Before I start, I want to say YAY ME!  This is my 100th post!  How cool is that!?

So, after our amazing weekend with friends, the balance of our week didn’t go quite as planned.

Monday, it was – guess what? – raining!  Bill and I figured it was a good day to see the Sea Life Center.  It was smaller than I expected, but very informative.  We got to see puffins up close!

Tuesday we had been hoping to earn a bit of extra cash.  Gary’s neighbor, Jan (pronounced Yohn), had rented out some of his property to some photographers who were taking pictures of models wearing jeans for the clothing line Garage Jeans.  They had told Jan and Gary they may need help with some stuff.  We didn’t have much planned, just some chores, which did get done, but the photo shoot stuff didn’t pan out.  They did bring a bunch of food to the lodge, since Jan’s cabins don’t have electricity, therefore no refrigerator.  The wraps and seafood chowder were delish!

Wednesday we were up and out, making our way to Anchorage.  I had an appointment for a follow-up mammogram – YAY ME!  NOT!  Anyway, that took longer than expected but all is well!

Our next stop was Sam’s Club for getting the front tires rotated and to pick up a few things.  There are two Sam’s Clubs in Anchorage and we decided to try the one we hadn’t been to yet, mostly because it was closer to the Imaging Center.  We dropped off the truck and headed into the store with our list.  About an hour later, we were all checked out and Bill had gotten the call that the truck was done.

When we stopped at the tire desk, we were given some bad news.  The tech who worked on our truck had stripped one of our wheel studs.  NOT COOL!  They apologized profusely, saying they would pay for the repair and we would get a gift card for our trouble when we brought the receipt in.  Ok – s*** happens sometimes.  We looked up the closest Ford dealer and plugged the address into the GPS.

The Ford dealer got us in almost right away, even after saying it would take an hour.  Seemed like our quickly souring day was looking up again!  Except they didn’t have the correct part and needed to wait to have it delivered from their other location.  Longer story short, we were there 2 1/2 hours!  I was NOT happy! It wasn’t their fault, but our day, which I initially thought would include a small blip, was essentially shot now!

See – after Sam’s Club, we were supposed to head back south toward Seward (which I should probably mention was an hour and a half drive away), and make the following stops:  Indian Valley Meats, Alyeska Tram and Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.  Doesn’t that all sound wonderful?  I thought so also!  Another point I’d like to make is the weather was fairly good for the earlier part of the day, but then getting more cloudy as the day went on.

We go back to Sam’s and there is no one in the tire department.  They are clearly still open, but no one around at all.  Instead of standing around, we go in search of a store manager.  Tiffany was the manager on duty and we gave her a quick run down on what had happened.  She knew nothing about it, but took our receipt and said she would be right back.  How long would you consider “right back” to be?  Maybe it’s just me, but I seriously thought it would be something less than half an hour.  By the time she got back to us, I was HOT!

So, she had cash to pay us for the repair and said we would have to walk over to customer service for our gift card.  I HAD to speak up.  I was very calm and polite.  I let her know how we were very grateful that the tire department had told us about what had happened, instead of having us find out by having a problem or at the next tire rotation.  Next, I let her know what my day was supposed to look like (see above) and compared it to what it ended up looking like, sitting in the Ford dealer.  I also emphasized that the “oops” that occurred with our wheel stud was 100% preventable, had the lug nut been started by hand instead of with the air gun!  She readily agreed that sucked and apologized again, asking if $150 cash would help.  I said yes, that would help a lot, thank you very much!  So, we walk over to customer service desk and walk away with our $150 in cash!

I was still disappointed to not have our planned for day, we even thought we may still be able to do the Alyeska Tram, but it has clouded up so much, didn’t seem worth it.  Indian Valley Meats had already closed by the time we went by and we wanted to spend more than the half hour we would have had at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.  I know there will be other days, but August is a very rainy month here on the Kenai Penninsula!  Not sure when we will be able to make it happen!

The one thing we did do was stop at the Fish Viewing area at the Trail Lake Hatchery, which is just north of Moose Pass.  The salmon are coming in to spawn, and it was pretty cool to see.

Thursday we had told Gary we would work, since they had all 8 cabins to clean. It was pouring down rain most of the day anyway, may as well work.

Today, Friday, we had a lazy morning and since the rain wasn’t awful, we thought we would go see Exit Glacier.  We got in the truck and got down there and the light drizzle rain turned into a much heavier rain.  We decided to wait for another day.  After a quick stop at the liquor store, we are back at home, getting ready for some dinner and a quiet evening of movie watching, or maybe a binge night on “The Americans”.