to Anchorage late. There had been a fatal motorcycle accident between Girdwood and Anchorage and the traffic was still backed up bumper to bumper by the time we got to Girdwood at about midnight. We got back to Gary and Bob’s hotel about 2:00am. Ken picked me up there, and I was one tired fisherwoman I tell you !

In September, I had my house painted. Not a big deal really, but I had the trim color changed and I really like it. I was fortunate and had it painted while the weather was good.

In October, I received my first PFD check from the State of Alaska. I had to be a resident for a full calendar year before being eligible. Since I moved to Alaska in July 2005, that meant I wasn't eligible until I'd lived here the entire 2006 calendar year. The PFD for 2006 pays out in October 2007. Here’s a bit of a history lesson that explains what the PFD is:

Alaska Permanent Fund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Alaska Permanent Fund is a constitutionally established Fund, managed by a semi-independent corporation, established by Alaska in 1976. Shortly after the oil from Alaska’s North Slope began flowing to market through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, the Permanent Fund was created by an amendment to the constitution of the U.S. state of Alaska to be an investment for at least 25% of proceeds from some minerals [such as oil and gas] sale or royalties. The Fund does not include property taxes either on oil company property nor income tax from oil corporations, so the minimum 25% deposit is really more like 11% if those sources were also considered. The Alaska Permanent Fund sets aside a share certain oil revenues to continue benefiting current and all future generations of Alaskans. Many citizens also believed that the legislature too quickly and too inefficiently spent the $900 million bonus the state got in 1969 after leasing out the oil fields. This belief spurred a desire to put some oil revenues out of direct political control.

The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation manages the assets of both the Permanent Fund and other state investments, but spending Fund income is up to the Legislature. The Corporation is to manage for maximum prudent return, and not--as some Alaskans at first wanted--as a development bank for in-state projects. The Fund grew from an initial investment of $734,000 in 1977 to the current sum of approximately forty billion dollars as of July 13, 2007. Some growth was due to good management, some to inflationary re-investment, and some via legislative decisions to deposit extra income during boom years. Each year, the fund's realized earnings are split between inflation-proofing, operating expenses, and the annual Permanent Fund Dividend.

In November, Ken and I started thinking about the various holiday craft shows we wanted to attend. There are quite a few different events at the schools and churches in town in addition to one at the Sullivan Arena and also the Egan Convention Center in town. We enjoy going to a few of them but neither of us are big shoppers. There are some amazing photography and craft items made in Alaska, and it’s always fun to see what’s new.

In November after Thanksgiving I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for a few days for a CH2M HILL training class. I worked at the University of Michigan from June 1971 to August 1974 after I graduated from Milan High School which is about 20 miles away from Ann Arbor. It was a quick trip, and when I got back to Anchorage the first week of December, Ken and I took a week off. Except for an occasional day off here and there all year, I worked and by November, I was exhausted and I needed some rest.

For Christmas we’ll get a 4-day weekend and we’re planning on taking it easy and just enjoying the time off.

Looking ahead to January, I’ll be taking a trip to Denver with some of the people in my HR Department to work on some of the 2008 transition issues and to meet with various HR and other people in the Denver office.

I’m looking forward to the trip and I’m hoping for lots of sunshine since December and January are the darkest months in Alaska. I have a bit of a hard time with the darkness. Most people look at December 22 as the beginning of winter. Not me. It’s really the beginning of spring, I think, because the days start getting longer. By the end of January, I can tell there’s more daylight and I begin to snap out of the winter slump. I’m planning on stopping to see my 91-year old aunt in Soap Lake, Washington on my way back to Anchorage after the meetings in Denver.

Ken and I (and Little Bit who is 16 years old now) wish you Happy Holidays and all the best for 2008. And yes, I will try to do better about keeping this Blog current !