I'm still here.

Despite the fact that I have not blogged in several months (since last September, to be exact), I am still here.

In no particular order:

I switched jobs, moving from a law firm to the corporate side. Overall this has been a great change, but has meant more work than I could have believed.

My dad had a serious brain injury and I subsequently took some time off work to deal with the consequences of this. I am almost at the end of this time and still have not completely digested the implications of this.

I am quickly approaching my 30th birthday. This has been both overwhelming and underwhelming, as I have achieved most of what I would have liked to accomplish by 30, if I were the sort to maintain such a list (which I do not).

There are a ton of people who have supported me through this, starting with my family, my friends, and the people I work with. I wish I could thank them enough, but probably can't express it in words, so thanks in fish will have to suffice.


But I digress. I have seriously thought about starting an Anchorage food blog, because there is a dearth of actual writing about the food scene in town, but I don't think I have the time or the energy to do so properly. I have thought about giving up poker, thought about giving up on a lot of things, but keep chugging along.

My search for ways to improve myself continues (or at least motivation to stick with the ways I do know). I will try to blog once or twice every week.

Heading Outside - LA

So I am going outside (for those of you not from Alaska, "outside" means outside of Alaska, which is Alaskan slang for one of those places that no one has ever heard of in the lower 48, unless it is mildly cool (like Ann Arbor)) tomorrow morning. I am headed to LA for several days. It is currently 63 degrees there and 39 degrees here. I am very excited.

I am sure that 100% of the people there will want to know about Palin, so I will contain my follow up thoughts for posts about responses to things people will ask that I could never have thought of.

Sarah Palin - An Alaskan Perspective

I have gotten a lot of questions about Palin and the general view that people have of her in Alaska. Here, in no particular order, are a few thoughts.

Wasilla. Wasilla is a very small community where everyone knows everyone. She served as mayor from 96-02. During the time she was mayor, she fired the police chief for "intimidating" her. She also attempted to fire the city librarian, after the city librarian refused to "remove" certain books from the library. Only after the community objected was she persuaded not to fire the librarian. She greatly increased both the taxes and the spending during her tenure. Her big project was a multi-use sports complex, which she pushed ahead of infrastructure projects and has not turned into the moneymaker it was supposed to (and spawned nearly a decade of litigation). She was pushed to hire a city administrator after some of her staff firings nearly caused a recall campaign against her. During this time, she campaigned for numerous pork barrel products and lobbied to get as much money as possible for her city from the very influential federal legislators (Stevens and Young).

Her husband works on the slope in the oil industry and commercial fishes for a month or so each year. He has native blood, but they have never lived a native lifestyle or been overly involved in the native community. He stopped working on the slope when she took office (to avoid the appearance of impropriety), and was promised that his position would still be there when the conflict ended and that he would lose no seniority in the process. The whole family are avid hunters and take part in the subsistence lifestyle (like many Alaskans). Sarah has a long history of doing so and can field dress a moose or a caribou with the best of them.

After her tenure as mayor, she got a sweet assignment to the Oil & Gas commission from Murkowski, despite the fact that she had no experience, education (her degree, obtained after stints at 5 colleges, is in journalism), or expertise in the field. Despite the fact that this was a plumb job (6 figures and not in Juneau), she did not like it and complained about it. She quit by making accusations (that were true) that another member of the commission (and head of the Republican party at the time) had taken some unethical accusations.

Governor. She ran for governor as a "reform" candidate against Frank Murkowski, who was the incumbent governor and a hugely unpopular figure at the time. Murkowski had completely alienated the people, had purchased a jet for himself (ostensibly to transport prisoners to outside prisons), and had conducted negotiations with the oil companies behind closed doors and refused to make the process public. There was a 75% chance that "anyone but Murkowski" would have won the Republican primary. She defeated Tony Knowles (who had already been governor) in the general election.

