Inktrails from Alaska

Stevie the Wonder Dog Update 1

Just got back from taking Stevie the Wonder dog to the vet. He's been wandering around the house, mostly trying to stay close to me, and whining for the last 24 hours. The only time it stopped was when I upped his morphine dose, which resulted in a sound sleep for Stevie (and for me) for the first time in weeks. The cancer in his sinuses makes it very difficult for him to breathe while he's sleeping, as dogs don't normally breathe through their mouths when they are at rest. So he'd thrash around all night making some truly yucky noises in his nose and throat while trying to breathe. It was impossible to sleep in the same room with him because it was loud and very distressful.

Last night, after he had been whining a lot, and hadn't eaten for a couple days, I decided I'd better give him more than the usual dose of morphine. Miracle of miracles, he crawled up onto my bed and slept the night through without a peep. But as soon as he woke up he started whining again.

He is favoring his hindquarters, and seemed to have pulled a muscle in a rear leg and was limping pretty badly for a while. Standing with his tail curled under and a very sad look on his face, he wasn't a happy camper.

However, looks and even behavior can be deceiving.

While we were having the Celtic Jam last night he was in the back yard. Suddenly I got a phone call that my dog was at the house next door!

A friendly woman answered my knock and said, "You must be Stevie's mother!" There was a truly george-mongus (hugh's bigger brother) golden retriever with her. Stevie came out looking pretty excited. We introduced ourselves.

"I looked out in back and suddenly there he was," Wanda, the neighbor, said. "Sandy," she patted her giant, brown-eyed sweetie, "and Stevie were just playing up a storm out there!"

Hmmmmm. I thought. So he's playing like crazy with a giant retriever, eh? Can't be TOO sick.

After the vet took two X-rays and a blood panel, our conclusion was that Stevie was suffering from doggie overexertion of old muscles. Not that he and The Pig didn't dash back and forth constantly when they played, but I think the wrestling-type play he did yesterday, plus jumping out of the pickup truck, may have pulled something.

There is no sign of spreading cancer in his belly. His guts are clear and he can pee fine. (I'm glad, because I wouldn't want him to rupture, that would be awful.) His bloodwork comes back like that of a young, healthy dog! (He's 16 and until this cancer, no one would believe it until they saw his teeth.) We think he just has the cancer in his sinuses as the only significant illness.

He sure had ME fooled. I thought he was about to fall apart. I guess we'll have to wait and see how he's doing day by day. As long as he wants to play and eat and can get around, we'll let him do just that.

Near-Moose Experiences

I'm visiting a friend here in Fairbanks town, and she has a fenced yard. It's right behind the Noyes Slough (otters have been sighted in the Noyes Slough!) and there must be a break in the fence, because there are several piles of moose "nuggets" out there, and a willow bush that has clearly been pruned by moose teeth. My friend tells me that a mama moose slept for 24 hours right in front of her shed door.

Of course the moose might not have come from the slough, she might have just walked down the street, up the driveway and into the backyard. It's not so unusual. Remember the moose on Northern Exposure? It's really like that, even in a town of around 35,000 people. A moose can appear just about anywhere, any time.

When I first went to the music store where I now give fiddle lessons, there was a calf moose inside a fenced yard right across the street from the store. Everyone was huddled close to the door of the house, taking pictures. No one was going to approach this baby, though, even though you could have walked right up to her and petted her easily. This is the kind of stupid stuff tourists do. (Not to mention trying to pet bears.)

Mama Moose had to have been around somewhere. I think more people are hurt by moose every year than by bears, by a long shot. Those mamas are extremely protective of their babies. They will stomp the life out of you, no questions asked, and quicker than you could ever imagine.

Because stupid people let their dogs run loose, the moose will enter a yard and stomp a dog to death, too. With no provocation. They have already experienced being chased by packs of dogs, so they proactively kill dogs when they get a chance.

I few issues back I read a small blurb in Alaska Magazine (which really seems written for people outside Alaska, a tourist magazine) about a moose stomping a miniature poodle to death in a yard in Anchorage. Stepped right over the fence and smushed it.

