I know, I know, cliche, especially since I am one of the few people who hasn't actually watched Game of Thrones. :) it's been a pretty chill summer overall, and winter has pretty much come in out of nowhere in the surrounding mountains. The summer has been pretty good overall. I made some new friends, visited new places, and even managed to bring my mom up for her first trip up north and nothing went wrong. Well, except for the first night. We went to sleep just before dark (car camping), and woke up in the middle of a river that had overflowed from all the rain. I noticed something was up when I saw my spare gas can on the edge of the road. At first, I was pissed thinking that someone had stolen the gas, but then it started to move, which I knew wasn't right. It was 7am and I was groggy so it took me a moment to realize what was going on. Was able to save our cooler of food as well before it floated into the wilderness. Overall, though, it was a pretty great tour of the state.

I have some long-term winter plans this year. Unfortunately, the season does mean the drive to Anchorage is now 6-10 hours long instead of 5-6, so I don't see myself heading into the city any time soon unless I can stay with a friend. In the meantime, to keep myself busy, I am hoping to dabble in some C++ and/or C# tutorials and small projects. I have an Unreal Engine 4 license, and I could get Unity, so if anybody out there is also wanting to experiment and play around, and doesn't mind someone who isn't really a programmer but is eager to learn, hit me up. I do want to keep things simple for now, and always studying and working alone can get pretty boring after awhile.

I've been debating a winter gear refresh but don't like the prospect of spending thousands of dollars on ski gear, especially since the only skiing around here is the extreme kind, and avalanche danger really freaks out despite the fact that I occasionally snowshoe during time and places where people think I am crazy. I've only had one close call where the snow suddenly shifted and I knew that a misstep would ruin my day, but it was scary enough to really reflect on the dangers of going in that terrain and carving it up at high speed a-la skis. What annoys me the most about winter, however, is how quickly the wind piles up snow and blocks any chance of exploring ice caverns in the glaciers, since winter is prime time to explore them. Hopefully there will be a few that are decent this year, though; last year wasn't very impressive.

So yeah, that concludes my bi-yearly journal! Who knows, maybe I'll find something to update this with a bit more quickly.