Busy day

Today was one of the busiest days I’ve had in a while.  To start things off, the photography class shot the pictures for grades 6-11 on the second day of picture day.  Since the 8th graders had PE, we shot them first starting at 8:45 AM.  The order of shooting went Grades: 8,7,6, 11,10, & 9.  Overall, the pictures went really well and the photo class did a great job collecting pre-paid flyers, selecting the proper background, posing the students, and getting the kids to smile.  What remains to be done is the cropping, sizing, proofing online, re-shooting, and ordering.  This picture of Hannah is a nice shot, but it needs to be cropped properly, as you can see.  I initially was going to do all the cropping myself, but now I want to show the class how to do it and let them try it first.

Then I had to clean up the bits that needed to be put away that nig ht and write out what sub-plans I could for whoever would be my sub and pack up the things I needed to go on the trip to Anchorage was scheduled to leave at 5 PM.  I walked over to the Library at 4 PM and said bye to Holly and picked up the Subaru Legacy.  It turns out that cars are really heavy.  I needed to get the car back to Holly so she could have it, plus I needed to say Happy Birthday to Mark Daniel before I left.  I called ahead to Margaret so that Bob could get ready to take me to the Airport for my flight on Wings (of Alaska), Margaret told me how Mark had just been up in the tree and she wished she had a camera.  I told her I’d be there in 1.5 minutes and I’d have a camera ready to go.

Mark scampered up the tree, lickedy split, smiled big and then raced back down to  give me a hug.  I hate leaving town on a big day like a birthday.  He’d been looking forward to it and counting down the days, like kids do, and it was just really lame to have to leave.  He’s grown up so much in the last year and experienced so much, and yet he’s still learning and growing so much. 

The flight to Juneau was, by far, the best flight I’ve ever taken to Juneau.  The weather was perfect for flying, clear cool skies with almost no clouds in sight.  The pilot said we were going down the eastern shoreline, so grabbed a seat on the left-hand side of the plane and kept my camera with me.  we headed straight for Point Sherman and then flew up over the ice fields and then skirted the tops of the mountains until we got to the Mendenhall Glacier and then flew into the valley via the glacier.  It was beautiful.  Absolutely stunningly beautiful.

At Juneau, after flight 67 arrived from Sitka I called Jack on is cell phone and confirmed that we were going to be on the same flight.  He was way in the back of where my seat was but since the plane was less than half full, the stewardess let me moved back to sit by him and catch up on things.

Getting the car at 11 PM was a fiasco.  The rental company we booked with was called Budget, but it wasn’t Budget Rent-a-car, the national chain.  Instead it was a little family owned business that made up their own policies as they went along.  The worst part of the rental was they required insurance with full coverage for each driver, on the driver’s own auto insurance even with Alaska Airlines Credit Card payments.  The rate for the economy car was $27 per day for three days, and the insurance they insisted they get was for $29 per day.  Needless to say, I canceled the rental on the spot.  Instead of getting out own car, Jeremy and I just bummed rides from my brother Jack.