Sofia (the husky/coyote dog) had a near-moose experience. She was on her chain outside, when we realized that there were moose in the yard. She barked like a demon at her (a huge pregnant cow) and the moose responded by going over to her area and rolling her eyes at her. Considering? Sofia ran up behind the moose and sniffed her heels. A strange look crossed Sofie's face as she realized a) this wasn't a "big dog," and b) it was the biggest animal she'd ever seen Maybe there was a c) this animal was becoming annoyed with Sofia. Whatever it was, suddenly Sofie was cringing at the far end of her chain, terrified, low to the ground, trying to make herself as small as possible. The moose was standing right by her doghouse, so the safety of the doghouse seemed void to her doggy mind.

At this point my guy ran for the .45, (to shoot in the air) and I ran for the tambourine. Yes, you heard me, the tambourine.

In my opinion he was taking too long to shoot the gun off. I'd already tried yelling and waving my arms. That had had no effect whatsoever. Mama Moose hadn't even turned her head to look at me. She'd just stood there, considering Sofia.

I whapped the tambourine with my hand with wild abandon. The moose's head snapped up! She tossed her head and dashed off into the woods.

My guy stood there with the gun in his hand. "Well, THAT worked."

So now I keep the tambourine handy. We figure it will work on bears, too. Let's just hope I don't need it.

The Shoals of Shit

The snow is slowly melting, receding day by day, freezing again by night, turning into slush in the afternoons in the places where we walk. The three feet of neat snow, sometimes speckled with spruce needles, has collapsed on itself into ice gravel, no longer neat, and sprinkled with flecks of dirt.

Sofia's circle of ice and snow, where she had dug a nice ice moat at the end of where her chain reached, is only about ten feet across now, and there is space under her doghouse, too, instead of packed snow. She has been discovering sticks and bones and toys that she stashed there last fall and greets me with them joyously each time I come to get her.

Her ice moat is now a mud moat, and the frozen berms behind her doghouse have melted completely away, revealing the legendary Shoals of Shit, a semi-circle of solid shit.

It isn't that we are so lazy that we don't pick up the dog poop all winter. It's not that at all. We'd do it, if it were possible. But I ask you, have you ever tried to pry frozen poop out of snow and ice at 20 below zero? I think not! (For another thing, it's a miracle that dogs can poop at all out there at that temperature. I know that I sure can't!) There are extreme Forces of Nature at work here, not to mention that it would take specialized equipment to FIND the poop in the first place, as it is covered in lovely white snow.

Oh, and remember, there are only about two hours of light per day during winter, which makes finding things rather a problem.

First you'd need something along the lines of a Poop Dectector in order to find what you are looking for. I've seen the dogs looking for a place to poop in the winter time, and their own buil-in Poop Detectors don't work very well at 20 below, either. They walk around and around, circle, sniff, circle, sniff, and repeat. Sofia has a new twist to it: she pounces on the snow, digs a little, dashes back and forth and pounces again, digs a little more, and keeps doing this until she's satisfied that she has discovered a bonified Pooping Place. If a dog has trouble finding the Pooping Place, I don't think we'd stand a chance without specialized and scientific equipment. I don't know how it would work, but a Poop Detector would be necessary, since you can't remove poop if you can't find it. It would look like a metal detector, I suppose. You'd have to adjust it to ignore Moose Nuggets, though.

Once the poop is found, it needs to be removed, and since it has bonded with the ground and snow and ice on a molecular level, I think a heated shovel would be in order. However, since you are going to heat the shovel, why not just put a blow torch at the end of the shovel? In fact, forget the shovel. If I have a blow torch, there's only one thing I want to do with it, and that's burn stuff up!

So forget shoveling! Just get your handy, dandy Shit Incinerator™ and once you've determined where the lode of poo is, crank it to high and burn it right there! Of course be very careful not to burn up the doghouse, or any of the trees, though in the winter in Alaska it's pretty much impossible to start a forest fire. I wouldn't use it if the dogs have been pooping right next to the cabin, either.

