I’m obsessed with watching everything Alaska on tv.  Clearly, if these shows are being aired to peak interest in travel to Alaska, then they are working, at least on me.  It’s like a whole different world that has cities closer to Russia than the state’s capital.  How crazy is that?  Alaska is just so wild and untouched it’s hard to wrap your head around.  The vastness is unimaginable.  Some villages don’t even have running water.  And almost 85 days of complete daylight? Crazy.  I get my Alaska fix from these shows.

Alaska State Troopers on National Geographic

via Nat Geo

Coast Guard Alaska on The Weather Channel

via Coast Guard Alaska

Flying Wild  Alaska on Discovery

via Flying Wild Alaska

VIP Alaska on the Travel Channel
(though this is far from a  favorite)

So have you ever been to Alaska? Would you recommend a trip? 

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…and I’m back from Ireland. It was really a great experience and made me appreciate where I live. Not because of anything bad happened but leaving your country just makes you appreciate what you left behind. Our next travel adventure will probably be a little more planned with less travel, we were on a train or bus almost every day. 9 days of that can take it’s toll.

The things I’ll miss most about Ireland are the people (seriously, nicest people on earth), the pubs, the beer (All of it: Guinness, Murphy’s, Kilkenny’s, Harp, Carlsberg, Beamish, Smithwicks), the history and the green landscape dotted with sheep and cows.

The "character bar" in Dingle

I’m not the girl that is all “I love beer” I’m more like “meh, it’s ok, I’ll drink it” but seriously REAL beer like the ones I listed above do not give you the bloated, gassy feeling you would get drinking draft Miller Lite and it has taste. I’m just sayin’. I’m in total love with Irish beer and I will be drinking REAL beer as often as possible. But I’m broke must of the time so I guess I’ll have to suck it up and drink crap American beer (Ghettoblaster, not included in the crap American beer comment)

Update: As Dream In Gray pointed out in the comments -  Miller is a lager, which accounts for the bloating/gasiness.  I guess I’ll just need to stick to stouts, which I feel (and could totally be wrong about) aren’t as popular in bars as Miller and Bud Light.

St Colman's - Cobh

Isn't this gorgeous? I took it myself, I'm impressed lol

Oh! And also the cheese curry fries! (Thanks for the tip Erin!)

I look exhausted because I was - Dinner that night was Curry Cheese Fries from Lennox mmmmmmm

I’m not even sure our dogs missed us. They had so much fun with their Auntie L, she even took them on walks almost every day!

It felt awesome to sleep in my own bed with both the dogs cuddled with us. Scooby usually sleeps on the floor but he’s such a cuddle bug that sometimes we feel sorry he has no one to lay with now. Our house seems a little bit empty without Nani. It’s not because she was energetic or needed a lot of attention, there is just a space. We lived a long time as a three dog house. Before I left for Ireland I told C that I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to get another dog but being home now something feels like it’s missing. Of course I could never replace Nani, but in time I think we have enough room to give another dog a forever home. Possibly a puppy, even though I swore I wouldn’t ever do it again. Funny how you change your mind.

In other news, can you believe that we bought our cottage almost a year ago? It blows my mind how time flies by. We were going to open it this weekend but Michigan decided that winter isn’t over yet so we are still up in the air if we want to go up there and freeze, it has hardly any insulation and the windows are old and drafty.

I’ve been fully aware lately how truly blessed I am and I hope I never lose that feeling.  It’s so easy to take things for granted.

So tell me, what new and exciting things have been going in your lives this past week?

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Speaking of travel…here are a couple other questions I’m researching.

{via weheartit}

• What are the top 5 things you must have on a long flight?
• How do you calm the travel nerves?
• What song should I make sure to have on my mp3 player?

