Are we tired or what! We’ve mailed over 30 boxes to Chevak. We have two coolers of frozen meat to take with us on the plane tomorrow. I am so tired and Tom is so tired. I just need to get back to school to recuperate from the summer. What will I miss most about Anchorage? Ummm the view of the mountains that changes daily depending on the sun and the clouds. I’ll miss being able to make any kind of medical appointment I need to make. I’ll miss the great eating places – SourDough Mine, and the Moose’s Tooth in particular. I’ll miss Blockbuster and most of all I will miss Elmendorf Air Force Base – the campground, the PX, and the commissary. The whole place is roomy, green, spacious, quiet, and clean. I’ll miss seeing and hearing those F-22’s and F-16’s fly around and sometimes straight up and down. What will I absolutely not miss about Anchorage – traffic, homeless people, and noise.

I’m looking forward to seeing all the stuff I ordered from Scholastic Book Fair for the kids – including 25 bean bags, and ordering all the new materials for our Improving Literacy Through School Libraries grant. I also have been purchasing Alaskan animals, birds and fish this summer – stuffed actually. The students will love them.

It may be a while before I can post again – the first week of school is so crazy. Tom says this is the last year for Chevak – he is not packing any more food. Okay.

Well, I had the knee surgery today. Man, what an experience. Most impressive was the whole set up of the procedure. The doctor was a Dr. McGuire. I had seen him at my original appointment and felt certainly like my knee was in good hands – he seemed sort of “New York” – a little different from most of the other professionals I have seen this summer, with the exception of Dr. Cusack who seemed a little “Miami”. Anyway today all of nurses and so forth were just as nice as possible – not only to me, but to each other. Everyone was just laughing and getting along. And were they busy! It was like an assembly line with several patients lined up getting knee surgery. Unfortunately I suppose the reason things were so efficient was because this was a private medical practice – albeit a big one – but this wasn’t a hospital. These guys are not “in network” although their prices are a bit lower than the “in-network” guidelines. I was on my way home less than four hours after my arrival.

I’m using an IceMan icepack. It consists of a small blue cooler of ice and a long tube which seeds cool air to a large wrap around my knee. It is wonderful and working beautifully so far. I have only had to take one of my pain medications – the second may have some side effects I don’t want to deal with. I can walk at least as good as I could yesterday, so things should be looking up as the meniscus heals. I am suppose to rest for the next five days. And I have rested today…

Now we have to get our groceries packed and shipped. I have a follow-up appointment tomorrow and I will rest then too. On Thursday I hope to go with Tom to the PX to get our four months of groceries purchased – maybe even for the year, so we don’t have to do that at Christmas. Sooo, I will have to use one of those little motorized carts to go up and down the isles. The commissary is a pretty big place. We have always joked about the day one of us would be riding around a store in one of those motor carts and now here I am!

We put our Charlie on the plane tonight at 1am. What a pleasure it has been to have him up here. He is anxious, however, to get home tomorrow because he has a new computer waiting on him. I can understand - but we are sure going to miss his presence. We are at the PX now getting a bite to eat. He slept this afternoon so he could stay away tonight - he is not a fan of flying. What fun we have had with our visitors, Terry and Dee, Mary, and now Charlie. It will be lonely around here without them!