People, places, things, and ideas I love in Anchorage, AK
I recently visited the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center for the first time. I’ve always driven by and thought it was just for visitors who hadn’t yet gotten to see a moose. Boy was I wrong – it was so cool!
Continue reading “Random Facts I Learned at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center”
One of my places to linger this summer is the commons at the Anchorage museum.
I paid close attention to the redesign, and loved the ideas for the common space (designed by Charles Anderson) – I remember that at one point it had a water feature that was supposed to turn into a skating rink during the winter, but it must have been dropped at some point, probably due to practicality or budget. As it is, the large grassy expanse where the water would have been is a wonderful place to play or relax.
A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I watched the F-22s perform at the air show.
Top Gun was one of the first movies to make a big impression on me as a child (I wanted to be like Charlie when I grew up – that leather jacket! big blond hair! cooler than all the boys! – and ride on the back of Maverick’s motorcycle; I used to think that “Take My Breath Away” was the most romantic song EVER, and I still love “Danger Zone”; and I absolutely practiced the super cool high-five low-five action from the beach volleyball scene and dreamed of being serenaded with a Righteous Brother’s song) and even though I was way more into the plot than the planes, pilots will be forever cool in my mind, especially if they wear aviators.
Second Run is having a sale, and it’s great! I fell in love with multiple home furnishings, including a pair of Tiffany style lamps, and art deco brass and glass coffee table, some oil landscapes, a little dog named Gizmo, and multiple gold framed mirrors. But this crazy dragon stole my heart. It used to grace a restaurant, but now it’s for sale at Second Run. I long for this dragon to come home with me – it would be so cool in a dim corner of a house, lurking to startle unsuspecting guests, or even better, paired with some sort of over the top, glitzy glam vanity/dressing room.
A few years ago, I traveled to Seattle for a friend’s wedding, and had an awakening. I’d never paid much attention to peonies before, but that weekend, they were everywhere: beautifying the bridal bouquet (you can see them if you click the link and scroll through the photos), artfully arranged (so that they looked perfectly un-arranged) in a vase in the guest bathroom of the home where I was staying, and spilling over fences in neighborhood gardens around Green Lake. Suddenly, it seemed peonies were everywhere, in home decor, clothing, poems, and strangely enough, in Alaska.