My Review of Carol Beth Anderson’s Beauty and Deceit.

A new spin on Beauty and the Beast involving, fairies, magic, and a contest.

I’m a huge fan of fairytales and fairy tale retellings, so I was very eager to read Beauty and Deceit, Anderson’s take on the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast.

Carol Beth Anderson’s Beauty and Deceit

First off, I really enjoyed how she got away from the Stockholm Syndrome/Prisoner aspect of the original tale. It was always tough for me to swallow the whole, “I’m a prisoner of this creepy monster because my dad took a rose. But, hey he’s nice to me and we live in this swell castle. I love him!”

C’mon, raise your standards, girl.

Instead, our heroine, Aeryn is selected to “compete” for the Beast, in the style of the show the Bachelor. Except, the nine other contestants are Fae and have unearthly beauty and magical powers, while Aeryn is an attractive, but normal (or so she thinks, spoiler alert) human.

While Aeryn is not a prisoner of Tor, the Beast, she’s a prisoner of her motives to enter the contest, and her Savior Syndrome. She has an overwhelming urge to take care of everyone else’s problems, to the detriment of herself. In this case, the fairy who brought her into the contest will take care of her poor and starving family as long as she is in the contest. As she gets to know the other contestants, and their motives for joining the contest, she tries to solve their problems as well. But like all protagonists with a flaw, the more she tries to help, the more she messes things up. And oh nelly, does she mess things up.

I liked how the other characters had varying reasons, good and bad, for joining the contest (and wanting to win). The alliances between the contestants constantly shifted and merged along the way. I’ve never seen the show, The Bachelor, but I’ve read enough to imagine it must be the same way. Some join to find love, others for fame, probably some just for the fun of it.

Tor, is difficult to like, let alone love. Okay, I take that back, he’s an absolute jerk. He’s arrogant, conceited and obnoxious. It’s hard to have empathy for his plight. You really have more concern for the rest of the people effected by his curse. Throughout the story, I wanted to scream at Aeryn, “Dammit! Walk away, your family will be fine. You don’t have to put up with his crap. Let someone else win.” But, Aeryn is determined to win, to save her family, the other contestants and the people trapped by Tor’s curse. What she risks losing is herself and those she truly loves.

The author does a great job with the protagonist in that she’s not a perfect Mary Sue. She does have anxieties and flaws that cause her to constantly trip up along the way. Now, I did wish (spoiler alert #2) that Aeryn hadn’t suddenly developed magic along the way. I would have liked her to get out of some of her problems using other skills (but that’s just me—this isn’t Burger King, I can’t have it my way).

If you’re looking for a fun and fast-paced retelling of Beauty and the Beast I feel you will enjoy CB Anderson’s Beauty and Deceit. There’s magic, love and romance, quite a bit of spite (instead of hair pulling, one girl casts a spell making another girl’s hair fall out. these girls take catty to a whole new level). Now for those who disapprove of such things, two of the female fae fall in love with each other during the contest. I thought it was a riot. I mean, wouldn’t that be a shocker on the real TV show? Final ceremony, “Sorry bud, I’m just not that into you. Me and Sara hit it off during the show and we’re going to open a winery together.”

But if you don’t like that sort of thing, well, this may not be the book for you. It was such a small part of the plot, it is hardly worth mentioning. That being said, I thought their romance subplot might make a great short story, since the details didn’t make it into the book (just a suggestion if you read this far, Beth).

My one beef with the story is that I thought the ending was a little too easily resolved. I want to avoid spoilers here, so, all I will say is I would like to have seen the emotion of her final choice drawn out more.

But all in all, a fun twist on a classic tale. And it now places second for my fastest read book, at just over 5 hours (Dawn Hosmer’s Bits and Pieces is still #1 at approx. 3 hours).

Thanks for reading! Please check out some of my other reviews and blogs, or even my own books, The Dark Land series.

Ancient evil stalks the Alaska back country. Some places were never meant for humans to trespass.

September 27, 2021

The Statute of Limitations on A Booty Call: Weird Dating Tales of Old

I’m taking a break this week from my 30-Day Space Available Adventure to dip back into the Dating Vault. I was joking with one of my younger single friends about booty calls.

How long is it acceptable for a guy to keep your number in his queue, then call you up out of the blue expecting you to be receptive to his advances? The weirdest one I had was a year.

Yep, you read that right. A year. This was after he DID NOT call me back after our first and only date. Now, I will say after that less than stellar date, I wasn’t hankering to hear from him. which was why I was surprised to get a booty call more than a year later.

Let me set the stage.