*original image*

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{via weheartit}

Thank you so much for all your kind words while C and I go through this difficult time. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Scooby, my sensitive boy, hasn’t been eating much lately and he looks for Nani when it’s time to eat. It’s like he can’t eat until she does, which is why his eating habits had altered her last few days with us. We are taking both dogs on daily walks and will return to our normal routines next week. We are hopeful that by the time we leave for Ireland they have settled into a life without Nani.

If you have any advice on how to help pets cope with a loss of a companion I’d love to hear it.

I also would like some advice on traveling abroad. C and I have never left North America so we are kind of clueless on what we should bring with us beside out passports. We have no idea what to expect from customs or how we should carry spending money.

Thank you!
♥ xoxox ♥

*image location*

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original can be found by maddy mash on flickr - click image

After this weekend I am hopeful that C and I will be able to get excited for Ireland, which is good because we leave in a little over 3 weeks!  Nani almost completely stopped eating on Monday.  The only thing she would eat was lunch meat and cheese that I would break into teeny tiny pieces and peanut butter out of her kong.  I finally googled inner ear infection and I was starting to believe that when we took her to the vet last night they were going to refer her for a CT scan and schedule surgery to have her ear drained.

Last night marked the third trip to the vet in a month but this time we saw a different doctor who immediately decided to look in Nani’s mouth after listening to the symptoms.  Finally, a real diagnosis where she showed us the problem!! Nani has to have two molars extracted.  One has completely lost all it’s enamel that caused an infection in the inside of her cheek, causing swelling.  Not her ears!  She also has a cracked molar on the other side.  The doctor assured us that this is something that happens in older dogs.  We are so relieved to finally know the cause of Nani’s pain!  C watered down some canned dog food into a soupy consistency and she devoured it.  Poor baby was starving!  She is now on pain meds until tomorrow.  Please send lots of hugs to Nani who will go in morning to get her teeth removed.

I’m confident she will have the luck of the Irish with her.  I am 1/8 Irish ya know, a Burton no less

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Happy last day of February! Usually it’s January that I’m happy to see go but this February has been brutal with the amount of snow and crappy driving conditions. Good riddance. That also means that summer is creeping a little bit closer every day. Woofuckinghoo! I miss my flip flops!

I won’t bore you too much more with my Tampa trip. We went to the game and we were amazed by the sea of red. I felt a little sorry for Tampa because when the Wings scored 6 times the place was crazy. It was even so bad (for Tampa Bay) that there were not 1 but 3 octopi (a Detroit hockey tradition for playoffs) thrown out onto the ice. I mean these Wings fans stuffed an octopus in their pants! (I don’t know if it actually came from their pants…) One of the Tampa Bay crew members got fined for swinging one around. I don’t know if he knew that the gesture is disrespectful to the home team or not. You can only swing Octopi in Detroit, sorry Stevie Y. I read an article that even the upper management was embarrassed by all the red in the seats. The Lightning organization vowed not to raise ticket prices for playoffs this year or next season so Lightning fans will buy tickets to avoid the massive amounts of out of state fans.

Water Taxi to the game – It was GORGEOUS out

Outside my favorite Arena – St Pete Times Forum

Sea of Red at the Game

The rest of the time was spent walking around Tampa and spending quality time with C. Oh and of course, enjoying the pool and the view from our balcony!

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There is so much I want to say and I feel like I’m stumbling over the words in my head. There are pictures!

The background:
In 2005 C and I moved to Florida, Tampa Bay area, after I graduated college. Well C moved first and I followed after I finished my classes a couple months later. It was a toss up between there and Arizona and a job offer for C came from Gulf Coast Harley. It was a big move, I had never lived away from home, not because I didn’t have a choice but because I was comfortable and my mom was sick. I chose to stay close to home. By the time I graduated my life was a lot different than when I started and I just need a change, a big change. We lived in Tarpon Springs (C found the apartment and let’s just say I refused to live there long) while we found a condo that moved us farther north to Holiday. By that time C had quit Gulf Coast because of the primadonnas and we were both working Clearwater. I still miss driving to work together.

