Gah! The rain won't stop!

All my posts mention rain - it won't stop raining here and it's starting to bug me. We managed to get a couple nice days last week, but when you get a taste of the good stuff it stings when it's gone. But when the sun comes out and the skies clear up, it reminds you just how beautiful this place is. So, once again, we didn't have too interesting of a week. So, this should be a short update. :)

The best part of last week was we booked the flights for our honeymoon! We will be spending 2 weeks on the South Island of New Zealand and 1 week on the beaches of the Cook Islands, in the South Pacific! We are super excited! It takes forever to fly anywhere good here, nor is it cheap, so we figured we might as well go somewhere that is far to get to from anywhere. So it will take us a horrible 22 hours in total to get to New Zealand, but to go to Central America, Caribbean, or Florida it would've taken us 18 - 24 hours. Where as anywhere else in this country you could get to those places within 10. Fortunately the price difference was minimal too, so the next step was Eric asking for all that time off. His boss didn't even blink when he asked, in fact she's going in February for a couple weeks! So now to plan the rest of it... We have some time though, we'll be going mid-October until the beginning of November. We hear the fall is the worst season in Juneau, so we figured that was the best time to get out. In New Zealand, it will be spring and in the Cook Islands it will be a warm summer temperature. And the fun part? Eric still has vacation days to play with! That's one very nice perk of the PHS.

Over the weekend, I got a little homesick. Like I said, the rain was really getting to me. We've been skyping with friends and family, which is great! But sometimes I think it's makes me miss them more. If anyone else is interested in Skyping, just let me know! You can find us as one of the 5 Metterhausen's on there. (The others are family.) Fortunately, Monday came with no rain and a care package from Meagan (my maid of honor at our wedding) which made all things better. :)

We checked out the Alaskan Brewing company with one of the guys Eric works with, where we had heard they just serve you as many beer samples as you want... for free! And these beer samples are about 6 oz., so it's a hefty, free serving! Alaskan makes some pretty delicious beers, and I am no beer fan. But there was one that stood out.. it tasted and smelled exactly like beef jerky. Ick! It was terrible! Eric and Grant liked it, but gross. :) Then there was another one that was like a sweet brandy beer... double ick. Tasted too syrupy, but again, the boys liked it. But it was fun, and we'll be bringing all friends there to taste the wonders of Alaskan beer.

We also checked out another harbor to see what they were selling. We had heard rumors of king salmon and shrimp. So we headed out to find that you buy king salmon fresh from the boat - can't beat that! The flaw? They sell it in one whole fish and at $8.50/lb. it's still not as cheap as we thought it we be. The bigger flaw? It's one whole fish! So you have to buy all 20 lbs. of it! Not only do we not know how to fillet a fish, we also don't know what we would do with 20 lbs of it! Haha... so until we start catching our own, invest in a freezer and a vacuum seal food saving system, we won't be buying king salmon fresh at the harbor. We tried to then go get crab, but we think we went too late because nobody was there.

So despite the fact that I'm not working, I'm meeting people on my errands. I'm always interested to hear if people are from Juneau or where they're from and what brought them here. Well, through this quest, I'm learning that nobody is from Juneau. I think the only person I've met who's from Juneau is our realtor. Everyone else is from everywhere else. Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oregon, Wyoming, California, Washington, Idaho - that seems to be the most popular. It seems that most people got a job offer to come up here and were excited about the location, so came up for a new adventure. Sound familiar? But it makes me wonder... if nobody is from Juneau... is it because nobody wants to stay in Juneau? Hmm... something to consider...