My sophomore year in college, I decided to try out the on-line dating thing again. One such date was a guy named *Mike. Mike and I chatted online for a bit before deciding to meet for dinner. We had pretty good rapport in our online messaging and phone calls, so I was pretty excited about Mike. From his online pictures, he was good-looking (I know, I know, some of you sense danger already. This is when online dating was in its infancy). I even went out and bought a new outfit for this particular date.

I would regret wasting the money later, though I still have the shirt. what can I say, I’m kind of a clothes hoarder.

*Once again, name have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent

What’s the Most Taboo Topic on a First Date?

My regret was not in how Mike looked. His pictures were spot on. My regret was in our dinner conversation over Mexican food at Azteca* restaurant.

*I mention the specific name because it will be an important detail later during the booty call!

I think everyone can agree that exes are typically something a person shouldn’t bring up on a date, right?

His Ex and her Magnificent Fake Breasts

Not in Mike’s case. He spent the whole date getting wasted and talking about how gorgeous his ex was. I got to hear all about her plastic surgery and magnificent fake breasts (and how much he missed them). His grand plan was to train to become a pilot so that he could make enough money to impress her to win her back.

I stabbed at my chicken enchiladas trying to pretend to be interested in this bizarre conversation. I seriously wondered why the hell I was there. I couldn’t even have a margarita since I was driving, though I planned on drowning my angst when I got home.

When I got up to use the ladies’ room at one point, Mike made sure to comment on how great my backside looked in my jeans (but not in such polite terms). When we finished dinner and split the check, I declined the honor of going back to his place.

SHOCKING!

I know, how could I resist such charm?

Obviously, he never called me for a follow-up date. I never called him requesting another either. The feeling seemed mutual at the time.

Can I pick a winner, or what?

A Year Later…The booty Call

Late at night, over a year later, I was sitting on my couch studying for one of my electrical engineering finals. You can imagine my surprise to receive a random text from a number I didn’t recognize:

HEY, WHAT ARE YOU UP TO TONIGHT?

Baffled, I replied:

WHO IS THIS?

A few moments later:

MIKE! WE HAD DINNER AT AZTECA!

I’m sitting on my couch holding my phone surrounded by piles of engineering notes. My phone was one of those small, gray Motorolas that were popular circa 2003. Not great for fast texting, but practically indestructible. I’m staring at this thing trying to figure out who the hell this guy is, then it hit me.

It was the creepy guy that went on and on about his ex, her fake breasts and his pilot lessons.

So I texted back:

HOW ARE THE PILOT LESSONS GOING?

Funny…he never replied.

Personally, my statute of limitations on booty calls is pretty short. If you didn’t get any on the first go round, probably doesn’t make sense to call me out of the blue a year later. But then, there is the saying, “Fortune favors the bold.”

Thanks for reading!

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About the Author

I joined the Navy at 18 to escape a small town in the Mojave Desert. A diagnosis of MS disrupted my dreams of becoming an astronaut or a super spy. I made limoncello from my lemons and became a super electrical engineer instead. My fascination with live high voltage drew me to Alaska. I came for the job, but stayed for the adventure. I enjoy blogging about my journey as a woman working in STEM, my experiences dealing with everything MS has handed me, and the wonder of the Alaska wilderness. My husband and I have undertaken the task of turning 30 acres of remote land into an off-grid retreat. I write stories about unique women in STEM who save the day and the hot guys who sometimes help along the way, as well as historical fiction about the Klondike Gold Rush. Teasers for these stories can be found on my website. I self-published my first horror novella, The Dark Land, on Amazon in May of 2020. I released the sequel, The Devil’s Valley, in May of 2021. Both stories are set in the wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and draw on the Athabascan “Head Waters Peoples” legends of the Cet’ann, or “The People With Tails”.

Some places were never meant for humans to trespass: The Dark Land

July 26, 2021August 25, 2021

Getting Lost and Found: The Beginning of My 30-Day Space-Available Adventure

A while back I posted this picture on social media:

Me in downtown Charleston in August, 2003

It was one of my most unique life adventures. For about a month during summer break from college in August of 2003, I flew around the US, wherever the military had Space Available Flights.

Several followers reached out and said they would like to know more about the story behind this trip.

Here goes:

The Backstory

Midnight 2001/2002 I met *Bob at a nightclub in downtown Seattle. We went on two dates before he was stationed overseas in preparation for Iraq.

Long Distance Relationship

Our relationship was mostly phone calls and letters. But he professed to love me and want to marry me. On one hand, I was rather flattered. This is the kind romance you read about in books or see in movies, right? Even my mom thought it was sweet, since that is how she and my dad met. My parents dated briefly before my father headed off to Vietnam, then they got married when he returned. They’ve now been married almost 50 years. In theory, it could work.

