Inktrails from Alaska

Todays Top Ten Happy List

Ten more things that make me happy:

1. Blue, eyed-piercingly blue SKY.

2. Being able to buy $200+ groceries at the store.

3. Having Safeway give me a 10% discount on those groceries just because I asked for one!

4. Chewing nice soft ice.

5. Having Sofia and Ole behave themselves wonderfully in the truck while I was shopping, and greeting me enthusiastically when I returned to the truck.

6. Seeing the checkout clerk and bagger boys get ALL DISCOMBOBULATED but EXCITED that I brought SIX of my own grocery bags, and getting 3¢ per bag credit for bringing them.

7. Oatmeal squares cereal. They look ugly but taste soooo goooood!

8. Lots and lots of birdies at the bird feeder today!

9. We rarely get wind in my area, and today has been windy! It's been fun seeing and hearing the trees dance.

10.Sofia "gets" the OVER command now. Ole is very close, he is not quite sure, but he's verrrrrry close to getting it.

2008 Oscars

Yawn.
Glad Juno won. That's about it.

I didn't watch. I was watching Pride & Prejudice on PBS, which was far more interesting, if not less predictable. Colin Firth never looked better!

40 Freakin' Degrees

Remember that picture I posted a while back of my "freezer?" It's a good thing that I didn't have more than a couple bags of ice and some vegetables in there because for the last week it's been ABOVE ZERO to the tune of highs of 40 degrees. This is nice in some ways, horrible in others. Having to move everything from the outside freezer to the small, indoor freezer in my refrigerator is one. Driving on roads that are half ice, half water is another.

A few days ago the water/ice combo caused my 4WD truck to try to throw me off the road all the way home. It was ice where the left tire was riding, and water where the right tire was. The right tire kept grabbing while the left tire was still trying to get traction, causing the truck to try to fling itself off the road and into trees, telephone poles and people riding snow machines on the side of the road. It was very scary, especially when I had to drive up that steep hill that is on my way home. You have to get a run at it, there is no other way to reasonably get to the top. Oh, might I add that there are really stupid people who insist on driving 70 mph on ice in winter on a two-lane country road? So add those people into the mix, too. I had to keep pulling over because there was some maniac snorting down my tailpipe.

Do these stupid people not remember that you can expect a moose at any time? Especially when it's warm outside? Do they actually want to hit one at 70 mph on freakily icy roads in the dark?

Better them than me, I say. So I pull over and wait for the three cars behind me to continue up, each of them less than a car length behind one another. Idiots.

Every time I tried to go at any speed more than 40 mph the pull on the right side became alarming. So I ground up the hill in 4WD so I wouldn't slide backward and then crept down the north side an an increasing rate that started at 30 mph and ended up at 45. But by then I could take the 4WD off and the of the pulling stopped.

That gave the next herd of idiots a chance to catch up to me, but hey, I have to get home some time, so I managed to turn down my road before anyone smashed into me.

Besides dealing with cranially-impaired drivers, 40 degrees above zero causes everything to DRIP. When I pulled into my normal parking spot at work last week, I got out, walked around to get the dogs out the passenger side and luckily looked up at the building. There was a glacier-like hunk of ice and snow that must have weighed several hundred pounds sticking four feet out from the edge of the roof, and it was going to slam right into me, my dogs, my passenger side door... After moving my truck to the parking lot, I went in and we made a sign to warn folks, and then the guys who work there had fun yanking down as much of the glacier as they could reach with their snow roof tool thing....it's kind of like a rake for a roof.

Let's see, it's nice not to wear gloves and a hat, though you still have to carry them at all times because it gets back down to 20 and even 10 later in the day and evening. It's way slick for walking, as well as driving, so everyone walks around parking lots with this ridiculous teeny weeny toddler steps. I'd love to have a bird's-eye view of the Fred Meyer parking lot at say, 6pm. We look like a bunch of penguins shopping.

Not exactly fun, but useful for later....I can dig out the frozen dog poops in the yard and dispose of them. That's good because there will be much less of a mess when then finally thaw out in the Spring, at which time they suddenly become gooshy and REALLY STINKY.

Even less fun, I can now move and clean out a plastic dog kennel without fear that it will break. When it is very cold, plastic stuff simply breaks. If it's warm enough I can actually move it and clean it out.

Okay, I'm not sounding like I like the warm weather but I DO like it when the dogs and I can play outside for longer periods, not limited having to go inside when get too cold.

Lots of people are doing quick outside construction projects, people are skiing and snow machining and even jogging and bicycling. Oh yeah, when I was driving up the hill with my misbehaving truck that night, there was a bicyclist just below the crest of the hill IN THE ROAD (is he suicidal???) and I had to go around him or slide backward down the hill....risking a head-on collision with whoever might be coming up the hill from the other side.

I guess I just needed to vent that exasperation. The temps are supposed to drop back down again in a few days. I, for one, will be rather relieved.

Sofia's Come Hither Valentine

I'm a little late in posting the pictures, but she was quite comfy here on Valentine's Day.
Actually, she loves to sleep in until 11 every day.

