Ideas, Plans, Mountains and Moose

Hello everyone,

On my way home from work last night it was sunny for the first time all week so I wanted to get outside. I had not walked around this lake since it was still covered in snow and ice last winter. I get annoyed it is so hard to get anywhere to just sit and enjoy the sun since we don't have much yard now and we live near the largest city in Alaska so there are poeple everywhere. I can't complain if I can take a drive to a place like this though. I don't ever get any direct sun at this lake since the sunny side (in evening) is all swampy and you can't really walk around it. But the upside it you get great photos looking back to the sunny side! The mountains and clouds were very dramatic! This was about 10:00 last night.

I saw a rainbow, a porcupine and a moose on the drive back too.

I have been considering writing and self publishing books (which I have heard is very easy with platforms like Amazon now). I know a number of people here on WA who do it. I think it would be pretty easy to promote my books on my websites if I went that route though you don't need to if they are really good I guess once some momentum gets started.

I want to dive into this but it is summer in Alaska and as always I am swamped with things to do! I will have to put that project off until this winter. For now I will add some content to my websites and focus on everything else I need to tackle. We have a vacancy to fill and there is a local program asking if we will consider taking in homeless poeple which is big problem. During Covid they opened a mass shelter but that just got shut down. Now there is a large park area they turned into a camping location for them but it has already had a death, an officer involved shooting and 5 bears killed as they are attracted to the smells of food in people's tents. We would love to help but of courese that gets tricky. We have not gone that route before and need to make sure we are making smart choices. That is for the building we manage downtown that is always a problem.

Our building here in Eeagle River will probably have a vacancy this fall as well. Our tenant is getting out of the Navy and going to help her parents in Arizona. We will miss our friend and co-pet sitter! Another of our tenants is getting out of the National Guard so we don't know if he is leaving as well. We have had every branch of the military in our building (Navy, Army, Air Force, National Guard and even the Coast Gaurd. My husband was in the Marine Corps. We are quite the crew of red, white and blue around here!

The other building we manage is very different and so much more work. One group owed us 6 months rent (they were supposed to be getting more Covid money and didn't) and then just up and dissapeared overnight. There was an eviction moratoreum last year so you could not get rid of people and some took advantage of all this. We have actually never evicted anyone but this group was going to be the first as they were buying new cars while not paying the rent.

Our regular jobs for the Alaska Dept. of Transportation and the Alaska Dept. of Natural Resouces keep us busy too. And then of course there are the four fur kids and our boy's surgery to have his kidney removed for cancer next week!

I am glad I can dream and plan and stay motivated. I definitly want to get outside more however while summer is here. I go out in the winter too but it is certainly harder when it is cold and the days are super short here. We have 5 hours of light instead of the 20 in summer. So new projects will have to wait until winter!!

I hope you are all doing well in WA land!

Jessica