A plague on both your houses! ... or, um, at least on your video rental establishment

In an effort to culturally prepare for the trip next month to Nome, my family and I figured that it'd be fun to watch a handful of DVD episodes of Northern Exposure, which I guess was all the rage back in the early 90s, when I would have been far too young to have appreciated it - and when I was barely old enough to allow me to still remember it now.

Apparently the same can be said for the employees at Blockbuster Video, because they didn't have any of the sets of the show's DVDs.

On the plus side, we picked up a copy of the old 60's movie To Kill a Mockingbird, instead.

To explain the title of my blog...

"Why 'Anvil City'?", you might ask.

The answer:
Nome, Alaska was originally called Anvil City for a short while after its founding, just before the turn of the century.

(Thanks, Wikipedia.)

T-minus 1 month

It's July 27th and I've one month to go until I arrive in Nome.

The paperwork is mostly out of the way, but there's still lots to do to prepare, including making sure my student loan payments get deferred, gearing up with winter-weather clothes, and getting routine medical check-ups.

The loan payments should hopefully be rather simple to take care of, as with the doctor's visits, but the winter-weather stuff is a little more unusual:

Even though Nome is on the coast, and therefore kept somewhat temperate, it still has been known to get down to around -40 degrees in the extremes of the winter, and it will probably have snow on the ground pretty much all the time from October or November all the way until May.

So I'm going to need a jacket... a really good one.