Pelagic What????

Yeah, I know. It took me a while to figure out the concept. I knew you were going to wonder what the heck it means. Its sort of a nonsensical title with an actual meaning behind it. Is that even possible?

Even after deciding that we were going to start blogging, we were held up for a couple weeks debating titles, anticipating that the web address and the title of the page would be the same. Every time I threw an idea out, I was shot down and I have say I wasn't too keen on many of John's suggestions. In the end, I became impatient and made an executive decision. The web address is mine, the title is his. I would argue that my cleverly designed address requires no explanation. But the question remains... what the heck does the title mean?!!

Per Wikipedia, the end all be all destination for those seeking wisdom, pelagic is described in the following manner... Any water in the sea that is not close to the bottom is in the pelagic zone. The word pelagic comes from the Greek πέλαγος or pélagos, which means open sea.

Prawnicles is an amalgamation of the words prawn, as in big shrimpies, and chronicles, as in stories or tales (or a historical account of facts and events in chronological order according to good ol' Wikipedia).

You can take it from there. I think I'm already in trouble for revealing this much.

But don't let the title fool you (or worry you as the case may be)... not all of our tales will be set on the open sea nor will they all be about harvesting the ocean's bounty. I'm sure there will be a bit of hockey thrown in on occasion to keep things interesting - probably sooner than later.

Fun in the Sun

When I first moved to Juneau, the only people I knew were my family - my Uncle Mike, Aunt Nancy and my cousins, Christa, Carrie, Chad and Craig. I had only seen them a handful of times growing up so I didn't really even know them that well. It didn't take me long to fit in and even though I was in Juneau for a summer job with the Forest Service, I spent all my free time with my family. Gradually I became friends with some of my cousins' friends. After leaving town for the winter, I came back to Juneau and worked for Christa at Gray Line. I met new friends there, but as with all summer jobs, after the summer ends everyone goes their own way. I had no idea what to do next, so I got a job for the City Engineering Department. I was a clerk/receptionist but John likes to tell people I was his secretary. Yeah, I love it when he tells people that. Before long, we were dating and I got to know his friends and they soon became my friends too. And then, came the hockey rink...

If I thought that John was at the rink a lot before it opened, I was obviously not prepared for what would happen after the ice was in. I like to tell people that I started playing hockey because it was the only way I could see John. Little did I know that I would eventually end up spending as much, if not more, time at the rink than him.

So what the heck am I getting at? Well, Juneau is a tough place to live. There are lots of great people, but it can be tough to break into a group. It wasn't until I started playing hockey that I finally found my group. Until that time my friends were Carrie's friends or Gray Line friends or John's friends. Now I have my own friends and they're a terrific bunch!

Last year I convinced about a dozen of them to join me for a ladies-only overnight out the road (out the road - that's a technical term in most SE AK towns. Really!) at the Shrine of St. Therese. Owned by the Catholic Diocese of Juneau, the Shrine sits right on the shores of Lynn Canal with several cabins available for rent. We had a great evening of laughs, great food, a little bit of wine and tons of fun. The following morning we packed up our things and headed out for some cross country skiing.

Needless to say, it was way too much fun to be a one time event. The hardest part of planning the second annual Ladies Night at the Shrine was finding a Friday night where we weren't all playing hockey (and it had to be a Friday because on Saturday nights most of us play a pick up game). Once again, we had an amazing time. I can't remember the last time I laughed until I cried! The skiing was spectacular as the sun finally decided to grace us with its presence. There is already talk of the 3rd annual. Gives me a reason to look forward to next winter.

view from the Shrine when we arrived Friday evening

Eagle Beach

The gang

And So It Begins....

A month or so ago, John made the suggestion that "we" should start a blog so our friends and family can see what we're up to. It didn't take long to figure out exactly who that "we" was meant to be. So here we go....

Its been a busy fall and winter for us. To kick off a wicked traveling streak, I spent 2 1/2 amazing weeks with my family in Europe for my little sister's wedding. We spent one week in Spain, a few hours north of Barcelona, followed by a week outside of Munich, just in time for the final week of Oktoberfest.

view from our villa in Spain

view from our condo in Germany

We took advantage of a long weekend about 2 weeks after I got back from Europe to fly down to Seattle and spend a few days on Whidbey Island. We stayed at a B&B, played golf at a cute little 9 hole course where it didn't matter that my technique is hideous, went wine tasting and even caught a minor league hockey game.


Not long after, I flew up to Anchorage for work on a Monday morning then flew back to Juneau late Tuesday night, only to hop back on about 5 hours later heading for Zihuatenejo, Mexico. On the way we overnighted in LA where we spent the evening with my Uncle T and cousin Lauren. We don't see them nearly enough, so that was a huge bonus. We had 10 awesome days in Zihua and, unexpectedly, overlapped with some Juneau friends which only made it that much better. Somehow, on our return, we flew into and out of LA and then Seattle without incident while thousands of other passengers were stranded due to cancelled flights and bad weather.

view from our hotel room in Zihua

We made it home in time for Christmas in Juneau before splitting up - John to Tenakee for some last minute deer hunting, and me to Spokane to visit family. My trip to Spokane was a bit special in that my cousin, Ryan, his wife and two daughters were there to visit as well. I haven't seen Ryan and Vicki since their wedding 7+ years ago and this was my first chance to meet their adorable little girls. Again, family we don't see as often as we'd like. I guess this blog is one way we're hoping to keep in better touch with everyone.

We weren't back in Juneau for more than two weeks before we flew back south - this time to Orlando to meet up with John's parents for a week. We had a terrific time even if we did bring the daily high temps down from the 70's to the low 50's while we were there. I think there were a lot of citrus farmers and vacationers who were happy to see us leave.


So I mentioned that John went deer hunting in Tenakee. Sometimes I wonder how much hunting really takes place on these trips, but I can't argue that its good for him to get away with his buddies every once in a while. Tenakee is a pretty cool boardwalk community located on Chichagof Island, between Juneau and Sitka. The guys have been making a couple trips over each fall and have been lucky enough to have use of a friend's cabin while they're there. Recently, our good friends Andrew and Judy bought a cabin in Tenakee. I can just see where this is going....


After all our travel in the past few months, I'm feeling a little guilty about being gone from my new job so often and John's been grounded by his boss. You can just see the wheels turning in his mind though. Tenakee has WiFi, and if he can get online access to work, maybe he can work from Tenakee when he's there so it doesn't seem like he's gone as often. The missing piece of the puzzle was the computer with WiFi. For the past 8 years we've had our trusty Dell desktop. We knew it was outdated and lacking storage space, and a couple weeks ago I finally broke down and checked out the stats. 256 MB of Ram and 60 GB Hard Drive. Yikes!

Needless to say, we decided that a new computer was not a bad idea. In order to network with his work set up, John was limited to Windows XP as his operating system. Because Microsoft is pushing their Vista system, they are only allowing XP to be put on little netbook laptops. Even then, the options are few. In the end, John selected the Acer Aspire One, an 8.9 inch little guy with 1 GB Ram and 160 GB harddrive, plus WiFi and, much to John's delight, a multi card reader that makes downloading photos from our cameras so much quicker. It took me about a week of watching John sit in his recliner while surfing the web to decide that perhaps I needed my own mini computer. So now we each have our own. A little silly, but fun and liberating all the same.

So now we're geared up and ready to share tales of our adventures, even if they are close to home for the time being. Stay tuned... this is just the beginning.