But Do You Really Know Him?

My guts told me this was rash. How much can you really get to know someone through calls and letters. I decided to give it a shot. At the same time, I really thought we needed to see each other more in person before taking it to the next level.

Through these letters and calls, we did learn quite a bit about each other. In particular, he did know about the fact that I had a chronic medical condition: MS. He also knew I was putting myself through school to get my electrical engineering degree in Seattle.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

In the on my summer break from college in 2003, I made plans to go visit him in Germany before he was due to rotate to Iraq. I was on a serious budget in college, so I researched taking military Space Available flights (I’m medically retired from the Navy, so I’m eligible).

The Inciting Event

During the final few weeks of classes, the stress brought on a migraine so severe, I had to be hospitalized (because they weren’t sure if it was a migraine or a stroke). When I was being released from the hospital, I sent him an email about what was going on and asked him to call me. I couldn’t call him at the time because of his location.

A Red Flag Flies

When he finally called, as I was being discharged from the hospital he said, “Is this going to be a regular thing? Because when we’re married, I don’t want to have to work.”

I was too stunned to come back immediately with anything, especially since I was still doped up on medications.

He then quickly dismissed me with something along the lines of, “take care driving home and I’ll talk to you later.”

I think you will understand when I tell you, that BOTHERED ME. And that is putting it mildly. I hoped he was joking. He said he cared.

WHAT THE HELL????

I wasn’t putting myself through the torture of an electrical engineering degree just for the fun of it. Though I am one of those psychos who likes to do math. In fact, the VA was paying for it on the premise that I would be employable at the end. I WANTED TO WORK. At the same time. I have Multiple Sclerosis. A disease that can choose to knock me flat whenever it wants.

One of my major criteria for a life partner was someone who would be on my team. Not someone who just wanted me to support him.

At the same time, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Part of me desperately wanted it to just be a misunderstanding. After all the letters and calls, yes, I had feelings for him.

Things Go From Bad to Worse

So, I sent him an email telling him that something he said really bugged me, and I wanted to talk about it. Could he give me a call back so we could discuss it?

His reply?

He was too busy. Just email him.

I really didn’t want to do that because I know how things can come off wrong in an email. I let him know that.

His reply was that I was starting to annoy him, and I should really just email what was on my mind.

So…I…did…

Oh boy…

The response in return was a profanity laced email that haunts me to this day. I won’t go into details. Sadly, I wasn’t rude. I just stated what he said and why it hurt me. The names he called me and how angry he got was terrifying.

I decided was not going anywhere in his vicinity.

New Plans and an Ex-Boyfriend/Old Friend

I was shaken and restless. I had a whole month off from school and work. I needed to escape. The walls of my apartment seemed to get smaller every time I read Bob’s violently angry email.

I know many people say you can’t be friends with an ex-boyfriend, but it just so happens I was.

I called up *Jake.

Backstory of Jake

Jake and I dated in the Navy in South Carolina. Our first go-round didn’t work out. He ghosted me in the worst way and broke my heart. I moved on. When I got diagnosed with MS and was getting ready to leave South Carolina, he called me one night out of the blue.

Jake apologized profusely with no expectations of forgiveness or friendship. He said that he had always felt guilty for what he had done, but didn’t know how to rectify it. He told some of his friends about it, and they insisted that he call and at least try to apologize. We went out for dinner. The sparks flew again between us, but I was moving away, so we became good friends.

When I called Jake and told him what happened, he suggested I come to Charleston and stay with him for a bit instead. I looked up the Space Available Schedule. While I couldn’t get directly to Charleston, SC; I could get to North Carolina and rent a vehicle.

The Adventure Begins…

I sent Bob an email that I wasn’t coming to Germany, and that we needed to take a break from each other. Which seemed silly in some ways since I hadn’t seen him in almost a year and a half at that point. But I needed time to process his violent response to my email. I let him know I would talk to him again when school started.

I packed my trusty green backpack. I have travelled with this baby across Europe, on camping trips in the Alaska backcountry, and I still have it to this day. I loaded it into the back of my red Hyundai and headed to McChord AFB, south of Seattle to catch my flight across the US.

Next: my flight to North Carolina and a Dark and Stormy Night

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent

Thanks for reading!

