Winning photos, an annoying cat, and an exciting opportunity

Congrats to Rich, who continued his UniSea photo contest winning streak by taking two prizes again this year for the photos above. The theme was "faces of Unalaska," but he didn't have too many people photos and entered these faces instead. All of the winning shots will be going into a calendar. And I think he gets a little bit of money, too. Nice! (Sorry, if you looked earlier, I had the wrong eagle picture posted!)

Just imagine lots of wind, rain, sleet and hail outside. Ajax is driving us crazy because he loves to go out and he cannot believe that the weather is so nasty. He cries, we let him out, he looks around for two seconds and then cries to come back in. Repeatedly. You might remember that the cats tore up the bedroom window screen last summer and made it into their personal "kitty door." When we were at home, we'd leave the window open enough that they could come and go through the screen. Then our house was being painted and the maintenance guys took down all the screens. We went without screens for four months or so, totally spoiling those cats. Again, if we were home, we left the window open wide enough so they could go in and out independently. Now, to their dismay, we have new screens, AND the weather has turned. Rich likes to have the bedroom window open when we're sleeping, even in winter time, so we are dealing with Ajax scratching at the screen all night long. I am tempted to take it off and store it somewhere before he ruins another one, not to mention ruining our sleep!

A couple of months ago, the Behavioral Health Program at my former workplace decided to apply for a program called the Healthy Native Communities Fellowship. It requires a team of three people, including one from outside the agency. Char, the community wellness advocate, and Donna, a behavioral health clinician, were chosen for the team, and I was asked to be the third member from the community. It's been an interesting process--we had to complete a letter of intent, followed by team and individual written applications, then a fairly intense phone interview with previous members of the Fellowship. It's competitive and there are teams from all over the country who apply each year so we did not know what our chances might be. This week, we were very excited to find out that our team was one of 16 who were accepted! We will be going to quarterly week-long retreats in various locations around the US to work on skills that we can apply to community health and wellness efforts. Our first retreat is at the end of January in Scottsdale, AZ. I am looking forward to meeting people from all over the country and having new experiences that will help our work here in Unalaska. Here's more info on the Fellowship:

http://http://www.hncpartners.org/HNCP/Fellowship.html

The Museum of the Aleutians is having its annual auction fundraiser Saturday night--another "can't miss" event. You wouldn't believe all of the fabulous items up for bidding--though the best ones go way too high for us. We just like being in the middle of it all, even if we don't bring anything home.

Otherwise, we are just counting down the days till vacation--15 to go! Can't wait to see everyone back in Texas, especially those grandkids!