The last week- with photos!

Yesterday was World Book Night USA, the first one we've had on this side of the Atlantic. I signed up for, and received my first book choice. Stephen King's The Stand. An epic post-apocalyptic story of good vs evil, and my husband's favorite book.

The way it works is that lots of publishers and writers waive their profits for specific books, and also help pay to get special editions printed. The people who signed up to give them were told where to pick up a box of 20 books with bookmarks. The goal is to give them to people who might not normally read, so it's very important to pick a book that you can recommend enthusiastically. William and TG were excited about the idea, and neither of them had read The Stand, so as soon as it was that I was getting my first choice book, they both started and finished it. They both liked it a lot.

We took our books downtown, to an area with lots of traffic of all sorts of people. Then we discovered something none of us had thought of, when you give away books for free, especially big thick books, people think you're trying to convert them. It's drilled into people's minds I guess that free books are things of a religious nature. Which makes me glad I chose a Stephen King book. His name being so well known helped convince people we were just giving away books.

William and TG putting bookmarks into the special edition copies.

I gave away the first copy, approaching a young lady and asking if she wanted a book. She told me that she saw almost all the movies based off his books and accepted happily. Then they started giving away copies. Walking up to people to ask if they wanted a book. We went through them fairly quickly once we found our rhythm. After it was all over, I asked them "So.. do you want to sign up next year?" and both said yes very quickly. It was so much fun!

Also this week, Michael and I went out on a tip from a friend to Potter's Marsh. We were looking for snow geese and didn't see any of them, but we did spot Green-Winged Teals, Canadian Geese and lots of nesting seagulls. I uploaded these pretty large, so click on them for lots of detail. 

Tonight, we had planned to see the aurora, but Michael's fighting a cold so we packed it in early when after 2 hours of sunset, it still wasn't dark enough. The sunset was gorgeous though. If you click through, you'll see the crescent moon over the sunset.

Alaska is even more gorgeous when it's summer properly. So far, the only thing coming up in my yard is my rhubarb. In the less gorgeous side of living in Alaska, there is also a bumper crop of newly revealed moose poop in my yard. Tomorrow I'm going to ask TG and William to  put plastic bags over there shoes and stomp it apart so it can be fertilizer instead of piles of nuggets.