About the Author

I joined the Navy at 18 to escape a small town in the Mojave Desert. A diagnosis of MS disrupted my dreams of becoming an astronaut or a super spy. I made limoncello from my lemons and became a super electrical engineer instead. My fascination with live high voltage drew me to Alaska. I came for the job, but stayed for the adventure. I enjoy blogging about my journey as a woman working in STEM, my experiences dealing with everything MS has handed me, and the wonder of the Alaska wilderness. My husband and I have undertaken the task of turning 30 acres of remote land into an off-grid retreat. I write stories about unique women in STEM who save the day and the hot guys who sometimes help along the way, as well as historical fiction about the Klondike Gold Rush. Teasers for these stories can be found on my website. I self-published my first horror novella, The Dark Land, on Amazon in May of 2020. I released the sequel, The Devil’s Valley, in May of 2021. Both stories are set in the wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and draw on the Athabascan “Head Waters Peoples” legends of the Cet’ann, or “The People With Tails”.

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Some places were never meant for humans to trespass…

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019

Get A Little Dirty

Sign in the arctic warning of polar bears, DMshepard

I’ve scraped the mud and gravel out of my steel-toed Keene’s the best that I can, and tug the plastic shoe condoms over the top to try to contain the mess. I know it’s an effort in futility. I’m just making a short stop back at camp to grab a cup of hot tea from the break room (spike rooms are what we call them), use the head, make some calls from my office, then head back out into the field. I’m coated, head to toe in mud. Not unusual this time of year. Most people assume that the dead of winter in the arctic is what I dread most. The time of year when we’re hitting temperatures of 20, 30, 40 and even 50 below. The coldest I ever worked in up at Prudhoe was ambient -65 with a windchill of -85. When it gets that cold, they suspend all outside work. Emergencies only. It’s because exposed skin can freeze in less than five minutes, and breathing air that cold can damage the lungs.

Me at work at one of our substations in late spring (June). Yes, that’s snow around the bottom of the substation

Nope. The time of year I dread are the shoulder seasons, late spring and early fall. The time of year when we’re in cyclic freeze and thaw. We can see temperatures at night in the minus teens, only to swing up to above freezing during the day. Meanwhile, the sun is shining almost 18 hours a day, 12 hours of it direct on the snow. This causes the top layers of snow and gravel to melt. The pads and roads turn into a quagmire of mud. Even though we are theoretically below freezing most of the day. This wreaks havoc on our equipment, particularly our electrical infrastructure. The winds blow the mud onto the powerlines, causing short circuits and outages. The permafrost heaves and jacks, causing buried cable to stress and snap. The crews then have to dig it up and repair it. I can count on being out in the field most of the day, answering trouble calls with the line crews in addition to my normal field engineering duties.

I make my way down the hallway of the old ATCO trailers that make up the office complexes. This bolted-together relic from the pipeline days, with wooden paneling lining the walls that was the height of decoration in the mid-70’s has seen better days, but there’s no where else I’d rather work.

The heat is cranked in the building and I unzip my muddy jacket as I carry my hardhat and ice grips down the hall, feet dragging with exhaustion after being out in the field all morning. Coming down the hallway I see her and she sees me. I’m suddenly self-conscious of my messy braid that I threw together 8 hours ago when I climbed out of bed in camp when my radio went off.

She flips her perfectly flat-ironed long blonde hair as she struts down the hall in painted on denim and 4-inch-high heels. I’m not sure which glitters more under the old florescent lights; her long, dangling earrings, her pink shellacked nails, or her glossed lips that are curled up in a smirk as she sees me.

Can’t avoid her, there’s no where else to go, so I smile back despite my weariness and I feel a flush rising to my cheeks as she looks me up and down and begins to laugh.

“OH—My—God, Daniella. What happened?” she says, putting her hands to her face.

I don’t have to look down at my mud-spattered FRC pants and shirt to know what she’s talking about. “I’ve been out in the field, working.” I reply, trying to extract myself from this awkward conversation.

She rolls her eyes. “You look terrible. Thank god I don’t have to go out in the field and get all—dirty.”

“Sure,” I reply. I hold my head high and I keep walking. I have a job to do.

I want to say a lot of things, but I bite my tongue. Why? Because I’ve been there before, and it would be like talking to a brick wall. I’ve had lunch with this woman (and talks with others like her). This is the same woman who complains that she doesn’t make enough money in her job and wishes she could make more. When I tell her or others like her they could become a technician or an operator with only a two-year degree and make more than I do, and have better job security, here are the excuses I hear:

Oh, but that’s so hard
I don’t have time for that
That’s a lot of physical labor
I don’t want to have to get dirty
I want to be able to dress pretty and feminine for work, I don’t want to have to dress so drab (like you)
That takes a lot of math, and math is hard
I don’t want to be out in the cold or bad weather

I get it. I really do. Everyone has certain choices and expectations in life. Many of those, unfortunately are culturally embedded. But I know this. The choices we make or don’t make define our careers, our lives and our financial situations.

Me in Prudhoe Bay after my dunking summer of 2018!