I HATED my job (ok jobs I had a couple) in Clearwater. This one in particular was by far the worst place I’ve ever worked with a passive aggressive boss and a dickhead of a boss’ boss. It was awful trust me. I only survived because of the time when I wasn’t working. We didn’t have the money for Center Ice to get the Red Wings games and it was the season right after the lockout so C was dying to watch hockey. We got into the Lightning who had just won the Stanley Cup in 2004. We bought a mini season pass and we were beyond impressed by the St. Pete Times Forum. Just thinking about it now makes me miss it. That is saying a lot because my memories of living in Florida are quite jaded.

So before Stevie Y became the GM for the Tampa Bay Lightning I was a fan. And because of the way I roll I had a favorite player, Vinny Lecavalier. When we moved back to Michigan I kept tabs on Vinny’s career and we caught all the TB Lightning games on Versus. I’ve seen TB play Detroit every year since 2005-06 season with the exception of the 2006-07 season because they never met in the regular season.

2005-06 Season (December 17, 2005) – Tampa
2006-07 Season – No matchup Because Bettman is complete idiot
2007-08 Season (November 29. 2007) – Detroit
2008-09 Season (November 13, 2008) – Tampa
2009-10 Season (December 17, 2009) – Detroit
2010-11 season (February 11, 2011) – Tampa

We are Hockey Town – and apparently, as of this year, – Tampa Bay is Hockey Paradise

Since I’ve bored you with a ton of text and background let’s get to the good part, I guess that should have come first. C is totally cool when it comes to my hockey boyfriends and he definitely proved himself last week. So as tradition goes we flew to Tampa for the Wings vs Lightning game. Thursday morning we thought we may be able to catch the morning skate but talks with the security guy proved that was a no go. So we found some steps and sipped our coffee while we waited to watch the players go in. I know it sounds stalkerish and this is definitely not what I normally do. In fact, I was kind of embarrassed while we were sitting up there.

We saw Guy Boucher walk in – well C did I didn’t know who the head coach was.

Then Dwayne Roloson

And then the security guy we had chatted with came up to us and politely told us we couldn’t sit up there any longer. I think he felt bad, he kind of beat around the bush when telling us to leave and finished up with letting us know when the players would come out of the morning skate to sign autographs. You think Boucher didn’t appreciate us out there?

We walked over to where the gate was and in a red Ferrari Vinny LeCavalier pulled up next to us waiting for a car to leave the parking lot. C yelled his name and Vinny looked confused and then drove into the parking lot. We decided it was a good idea to go change because even though it was only 8:30 in the morning I needed a tank top.

By the time we got back to the St Pete Times Forum there were already other people waiting for the players to drive out of the lot. Honestly, most of them were Wings fans.

Lecavalier was one of the last players to come out. He was waiting on his Ferrari that was getting detailed. When he came out he signed a couple autographs and then mine and I asked for a picture, he didn’t hear me so C called him over. It was pretty anticlimactic but I definitely couldn’t stop smiling.

I got 10 autographs:

Lecavalier
Moore
Bergenhiem – he was so cool he didn’t even drive his car over and get out he just asked if anyone wanted him to sign something. I was the first and I didn’t even know his name, he helped me find it.
Gagne
Purcell
St. Louis
Kubina
Lundin
Ellis
Roloson

I missed Smaby because I didn’t know who he was and couldn’t get my program open in time. Stamkos drove by with his dad in the passenger seat of his convertible and promised after the game.

