BUSH DIARY MAY 1998:
May 3: Back from trip to Juneau. The trip went well except for the jet departing Barrow was four hours late. Had to rebook my connection to Juneau. Got there about 10 pm and fell into bed.
Skipped Wednesday's workshop but did go into take pictures with my snazzy new Sony camera. Then I played tourista and walked about downtown where everything is very close and well within walking distance. The big mall is out on Glacier highway and I didn't have a car so I skipped that portion. Right next door to the venue was the Alaska Museum. Great stuff there.
I snagged a Iiadro angel ornament in a duty free shop! So cute. I got to ride the Mt. Roberts tram. They opened it just for the medical records group as it is not open for another couple of weeks when the ship board tourists start flooding into town. Ate at a placed called Second Course and I ordered and enjoyed halibut with mango sauce. Fabulous!.
One of the vendors demonstrated Dragon Naturally Speaking. Impressive. I also discovered that a digital camera HAS TO BE HELD STILL just like a regular camera to get a clear picture....duh.
I have been working on an unofficial web page for the state medical record group. I will see how well that works. AHIMA wants all of the states to participate in their web presence and that is a terrific idea given the wide range of concerns at the national level.
5-14: Funny but true story. At coffee break the subject of dogs came up. One of the maintenance guys owns a golden retriever with hip dysplasia. He is contemplating taking the dog out of Barrow for a canine hip replacement.
Someone asked casually, "So how good of a retriever is she?"
"My dog found a hundred bucks!"
"No, you're kidding!"
"Yep, I let her out to go take a pee and she came back with a hundred bucks in her mouth; a fifty, two twenties and a ten!"
That struck us all as hysterically funny and we laughed ourselves silly. The fact that the dog retrieved that amount of money is not all that strange. I myself had stood in line at Arctic Coast grocery and watched a kid sent to pick up a couple of things hand over a 100 dollar bill. The clerk got a little distracted when he laid down the bill on the counter and she gasped "Oh no, I can't break another hundred!" The kid looked up at me and said that "No that was the only hundred" he had. Good boy!!
I may have mentioned the lobby redecorating project a few posts back? About six months ago the hospital completed refurbishing all of the exam rooms in the outpatient department. One of the decisions was to go with wall mounted cabinetry, cupboards, writing area etc. Well....I made a private bet with myself that those would not last very long. I win!! Yesterday someone went postal and COMPLETELY tore down the wall mounted wall units in addition to trashing the whole room.
That incident brings us to yet again, the wet/damp/dry situation in Barrow. There is a petition going around to put the local option question on a borough wide basis. The City of Barrow currently has a local damp option. The Borough will put the question to a vote, if the committee filing the petition can scare up over 800 valid registered voters. If it passed that means the borough will go dry but we are not too sure how that will effect the damp option now in force within city limits. This could keep a barrage of lawyers very busy.
MISSING ELDER: A couple of weeks ago it was announced on KBRW that Daniel Okomailuk, 77, was missing. He had driven his snow machine to his cabin to do some subsistence hunting and had not yet returned. Search and Rescue sent out crews when the weather was good enough as it had been very foggy.
A couple villages near his cabin sent out ground crews. We all thought the elder gentleman was a goner. The search went on for eight days, finally on day NINE, a plane spotted him about 100 miles south of Barrow. He was on foot. He was about 20 miles from Atqasuk. He had been walking about ten miles each day after his snow machine burned up. He had been drinking melted snow, but had no food.
So they brought him into the hospital very quickly. He allowed as how he was a little stiff and sore from walking using his CANE!!. He was hospitalized and his diet was carefully advanced. He knew where he was going, so he just kept walking. Oh my goodness.
5-25: Attended the soft opening of the new AC store. It is located here in the suburbs a couple blocks away from me. The new store has a deli, a bakery, meat department, soft goods and a food court. The court is not yet open but will have a sub sandwich shop, Mexican food, pizza shop and a cinnamon bun shop. Ooh! Everyone was impressed and kept saying, "Wow! It looks like Fairbanks...until you go outside."
5-28: Had a little excitement in hospital quarters. One of the nurses went out for the evening but left something cooking on the stove top. Monica heard the alarm go off and it went on so long that she decided she better get dressed. She stuck her head out in the hallway and could smell something burning. They got evacuated about the time the Fire Engine arrived. The nurse was understandably upset and has been dodging the obvious question,
"Hey what's for supper??"
