I’m sipping coffee and typing on my Mac in the Ann Stevens room in the strangely luxurious and well-appointed public library in Anchorage. Well, maybe not so strange – I’d want me a good library too, if I were going to spend three months every year in darkness. Ann Stevens was the wife of US Senator Ted Stevens, he of the famous pork-bringing talents (look at this year’s transportation appropriations bill, if you don’t believe me). It’s all dark wood and Oriental rugs on blonde wooden floors – a little bit of east coast way out in the west.

Looking outside, I can see mountains to the east, and people in shorts and t-shirts eating ice cream outside, despite the fact that it’s 62 degrees outside and cloudy. It’s been raining for a week now, including last weekend in Kenai. I guess rainy season has started. It feels like we had exactly one month of reasonably warm weather – mid-June to mid-July – and now it’s going to rain until it snows, basically. Ugh.

The days are definitely getting shorter too – the sun now goes down around 11 pm, and the nights (all five hours of it) are darker. Hence, better sleep for the hk – I slept 10 hours straight last night because the weak light of the cloudy sky only got strong enough around 11 am to wake me up – but also sadness, because as that German tourist said on Flattop on the solstice: “Now we are losing light.”

I think I love Alaska. It’s probably partly due to the rapidly approaching end of the summer (I stop working on Aug. 12), but I keep looking at things around town and thinking how much I like living here, with the easily accessible trails and the manageable traffic and the general politeness of the people and the colorful characters and the moose crossing the road and the mud flats right next to the trail I run on and the lagoon with its myriad birds and flowers and green life so close to the house.

I haven’t liked my job all that much, but I’ve collected a good number of interesting stories from the frontlines of poverty lawyering, both about the clients and the lawyers I worked with. I got to hear about rural Alaskan life from my co-intern. I learned I hate legal research. It was pretty humbling to find out that I’m no good at it either, and that I probably didn’t measure up to my predecessor.

It was even interesting living with Roommate, who is younger than me. I’m not used to being the older one. Even most of my friends are: 1. older than I am, and 2. elder siblings. It was a good experience to be the one who makes decisions about things.

Enough ruminating, though. I still have at least two weeks here! – and more, if I can’t get a seat on a flight to Korea. Quick updates on various things: The night after I sadly bade my dad farewell, Junebug and her friend came into town, to stay with me for anight before setting off on their kayaking trip. Her friend is a kayaking instructor, as well as several other people on the trip, and they planned and set up this trip amongst themselves, which I find almost unutterably cool. Junebug and her friend have taken several awesome nature/adventure-type trips to various places, which I hope to emulate (maybe with Double M).

Because of these multiple trips, they have oodles of cool gear, accumulated through the years: packs and sleeping bags and paddings and bottles and boots and cool neoprene thises and awesome synthetic thats. I had lust in my heart, I admit. But I also think I’m not nature girl enough to buy these things. Yet. Which I confirmed when I went to the local REI store just before coming to the library, where Roommate is planning to buy a pack and sleeping bag for her big camping/hiking extravaganza at the end of the summer. (She’s exploring her Nature Girl side this summer too.) I felt overwhelmed, though, at all the Stuff you could get there, and all the ratings and shit. A sleeping bag to 25 degrees F or 15? The 60 liter pack or the 70 liter? The breathable waterproof activewear shell or the more humble nylon raingear? I feel like I’m in over my head.

Junebug and her friend (over my protests) got me a gift certificate to REI, which I should apply to a big ticket item like a pack, which I actually need for carting some of my stuff back to Crimson City, or a synthetic sleeping bag, which would be useful for life, but the big ticket items are so goddam pricey and scary, I fear I will chicken out and buy a non-threatening fleece and waterproof shell instead.

Part of the chickening out (and what is it with chickens anyway? Are they really less courageous than other birds?) is price-related, but it’s also a bit of principle thing – I mean, $199 for a “breathable, waterproof” shell with fancy technology that lets the sweat out but doesn’t let the rain in? I remember reading somewhere that old-timers laughed at this fancy-pants stuff, because you know, the humble rubber boot and plastic macintosh has gotten “outdoorsmen” like fishers through inclement weather for years and years, and it don’t cost a week’s salary.

But. I do admit that the lime green breathable, waterproof activewear shell with the fancy-pants technology that lets the sweat out but doesn’t let the rain in inspired lust in my heart. I want.

I saw a movie last night with Roommate that made me want something else – namely, to bash some heads. I’d heard good things about “Wedding Crashers,” and I admit that Vince Vaughn has some really good moments in there, but mostly I felt the same way about the movie as I did about “Sideways”: men of America, please GROW UP, and movie-goers and women of America, please stop enabling this infantile behavior. I really disliked "Sideways" because the protagonist was such a mealy-mouthed, spineless, immature wanker, in whom someone cool like Virginia Madsen’s character could not truly be interested. The best character in that movie was Sandra Oh (a sista – awww yeeeeaahh), and the best part of the movie was when she takes her motorcycle helmet and bashes that other wanker’s nose in. Straight up, girl.

"Wedding Crashers" was much less Serious Art House Movie and much more Let Boys Be Boys Until They Find That One Girl And Become All Woebegone and Sodden With Love, and like I said, it had some seriously funny moments in it. But again, the main character was so self-centered and immature, I couldn’t root for him. And in the end, he gets rewarded with Rachel McAdams (whom I totally did not recognize, despite seeing “Mean Girls” just 6 weeks ago)? Who, incidentally, also has zero spine and character, unless you consider laughing about a familial resemblance to Klingons to be some sort of character definition. Ugh, ugh, ugh. The whole movie set my teeth on edge. I couldn’t see any difference between the casually racist and immature blueblood fiancé (“get that wop investigator”) and the casually racist and immature protagonists (“it was my first Asian!”). You know you’re in trouble when you dislike the good guys as much as the baddies.

Anyhoo. Enough haranguing. I gotta go find some fun books to read.