We see a lot nowadays about following our passions, pursuing our dreams. That chasing money is going to lead to a life of misery. At the same time, we don’t hear enough as women about choosing a career that can make us financially independent and stable. I was able to find that in my multiple iterations of careers in STEM. Some would argue that I was lucky somehow, I was born good at math and science. I would argue to the contrary. My luck was that I had educators early on that instilled in me a desire to learn despite the fact that it was difficult. That it didn’t matter whether I was a boy or a girl, that I just needed to apply myself. My other stroke of luck may have been my father. I had a father who was a power plant operator and a mechanic on the side. He would let me come into the plant with him on payday to pick up his check, and explain to me what the big generators and relays were doing. He would let me watch him work on cars (and even sometimes help). This instilled a curiosity about machinery and electricity that lives in me to this day.

This is me standing beside a rotor for a frame 5 turbine.

I’m only a good engineer because I started out as a good technician. I worked my way to where I am now because I wasn’t afraid to get dirty and do a physical job. As a result, I can actually afford those nice shoes and life I want when I am not in the field covered in mud. I don’t have to rely on a man to finance it for me. I was able to chose a man to be in my life because I wanted to be with him and he wanted to be with me.

Due to medical circumstances beyond my control, I eventually couldn’t do the hard, physical part of the job anymore, but the solid technical foundation I had laid carried forward into the rest of my career, and made me the competent, highly qualified engineer that I am today.

All of this because I wasn’t afraid to get dirty.

November 5, 2018November 5, 2018

An Autumn Walk

I decided to take a break from writing on this clear cold autumn day to get out and enjoy the beautiful Alaska fall weather. For those of you who follow me regularly, you may be wondering why we aren’t headed out to the cabin. Well, unfortunately, the road to the cabin is closed for the year. We’re busily making our plans for next March, but for this winter, we’ll enjoy activities closer to home.

We decided since the weather was so nice, as previously mentioned, clear and cold, to head down to the small ski town of Girdwood for a hike. We’ve gotten out first snowfall here in south-central Alaska, but it’s not very deep. We wanted to get one last hike in before it’s time to break out the snowshoes and cross country skis. It’s also fall, so the daylight is fading fast. Between now and the winter solstice, we’ll be losing light everyday at a rapid pace.

We drove along the Turnagain Arm (as seen in the above picture). This is a great place to see the bore tide, or to see beluga whales. Directly across the arm (right where the sun is shining), is the small gold rush town of Hope. Both Girdwood and Hope have been inspirations for some of my stories.

Sun peaking through the trees. Winner’s Creek Trail, Girdwood, AK

We wanted to hike the Winner’s Creek Trail. In the summers, this is a popular hike. It connects from the Alyeska Resort property to the Crow Creek Pass Trail. This trail is part of the original Iditarod heritage trail. For hard-core marathoners, the Crow Creek Pass Marathon is one of the toughest.

When the snow gets a little deeper, we plan on coming back out and exploring some of the cross-country ski trails or snow show trails, but while the snow is still shallow, this was an easy trail with just hiking shoes and poles. At times it was slick and treacherous, as it was hard-packed and icy.

Snowcat Bridge over Winner’s Creek, Girdwood, AK

My husband and I truly enjoy disconnecting from the world. This trail is approximately forty-five minutes from Anchorage, but as you can see from the pictures, you feel like you’re in a different world.

As you walk along and soak in the surroundings, you notice more and more details. Animal tracks in the snow pop out at you. This bear has wandered along sometime ago.

Waterfall near Winner’s Creek Gorge, Girdwood, AK

I’ve lived in Alaska now for 12 years. Each season has its unique beauty. A different faucet to enjoy, if you just get out and give it a chance. Yes, sometimes that does mean experiencing a little discomfort. I promise it’s worth it.

Turnagain Arm on our drive home that evening

August 13, 2018February 28, 2019

The Thong Story

It’s funny, when I started my website and built my blog page, it showed me how I could build categories. At first, I kind of chuckled to myself. Categories? Why do I need categories for random thoughts? Now that I am a few blogs in, I can now see some categories starting to evolve even without my intention to create them. This blog kind of straddles the Navy category and my current job.

Sunrise and sunset during the arctic winter.

Summers in Prudhoe Bay can have the few random nice days, but for the most part they are cool and wet. This precipitation leads to soft, wash boarded roads and treacherous, slow driving conditions.

The morning I wrote this post, I read the roads and pads report and sighed. It rained yesterday and is projected to rain again. Roads are going to be a sloppy, slow slog of wash-boarded gravel. The speed limit on almost all the roads according to the report has been dropped to 15 MPH, and I needed to drive across the field. As I got ready for work, I thought to myself, Today I need to wear the good sports bra.

