When Is Ramadan 2014?
Forward planners alert!
When-Is.com tells us the start date of Ramadan 2014 will depend on where you live. If you live in the US, it will start a day later than if you live in Asia or the Middle East.
If you want first crack at Ramadan reservations, major airline sales often start in October 🙂 Eid al Fitr will start either the 28th or 29th of July, depending also on where you live.
Eid al Adha will be the 4th or 5th of October.
Ramadan in 2014 will start on Saturday, the 28th of June and will continue for 30 days until Sunday, the 27th of July.
Based on sightability in North America, in 2014 Ramadan will start in North America a day later – on Sunday, the 29th of June.
Note that in the Muslim calander, a holiday begins on the sunset of the previous day, so observing Muslims will celebrate Ramadan on the sunset of Friday, the 27th of June.
Although Ramadan is always on the same day of the Islamic calendar, the date on the Gregorian calendar varies from year to year, since the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar and the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar. This difference means Ramadan moves in the Gregorian calendar approximately 11 days every year. The date of Ramadan may also vary from country to country depending on whether the moon has been sighted or not.
The dates provided here are based on the dates adopted by the Fiqh Council of North America for the celebration of Ramadan. Note that these dates are based on astronomical calculations to affirm each date, and not on the actual sighting of the moon with the naked eyes. This approach is accepted by many, but is still being hotly debated.
Departing Homer for Kodiak and Chenega Bay
Did I mention departures can be ephemeral?
“As soon as possible” can take a long long time when you are boarding cars, motorcycles, even a grown-up tricycle, container vans, campers, R/vs of all shapes and sizes, trucks, and today we learn how it is done. This is truly a marvel of engineering. It must also take some amazing system to keep straight where every vehicle needs to go because they are getting off at different stops, so all the ones getting off at the same stop need to be stored together. Watching all this happen is amazing.
They have this turntable. Cars drive on, we think a maximum of six. The turntable also handles a maximum of one large container truck.
Cars drive on the elevated turntable:
Turntable begins to lower:
Cars reach main deck:
Turntable begins to turn:
A friendly otter kept us entertained while we waited for all the vehicles to board.
We were told this is one of the Homer small ferries to Kachemak National Park or to Seldovia:
It is another gorgeous day in Homer, and even early in the morning, fishermen and women are on the beach:
It’s a beautiful departure, and somewhere between Homer and Kodiak, we run into a heavy mist near sunset:
We departed late and will be getting into Kodiak late, so late we sleep right through it. Before we know it, we are departed from Kodiak and en route to Chenega Bay and Whittier.
One New MERS Death in Saudi Arabia; One in Qatar
New in from Reuters, via AOL news:
DUBAI, Sept 8 (Reuters) – The MERS coronavirus has killed two more people in the Gulf, one in Saudi Arabia where the strain emerged last year, and one in neighbouring Qatar, health authorities said.
The death of a 74-year-old man in the Medinah region of western Saudi Arabia was the 45th fatality in the kingdom from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia.
The Saudi Health Ministry also said on Sunday that three women aged between 64 and 75 had contracted the disease.
A 29-year-old Qatari admitted to hospital on Aug. 17 has died, Qatar’s Supreme Council of Health said in a statement dated Sept. 6, adding that another citizen who had contracted the disease while abroad had recovered.
The World Health Organization said last month the number of confirmed infections worldwide in the past year was 102, of whom almost half had died.
In a study into what kind of animal “reservoir” may be fuelling the outbreak, scientists said this month they had found strong evidence it is widespread among dromedary camels in the Middle East.
The virus has been reported in people in Tunisia, France, Germany, Italy, and Britain. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Amena Bakr in Qatar; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Dining at Captain Pattie’s, the Best Meal of our Trip
We’d been driving since breakfast, stopping, getting out, maybe hiking a little, taking photos, and we wanted a nice lunch. The weather is gorgeous, even hot, and we head for the Homer spit.
The name Homer Spit just cracks AdventureMan up, even though he knows Spit in this usage means a long, thin, flat beach that goes out into the sea (Definition of spit noun (LAND) from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press), he still cracks up just like a little boy when he hears it or says it. This is what Homer Spit looks like:
It is actually like four or five miles long, longer than it looks on the maps. While a lot of people hike out there, we drove; we want to continue exploring after we eat.
The nicest restaurant we can see is Captain Patties, and we decide to give it a try.
From the moment we walk in, we are so glad me made this choice. The interior is clean and neat and sunny, there is sea memorabilia on the walls, and the place if filled with people who look like they live here.
This is the view from Captain Patties:
We love the place, and we love it that they are fine with us each ordering soup and splitting the main dish. We have found that we just can’t eat as much as restaurants want to put on our plates. At home, it is no problem, we ask them to pack it up and we have it for dinner, or lunch another day. We don’t want to waste food, and we don’t want to pack it up, either, so sharing a main dish works for us.
