I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. - Mae West

Beach ride! (T taking action shots!)

Seems Nome heard me talking all kinds of smack about her online and has changed her weather tune a bit! That's actually only like half true, but you know what? I'll take it.  It was 80 Monday and everyone here was basically melting.  It was absolutely OUTSTANDING.

So let's see since we last chatted I have seen a through and through self-inflicted (or the luckiest sneeze gun accident ever) .22 gun shot wound.. this was highly unremarkable. No bones hits, no organs hit, just a little soft tissue damage (I sound like such a sadist... I know.).  I've seen what happens when an ATV hits a front loader and someone is inside the ATV (cooler than the GSW).  We have had new babies born in town (not in the ER.. thankfully... the only time I will be delivering a baby is if it's in an airplane 30000ft in the air, or it's the apocalypse.). Seems there is a solid stomach bug going around town, lots of booze related health problems. Oh and I got to go to the ER myself... as a quasi-patient.  And my boss is expecting me to completely redo out community medical emergency plan... Hey Todd.. you know I'm a new grad with 2 months of experience right?  I know how to stop any more of these big plans from happening.  I will bombard him with questions and exciting new ideas, that in the grand scheme of things are totally ridiculous (glow in the dark triage tags... come on Todd it's dark here 50% of the year!).  I also see a large game of Risk being played where the goal is to save the monkeys from the mass casualty incident.. I shall use Todd's desk for this. It will basically be an epic monkey battle but this time lives are at stake.  Perfect. (Pictures of this will follow when it happens in the next few weeks.)

Side note: One of the best conversations I have ever had in this ER to date:
Me (Loitering in the triage area and approached by a gentleman): How are you doing today?
Guy: I need to see a doctor
Me: What's going on?
Guy: I need antibiotics.
Me: What happened?
Guy: I may have loved a woman that is not clean
Me: You can just write "personal" in the the "reason why you are here box"
(Me in secret talk in my head: Welcome to Nome!)

Animal remains on the beach

So anyways. Lets talk about my days off from work! My friend, we will call him T for now, from Anchorage came out for the weekend and we were lucky enough to borrow an ATV from a buddy of mine at the hospital. The weather sunned up and got nice and warm!  So the two of us set out on an epic beach ride adventure west of town.  We went about 15 miles down the beach and then got the novel idea to see if Sara and Dirtrude could do a doughnut..... When I wear a helmet I find that I am soooooooo  much more likely to do something stupid than when I don't... Because hey! I'm wearing a helmet! So needless to say a wonderful re-teaching moment in physics happened; too much throttle, not enough leaning and too much turn... Dirtrude ended the wrong way up and I was able to make a jump for it, courtesy of all the training on horses and learning to bail on skis.  It sounds far more dramatic than it was. I was up on my feet super fast and the only thing wounded was my ego and my thumb.  It's not broken (this was my quasi-patient status) only pretty bruised. I still can't give a full force high-five though, this saddens me greatly.  Dirtrude just has a little body damage, nothing some zip-ties can't stitch back together.

Crossing Cripple Creek! (Thanks again T!!)

Pretty much half the ER gang!

So Monday after work a whole crew of us took our 4-wheelers to the top of Anvil mountain and watched a herd of musk ox wander around, then we rode down to Dredge #5 on the tundra, and that little extra excursion to the dredge led to an awesome mud ride. Dirtrude lived up to her name for sure! It was so nice spending time with work friends outside of work.  I find that this trip was needed by lots of people in the group.  A nice way to get out of town, without getting on a plane.

We sure are a motley crew.  A gang of ATV riders

Carolyn and I at the base of Dredge #5

 Today I will be hitting the gym, the post office (Christmas!!), painting my toe nails some rad color, and then at 9pm the crew is headed back to do a little mud running and go explore the dredge in more depth since none of us have to work Thursday :)  And we may as well utilize 24 hours of daylight.  The plan is take go up to the top of Anvil at midnight and get a good picture of the midnight sun. Hopefully Nome will cooperate with the weather... it's looking good. Perhaps more pictures to come tomorrow of this adventure!

I am doing okay.  Nome has it's ups and downs. The ups are pretty sweet; while the downs are pretty low.  One day they will hopefully level out a little more.  Until then I'm just livin by the seat of my pants.  My heart smiles when I see my friends having fun and having wonderful surprises like my friend Danielle in Denver.  Never has a girl been more deserving of a surprise bachelorette party.  I've been getting sweet snail mail from Lindy-Loo and Adrienne my whiskey sister.  I love getting all the invitations to baby showers and weddings.  Even though I know I won't be able to make it to all of them, or even most of them, I love knowing that my friends keep me in their minds when happy times and even sad times happen in their lives.. no matter how many miles are between us.  Marissa I love you and keep your head up! At least you don't live in Nome ;) sometimes it's just the silver linings in life that keep us going.  My friend Jesse told me that sometimes her and her boyfriend will take time out of their days, especially the worst of the worst days, and say out loud to one another three things they are grateful for.  Some of the silver linings from the terrible days are along the lines of "I'm eating this bag of M&Ms, and I am thankful that I bought them in Anchorage and not Nome", or "I'm thankful for not having two twisted ankles".  So today I am thankful for sunshine (all 24 hour of it), My incredible co-workers that take adventure trips with me in the night to help my soul laugh as I help theirs laugh too, my wonderful friend T, and my most amazing family that is behind me 100% of the time even when I'm following my most craziest of dreams. I will try to make this a habit in my posts. This could be entertaining...

Lovelies it's time to start this day. I will try to be better at updating more than once every 10 days! Yipes!