One little footy peeking out...

Ah, maybe I'll think about getting up....

But first, I definitely need a tummy rub. After all, it's Valentine's Day! Okay, I'm waiting....

Northern Dogs Know

I've been puttering around putting off going to bed. I realized I needed to take the dogs outside one last time before lying down. So I put my padded Carhartt pants on over my flannel pyjama bottoms, stuck my boots on my feet, put on a sweater, my jacket and my hat and gloves and hooked up the dogs to their leads.

We headed for a nearby pee spot in the snow, then went down the driveway to the road.

The Northern Lights, which have been almost nonexistent all year, were gearing up. Spears of aqua light were poking up from horizon to past the center of the sky vault. At first vague and unsure, they gained momentum and did some very impressive swirling, fencing and blending.

The I told the dogs to look. They looked. We stood there on the hard-pack, all three of us perfectly still for the fifteen minutes it took for my face to get numb. They didn't even pick up their feet. They just watched.

It's -20°F tonight.

Ole the Dog Wakes Up

If you've followed this blog at all, you know that I adopted Ole, a young Norwegian Elkhound, in mid-May of last year.

After having flown from Oregon to Anchorage,  he arrived benumbed by airplane noise, bewildered by all the people in the airport, and gosh-darned glad to get out of that darned crate! Though we walked him for over half an hour, he wouldn't pee or poo. Some things did get sniffed, but mainly he would stand next to me, or his foster mom, gaining a little comfort from the two humans who seemed safest.

Then Ole and I drove in my pickup truck the 350 miles back to Fairbanks. It took a little doing to get him in the truck cab with me: he was really frightened. I spent 350 miles prying him out of my lap so he wouldn't accidentally push the truck out of gear, or affect my steering.

Later I discovered that he was terrified of being alone, and would freak out if I left him even for a minute or two. Even the companionship of Sofia didn't help right away. He locked me out of the house in my pjs once, but scrabbling at the door and throwing the deadbolt! I had to call a locksmith to let me back into my house...him freaking out the entire time.

It's been almost nine months since Ole guy came to live with me and there has been an amazing and wonderful transformation: his little button eyes shine with love and meaning, trying to tell me all kinds of things ALL the time. He follows me everywhere, even at 1am when I have to go downstairs to the bathroom, he follows me. And yet, if I leave him alone he doesn't panic. He knows I always come back, and he gains comfort from his friend and best friend, Sofia.

He's become himself, with some extremely endearing habits and quirks. Every morning he lets me know with a long, low "Arrrrrooooooo!" that he can wait no longer, he MUST go pee NOW!

He has learned to come, sit, lie down, "to me" (come close enough to grab collar), and shake. He's so attentive (and so food-happy) that he's a breeze to teach and can't wait to learn more. And I can't wait to teach him more.

He now runs around and plays outside in the yard even when it is -30, albeit not a long time, but he joyfully rushes around the yard and would stay longer, but older, smarter Sofia knows when to call it quits and go back inside.

He's learned to look UP to see squirrels and birds. Sofia has shown him foxes, moose, voles and both dogs go nuts when they see the sled dogs go by.

He's sweet, super smart, healthy........and an elklown. Some dogs act like mature grown-ups as they get older, and some dogs seem to be stuck as puppies and are very, very silly. I am lucky to have adopted a very silly boy who makes snorty noises when he finds something yummy to eat, who roo-roos and talks to me, who nearly tumbles down the stairs gaining him the nickname Thunderpaw, who lovingly licks the cabinet where the dog food is kept, who, after having had dinner, roo-rooed me to follow him, and who then led me to the cabinet...These things and more, many involving klutzy puppy paw maneuvers such as coming down the stairs with a toy, dropping the toy and sitting on it, then trying to pull the toy out from under his butt without standing up, all while in the middle of the steep stairs. He just about threw himself down the stairs doing that!

Then there was the Razor Blade Incident....

But the best thing of all is that he looks at me and I can see that he's MY dog and I'm HIS human. We belong to each other now. The love is mutual. He comes and snuggles on the bed now, whereas before he would jump up and be gone again in ten seconds. He knows he's home. I'm so glad he's here.

Cold Tonight--Cold Tomorrow Too

I just came in from turning up the heater in my tank house for the third time tonight. It's after midnight and it has dropped to -30 at my house. It is supposed to be -50°F in town tonight, and I think the high for tomorrow is something like -20°F.

I have a remote sensor thermometer in the tank house so I can tell if need to turn up the heat down there. The darn thing has no foundation, and it is sinking, resulting in a breeze right on the pipe the brings the water into the house. I've put a heat trace on it and insulated it, but if it freezes I have to go out there with a hair dryer, plus catch it before the pump burns up. Ah, life in rural Alaska!

I've used an entire can of Crack-B-Gone (aka spray foam) to fill in the places where the walls have cracked, don't quite meet the floor anymore, and other such stupid things.

This house needs a LOT of work. And it all has to wait until summer.