I finally got my desktop computer back from HP, which is so much nicer than I could hope to express. I was having a lot of trouble trying to keep up using my laptop, since I did not want to abuse the poor little thing too much. My mom had bought that for me so when I went to Vegas on that business trip last year, so it would have seriously broken my heart to burn it out trying to keep up with everything I do during a work day. Which means I had let a lot of things slide as I waited for HP to get my desktop repaired and back to me.
The savings grace on the desktop was that HP paid for everything, even though it was no longer under warranty. I could never have afforded even shipping for that, so I am extremely grateful to them for getting my computer fixed and back to me. Now I can get back to work and hopefully start getting something saved up toward saving my parents house from getting foreclosed on if something happens to my dad one day.
It seems kind of silly, me wanting to stay in this cold state, but Alaska is my home, has been for… well… I guess it has always been my home, even the few times I was out in the lower 48. That was not often. So… what is it about this state that drew me and my parents to want to call it home? I don’t know. It… it’s special. When you stand out in the cold with the snow all around you and look up at the curtain of lights high above you, a soft sound of millions of tiny crystal bells filling the air as though the aurora itself were creating the soft tinkling sound of crystal – a sound so pure and magical in its very nature that it touches your soul and leaves its song etched in your heart for the rest of your life… When you watch a child pull in a fish larger than he is, smiling with pride as he holds it up, tail dragging the ground… watching one of your nephews catch their first salmon and forever getting hooked himself on the lure of fishing… Fireweed in bloom across the side of Hatcher Pass… Wild Iris covering the fields of the highway driving into Anchorage… a simple garden that while it never quite turns out how you wanted it to is each year marked by vibrant colors of nasturtiums and pansies and other assorted flowers that date back into your childhood… a small glitter of color in the bottom of a pan, striking a fever in your soul not for riches, but for a treasure hunt that will bring far greater treasure from the searching than you could ever find in the finding…
Alaska is a truly magical place where the sight of a mountain, raising high on the horizon, brings to mind the same feelings one gets as the sight of an eagle soaring free and proud through the sky.
I may one day be forced to leave Alaska, but Alaska will never leave my heart.