Trust me, driving 20 to 30 miles over wash boarded roads is no fun, especially when certain body parts jiggle more than one would like. I realized that most of my co-workers probably don’t worry about this. It is neither a good or bad thing, it is just a fact. Most of the people who work up here are men. We women are a slim minority. Most of the women who work in Prudhoe Bay are housekeepers or admins. The few female technicians, operators and engineers are a tiny fraction of the overall workforce.

It made me think of a time in the Navy where I was asked a question about women’s underwear.

It was back in 1998. I had been picked up as a staff instructor and I was the only female staff member on crew at the time. On this day, I was standing watch as electrical operator, watching the board and taking logs. The hum of the HVAC unit and the conversation between myself and the reactor operator was suddenly broken by the curtain for maneuvering drawing back and the Engineering Watch Supervisor poking his head in and shouting, “Request permission to enter and speak to the Electrical Operator.”

The watch office granted permission without looking up from his logs. I however, looked up to see the entire watch team outside the door, peering in eagerly, staring at me.

My first thought was, “What fresh hell is this?”

He squeezed into the small room and even before making it to my bench he shouted, “Nipper (that was my maiden name), can women wear thongs in the Navy?”

Taken aback, my first response was something along the lines of “Hell if I know?” Then, “Why are you asking me?”

He was more than happy to oblige. One of our female students had put on a lot of weight since she joined the Navy. Sometimes it happens, especially in the Nuke program where you are parked on your backside for hours on end studying. She had become so much over weight that her uniforms no longer fit. Now if you have never been in the military, your uniform is supposed to look a certain way. Her supervisor, sensitive to her feelings told her she needed to purchase new uniforms because her old ones were no longer suitable, but he did not exactly tell her why.

Well, as I know some women do when they purchase a prom dress or a special occasion dress, this young sailor decided to buy her uniforms a size smaller to motivate herself to lose weight. While I can understand her logic, it backfired, literally. Unfortunately, while performing her duties, the seams of her pants across her backside did not survive the activity. They split down her rather ample backside. When she went to her supervisor and showed him her predicament he told her to go home and change. For some reason, though she had permission to go home, she decided to ask the Watch Supervisor what she should do.

Being a rather seasoned sailor, he advised her, “Just put some duct tape over it, you’ll be fine now, No one will notice.”

“I can’t, I’m wearing a thong,” was her reply, to which he responded by ordering her to go home and change, then running to where I was on watch to ask his question.

Just so you know this really blew their minds/freaked them out. Women can wear sexy underwear under their uniforms? Oh My God!!!!!! Personally, I kept it pretty comfy. Dungarees are uncomfortable enough. Granny panties all the way, but I digress.

Being the only female staff on crew, I was considered to be the font of knowledge on all things female. We looked it up. At least in the regulations at the time, it did not call out what type of underwear you could wear, just that you wear them. Believe it or not, it did specify color: white or skin tone under white uniforms, and any color under other uniforms.

So yes, we determined it was perfectly acceptable for women to wear thongs in the Navy.

I have thought about this often over the years. How much effort emphasis we women put into dressing and looking a certain way, even down to choosing just the right underwear under a garment, because heaven forbid people see a panty or bra line and know, gulp: we’re wearing underwear! OMG!

While sure, men worry about looking neat, professional, and presentable, they do not obsess over it the way we do. The interesting thing I have learned, working around men for so many years, most of them do not notice our efforts at all. Sure, my husband notices when I dress nice, but we dress and look a certain way because the fashion industry says it is important, other women say it is important. But most of the guys I work with? I really don’t think they care.

Thanks for reading, and I hope your underwear is comfy and soft today.

July 23, 2018July 25, 2018

Taking the Plunge! My dip into Prudhoe Bay.

Arctic ocean in winter with Polar Bear warning sign

“Off of the tour bus and into the food chain.”

It’s a common joke in Alaska, and tonight, we decided to join other co-workers and take the Polar Plunge and jump into the Arctic Ocean. I’ve worked up here on and off for 11 years, and never done it, my co-worker Derek has worked 13. He told me about it over lunch and I decided after a rather rough week, why the heck not?

Unfortunately, not knowing that this event was coming, I had to run to the gift shop in camp and buy a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and pray they wouldn’t be completely see through after my dunking.

People on the beach waiting to go for it.

We drove the long gravel road out to East Dock, both of us marveling at the fact we had never been out there in the summer. I’ve been out there countless times in winter, in the dark, helping with generators and other electrical equipment. I’ve been to other places on the arctic ocean in the summer and marveled at the sight of Prudhoe Bay without ice for the brief few weeks that it happens. But here we were going to jump in.