5-31: Got a jury duty notice and I am up for June, July and August. Oy.
Book report: I just finished reading "Tacos On The Tundra". It is a biography of Fran Tate who owns Pepe's North Of The Border. She is quite an interesting woman.
The book was written by Lynn Kidder, our SSMH lab tech. She is brilliant and a would often play Scrabble with me while I was doing Friday evening computer back up. Her husband Frederick, has a background in French cuisine and wound up working at Pepe's. He thought that Lynn should do Fran's biography. And so it went.
Their publishing company is Bonapart Books. It is named after their black Lab retriever. Bonapart would often attend parties in full on costume.
Fran Tate's background is fascinating. She grew up dirt poor in a Swiss German family and learned to work hard at an early age. A chance remark from a boy she liked in high school sent her on a career path as an engineer. Which is how she wound up working for one of the big oil companies in the late 60's on the North Slope.
She worked for the oil company until they wanted to send her somewhere else. She liked it in Barrow so much that she decided to stay and eventually wound up opening Pepe's.
Her first effort was the Teriyaki House. It was shipped up. Fran had wanted a big name franchise but McDonald's was not interested. At first there was a drive through window but it was so high up that they had to construct a dirt ramp and it was still so high above the cars that the food had to be lowered in a basket from the drive through window.
As it turned out the cooking crew was only checking in and out and not working much. Fran had to declare bankruptcy over that effort. I think the whole fiasco was blamed on husband number four.
Pepe's North of the Border is a featured destination for the Japanese tour groups who come through. She grew up speaking Japanese where she lived close to the part of town where the Japanese lived.
She had good friend who were shipped off to internment camps in WWII and she was the only blond headed blue eyed kid bawling her eyes out when the train took her friends away.
Her other businesses in Barrow have been Elephant Pot Sewage and Inupiat Water (not the same truck). I see the green water truck all of the time. The borough has honey bucket trucks. Thank goodness.
Time to put everything to bed. G'night folks.
May 3: Back from trip to Juneau. The trip went well except for the jet departing Barrow was four hours late. Had to rebook my connection to Juneau. Got there about 10 pm and fell into bed.
Skipped Wednesday's workshop but did go into take pictures with my snazzy new Sony camera. Then I played tourista and walked about downtown where everything is very close and well within walking distance. The big mall is out on Glacier highway and I didn't have a car so I skipped that portion. Right next door to the venue was the Alaska Museum. Great stuff there.
I snagged a Iiadro angel ornament in a duty free shop! So cute. I got to ride the Mt. Roberts tram. They opened it just for the medical records group as it is not open for another couple of weeks when the ship board tourists start flooding into town. Ate at a placed called Second Course and I ordered and enjoyed halibut with mango sauce. Fabulous!.
One of the vendors demonstrated Dragon Naturally Speaking. Impressive. I also discovered that a digital camera HAS TO BE HELD STILL just like a regular camera to get a clear picture....duh.
I have been working on an unofficial web page for the state medical record group. I will see how well that works. AHIMA wants all of the states to participate in their web presence and that is a terrific idea given the wide range of concerns at the national level.
5-14: Funny but true story. At coffee break the subject of dogs came up. One of the maintenance guys owns a golden retriever with hip dysplasia. He is contemplating taking the dog out of Barrow for a canine hip replacement.
Someone asked casually, "So how good of a retriever is she?"
"My dog found a hundred bucks!"
"No, you're kidding!"
"Yep, I let her out to go take a pee and she came back with a hundred bucks in her mouth; a fifty, two twenties and a ten!"
That struck us all as hysterically funny and we laughed ourselves silly. The fact that the dog retrieved that amount of money is not all that strange. I myself had stood in line at Arctic Coast grocery and watched a kid sent to pick up a couple of things hand over a 100 dollar bill. The clerk got a little distracted when he laid down the bill on the counter and she gasped "Oh no, I can't break another hundred!" The kid looked up at me and said that "No that was the only hundred" he had. Good boy!!
