Here at the ASTE Conference

I'm here at the Alaska Society for Technology in Education (ASTE) conference geeking out. So far the sessions have been great. It's interesting for me to be here as a teacher, because in high school I came here as a student tech from Tok. I'm meeting lots of people that I know including old teachers and family friends.

I took this picture on one of the new iMac G5's with the built in camera. Pretty cool. The conference is at the Hotel Captain Cook and (as shown in the picture) I am in the room where we had the keynote this morning.

Happy Birthday Heidi!

Heidi had her 27th birthday over the weekend. As you can see she received cards and even flowers from her dad. The local delivery guy, Bob, picked them up off the runway and delivered them to the school as soon as the mail plane landed. Not a freezer burned petal in the whole bouquet, we were amazed.


Since Heidi's mom is thousands of miles away, the duty of baking Heidi her annual birthday Chicken Kiev fell to me. In case you are not familiar with Chicken Kiev, let me say that it is a fairly complicated recipe. Here is a brief synopses of what has to be done:
-thaw chicken breasts
-beat chicken with a hard object until flat and thin (reminded me of rolling out dough for a pizza)
-mix spices with some butter and freeze into cubes
-use the flattened chicken like a tortilla and make a burrito with the butter cubes inside
-roll in flour, dip in egg, then roll again in bread crumbs
-fry everything
-then finally bake

This recipe is not to be attempted by any amateur. Luckily, I am a culinary master (see picture below).

Heidi's parka makes the news

After seeing Heidi shiver several times in her inadequatly insulated coat, I suggested that it was time to upgrade. After some extensive research, Heidi chose the CanadaGoose Eclipse Parka. I scoured the internet for the best price and found Bob Mickler's. Their store, which is down in Kentucky, was quite surpised to see a customer from Stebbins, Alaska. The news caught the eye of a reporter for a local newspaper.

Check it out...
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Lexington Herald Leader

THE BUZZ by Jim Jordan

No roads? No problem

Bob Mickler's gets lots of orders for riding apparel and clothing through its Web site, www.bobmicklers.com.

But a recent one for a woman's goose-down jacket caught the eye of Julie Mickler, the Lexington company's president. The reason was the destination: Stebbins, Alaska.

"It's almost 900 miles north of Anchorage," Mickler said. "I knew there weren't any roads there and that it might have to be flown in.

"So I called UPS to see if they would deliver," Mickler continued. "They said, 'yes,' but I heard this giggling in the background. 'We'll have to find a musher,' they said."

In the end, the U.S. Postal Service picked up a jacket in Lexington that had been made in Canada and delivered it to a far corner of Alaska.

Did they use a musher and a dog team? Mickler wasn't sure, but "we got an e-mail from the customer (Friday) and she loved the jacket."