Local Hero, and Complaint About the Weather

Local 'Net Sensation:  

Christopher Strickland's unlikely rise to Internet fame started last Thursday, when he caught a baby girl as she tumbled out of a shopping cart at the South Anchorage Home Depot.

Watch the video here

The 19-year-old, who has lived in Anchorage all his life, graduated from Grace Christian School in the spring. He is fond of playing video and computer games and has only been working at Home Depot, his first job, for three months.

Last Thursday, Strickland was hanging around the cashier area waiting for a customer when he noticed a baby loose in a car seat, balanced atop an orange shopping cart. The arrangement looked precarious.

"I thought I'd keep an eye on it, in case something happened," he recalled Wednesday.

The baby began to tip out of the car seat. Strickland darted toward the cart and caught the baby in midair, moments before infant's head would have hit the concrete floor. He cradled it gracefully, as if he'd been catching falling babies his entire life.

It's Official

From Sunday's Daily News:

The website www.mentalfloss.com is running a campaign to shame Virginia (the state) into abandoning its famous motto, "Virginia Is for Lovers" on the grounds that other states have a better claim to it.

They say they've measured the birthrate, marriage rate, wine consumption, cut flower sales, number of bed and breakfasts and Marvin Gaye "listens" in all the states and subjected the results to some statistical mojo. It looks like we scored first in only one category, the bed and breakfast rate, but somehow they've concluded we're cumulatively on top. 

So, it's official: Alaska is for lovers.

You heard it here first. Who knew? :)