CAP Test Preparation

I am in the thick of studying to take and pass the Certified Administrative Professional exam. Most of the administrative professionals at Chugach have taken this rigorous test. Many have passed on the first try; some have not.

The study material consists of three manuals and an extended supplemental list of related books, magazines, periodicals, and newspapers. Office Administration, Office Systems and Technology, and Management are the three components of the exam.

Studying is slow-going and frustrating. The latest editions are from 2005, which is ancient, espcially with regard to Information Technology which is in a constant state of flux. Also, the authors have done a poor job of actually writing  and I find myself mentally editing what they have written, wondering if I have guessed and grasped what they really meant to convey.

Clear and precise communication is one of the most important objectives for the administrative professional and this concept is stressed throughout the three books. Ironically, the authors are often anything but. At first I thought it was just me, but my study partner Gorgeous Jen, who is very much on the ball and a former editor, has expressed the same.

Still, the subject matter can be surprisingly interesting, which is a good thing considering the profession I am in. I am definitely learning and appreciating all the new brain connections I am forging!

We started late and basically have to read and assimilate four chapters a day. Pretty impossible actually for both of us. Jen has two small children; I teach after work.

The test will be in Fairbanks as there were not enough Anchorage students to make it worthwhile to host the exam here. I am flying up the day before; Jen is driving. It will be interesting to compare the Fairbanks of 2012 with the town I knew 25 years ago!

Break a leg Jen and alison!

Update

I re-scheduled my test to May 2013, but Jen passed!!

 

Mid-Week

I have been in a seminar for administrative professionals this week in downtown Anchorage at a hotel.  Debra Ballard of Macon, GA is the instructor and she is wonderful: intelligent, funny, observant, and completely qualified after 25 years in the utility industry. 

I am proud to say I am able to negotiate the spirals in the parking garage without undue difficulty. This is a first for me!  Hurrah!!

Horror of horrors, there is another wind/rainstorm forecast for Southcentral this weekend.  Turnagain Arm and the Hillside are forecast to get the brunt, but I think I heard 60 mph wind in Anchorage.  As the leaves are still on the trees, this could do just as much damage as last week's storm. 

We are terrified that the big cottonwood in the back yard will go down.  It could easily take out any number of houses.  Think good thoughts, everybody.

We are on "call-out" alert at the utility company.

In other news, I believe I have found all the supporting evidence necessary to document our move to AK to qualify for the Permanent Fund Dividend checks that get doled out to AK residents in late fall.   I am rather proud of this as we have things piled everywhere in this tiny house.  This deadline is coming up fast, faster than the CAP test in Anchorage, and so, takes priority.

Of course, I had to do this when the lad was sleeping, so I am quite sure I woke him up.  This house is not working for us for a number of reasons; not least of which when one of us is up, we have to be quiet, for the other one is sleeping.

I am way behind on my studying as is Jen, my study partner.  Somehow that makes me feel comforted as she is formidably organized and has passed out a study sheet with dates, materials, and chapters when things have to be done, and both of us are behind.  This weekend I will have to hit the books hard. 

Lots of other things going on as well, such as house hunting and other related activities.

I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know my fellow Admin Assistants, who are all upstairs.  Especially Nikki who is strong, smart, funny, and outgoing!

Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law Kirk today!

P.S. I know there are people viewing these posts, but it feels a bit funny posting when there is no feedback.  About a year ago, I altered the settings so folks are able to leave comments, so please feel free to do so!  Otherwise, I will just publish a book~! 

Our Yard-Post Storm

September 2012 Storm and Aftermath

Yes, this is termination dust on the Chugach range.  We are supposed to get a frost tonight so will have to harvest the mint.

 

 

Hundreds of trees uprooted

 

                                         This poor little house!

 Directing traffic at one of the many intersections where street lights were out.

 
 The flagpole on the Park Strip came down.

Hurray for the Chugach linemen working so hard to restore power!

 

 

 

 

 

Some folks (less than 2000) are still without power after our terrific wind and rainstorm this week.  I feel bad for the elderly and sick who can't afford to go to a hotel.  But our crews were out working double shifts.  We pulled crews from Homer and Golden Valley and by yesterday there were 36 crews for Chugach alone working to get power restored to everyone.