Today we choose seafood chowder – oh man, we’ve been eating chowders everywhere but this one is THE best. And we split a grilled local seafood platter, everything on the plate, the scallops, the shrimp, the salmon and the halibut, all local. It is unbelievably good. It is so simply prepared, no elaborate sauces, and it is so tasty, so good.
On the wall hangs this piece. From our whaling adventures with Captain Alan on the Scania, we know that this is baleen, what the whale uses to screen fish as he ingests them. 🙂
We wanted to go to The Mermaid for dinner, but they were fully booked, right up to closing. We could see people waiting outside at Fat Olives, a lot of people, so we decided we had such a good lunch at Captain Pattie’s that we would go back for dinner. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha on us. Whoda thunk, but in Homer on a gorgeous Saturday night, you had better have reservations for dinner. We ended up having a nice enough dinner, but nothing special, across the street, wishing we were back at Captain Patties.
Our dinner somewhere else, nice enough, but not the same:
AdventureMan had salad and salmon quesadillas; I had Ceasar salad with grilled salmon:
A few last views of Homer:
The Homer Airport, cozy and efficient:
Public art at the airport 🙂
Sign on a property outside of Homer:
One of several thriving community gardens we saw in Homer, full of delicious things to eat. We love it that Pensacola also has good community gardens.
Where Atz Lee Kilcher and Family Really Live (JOKE!)
First, this really is not where Atz Lee Kilcher lives, but as we drove out to the end of the road going up Kachemak Bay, we saw so many houses that look self-sustaining, or as self-sustaining as possible. We saw old Volkswagon buses, used as chicken coops, old school buses used as green houses; we saw a lot of homesteads that looked like they were using solar power and growing a lot of their own produce. We saw horse barns and ATVs and cranes and big barns. We saw all kinds of signs of self-sustaining people who are loving life in Homer, Alaska.
Do you know who Atz Lee Kilcher is? The Discovery Show has a reality show called Alaska, the Last Frontier, and it is one of my guilty pleasures. I have a good friend whose husband also follows the adventures of this hard-working, self-sustaining family. My friend joked with me as we left “Say hello to Atz Lee for us!”
So as we drove along, looking at all these wonderful homes, I saw this one, and thought to myself . . . maybe this is where the Atz Lee family really lives. They film all these outbuildings, and the family going out hunting in boats, or taking their cranes on their barge, or taking their horses to run the cows back home – but maybe “reality” is all that AND they live in comfort in this beautiful house outside Homer. Atz Lee Kilcher does live on Kachemak Bay and there are a lot of lovely houses along Kachemak Bay.
Remember, this is a joke, I do not know where Atz Lee really lives, only when I looked at this house I thought it would be funny if this is where they really lived.
UPDATE: When I wrote this post, it was a joke, and I had no idea how many people would come her to see where the Kilchers live. Actually, without knowing, we were on the Kilcher road, and I believe this home is on the same road which connects to Kilcher road, called Merrimac road. You can see Kilcher road on Google Maps:
It isn’t far out of Homer, an easy drive. The scenery is BEAUTIFUL. The Kilchers homesteaded one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Reconnaissance Trip in Homer
Did I tell you how this trip came about? How last year I saw a notice about The Celebration in Juneau, but we were already en route to Zambia on those exact dates?
As we started planning this Alaska trip in 2014, we discovered we had more ideas than we have time. The Qatari Cat is ten years old now; we don’t like to leave him at the Wee Tuck ‘Em Inn longer than a couple weeks at most. The more we decided what to include in the two weeks, the more we came to the realization that we needed to do a reconnaissance trip :-). I found the Alaska Marine Highway System, and we realized we could cover a lot of ground and see a variety of terrain by taking this cross Gulf ferry, the M/V Kennicott.
Homer is almost the end of the line. The ferry continues to Seldovia, which is picturesque and beautiful, but we wanted to explore Homer, and to figure out where we will go next year after the Celebration.
Homer is so much fun. It’s been voted one of the hippest cities in America, for it’s 70’s counter culture and community values. It is a very fun place to be, and full of breathtaking scenery.
Even a Homer quilt shop!
The Duncan House Diner in Homer
We awake to a gorgeous day, a day with not a cloud in the sky, horizon to
horizon beautiful weather. That is thrill #1. AdventureMan goes outside while I
finish getting dressed, and comes swiftly back in for his camera – there is a
huge eagle perched on the turret of our building! We spend about half an hour
while he does what eagles do – soaks in a little sunlight, looks for a sparkle
in the water that might signal some breakfast – he knows we are here, and he
doesn’t care. How cool is that?
