Part of aging for me is a newfound interest in “safer” sports. Hockey? I didn’t grow up with it & have too many dreams about lost teeth to be excited about adult rec league, but Floorball (floor hockey designed by the Swedish Fun Police) is appealing to me now. Ditto for gravel bikes and pickleball.

It’s 6:19 AM in central Fairbanks: it’s -35 F, with the outdoor temperature rising, AND the ice fog has lifted!

Greetings from Fairbanks, where our outdoor thermometer quit (it stops after - 40 C), I’m on my 2nd week of Winter Break, and I’ve dusted off the cast iron tea pot Heather and I bought in Japan. It now lives on the wood stove.

I am revisiting Quake (the video game). It never ceases to surprise me that, with its turbulent development and lots of elements that shouldn’t mesh on paper (fighting chainsaw & grenade-launcher wielding ogres in castles with shotguns to a soundtrack made by Trent Reznor?!) but it all works out.

Birch Hill looks mighty spooky this October..

Preparing for the Golden Days Parade tomorrow! If you’re in Fairbanks, come on downtown to see the floats and familiar faces, such as yours truly!

Hello friends and family across the Fairbanks North Star Borough! I’m running for Assembly this Fall to strengthen our public schools, work on lowering energy costs and promoting more affordable housing, and supporting our seniors. See my website for more information: www.armstrongforassembly.org

So one of my eggplants has a bud, which is really cool. It’s my first year growing eggplants in my garden, and boy was I surprised to learn that not only do they grow thorns, their flowers look like they’re from a nightmare realm. Just look at it!

I just finished filling envelopes with thank you letters for donors from my campaign last year. Whew! It takes a while. Even a modest 71 letters took 2 hours. I can only imagine what it was like to pack envelopes for political campaigns in the days before the Internet.

#akleg Our state constitution says "All civil officers of the State are subject to impeachment by the legislature." If Adam Crum has been obstructing legislative audit and giving away hundreds of millions in sweetheart deals to his buddies at the oil companies, it might be worth considering.

Who’s my little chimichangita?!

Last week, my school’s PTO gave me an entire Kirkland pizza for showing up for an open house (lesson here: it pays to show up. I was home alone, so I ate it all by the next day. My warning: if you finish an entire Kirkland pizza alone in 24 hours or less, you may never crave another pizza again.

Prayers, thoughts, and good vibrations for my parents. I just took my dad to the ER. I’m glad he’s going (he’s bedbound and needs more medical attention than my mom and I can provide ) but I’m worried about him and my mom.

Is it just me (and my wife), or is Microsoft Office becoming increasingly difficult to use? I just noticed that the first thing I see in Word is an invitation to use the AI. I don’t want it! I just want Word’s toolbar to look like it did in the XP era OR find a modern version of Open Office.

In addition to teaching PE, I do some reading tutoring at my school. My 3rd grade boys and I had fun reading this - kind of a Malcolm in the Middle type chapter book. I like that the boys reading it were engaged, asking questions, trying to predict what happens next. Good times!

It took a long time of lying in wait to catch this snapshot of Oaken in his true state - being a weirdo. Do not peer into his eyes, or else you will start hearing didgeridoos, see new colors, & you’ll wake up tomorrow with your clothes on backwards and a lot of dog treat charges on your credit card.

God, our future is starting to look even more like CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, but much lamer. No cybernetic implants, no cool cars, no simulacrums of dead rockstars/terrorists hanging out in your head, just easy access to guns, an uncaring political class, and corporations run the world. Sigh.

"working to swiftly rectify the situation..." www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...

I am excited to put in an order for .. a new washing machine. I am now officially middle-aged. That said, it’s a Speed Queen, so you know that baby’s staying put for a good long while!

Looks like @lisamurkowski.bsky.social just lost my vote I hope she recognizes that the blood of thousands will be on her hands if vaccines are revoked and FDA approval for lifesaving medications becomes political Shame on you Lisa

@lisamurkowski.bsky.social are you aware that vaccine data are readily available on clinicaltrials.gov already? That regulatory decisions are already made based on science that is publically available? All of RFK Jrs concerns are patently false Shame on you Lisa Signed- a regulatory med writer

We arent going to “Make America Healthy Again” by banning seed oils and red food dye. We’ll make American healthy again if we raised the minimum wage so no one has to work 2 jobs to survive, if we got rid of our car dependency, had universal healthcare and supported working families

Meanwhile in my mom’s home state, sorghum is piling up because Musk and Trump shut down USAID and it turns out a) sorghum is great for dry farmland like western Kansas and b) there’s no significant domestic market for sorghum. Bad choices abound.

I’ll also add that Art Matthias, who is also a pastor in an Anchorage church, threatened legal action against Andrew Halcro in 2023 for just reporting this on his podcast. However, Kevin Clarkson couldn’t even get the mailing right - he sent it w/o certified mail and to the wrong address.

I recently found a copy of Ray Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers’ CD “Fish Worship” at my library, and let me tell you.. fish worship is alright.

Sunday afternoon suburban cozycore vibes at our house today. House is clean, Zoya the dog is dozing, and the wife and I are enjoying the Great Indoors.

I recently started watching the Sopranos (I know, what took me so long? It was hottest when I was in high school and my parents didn't want to pay for basic cable, much less HBO). I really like it, but one thing I noticed: I really identified with Tony being Mr. Sandwich Man. 1/

I’ll brag about something I did last week: I baked my own birthday pie. For the past 5 years, my mom has baked me a custard pie (following strictly an Irish-Catholic-American recipe my granddad loved). She’s been so busy this year I baked my own. If she asks, it was alright, but hers is better!

I have seen Fairbanks’ resident cyber truck, and let me tell you.. I think it’s the ugliest automobile I’ve ever seen, and I lived in Ukraine for 3 1/2 years! In fact, I’d rather be seen driving a Lada than one of the polygonal enemies from a PS1 tank wars game.

My Dad’s home from his 7 week stay at Denali Center!

My name is Olaf and I ate half a loaf of sourdough while my humans were gone for an hour and a half

Not pictured: Zoya towing me for a 10km skijor. Pictured: Zoya having the tired zoomies as soon as I tried to take a photo of her.

My winter’s projects are: 1. Study at least 2 hours a week on my Borough’s functions and issues around them so I can run again next year. 2. Enter Zoya the dog in at least 1 skijor race with me. 3. Scrounge for CDs to load music into my Walkman. The Library has been a great musical resource.

I recently discovered the r/Kansas subreddit (my mom’s home state, so I have a passing interest) and overall, it’s so wholesome. Someone’s posting about Cowles County’s locally famous for its stone arch bridges, another about the Kansas State Parks. It almost makes me want to visit again.

Check out clinicaltrials.gov for all the vaccine safety data you could ever want! Guess what! They’re safe! Vaccines have some of the lowest rates of adverse events of alll drugs on the market because so many people take them! They’re also way way safer than getting the diseases they protect against

So, I love bikes. I love fat bikes. I finally saw a Surly Moonlander 2.0 in town, which has, purportedly, the broadest production bike tires on the market. 6” / 142mm wide, my hand for scale.

Libraries are rad. Here in Fairbanks, I feel like the Noel Wien Library is a real gem for this reason too.

Revisited Primus for the first time in years and they're still so good. So strange, and yet so good.

I'm here, fellow former Alaska Twitter peeps! I made the jump and like it here so far. For anyone new: my name's Garrett. I'm a teacher in Fairbanks, Alaska, into all sorts of sports and games.