Her relationship with the legislature (which has done most of the budget work and campaign reform legislation) is tenuous at best. She has a reputation of cutting projects as "pork" only to have the budget items reinstated later after the projects need is shown.

While she claims that she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere", she initially supported it and only opposed it once the political winds turned. Furthermore, she kept the money and used it for other projects.

Troopergate. She pressured the commissioner of public safety to fire a state trooper, who happened to be her ex-brother in law and in a custody battle with her sister. There were something like 20 calls from her office to the commissioner's office and (as yet unreleased) emails directly from her. She then dismissed the commissioner, ostensibly because he was not doing enough about alcohol control, and then appointed him to the alcohol control board.
The legislature then appointed an independent investigator to look at the situation (think Ken Starr), who she initially agreed to comply with completely. After she got the VEEP nomination, she made an ethics complaint against herself, in order to try to get the investigation under the jurisdiction of the Personnel Board (which happens to be in the executive branch, which she heads). There have also been complaints by the ex-commissioner and the troopers union. The independent investigation is going forward and has promised results before the election.

She has said that she "fought" Ted Stevens, yet she served on his 527 committee and has benefited from his (and Young's) earmarks.

She has no foreign policy experience. Any claims that she has command of the Alaska National Guard are in name only. There have been NO situations which have required their deployment within the state. She has no say in what they do, period. Her participation consists of welcoming them home and assisting in fundraisers. Any discussion that she is involved in "Missile Defense" is also laughable. She may be privy to more information, but she has no say in any of this. Any claims that she has to deal with Russia are equally ludicrous.

She is solidly right wing in her views, and is pro-life and opposes any sex education besides abstinence. Trig is her child, and it was a well known secret that Bristol was pregnant. This is not really a big deal in AK and much more accepted here than it might be other places.

I am sure there is more. If anyone has any further questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

Potential only matters if you use it

I have been thinking a lot about the things that I do and the things that I have the potential to do. Over this past weekend (spent hanging out at Fito's cabin, smoking fish), I read a book by a guy who has made a career basically being a drunken womanizer, but a very honest drunken womanizer (I'll save the reflecting on my own drunken womanizing days for another post). After some additional reading of his website and message board, I came across this quote (found here):

You know people always talk about the things they want to do but never do them? Some people are lazy, some stupid, but the reality is that most are scared. If you don't try something, then you can always sit on the sidelines and talk about what you would have done; but once you cast your hat in the ring, you can't play that game anymore. You shed the ability to talk about what you might do; now, the discussion shifts to what you DID do, and you risk failure. One can always concoct a victory or explain away a failure in the abstract, but once you put yourself out there, once you actually set something at risk, then you open yourself up to the potential of real failure, and you can't talk or wish a real failure away.

There have been numerous points in the past where the goal was survival. Make it through the next semester. Make it through to the end of the month on $43. Keep everything from falling apart till December. Make it through the ACT/LSAT/Bar. Get through till X and then everything will be ok.

These days exist no more.

I will now dominate. Whatever potential I may possess no longer matters. Either I become or I do not. Either I suck it up, stop allowing myself to be satisfied with surviving another year, another bad habit, another lost season, or I start unleashing. I have arrived at the crossroads, I no longer need to struggle to survive. To those that oppose me, I say "step forward."

Once I was visiting the family in Michigan and was swimming at the new downtown Y (my sister is a lifeguard there). As always, we had run into several people who knew my mom and had known me as a child. I ran into one of the family friends in the mens locker room, as I was walking back from the shower and he was walking to it. He noticed the tattoo on my back (well the big one, not the ancillary ones), which happens to be a 10" star of David (I'll save the irony of the tattooed Jewish guy for another day. For one, I'm planning on being buried on the North Slope). He said to me "you know, that could get you in a lot of trouble" or some statement meant to convey the there are some places where people will kill you (or worse) for such a display. My response was "Yes, and I would rather it be me than someone who cannot stand up to such people."