Okay, so jump is a relative term. Prudhoe bay is really shallow, for quite a long distance. We were warned in advance to wear shoes, since we were going to have to wade out until we got waist deep, then submerge over our heads, then slog back. The beach is rough gravel and sharp rocks. We signed in and began our slog our into the bay.

The water temperature, according to the little certificate I got was 32 degrees. The air temperature was 48. It didn’t feel so bad…at first. But the further out we got, the chillier we got.

As previously mentioned, the plan was to stop at waist deep, I should say I did. My friend tried to keep going. I think he forgot that I’m like a half a foot shorter than him. I’m not short by any means, but he’s pretty tall. Our conversation went about like this:

“How deep do we have to go?” I asked, puzzled that he kept walking seaward.

“Just waist-deep, then we dunk our heads under.”

“Where are you going?”

“I want to get deeper.”

“You go ahead, I’m dunking now.”

So we both dunked under, then trudged quickly back to shore, where a friend was trying to video said event. Unfortunately, the video didn’t record, but I got some pictures.

For those of you who have never been, I hope you liked my pictures of the arctic ocean. I feel privileged to have been able to work in such a unique place for so long.

My favorite picture of the Sag River where it meets the ocean during the few hours of light in winter

June 11, 2018

STEM Ambassador Talk

Me in Azerbaijan at the Temple of the Eternal Flame as part of a work trip in 2007

This week I am preparing to talk to a group of high school students at a summer camp about opportunities in engineering. The technical focus of my topic going to revolve around my work with drones, but after reading the headlines this week, I am actually going to talk about something even deeper.

The Number of Female Chief Executives is Falling

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times, May 23, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/upshot/why-the-number-of-female-chief-executives-is-falling.html

While I am on the engineering side of the fence, I agree with what she says in the article. I have seen it throughout my own career as a technician, operator and engineer. Yes, there are biases against women in the workplace, and many of them are not just because of their own choice, but because of perceptions on behalf of those in management above them. The article is well worth the read, but I would like to speak to another issue the article misses. Something more systemic that I see in society and new interns that I work with. And it was summed up well in an article from the Chicago Tribune.

Teenagers may be losing interest in STEM careers, but the know they need tech skills to land a job

Ally Marotti, Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2018

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-teen-girls-stem-career-ambitions-20180606-story.html

The crux of this article is that many young people use technology constantly, but they don’t see themselves as a part of it. They don’t see the exciting career opportunities that may be available to them. Let’s face it. How are engineers portrayed but the media? Boring, geeks in ties.

THIS IS WHY I AM A STEM AMBASSADOR

I think the answer is that more of us need to get out there and show these people the possibilities. The world it is changing. And while there is a lot of negativity out there, I believe it is changing for the better, if we can catch people and show them the limitless possibilities then we can energize them to want to struggle against the negative connotations associated with rising to the top. We need to show them that engineering is more than sitting behind a desk and crunching numbers. We need to show them that being a CEO is more than wearing a suit and saying, “You’re fired.” If people cannot see where they would fit in leading a company or being an engineer, why should they want to fight for it in the first place? Why should they put up with the sexual harassment, the discrimination, the lack of respect if they can’t see a positive side to it?

The more people with integrity, intelligence and vision that we can inspire to lead the world, the better the world will be.

Hiking in New Mexico. It is good to get away!

May 21, 2018July 25, 2018

The MonSter Awakens

I sit here in my dusty office in Prudhoe Bay Alaska, winding down for the day, I look at the date on my computer and I realize I am a little over a week away from my anniversary. Nope, not my wedding anniversary, that’s later this month. The anniversary I am speaking of is the date that changed the trajectory or my career, my personal life, everything that I knew about myself at the time. The date was June 1, 2000.

This is a tough one to write. While a few of my closest family and friends know “what’s wrong with me,” it’s something I have kept to myself for many reasons. This blog is a coming out of sorts. Shining a light on the MonSter I have kept carefully contained in the closet. I think I am also about to find out, just how many of my “Friends” really do read my blog posts. I realized after I started blogging, this disease and disability is so intertwined in my life, who I am and my writing, that it needs a voice of its own. This blog will probably become a category all unto its own as I write about all the things I pertaining to the MonSter, but I figure this is a good start.

I knew something was wrong. I had known for a long time. The strange medical symptoms had finally reached a tipping point when my right arm, and right side of my face went numb, along with the blurriness in my right eye becoming larger and larger. The military doctor I had been seeing could no longer blow me off as just being a hypochondriac or his other favorite, “You’re fat, you just need to lose weight.” I was thinner than I am now, but I digress.

