birds, flowers, governors

This is the third time I've tried updating - maybe it'll be the charm. Some computer glitch would allow me to get partway done, then shut down my IE. Hopefully I've been able to fix that.

It's been a busy month and summer has been flying by. I can't belive the fair starts in less than two weeks!

I've caught a number of weekend baseball games (weeknight games keep me up too late) and enjoyed watching my favorite game. It's so nice to sit in the seats with friends nearby and enjoy the sun and breeze, a hot dog and a good game of baseball. I did miss the games Friday and Saturday because of the smoke that drifted in from wildfires. That's taken some of the enjoyment out of a lot of outdoor activities. It smells nasty, puts a haze on the city and is bad for my asthma.

I don't let it destroy my pleasure in summer though. I've made some drives through the city to my favorite places. One Saturday morning I took the long way home from the grocery store. The sky was a bright, cloudless blue; the temperature was a lovely 60 degrees with a small breeze. I reveled in the cool air blowing in the open windows, the blue sky and the vivid reds, yellows, oranges and blues of flowers planted all over town. Set against the emerald green of the trees and grass it was a perfect drive.

Last week one evening my friend Mae and I stopped at a local drive-in for foot-long hot dogs, then went to Creamer's Field to watch the sandhill cranes. There were two groups - one in a dirt clearing in the field, the other in the tall grass. Soon after we arrived the group in the grass started moving as one to the clearing. Mae and I wondered if they sensed a predator in the grass, but they didn't appear to be alarmed. It was a slow stroll out of the grass. The two groups merged into one, with some occasional posturing by the younger cranes.

After we left Creamer's we stopped off at Wedgewood Resort, a popular lodging for summer visitors. For our money, Wedgewood has the nicest flowers of any other Fairbanks business. It rivals the Georgeson Botanical Garden for gorgeous blooms and we ensure we visit it at least once every summer.

Whoever does their landscaping and planting is certainly a flower genius. These are a couple of my favorites this year.

We'll be heading out today to watch our friend Dan in the barbecue competition, and will probably stay to watch the zoo at the swearing-in of our new governor, Sean Parnell. I'm still not convinced I want to do that, but my friends do, so there I'll be. I'm not looking forward to the crowd and I am not a fan of national media representatives. Having worked with some of them, I find them rude and egotistical with very little exception. I enjoy working with our local reporters and editors, but those national guys are a bit too cutthroat for my liking. However, since I won't be working with them today, I'll sit back and watch the show.

Happy Sunday. Hopefully the smoke will drift off and give us a few days of nice clear days.