Many small pockets of Anchorage went out.  Chugach lost miles and miles of lines and severely damaged the distribution system.  The hardest-hit areas looked like a bomb zone, according to the crews who were out.  Hundreds of trees heavily laden with leaves went down on lines.  The sparking and arcing on Tuesday night looked like fireworks and the sky was an eerie blue. Small fires erupted, leaving a burned smell in the air.

We were terrified the huge cottonwood in the back yard would come down because that could easily take out any of five houses.  Our neighbors were too.  It was not that one though, but others in neighbors' yards that came crashing down.  I heard the Irish say, "Bob's tree came down in our yard" and I just put my good ear in the pillow and tried to block out the wind.  This area does not usually get this type of wind.

Along Seward highway at McHugh Creek, the wind was recorded at 98 mph until the machine broke!  So we still really do not know (and does it matter) how high the winds blew.  We only know it did major damage and we had many many angry and upset customers who expected us to pay for their spoiled fish, caribou, moose, and bear.

On Wednesday, a sleepy city got up to coffee or no coffee.  School was cancelled, the Anchorage Daily News could not print the paper, hundreds of businesses were closed including the Irish's bank.  Eventually all you could hear was the sound of chainsaws and generators.  Many acts of kindness occurred as Facebook shows.

Our phone lines were overloaded and Member Services could not keep up so they asked others in the building to come and assist.  I never realized the coordination necessary in Dispatch to not only send the crews out to locations but to make sure no crew was near any other crew. 

I worked 3 1/2 hours OT on Thursday and worked the outage lines during the day on Thursday and Friday and in fact just got a call from June as I was next on the list asking me to come in and work.  I am not going to though as I have some major studying to do for the CAP test which is fast coming up and I still feel tired from talking to so many customers and upset that some don't understand that the crews are taking an average of four hours for each outage because they have so much chain saw work to do to get to the downed lines.

June sounded exhausted.

Happy Labor day Eve Day 2012~

Fall is here in Anchorage.  We have regular night now and the leaves have been falling since July.  The wind has been blowing and it is not the warm wind of summer (which was not warm).

I continue to wear Bon Ton super-sale-priced sandals to work.  My office is on the sun-less side of the building and is a little cool, but until it snows, I am going to enjoy free feet for as long as I can!

We continue not to be able to find things in this overcrowded and small house but have made some headway consolidating and getting rid of things here and there. I mean, why have two blender bases when one of them doesn't work??

We lost Pak which was a huge blow for both of us.  Her garden has filled in with plants, but we feel her loss deeply.

We closed the door on a 4 1/2 yr old accident, which I still feel the ramifications from.  It was as traumatizing as getting hit,  but it is done and we can move forward.

We were so fortunate that my friend Terry was able to come over and feed Larkin while we were gone.  He sure was happy to see us!

We are looking forward to the next chapter here: spending more time together, fishing, hunting, and berry-picking next year since we don't have to go out of state!  Hurrah!

It is fantastic having three days off and not having to go anywhere.  Yesterday I made Italian minestrone with everything in it but the kitchen sink and a clean chicken stock and soup.  Today I made tortilla chips (which were exactly like flat Jonnycakes) layered with cheese and a black bean sauce, baked in the oven then served with fresh salsa and sour cream.  Yum yum!

Tomorrow we have the day off together and if fine, will venture south towards Hope and Whittier.  Otherwise a BBQ and some touring around Anchorage.

August Travels

Cotton

Getting ready to fall

Cotton among the raspberries

Falling among Larkin

Cotton among the Stellaria media

Gorgeous day!

Garden

Transition

Lots of things going on...  I finished up at the music studio in lae May.  It was predictably, over-emotional saying good-bye to 30+ students and their parents, which actually had been happening for weeks.  What was really hard was having a beginning voice teacher sit in on lessons for a week.    I have several students who are in a tricky stage technically and I have already seen a decline in one that I gave up a month ago (breath control).  Still, I have to let that go and move on. 
Now I am in the process of submitting a bid for the temporary position I have been occupying for the last couple of months.  It is a big process and I hope to be done with it tomorrow except for the typing test.