I may have mentioned the lobby redecorating project a few posts back? About six months ago the hospital completed refurbishing all of the exam rooms in the outpatient department. One of the decisions was to go with wall mounted cabinetry, cupboards, writing area etc. Well....I made a private bet with myself that those would not last very long. I win!! Yesterday someone went postal and COMPLETELY tore down the wall mounted wall units in addition to trashing the whole room.
That incident brings us to yet again, the wet/damp/dry situation in Barrow. There is a petition going around to put the local option question on a borough wide basis. The City of Barrow currently has a local damp option. The Borough will put the question to a vote, if the committee filing the petition can scare up over 800 valid registered voters. If it passed that means the borough will go dry but we are not too sure how that will effect the damp option now in force within city limits. This could keep a barrage of lawyers very busy.
MISSING ELDER: A couple of weeks ago it was announced on KBRW that Daniel Okomailuk, 77, was missing. He had driven his snow machine to his cabin to do some subsistence hunting and had not yet returned. Search and Rescue sent out crews when the weather was good enough as it had been very foggy.
A couple villages near his cabin sent out ground crews. We all thought the elder gentleman was a goner. The search went on for eight days, finally on day NINE, a plane spotted him about 100 miles south of Barrow. He was on foot. He was about 20 miles from Atqasuk. He had been walking about ten miles each day after his snow machine burned up. He had been drinking melted snow, but had no food.
So they brought him into the hospital very quickly. He allowed as how he was a little stiff and sore from walking using his CANE!!. He was hospitalized and his diet was carefully advanced. He knew where he was going, so he just kept walking. Oh my goodness.
5-25: Attended the soft opening of the new AC store. It is located here in the suburbs a couple blocks away from me. The new store has a deli, a bakery, meat department, soft goods and a food court. The court is not yet open but will have a sub sandwich shop, Mexican food, pizza shop and a cinnamon bun shop. Ooh! Everyone was impressed and kept saying, "Wow! It looks like Fairbanks...until you go outside."
5-28: Had a little excitement in hospital quarters. One of the nurses went out for the evening but left something cooking on the stove top. Monica heard the alarm go off and it went on so long that she decided she better get dressed. She stuck her head out in the hallway and could smell something burning. They got evacuated about the time the Fire Engine arrived. The nurse was understandably upset and has been dodging the obvious question,
"Hey what's for supper??"
5-31: Got a jury duty notice and I am up for June, July and August. Oy.
Book report: I just finished reading "Tacos On The Tundra". It is a biography of Fran Tate who owns Pepe's North Of The Border. She is quite an interesting woman.
The book was written by Lynn Kidder, our SSMH lab tech. She is brilliant and a would often play Scrabble with me while I was doing Friday evening computer back up. Her husband Frederick, has a background in French cuisine and wound up working at Pepe's. He thought that Lynn should do Fran's biography. And so it went.
Their publishing company is Bonapart Books. It is named after their black Lab retriever. Bonapart would often attend parties in full on costume.
Fran Tate's background is fascinating. She grew up dirt poor in a Swiss German family and learned to work hard at an early age. A chance remark from a boy she liked in high school sent her on a career path as an engineer. Which is how she wound up working for one of the big oil companies in the late 60's on the North Slope.
She worked for the oil company until they wanted to send her somewhere else. She liked it in Barrow so much that she decided to stay and eventually wound up opening Pepe's.
Her first effort was the Teriyaki House. It was shipped up. Fran had wanted a big name franchise but McDonald's was not interested. At first there was a drive through window but it was so high up that they had to construct a dirt ramp and it was still so high above the cars that the food had to be lowered in a basket from the drive through window.
As it turned out the cooking crew was only checking in and out and not working much. Fran had to declare bankruptcy over that effort. I think the whole fiasco was blamed on husband number four.
Pepe's North of the Border is a featured destination for the Japanese tour groups who come through. She grew up speaking Japanese where she lived close to the part of town where the Japanese lived.
She had good friend who were shipped off to internment camps in WWII and she was the only blond headed blue eyed kid bawling her eyes out when the train took her friends away.
Her other businesses in Barrow have been Elephant Pot Sewage and Inupiat Water (not the same truck). I see the green water truck all of the time. The borough has honey bucket trucks. Thank goodness.
Time to put everything to bed. G'night folks.
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