We can’t find Two Sisters Bakery (and discover later we stopped just feet short
of where it was hidden behind some shrubbery,) but we head up Main Street and
find Duncan Diner, with a parking lot full of pickup trucks and a very hip ’70’s
feel. I rarely eat pancakes, but I ordered something called the 1-1-2, which is
one egg, one pancake, and 2 strips of bacon.
“Blueberries?” the very hip waiter asked. I must have looked puzzled, and he
asked again “Blueberry pancakes or plain?” and I said “Oh! Blueberries!”
That pancake was so good. I couldn’t eat it all, but it must have had a full cup
of blueberries in it. I only used a little bit of butter; the pancake was so
good just plain.
As we ate, we formed a plan. We had intended to just walk around Homer, but
Homer is bigger than it looked on the map, more spread out. There are sights to
be seen! Homer is nearly at the tip of the Peninsula, on Kachemak Bay; whether you go east or west, you end up in Anchorage.
We call Hertz, they have a car available, and then we call Kostas taxi (907-399-8008) who come and takes us to the airport where we pick up a car. I mention Kostas specifically because every single local we asked mentioned them by name as the most reliable, and we found that to be true for us, too.
Recipe For Life
Thank you, Renee, for sending this lovely little reminder of how to lead a happy life:
Great Recipe (one of the best that you will ever read)
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate antidepressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
Talk to God about what is going on in your life.
3. When you wake up in the morning complete the following
statement, ‘My purpose is to__________ today. I am thankful for______________’
4. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
5. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild
Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
6. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
7. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, issues of the
past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead
invest your energy in the positive present moment.
8. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
9. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
10. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
11. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
12. You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
13. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
14. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about
.
15. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
16. Frame every snowballed disaster with these words: ‘In five years, will this matter?’
17. Forgive everyone for everything.
18. What other people think of you is none of your business.
19. GOD heals everything – but you have to ask Him.
20. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
21. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your
friends will. Stay in touch!!!
22. Envy is a waste of time. You have everything you need.
23. Each night before you go to bed, complete the following statements: I am thankful for__________.
Today I accomplished_________.
24. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
25. When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You’ll be smiling before you know it.
26. Send this to everyone you care about.
“);
Presenter Ses Condoléances
Some things you do. Some things are hard, and you do them anyway. I always think of them in the formal – pour prendre conge’, respondez, pour rendre petite assistance . . . must do’s, societal niceties, the grease that keeps civilization running, never mind smoothly.
I had to call a friend this morning to tell her how sorry I am that her husband had died. When she came to the phone, I was initially shocked. For months, since her husband’s stroke, she has been subdued and tired, but this morning she sounded happy and energetic.
“He’s free!” she said to me. “”As it says in the Bible, his passing was a breath; if I hadn’t been holding his hand and paying attention, I wouldn’t have known he was gone. It was so easy.” She was joyful. We wept together, for joy. He was free of the burden his life had become.
What I thought was going to be a sad call turned out to be a joyful call. She loves her husband still. They had years and years and children and grandchildren together, and she let him go with joy because he was ready.
Thanks be to God.
Driftwood Inn, Homer, Room 26 and Cabin
Homer greets us with a beautiful sunrise over the beach, and we can’t wait to get started.
This was such a lovely place to spend some time. It didn’t hurt that from the time we left Kodiak, the weather has been gorgeous. Gorgeous is not something you can count on in Alaska. It was nice having a break from the boat, being on our own to explore, and having such a beautiful view to write notes while I did the laundry.
What was so totally cool is that while you do have to pay for the washer and the dryer, and I don’t mind that, it’s only fair, the management provides a big jar of detergent.
Have you ever been traveling and wanted to do laundry only to realize you needed to go buy some detergent, or to have change to use those machines that distribute detergent, but sometimes don’t work when you need them to? What an annoyance! I so appreciated their providing detergent; it may seem like a small thing, but it made doing the laundry so easy.
Cold country dressing is so totally different from warm weather dressing. In warm weather, you really have to do a lot more laundry, sweat makes clothes need washing more often. In cold weather, unless it is rainy, you can end up wearing the same outer clothes multiple times before they need washing. Most of what we needed to wash was socks and underwear, but also my favorite jeans and t-shirts. I had others, but you know how it is, you have your favorites 🙂
Our room, #26 upstairs in a cabin separate from the Driftwood Inn but a part of it.
View from balcony:
Living and reading room
noticeboard prompting us to look for resident eagle
Stairway going up to our room (note antlers!)
Washer and dryer – and detergent!
view from downstairs
full kitchen area and dining available for use
As promised, eagle on turret 🙂
Eagle totally unfazed by our photo-taking 🙂
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