This has been a really nice weekend so far. I actually ended up with a couple days off — worked Saturday at Suncoast, but that was it, so had Sunday and Monday off. Quite nice.
Took Miranda out to see The Mummy Returns on Saturday night, making my second time seeing that one in the theaters. It pretty much stays the same in my opinion — a fun flick that I enjoy, and almost as good as the first one, but a definite roller coaster ride. There are parts that are so much better than the first that I was really impressed — and parts that were so much worse that it was depressing. Ah, well…overall, pretty damn enjoyable. Unfortunately, Miranda wasn’t feeling well, and so she had to go straight home after the movie.
Sunday was a great day. Absolutely gorgeous weather, so I decided to go out and enjoy the sun and get some pictures of Alaska before I leave. I just picked up a nice little Kodak DX3500 digital camera earlier in the week (finally — it’s been about 8 years since I’ve had a camera), and wanted to get some shots of my home for the last 26 years before I bailed. I started by heading out to Earthquake Park
, as it’s just about a minute away from my house. There were a bunch of other families and tourists out enjoying the weekend, too, so I ended up spending a couple minutes there watching some kids play as their parents took in the displays scattered around the area. The view of Mt. Susitna 
was just gorgeous, Sleeping Lady was out in full splendor, with just a scattering of light fluffy clouds up in the sky.
After Earthquake Park, I headed downtown, and discovered somewhat to my dismay that while downtown Anchorage looks gorgeous from afar, it’s still a bit too early in the year to get any really nice shots of it. None of the flowers have started poking up from the various planters, and the grass is still just coming in, so it’s still got a lot of brown mixed in with the green. No huge biggie, though — another couple weeks should take care of that pretty nicely. After a while I ran down to Village Inn to get some grub, then went home to rest for a bit.
That evening I went out to the valley to hit a bonfire party that Danielle was throwing. I met up with Danielle, Christina, and some of their friends from the valley (Sparky, Victor, Carlos, Dorothy, Earl, Dave, and a couple others who’s names I can’t remember right now) at Danielle’s house, then we all caravaned 
out to the Palmer Hay Flats refuge for the bonfire. The evening was just beautiful, and the area was absolutely gorgeous — a valley down at the base of some hills, with the sunset reflecting off the mountains in the distance. I took some shots to try and put together a panorama of the view, if I can get them stitched together decently in Photoshop I’ll see if I can get the final result posted here.
After starting the fire 
in the time-honored bonfire tradition of piling up a bunch of wood and dousing it with lighter fluid, we all just spent a nice evening standing around, talking, munching on some grub, and attempting to prevent Earl from blowing anything up. As few of us were much into drinking at all — I brought a few Smirnoff Ice‘s to drink, but only had two over the course of the evening, and few of the others brought anything — 
it was a very nice mellow evening. We even had the troopers stop by a couple times to check on us, and they basically told us just to make sure we got the fire put out when we left — one of them even said that this was the kind of party they like to see. It was pretty cool — for all the harassment the police get just because they’re in a position of authority, it’s been very rare that I’ve had any sour dealings with them at all.
Eventually 
it got to be about two in the morning, and we all decided it was time to head out — a couple of us had to make it back into Anchorage before we crashed out, and everyone was starting to get tired. So, after a good few minutes trying to put out the bonfire (quite a chore in itself), we all headed home. The drive back in was wonderful, too — I just set the cruise control for the speed limit, and cruised on in. As most people out for the weekend were going to be coming back into town today at the end of the three day weekend, I didn’t have much traffic to deal with, and only saw a couple cops on the way in. Made it home a little after 3am and crashed out.
So now it’s Monday, the last day of the weekend, and I’m pretty much just spending the day relaxing here at home. I’ve got four more days of work at GCI, then the next two weeks will be the final push to get everything packed up and ready to go before I leave state…that countdown just keeps going….