I went dipnetting for the second year in a row this year. I finished the season with 43 reds. I concluded that I needed to learn to can and smoke fish, as 1) they are tasty that way; 2) they are easier to give away canned and smoked (or send to people); 3) there is only so much fresh salmon a man can eat (100 pounds a year is about right); 4) there is only so much space a single guy living in a one bedroom apartment can store fish (even with the 5cu foot mini-freezer, I would have been out of space); and most importantly 5) I wanted to learn to smoke and can fish. I shot off an email to KellyTheGreat (who does both, and has done so for years), took her reply and the bits and pieces of knowledge I had gleaned from paying attention when the MoeFather spoke, purchased a canner and a smoker and got to work. I now have 4 cases of canned salmon and about 5 pounds of homemade smoked salmon (which is probably about 45% of what I have smoked, I gave most of the first few batches away to folks at the cabin/work/my beneficiary). Now I smoke and can my own fish. Why? Because I wanted to. Is it world class? No, but I have only smoked and canned for 3 weeks. Everyone tells me the fish tastes great, even as I quibble over the details (my strips are still uneven and I am still leaving them in 15-20 minutes too long, the chunks I also left in a bit long and are not as moist as the comm smoked fish). But you know what, screw the details. I smoke my own fish and it is delicious and I am proud of that. Not only that, but I want to keep producing smoked salmon until mine is the cream of the crop. I don't want to get by, I don't want to survive, I want to dominate.

So why have I allowed myself to settle into survival mode in so many other things? I do not know. Part of it is fear. I am scared of success, mostly because it will raise the expectations of others. If I do as little as possible, I have to do less to survive, because less is expected of me. I cannot fail if I do not try.

Part of it is self doubt (which is basically fear, just with more syllables). If I believe that I cannot do something, then I probably cannot. If I probably cannot, then I do not feel bad if I do not achieve it. A defeatist attitude constitutes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Part of it is the desire not to be the man. Ultimately I understand I am a flawed person and that attaining a position of power makes the consequences of succumbing to my own weaknesses greater than if I remain some random loser. However I have come to realize that this is a self defeating bit of logic, and that I am allowing my flaws (namely my fear of success) to prevent me from being in a position to be corrupted.

When I went through my big teenage rebelion and decided to go to school against my mom's wishes (yes, went to school. I had to fight for the right to go to high school), she told me "if you are going to go, go and do not be half-assed about it." I took this with a grain of salt, viewed through the prism of my disdain for her (much overhyped in my mind) hypocrisy as a wildly talented writer who wrote infrequently and never bothered to publish or do anything besides occasionally read poetry in some shithole bar.

I no longer want to be mediocre. I will no longer survive. I will no longer allow myself to make mediocre smoked salmon out of my life (or salmon). If I am going to continue to practice law, I will not be the guy working to make sure he can cover his loans. I will be the in house counsel everyone else wants to poach away. If I am going to continue to be involved with poker, I will not be the guy futzing around, playing $10 tournaments and randomly dabbling in 1/2 online. I will be the guy flying to the Commerce to play 100/200 every few weeks. I will be the guy punishing idiotic hold em players in the stud events at the WSOP. I will no longer wait for the perfect girl to fall into my lap, scared that I will become entangled by another life sucking bitch. I will go out and find her. And if I should happen to meet any life sucking bitches along the way, I will happily drop kick them to the curb.

I no longer have potential. I have training, skills, instincts, and a willingness to believe in myself. If I am with me (and God, always God too), then who will stand against me? And if I do not stand against myself, who can stop me?

A duffel bag full of fish

55 pounds of fillets in a duffel bag.



In the cooler.













And I have 14 fish at the processor getting smoked and turned into lox. I am going to buy a canner and start canning fish today.

43 fish total, probably 175-200 pounds total fillet weight.

Kenai, Round 2

So I am heading out for the second weekend of dip netting the Kenai. I will be going out on the boat with KTG and The Moefather tomorrow, then hitting the beach with Fito and Lizza on Saturday. Hopefully I will have gotten my fish and will merely be running/cleaning/advising/taking pictures/video rather than getting my gear on and getting into the water.

