First, a photo from last night’s sunset, taken after we all got back from dinner at the Bear Tooth:



Not unusual, but still spectacular.

Today began with Mom’s departure for Utah/Vegas at 5 am, and in between unpacking and moving Dad’s desk, I upgraded his computer and watched Buddy Buddy. What an incredible, underrated movie: in addition to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, it’s got Dana “Col. Lard from ‘Black Sheep Squadron’/Pete from ‘MacGyver'” Elcar, Ed Begley, Jr., and Klaus Kinski (!) channeling Peter Sellers. And it’s funny, too.

I took off this afternoon for my annual coffee shack round-up, new locations thanks to Mom, who did some advance scouting. While looking for the five or so she had listed, I found another six or so, to bring the total to around 80 different ones since 1998. Some locations have seen a few different shacks come through, and one location has even spawned a mini-shack, no bigger than a couple of phone booths together. But my favorite had to be the abandoned bank drive-through ATM that is now a drive-through coffee shop. It’s like some kind of weird reverse-evolution.

I saw Wayne at Cook Inlet and we swapped stories about turning 29 and 60, respectively, on the same day six weeks ago. Down the street, our old haunt Cyrano’s has become a shell of a book store, with a meager selection of Alaskana and a random assortment of other books that are either half-off or $2 flat. It’s sad to see the once-vibrant and inspiring little place go from full-service bookstore, cinema, caf?, and theater to a theater with occasional caf? and no books, as the outer rooms have been eaten up by neighboring antler-carving studios and fur shops. Downtown Anchorage as a whole, at least 4th and 5th Avenues, seem so much more tourist-oriented than I remember. It’s a wonder so many similarly-themed stores can survive set one next to the other like they are.

I’ll put up the new coffee shack photos when I have time, but for now, I submit a photo of something I saw while turning around to catch “Java Junky,” or maybe it was “Mocha Mutts,” I can’t remember.