I remember walking into the neurologist’s office on that sunny day with mixed feelings. I had completed the MRI’s and other blood tests they had asked for. I had spent three weeks on my back, trying to recover from a lumbar puncture test that wouldn’t heal properly. The neurologist had warned me ahead of time that I should probably have someone come with me to the appointment, anticipating bad news. Since my family lived 3000 miles away in California, I had no one close who could come with me to the appointment. A fellow sailor on my crew in the Navy volunteered to drive me. Part of me was hoping they were wrong. It would be something they could easily fix. They could just give me a pill or I could just lose 10 pounds and all the problems would go away. Though it would be great to have a definitive answer; I didn’t want it to be what they suspected: Multiple Sclerosis.

I don’t remember much about that appointment itself. It’s strange how I held it together just fine in the doctor’s office while he delivered the news, gave me pamphlets on the medications he was starting me on, and resources for information on the disease. What I do remember is crouching down in the elevator as Paul and I rode down, eyes finally blurring with tears as the information sunk into my brain.

I had Multiple Sclerosis. My Naval career was over

I couldn’t see much past that at that moment. My world was crumbling around me. It would take another 6 months for the military machine to process all the paperwork, but by December I was “retired,” and a civilian again.

In the book Anne of Green Gables, by Louisa Maude Montgomery, she refers to “the bend in the road.” This was definitely a bend in the road I didn’t see coming. For better or worse, it shaped my life in a way that can never be taken back. I will do my best to explain the path I took, in the hopes that it helps others, no matter what you’re dealing with.

Hope you enjoy the ride as much as I did. Fasten your seat belt, and hold on to the “oh—” bar, it’s going to get bumpy.

April 30, 2018July 25, 2018

Feed the Birds

The summer between my sophomore and junior year of college I lived in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, in anticipation of starting at Seattle U in the fall. Meanwhile I worked at the Federal Building downtown for the Vietnam Vets of America. I was also taking some classes I needed at University of Washington. Translation, I became a master of bus schedules that summer, riding the bus all over Seattle, with the bonus of a leg in a walking cast.

I immensely enjoyed my time spent riding the buses in the pleasant summer weather. I would use the time to read some of my assignments, but often, I found myself people watching. One particular gentleman stood out from the rest. People gave the tall muscular African-American man a wide berth. He often sat alone on the bus, and though I never saw him harass or bother anyone, he talked to himself, mumbling obscenities while he listened to his headset. He dressed neatly, often wearing shorts and a tank top, along with white tennis shoes and socks, the anti-thesis to some of the other people who rode the bus. Whenever he got on the bus, he would drag a small carry-on suitcase with an igloo cooler bungeed to the top. I would often wonder what was in the luggage he dragged all over Seattle. I never imagined curiosity would be satisfied, nor would I have dreamed up what was actually in the cooler, either.

It was a warm, sunny day and due to a doctor’s appointment, because of the aforementioned cast, I had taken a different bus line than usual, and I was now waiting to catch my bus up Capitol Hill to go home. I remember looking up at the clear sunny sky, and then at the parking lot nearby full of high-end cars and thinking to myself how strange it was, there seemed to be so many birds hanging around. Literally hundreds of seagulls, pigeons, and even ravens sat on walls, light poles and even on the top of the building of this one bank parking lot. Shrugging and looking up, I saw a bus coming, but it was not mine. Mine was the number 10. I sat back down on the bus stop bench, as my ankle throbbed horribly in the walking cast after the session with the doctor. Thankfully I would only have to wear it for another month, the break was slowly healing after six months. I looked up in surprise as the gentleman with the cooler climbed off the bus, usual luggage in tow.

Without acknowledging me on the bench, he lugged his suitcase and cooler to the driveway of the parking lot. The birds immediately swarmed at his appearance. He opened the cooler, reaching in and pulling out bags of bread and bird seed. He threw it into the parking lot, on top of all the nice cars, all the while shouting the obscenities he usually (I’m presuming) muttered only under his breath. The birds eagerly gobbled up the offering, in the process defecating all over the vehicles in the lot. He did this for several minutes, unloading a few bags of bread and bird seed, then he closed his cooler, re-strapped it to the suitcase and waited for the bus which now approached. We both got on the bus, and he resumed his normal continence of sitting quietly and muttering to himself while listening to his music.

Admittedly, all I could think of was the lady from the Mary Poppins movie, singing, “Feed the Birds.”

From then on, whenever I saw him on the bus, I couldn’t help but smile. While I am certain the people who owned the cars in the parking lot didn’t appreciate his antics, that had to be one of the funniest, clever things I had ever witnessed. I often wondered what other places he visited and fed the birds, and why he did it. I will probably never know.