Postscript:  I have the position permanently now and am extremely happy with it.  I am slowly starting to meet the others who are in similar positions within the company and they are very welcoming.  The certification test is similar to any pre-professional test, but contains a lot of info that I won't use, but also will come with a generous raise, so it will be well worth the effort.  Seem like I have been studying hard the last five years, building those new brain connections!

The snow melted awfully fast.  There is a word for it where it swirls and disappears especially on the highway.  We did not have any of the flooding problems that all expected, thankfully.  Summer did take a very long time to get here and we have had more than our share of rainy, cloudy, cool days. 

Still, most of the rest of the country is suffering with triple-digit heat and humidity and I would rather have this. 

4th of July will be quiet.  One sister is back East, the other always entertains her mother-in-law on that day.  The lad will be off the day before as will I, so that's when we will celebrate, probably with a BBQ. 

A friend gave us a silver and the lad smoked it on the grill and it came out great!

Resting and Reflecting

It's Sunday, July 1st.  We are way behind in our gardening this year, because of the passing of Pak, the slow start to summer, and the mosquitoes, which are ferocious this year.  The paper says they are not any worse than usual, but apparently the conditions in our back yard, front yard meet swarming biters perfectly.  There is no other word for it: they swarm.

The lilac bush, really a tree, is gorgeous this year and the blossoms smell incredible.  It is more pink, than lilac.  The Irish is allergic to the smell unfortunately.

Fishing is poor this year.  Most areas are closed including Ship Creek, but we are hoping the silvers will run around the 15th of July.  Some folks I know took a halibut charter out of Homer and ended up with about 19 pounds per person, but that seems like a pretty high cost, and I don't know how the vertigo would be on a boat. 10th& M Seafood and New Sagaya always have beautiful fish for purchase.

The cottonwood buds are over and cleaned up.  They were terribly sticky.  The cotton is starting to form now and I belive I am allergic to this.  I don't mind picking these up for they at least can be burned.  One of our friends was telling us the Hydaburg folk use the cotton to smoke their fish with.

We are fully light now, actually have been losing daylight since Solstice.  First 5 seconds, now nearly 2 minutes per day.  The year has a rhythm to it up here and I am sure when darkness comes we will all look forward to more rest.  But for now, the white light in the night is here along with extra growing time, fishing, berrying soon, and all the other benefits of living in AK in the summer, including driving on ice- and snow-free roads.

Yesterday after slogging through Chapter 1, part A for a certification test I am taking, I made home-made noodles.  I have lost my urge to cook, for some reason.  I hope it is only dormant after working so many hours for so long and the Irish and I are on completely different schedules and can eat together only twice a week.  It is important to choose and care about what goes in to the body, and take time to prepare it carefully.  Although we don't eat preserved foods, our meals haven't been balanced.  Salad only or just berries for breakfast or pork chop and potato and no green.  I have gotten sloppy since we eat alone.

The Japanese have the right idea with their beautiful Bento box preparations.  Who has time for that, I say?  Oh well, will make a pact to eat really well three times a week and go from there.

OK, back to the books!

Mushrooms on toast

We are at the dining room table.  The Irish is reading aloud to me snippets of the Sunday paper while smoking silver salmon with apple chips.  Mmmmm....Our friend Jim is coming over for a BBQ today.  We hope we will be able to sit outside although the mosquitoes are atrocious.

So I must be recovering from working 80 hours a week for the past 18 months as I have been musing about mushrooms on toast.  It has long been popular in the UK and I used to think yuck, how unappezing.  All the Miss Marples, Poirots, Wimseys, Harry Potters and all the others eating mushrooms on toast for supper. Remember how hobbits turn absolutely bloodthirsty about mushrooms and how they risk life and limb for the delectable  mushrooms in Farmer Maggott's field?  JRR Tolkien had to get that from somewhere and now we find out there is a long love affair with this humble vegetable.

Those of you who know me know I love to cook, but the Irish has actually been doing most of it for a long time now.  Anyway, one night a few weeks ago we had some leftover mushrooms and I made toast and tried it and lo- it was delicious. 

Apparently it is a bona-fide dish, made even more famous by the famous cook Jane Grigson, who celebrates each ingredient - in this case field mushrooms.  Here she reprints a recipe from  Shilling Cookery for the People, first published in 1854 by Alexis Soyer, the great chef of the Reform Club.