Another Day, Another Hassle

Despite temperatures above "average" it's still freezing at night, which means here it is, 9am and I'm trying to walk a wildly happy coyote-dog to the humongo-truck over ice. She's pulling like crazy because she wants to be sure she goes with me and isn't left at home, I'm skidding and sliding in my rubber boots, yanking on her and telling her to chill out so that she doesn't pull me right off my feet and down onto the ice. It's a near thing. But luck was with me and I managed to get her into the truck without mishap. It could have gone wrong so easily. If a squirrel had suddenly popped its cunning little head around a tree it Sofie would have given a giant surge of frustrated-squirrel-kill-lust and I would have been on my ass.

I already put all my instruments in the car, plus my shower bag,(someday I'll have to tell you about living in a cabin with no running water) and I'm now taking a "sanity moment" at the computer before I get behind the wheel of what has to be the world's longest truck (extended cab, extended bed, extended hood, extended bumpers, extended glovebox...) and drive the fifteen miles into Fairbanks over dirt, ice, snow, and asphalt.

I'm teaching ten or eleven students today, no breaks unless someone doesn't show up for a lesson, the lessons are all 45 minutes long. It's a long, long day. I'll be eating beef jerky and whatever else I can get to keep me going.

I'll be honest with you here, I'm depressed. We have fourteen hours of daylight, and I'm depressed. Most Alaskans save their depression for the darkness of winter, but for some reason this is hitting me now, right when I should be, by all accounts, giddy with warm temperatures (after all, it's NOT 40 below).

I miss my truck, my real truck. The one Born Again Transmission ruined. Reports to the BBB have been made. But I still really miss my truck.

Let me just express how it felt to take my nice truck to those assholes and have it returned as an unrunnable hulk:

I feel raped. I feel kicked in the nuts and castrated. I feel like I woke up in a nightmare and found the nightmare wasn't a nightmare, but reality. Heeeeere's Freddy!

My truck was my one special space, my living space, the sacred area where I spent hours thinking, singing, praying, crying, watching the astounding aurora (while stopped by the side of a dirt road near the Tanana River), glorying in the eye-hurting blue skies, waiting for a mama moos and calf to move off the road...this space has been desecrated. It's gone, destroyed, defiled. It was my own room, one that I chose to share with the occaisonal rider, but it was the only room I had utter control over. It was MINE. It was private. It was MINE. It was my ONLY private space, in the physical world.

And now I have nothing.

I went out yesterday to find a new truck, but my heart wasn't in it. At the Toyota dealership they had only one truck that was used that had manual transmission, and they want too much for it and won't bargain with me on price until I am "qualified" to pay the full price. So far I've been refused by three lenders (because they are asking too much for the truck, is why). There is one more lender to hear from, but I'm not hopeful.

At good old UnAffordable Used Cars (they are good folks, I just like to call them that because their prices are high) there was only one Toyota truck, it was a 98 and had 77,000 miles on it. That's too many miles, but I drove it anyway. It was clear that this truck had been driven way too hard all of its life, and was all worn out mechanically. I passed. Besides, they wanted $14,000 for it. I think it was worth about half that, if you had it inspected mechanically. I passed on that one. It was just trouble waiting to be driven off the lot.

The Humongomobile is using a quart of oil every few days because the valve-cover gasket needs to be replaced. Maybe I'll surprise my guy and do that myself this weekend just to be nice to him.

I don't have enough money to buy a truck outright. That leaves out getting something out of the paper. If I buy a truck I must have a warranty. I'm not going to go through what happened to me last week ever again, I'm going to make sure of that. So I have to buy from a dealer of some sort, a truck that is new enough that it either comes with warranty or is new enough that I can buy warranty for it.

It looks like I'm going to have to buy a truck without a warranty again, even so. Money is power and I don't have enough of either, yet.

I'm depressed. And now I'm going to go to work.

Finally, Proof!

Oh J. Edgar, what beautiful puffy sleeves! And what a lovely, girlish waistline you had once upon a time!

