Fall and ICP (No, I haven't lost my mind)

So summer camp ending on Friday, which means fall is rapidly approaching. Unlike in most places that get a few weeks of summer weather after school starts, Alaska pretty much heads right into fall mid-August. But fall in Alaska is pretty great (even if it only lasts a few weeks.) Here are the top 10 things I like about fall

1. Leaves - The birch trees turn bright yellow and the fireweed turns bright red, it's beautiful

2. Wood burning stoves - A lot of people heat their houses with wood burning stoves so once fall rolls around it smells like a campfire outside
3. Abundance of fall scented candles - pumpkin spice, apple cinnamon, harvest cornucopia of home-y smells (I might have made that last one up...)
4. Sweater weather - Okay, I wore sweaters pretty much all summer too, but it just feels better in the fall

Evidence of summer time sweater weather

5. Crisp air
6. AK State Fair - Beard contest, moose calling contest, giant vegetables, tractor pulls, demolition derbies, etc etc etc. What's not to love?

7. School supplies - Even if I don't need them, I still like wandering the aisles at Target
8. Pumpkin spice coffee
9. Pumpkin bread
10. Okay, all things pumpkin...

 I haven't suddenly developed a horrible taste is music, it will all make sense, I promise. This week's hot jam was inspired by this article, a ridiculous news story from my hometown newspaper. The hot jam is Miracles by Insane Clown Posse. No, I'm not an ICP fan, but Miracles is the most ridiculous song in the history of the world and it's so bad it's good. It could have easily been written for Saturday Night Live (in fact they did a spoof) but no, it was legitimately written and produced by ICP.

NSFW due to language

Four Seasons and George Jones

I'm once again at a place in my life where I can decide to go pretty much wherever I want. (Assuming that someone will actually hire me, but that is one of my least favorite topics, so it certainly doesn't belong here.) In my search for a job, location is of the utmost importance to me. I've come up with a pretty good list of requirements, one of the which is having four seasons. (Other things on the list include: fireflies, thunderstorms, and relatively close proximity to a major airport.)

It's been a few years since I've lived somewhere with textbook seasons. You know, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, red/orange/yellow leaves in the fall, and rain and tulips in the spring. I like the balance of the seasons; as a reward for a surviving a cold and snowy winter, you get a hot and sunny summer. It all evens out. Here in Anchorage we have two seasons winter and not winter; dark and light, which has a balance of its own, I guess, but it's just not quite the same. For example, it's May 4th; it's raining, which is spring-y, but it's also 35 degrees, which is not.

This week's hot jam is He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones. Generally, I wouldn't consider a song this melancholy to be a hot jam, but I do love it. Released in 1980, it was George's first #1 song in six years, and it's often considered the greatest country music song of all time, although I'm not so sure about that. How do you judge such a thing? But it does have its own website (http://www.hestoppedlovinghertoday.com/) so that must count for something. Also I love any song that has talking in the middle.



Fun fact about George Jones: His alcoholism is/was well known, and apparently one time his wife got mad at him for being drunk all the time so she hid the car keys and left. The liquor store/bar was 8 miles away and she knew he wouldn't walk that far. Fueled by alcohol withdrawals and a stubborn streak, George rode the lawn mower all the way there.