I love the Detroit Red Wings and they are my number one team, my favorite player is Datsyuk and I am from Detroit, but while standing with the other Wings fans the majority rule was that the Wings are really hard to get to sign autographs. Most of the fans had their jerseys and Wings memorabilia. Instead of coming over they stood by their buses for a good 30 minutes. I know they were away from home but I heard they are even worse here. And if that’s true, that’s just sad. They have such an awesome fan base and the ticket prices for the aging Joe Louis arena are substantially higher than ticket prices in Tampa.

a few Wings standing around while fans yell their names and wave jerseys

My next post is about the game…

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I’m sorry how is it that I left on Wednesday when it was 50 degrees in Michigan and came back on Saturday, only to have it become a snowpocalypse complete with thundersnow. Why?!

I left this…

For 6-10in of snow and a possible ice storm to follow.

I want to share one of the most exciting days of my life but I’m still basking in it myself. What a great mini vacation!

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Remember that time on twitter when I said, “I’M GOING TO DUBLIN’ and then I never said anything more about it?  Yeah, it still doesn’t seem real.  Mostly because it’s in less than 3 months and we are going to Tampa in a couple weeks so I feel like I can’t get excited about IRELAND until Tampa is over.

There is no way that I’m not going to start planning for Ireland now though, mind you.  If I waited until after I got back from Tampa I’d only have little over a month before I left!  If you’ve ever been to Dublin, Galway or Cork I’d love to hear the places you think I should check out, what I should pack, or  any traveling tips for my first trip out of the country!

Well I’ve been to Canada and Mexico…really it’s my first trip to Europe and leaving the continent!

I also need to figure out what to do about a phone (I have a Verizon Droid and I don’t think it will work out of the country) and whether to haul my laptop or not.  Decisions, decisions.  We are only bringing our backpacks we used when we went camping in Hawaii a couple years ago.  I wonder if they would be too big to qualify as carryons?

Because of the flights I booked, for good or bad, we have a layover in Paris on the way there and in Amsterdam on the way back. I’m bummed because it’s a longer travel time but it’s also a little exciting because I can say I had my feet in Paris and Amsterdam, even if I was only in the airport, right?

I’m also trying to decide if we should travel across the country by bus or buy a pass for the train. Suggestions? Advice?  Anything is appreciated!

I’m so excited about this adventure and I’m trying not to think about the money part of it.  Rarely do people say, man I wish I wouldn’t have taken that trip.

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If you haven’t already heard on twitter, facebook, email, etc…Living Social’s deal of the day is a $20 Amazon Giftcard for $10.  Who doesn’t need this?!

Also in Good Deal news.  I booked a pretty awesome airfare to Tampa last month but I hadn’t found a hotel room yet.  See C and I have attended the Red Wings vs Tampa Bay Lightening since we lived in Tampa in 2005.  With the changes in the schedule the Wings only see the Lightening once a year and they alternate venues.  In 2008, we vactioned in Clearwater so we could go to the Wings game at the St. Pete Times Forum and last year we attended the game at the Joe.

he better be back and playing by February!

<3

i used to like McCarty - He does commentary on VS sometimes now

So it’s not really a surprise that when we saw on the schedule that the Wings play Tampa in February in Tampa that we would go.  But we didn’t want to rent a car because it can get expensive and we lived in the area so we don’t need to see the sights.  Instead, we decided to stay in the city near the Port of Tampa where all the museums, the Florida Aquarium and a lot of night life resides.

Did you know staying in the city at a hotel within a 2 mile radius of the St. Pete Times Forum is frickin expensive?  Even on hotels.com the cheapest I could find a hotel was $175 a night.  No bueno, when you are trying to plan a relatively cheap weekend trip.  I had narrowed it down to a choice of 3 hotels that are in the area we wanted to stay.  I decided to be adventurous and use Priceline’s deal negotiator.  With  Chris’ advice I started really low.  I bid $40 higher than my starting and decided to give it a rest when I kept getting No Deal.  Last night just for funsies C and I tried it again.  Our first bid was accepted and at a hotel that was in my 3 choices!  I might have let out a scream of joy.

Sunshine and warmth in a month is real now!  Sometimes you just have to hold out and you will score with cheaper prices!

Have you gotten any good deals lately?

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