How Not To Fix a Truck

On Tuesday, April 6th, I had a 1989 Toyota 4Runner that ran. It was noisy, but it ran. By Thursday (maybe even Wednesday, I don't know, it was done rather secretly), I no longer had a truck that ran, but instead a truck with most of its innards piled all over the dirty floor of an extremely disorganized garage. It won't recover from this for a long time, and it certainly won't while I own it.

It all began when I realized that I should take my truck in for work on the transfer case. It was terribly noisy. The transfer case is the magic box that switches a two-wheel drive vehicle into 4-wheel-drive vehicle. I won't name the shop...yet. But we shall see what happens later.

I brought it in on Monday, and they said that it should come in so they could look at it and figure out what was wrong. On Tuesday I took it in, dropped it off, and was taken over to Rent-a-Wreck to rent the lovely and delightful Korean POS aka Kia Sephia. The middle-eastern owner told me that the car was dirty, was that okay? Okay, fine, I just need a car, I said. Little did I know that every seat looked like it had been peed on. But that's another story.

I asked for an estimate of the work as soon as possible. Until we look at it, they said, we can't possibly tell you anything.

Okay, but call me today and let me know, I only have three days or so to get this done because I can't afford to rent a car any longer than that, even at Rent-a-Wreck. And the truck only cost me $4500, so please be sure to let me know what you find, I am a self-employed music teacher, it isn't like I have a lot of money, I told them. The point here was that I didn't have a whole lot of money, and that the truck wasn't real expensive, so that expensive repairs weren't going to be cost-effective.

Okay, they said.

For the next two days I tried to get them to call me back and tell me what was wrong with my truck. And to give me an estimate. Every time I talked to the mechanic, he said that he couldn't give me a price. NO PRICE AT ALL. Not a ballpark, not a range, not anything. Nothing. Nada.

This was making me nervous.

When I did talk to them, finally, the mechanic said that he'd "torn it down" and that the job was going to cost in excess of $3000, and that if I wanted my car back, UNFIXED, it would cost me $1800.

Now, I'd been calling and calling and had been told that this particular mechanic was the only one in the shop that could work on Toyotas, and that he hadn't been in the shop much at all. Not anywhere near the 24 hours of labor he was trying to charge me with (at $75/hr).

In fact, on Wednesday one of the mechanics told me that my car wasn't taken apart, and four hours later suddenly the "Toyota" mechanic calls me and says that he has "torn it down" and that it's going to be $1800 for him to put it back together.

All of this without any estimate at all. For two days I'd been asking for an estimate.

I should have walked out the door when they refused to give me an estimate. I admit it. I was too trusting. But I'd been referred and I thought that maybe these guys would do a good job.

In the end, after a possible call to this shop by a friend's lawyer, (I don't know if anyone called them or not) I was called by this supposed mechanic and told that I could pay him $300 to get my truck back, unfixed, with all the parts in boxes. Fine, I told him. (It was better than $1800 for a broken truck.)

Thank you for breaking my truck. Fuck you very much. All I can say is that it's a goddamned good thing that I DON'T HAVE A GUN.

I'm picking my truck up on Sunday. On a trailer, in parts. A co-worker is going to buy it from me for a bargain price (what can I do???--he's going to have to buy a whole newe transfer case and automatic transmission, these assholes have FU'd the whole thing beyond recognition).

On Monday I'm calling the BBB, the Attorney General's office, the DA's office, and writing a letter to the editor. And whatever else these "mechanics" deserve.

Bumper stickers and T-Shirts have been suggested by helpful co-workers. But I don't want to remember these absolute assholes that long.

With the money my co-worker gives me, I'm going back to good old UnAffordable Used Cars and buy as late a model 4WD Toyota truck as I can afford. With a WARRANTY.

POS vs. MUD

Within the next 24 hours, mud season will be in full, glorious, sticky, ooky glop. The three feet of snow collected over the last six months is melting at a phenomenal rate, creating lakes the size of Lithuania all over the borough. As soon as some of that moisture soaks into the ground we'll be in the soup.

