Justin Bieber and the Ogre of the Fairview Inn

A friend photo-texted me an invite to a "Tropical Hotdog Party" in Talkeetna, Alaska. Talkeetna is a two-hour flight from Homer, but Justin Bieber was on the invitation.
Three ladies flew to Talkeetna to see what the Bieb was up to and what this hippy summer town was all about. The party was great with bands and games, and even beach volleyball. There were hotdogs and chicken and white bread. I ended up thinking that the BBQ sauce on the chicken was so good that I just spread it on the whitebread like peanut butter and ate BBQ sauce sandwiches. Even at a Tropical Hotdog Party in interior Alaska, people notice that white bread/BBQ sauce sandwiches are pretty white trash-y. I wonder what The Bieb would think.
With a full belly, I retired with my friends to the Fairview Inn, a typical Alaskan bar with lots of old stuff and dead animals on the walls.  We learned that at the Fairview, you can behave as badly as possible, but they won't ask you to leave. They will just stop serving ill-behaved parties alcohol. This makes for a very volatile bar environment. A poor girl from Nashville was on stage trying to croon country tunes while everyone screamed around her. Just when the scene couldn't get more comical, a boy known only as "Coniferous" asked me to dance.

We camped for the night with our sleeping bags laid out in a 3-walled cabin, waiting for an ogre or a bear to walk in the open wall. It would have been scary, except we couldn't stop laughing about combined scene of Tropical Hotdogs and ill-behaved locals at the Fairview.
On the flight home the next day, Mt. McKinley was clearly visible. Our heads full of jokes, the last night full of new friends, and the Susitna Valley stretched out before us... lesson learned: If a teenage popstar that you don't know a single song by invites you to something, get in a small plane and go.

America! Land of the free and the customer coming first...

Blogging is so much easier when you have something else you should be doing. Right now, I should be working on running my own business, so I choose to blog about how someone else runs theirs.
In Homer, there are almost as many coffee shops as there are bars and churches, but I have a couple favorites. One of them is on that short list because of their tasty and quickly-served sandwiches. However, the owner of said shop can throw down quite an obstacle course for you to put money in his pocket. From just the last week, here are my examples:

Monday, at 7am, I stopped in to fill my travel mug with brew on my way to work. At around 1pm on the same day, I walked into the same coffee shop to order a sandwich. The owner took one look at me and growled: "There are other businesses in this town you could give your support to." In a rare moment of thinking on my feet, I replied: "I come here for the friendly customer service."

On Friday, at about 7:15am, I walked in and ordered a breakfast sandwich. The owner, who was manning the counter, growled, "No food orders! I'm working alone. Coffee only!" If you have ever had your heart and mind set on a delicious breakfast sandwich in the wee hours of the groggy morn, you will understand why this nearly brought me to tears. I was the only customer in the shop. I just stared pathetically across the counter and said nothing until the bell jingled on the opening door behind me. A friendly, chipper, non-breakfast sandwich-needing voice said, "Hey Steph! How are you this morning?"
"He won't make me a breakfast sandwich!" I wailed to my friend.
The grey-haired ponytail on the other side of the counter softened. "Well, I'll make you a sandwich, but you'll have to wait." Gleeful, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down.
While he assembled my sandwich, he growled for all to hear: "You can make these at home. You just get some toast, put some eggs in the microwave, add cheese.... this is something you could do yourself."
When the next customer clanged the bell on the door as she walked in, I was halfway through my sandwich. She stepped up to the counter and said, "I'll have a coffee and a breakfast sandwich on a jalapeño bagel."
"No food orders! Only coffee!" he shouted, louder than necessary to communicate with someone 3 feet away.  She pointed across the room at me. "Steph has a sandwich." Grumbling, he walked over to the kitchen and got out the bagels, proving, once again, that if you cajole enough, you can get people to take your money.
Now, if only someone would walk into my work and start whining for floatplane service, maybe I could get something done.

Honestly?

The cliché sitcoms and dramas are accurate, because being a single girl in small town Alaska is pretty much like severing your femoral artery and then paddling your surfboard out into a shark-filled break.
It's not that attention isn't nice, but one of my friends explained the operations principle: "As a guy in Alaska, you have to hit on every new single girl immediately. She's not gonna be single for long, and the pickings are slim." 
Apparently, this rule is followed by the majority of the male population: single, married, old, young, eligible, and ridiculously ineligible alike. Add that it's just not that flattering to be one of "slim pickings," and you create myriad awkward social situations.
My softball team has made it their mission to find me a boyfriend. A whole team of matchmakers is pretty hard to defend against, and I keep thinking that if I'm polite about it, maybe I'll get more playtime. That's a pretty pathetic confession of how much I like softball.
These days, a social calendar has to be managed in all sorts of medium. I didn't even know people outside of TV actually went on "dates," but apparently they do, and they plan them via Facebook and text message.  When I got a text from an unknown number asking me out, I wasn't sure if I should ask who it was, say 'my dance card is full', or tell my softball teammates to stop leaving my number on windshields in bar parking lots.