The forecast is partially cloudy, with highs in the 60s and wind. Saturday is mostly cloudy with scattered showers. We will see.

21 fish to go.

I got this shirt at B & J's in Anchorage this afternoon.



It says:

Fishes Fishies!

Back from the Kenai, ended up with 29 reds after a marathon weekend. Very tired, more words and a write up to come tomorrow. Here are some fish pictures.

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Fish and fillets

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Fish!

And I'm Off to Kenai

It is now 2:25 am, I just got up from my nap and finished loading the car, and I am off in 5 minutes. I am going to stop and get ice and coffee and then hit the road, in time to be at the Kenai for the 6 am opener. I think my setup is promising, but needs to be tested. Pictures and a report to follow.

Dipnetting is Here!!!

I am leaving for the Kenai to go dip netting tomorrow after work. I am very excited about this fact. I got a total of 28 reds last year and I am hoping to limit out this year. For those of you who do not know what a dip net is, I got one and it looks like this:



If you say "But Josh, I can't see how big it is", here it is leaning against my bike:



Another shot of it:



I am very excited to get it in the water. 25k fish through the Kenai and 19k through the Kasilof yesterday (that is very good).

For those of you who did not eat some part of my reds last year, here is what they looked like:



Kenai red sushi



Lox on cream cheese and crackers



Sushi Buffet



Fillet pre super bowl sushi



Super Bowl Sushi Spread




It was very tasty fish. I hope to learn to smoke and can fish this year, in addition to the kippered, the lox, and the salmon strips.

In any case, I am leaving late tomorrow and will be back sometime on Sunday.

Life in Anchorage: the Gumbo House AKA the Jumbo Hutt

I went to the Gumbo House with my friends Scott and Maria tonight, which we were calling the Jumbo Hutt by the end of the evening due to my fondness for Life is Hell and the calling of anything that is a (food item/style) house as (food item/style) hutt. It was sacrilicous. I generally try to avoid eating pork, but there are certain situations when it happens. Cajun food is one of them, as it will be cooked into something I eat, unless I eat rice and beans (and it may well be in the beans).

Scott and Maria ordered a bbq pork po boy and the kitchen sink gumbo, and jalapeno corn muffins. I ordered the jambalaya, crab cakes, and a pepsi.

The jambalaya was very good. It came in a large bowl, with two heaping piles of sticky rice in the middle. It was red and spicy and contained a variety of tasty things, including shrimp, sausage, chunks of meat, and other goodness.

The bbq po boy was inhaled by Scott and Maria in short order. They said that it was very good, and it looked very juicy and tender. Maria wisely kept her half in the paper it came wrapped in, but Scott unwrapped his half, and was rewarded with a lap full of pork juice. This lead to many jokes about Scott and the Pork Juice.

The crab cakes were also good. There were two very crunchy cakes with a good, hot (as in spicy) corn salsa with them. Very good texture, very good flavor.

The kitchen sink gumbo was disappointing. It was also served in a large bowl with rice in the center. The goodies in the broth, which included shrimp, chicken, sausage, okra, and oysters were all very good. However, the broth was distinctly off, and tasted overcooked. It should be noted that we got to the Jumbo Hutt at about 8:15, and they close at 9. It could very well just have been the last bit of the evening, but it was still off.

The jalapeno corn muffins were good, although the jalapenos consisted of several slices placed on the top and bottom, as opposed to mixed into the batter.

Overall it was a very good dining experience, and hit the spot for us. There was one dish that was a flop, and even that had a bunch of tasty components.

The restaurant was clean and nearly full when we got there. The outside seating was full, but it was fairly cold by the time we left. The service was quick and attentive. The food took less than 10 minutes to come once we ordered and the whole thing took less than a half hour.

I give it 7 out of 10 Bacon Wrapped Scallops.