'Being in Devonshire, at the end of September and walking across the fields before breakfast to a small farmhouse I found three very fine mushrooms, which I thought would be a treat, but on arriving at the house I found it had no oven, a bad gridiron and a smoky coal fire.  Necessity, they say, is the mother of Invention, I immediately applied to our grand and universal mama, how I should dress my precious mushrooms, when a gentle whisper came to my ear...'

Soyer cooked them on toast, on a stand close up to the fire, with a glass tumbler inverted over them to keep off the taint of the coal smoke.  It also kept in all the delicious juices.  Here is his method adapted to our happier circumstances.

Wipe the mushrooms, which should be fine large ones, and remove the earthy part of the stalk.  Place them, stalks up, on rounds of toast which have been spread with clotted cream.  Season them and put a little more cream onto the caps.  Arrange toast and mushrooms on a baking sheet, and invert onehuge or several small Pyrex dishes over them.  Leave for half an hour in a fairly hot oven. 375-400 degrees.

'The sight when the glass is removed, is most inviting, its whiteness rivals the everlasting snows of Mt. Blanc, and the taste is worthy of Lucullus.  Vitellius would never have dines without it; Apicius would never have gone to Greece to seek for crawfish; and had he only half the fortune left when he committed suicide, he would have preferred to have left proud Rome and retire to some villa or cottage to enjoy such an enticing dish.'

I wonder what 'the People' made of such learned flights of culinary fantasy, and hope it did not put them off the recipe, which is the ideal way of treating our precious field mushroom.

-Jane Grigson     English Food

RAIN

We actually got rain today - real rain, not snow, the first of the season.

It smelled so good and kept the dust down!

The daffodils are blooming in the back yard and the rhubarb is up.

Life's good!

A few more miscellaneous pics

Ths is me concentrating hard while trying to take a picture of my practice makeup (which I hate). How grim if this is what I look like when working!!!!!!

First and last time for false eyelashes for me!!!!

The poser taking pictures of the photographers!

Nicola at Beluga Point

UAA in the woods

Photographer Steve and Nicola, assistant.

Isn' t this gorgeous?  Who would know it's April???

Steve and Nicola consulting while I warm up in the truck.  Note how warmly they are dressed!

April 18, 2012

Lots going on up here in Anchorage!  We have over 15 hours of daylight now and some heavy DIsappearing action to get rid of our record-bursting snow.  Over 137 inches fell in dribs and drabs and a couple of big drops.  Our streets got narrower and narrower, more and more accidents piled up, and snow piles on rooves.  Temps are in the 30's and 40's and we have lots of sunlight!

The Irish and I had our first BBQ for a birthday celebration/celebrate Spring/first-just-plain-get-out-of- the-house evening last week.  The pavement is largely dry, which was just a memory up until a week ago!

As I sit, sun is streams in onto tulips and daff bulbs that spent the winter in the fridge and are now in pots in front of the slider. The first daff responding to all that warmth has opened up.
I saw one of my students perform in RENT this past weekend with some Canadian friends.  It brought back a lot of sad NYC memories, but it was a very good production, all with local talent which Anchorage audiences just love!

I also had a photo shoot at Beluga Point, the train snowplow a few miles down the road, and behind UAA in the woods with my friends Steve and Nicola.  Gorgeous scenery and I will post some pictures on this and the next blog.  Note how warmly Steve and Nicola are dressed. 

Recital coming up, my last one with this center as I need to take a little time off as I just can't work these long hours anymore.

Next will be playing background music at a fundraiser my sister Cheryl is hosting.  Not singing, but playing piano!  I have picked a combination of classical and non-classical music.

Animals are good and spending more and more time outside.  Larkin wants to be outside all the time now in the light.  It is amazing how he can spend so much time out in the snow and not mind it.  Pak, on the other hand, likes to lay on the porch where it is dry.

The Irish continues to do the bulk of the house chores and work.  He is not getting enough sleep and we are not getting enough time together but I hope this will change soon.  The dog next door barks and kids across the street bounce the basketball at all hours.  And I am sure my coming home for lunch and packing my evening music is intrusive in this small house.

The bears have woken up and are starting to ramble around looking for food.

Hope you all are enjoying a wonderful Spring!