My truck, which has been grumbling all winter, is at the transmission shop. This means I had to rent a car. My self-employed status made it necessary for me to choose the cheapest car rental place in town: Rent-A-Wreck.

I have rented cars from Rent-A-Wreck before, but never have they provided me with a vehicle that more faithfully represents their name. Have you ever driven a Kia Sephia? How about one with 89,000 + miles on it? I hear their engines generally last about two years, maximum. I believe it.

It has about 2 1/2 inches clearance underneath, the front bumper is falling off, there are dents, and the seats look like someone peed on every single one. It smells like cigarettes ("NO SMOKING IN VEHICLE! $50 fine!" says the contract) and there are burns on the driver's seat. The glove box won't open at all, it appears to be jammed and broken shut. The right rear tire is bald.

When I go down my driveway, the bottom of the car scrapes the snow in the middle.

Driving home last night on my long country drive, I used the brights and decided that they covered just about as much of the road as the normal headlights on my Toyota truck. I also decided that if I hit a moose in this eggshell, I was dead meat.

The CHECK ENGINE light is on. The middle-eastern fellow I rented this from said, "Oh, it is okay. It means we haven't cleared the computer! Not to worry, Jean, it is okay! We check the car before it go out. " I pointed out that if the engine was fried that it would be my word against his and he kept assuring me that it was fine. If he hadn't used my name, I wouldn't be so worried. I checked the oil and coolant, both were fine, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this isn't an ruse to get me to buy him a new POS. (If you don't know what POS stands for, well, it's something that people usually say that begins, "Piece of —")

The automatic transmission shifts with a large jerk each time. If I hit a groove in the road I have to hang onto the steering wheel and slow way down in order not to drive off the road.

Oh, and of course, it's two-wheel drive during 4-wheel drive season. The KIA POS is going to lose the battle of the mud, no doubt about it. Let's hear from the mechanic today so that I can take this thing back ASAP.

Is there a patron saint of POS vehicles? Is/was he/she Korean? Where do I leave the offering of kimchee? I need all the help I can get!

Weather Update: Mud Approaching

Wal, I wuz a'gunna git me a shotgun er a hogleg and try t'bag me a weatherman 'cuz they kep' a'sayin it were gunna be wa-rum, an' it weren't. But I don't reckon I'll hafta shoot 'em yet.

It was up to 30°F today and things are melting all over the place. It's probably back down to 2o°, or even 0°, right now in the middle of the night, but it will go back up again to continue the melt tomorrow, most likely.

The gol' durn weatherman says this is going to be the trend for the week, which means mountains of snow are going to melt into the streets, yards, some basements, and especially our unpaved gravel road.

I prefer driving in the winter. The snow fills up the potholes, craters, and bear dens (small cars disappear without a trace on our road), the maintenance guys come out and smooth it out once or twice and it's great to drive on. When it's dry and cold outside the snow and ice is sticky, not slippery. It's only when it warms up that it becomes a little difficult to drive. Remember, we are talking about the Alaskan idea of "warm," which is 20°F or higher.

If these warm temperatures keep coming all throughout the week, it's going to look like a tidal wave of mud hit my neighborhood. Each Spring it is Two Sets of Shoes weather: breakup boots (rubber boots) to get out to the car, and then your city/work shoes that just stay in the car until mud season is over. You put on your rubber boots, walk out to the car, drive to work, change shoes and try to tippy toe inside without getting muddy. And still, it's impossible to get to work without mud on you somewhere, usually on your knees where you leaned against the car to put your stuff on the back seat.

Next to the expressway is a big valley, because they built the roads UP and and between the two roads and the exit there is a triangular valley. All winter the city has been dumping snow that has been scraped up from elsewhere into that little valley, and they have nearly filled the thing with snow. There are mountains of snow as tall as white spruce trees. When it melts there is going to be a lake there. I hope they stock it with trout.

I want one, but only if you get one, too.

Your Trekkie Communicator is Here

A company in Cupertino, CA, has invented the first communications badge that works very much like those on Star Trek, although they aren't nearly as spiffy-looking.

I don't care. I want one. But only if you get one, too. After all, if I had the only cell phone in the world, it wouldn't be much use, would it?

Two-thirds of the users are in hospitals, which could eliminate one of my favorite things in hospitals (the list of my favorite things in hospitals isn't very long): the loud paging announcements. These usually go something like this:

"Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard."

"Would the real Dr. Williams PLEASE report to neurosurgery IMMEDIATELY."

"Dr. Frankfurter please report to Urology."

"Maintenance to elevator Bank G, code LOPE. Repeat, emergency, code LOPE." (Large Overweight Patient Extraction)

And so on. Rather similar to the untelligible announcements in bus stations.

"Bus 45 now leaving for Anwar Sadat City, Tucson, Rambling Rose, Sprin[sktzasszzz], Brownsville and Cucamonga!" (They always end with Cucamonga, I think because Bugs Bunny always did.)

Nope, no more paging Dr. Strange and Dr. Love, simply slap your Vocera badge, say the name of the person you want and there go you, you are in communication! Never mind if Dr. Chronic is performing delicate eye surgery where the slightest sound might startle him into poking the laser right into someone's brain. Just go ahead and slap that communicator! He won't mind!

If this spreads, just think, no more straining to hear your name over the fuzzy airport paging service. We won't be walking down endless, cold corridors dragging those huge rolling suitcases (and stopping every few feet to set them upright again) listening to, "Mr. Badnidnoff, Mr. Badninoff, your party has given you up for dead." That's because Mr. Badninoff has slapped his Vocera badge and gotten the news of his own demise directly from the airport operator.

Just think, I could put one of these on my dog's collar and if she ran away I could call her back without raising my voice! Of course she wouldn't talk back, unlike teenagers, who would lose their Vocera badges at the first opportunity, no doubt. After all, no Caller ID, so you couldn't tell when it was The Parents calling. And no text messaging, no games, no cool tunes and so on. On the other hand, the potential for cheating during tests is large, especially if the badge could be disguised.

I've had a calculator watch for years. I'm on my fifth, I believe. It looks like a Dick Tracy communicator watch, and folks eye it closely sometimes just to see if there is a little talking head on the screen. I wish there was. I want one of those, too. But only if you get one.

Morning News

No attacks against Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan were reported today. Additionally, no conflict between Palestinians or Israelis occurred overnight.

Jobs are up by 600%, most of them manufacturing jobs created when employers decided that their quality of goods was suffering overseas, and returned their factories to the the United States.

Pope John Paul II announced today that he is stepping down from his post, citing problems with excessive drooling. He plans to appoint a committee of men and women to choose the next Pope, whom he has directed must be a woman. "There have been female Popes before, but we covered it up, " he said. "Fact is, women are far better at things like this than men are."

Minister FudgePie of India assured NPR listeners that that is his real name.

President Bush resigned today, admitting, "I don't really do anything anyway. Dick runs the show." When asked what his plans were for the near future, Bush replied, "I'm going into rehab."

In a related story, Dick Cheney was indicted on 35 counts of racketeering, 127 counts of money laundering, and other charges too numerous to mention.

Colin Powell announced today that he will not run for President. "I need to get some distance from all this," he told the press.

Microsoft's Bill Gates stunned the world this morning by announcing the end of Windows. "It's a sloppy, ill-conceived bunch of insecure patches, full of security holes. It's in the best interest of Microsoft to quit while we're ahead, before someone sues for damages and wins." The company has no plans for any replacement operating system, and suggests users switch to Linux, Unix, or Macintosh. "Macintosh is a better system, extremely secure, with a better, easier interface all the way around. I tried to make Windows be Mac OS, but I failed," said Gates.

The world's first talking dog addressed the nation today on the Today show. During the Emeril cooking segment, Brownie, a chocolate lab, interrupted the famous chef as he was sitting down to share the finished product with Katie Couric. "Excuse me," said Brownie, "But are you going to eat all that?"

In weather news, a warm front is slated to ease into Alaska and the Yukon, bringing 60 degree highs during the day, and 50 degree lows at night.