;)
To be quite honest, it was not a very good picture-taking day for me. In fact, I think it may have been the worst picture-taking day that I have experienced in months. That is because I spent basically the entire day sitting right here, at my computer, furiously working to finish that little proposal project that I told you about.
As usual, Pistol-Yero interrupted me now and then, as did Jim.
It always annoys me when they do this, but I don't know what I would do if they didn't. Their interruptions are the only thing that keeps me partly sane.
I am happy to say that I just finished that project, at 1:19 AM, pretty early for me when it comes to finishing something, and it is printing to pdf right now.
When I did go out, briefly, I hardly saw anything and if I did and tried to photograph it, I messed up.
;)
This is not from today, but I figure that it is a good lead-in to the next picture, which is from today and is essential to this post, even though it is boring. As this project neared completion, I realized that I was missing a certain image that I wanted to include and so I went looking for it. I found it. This is not it, but this image was in the same folder and, as I say, it makes a good lead-in to today's essential, but boring, image.
;)
This is the essential, but boring image. This is where I first found the car three days ago, sometime after it slid off the road and got stuck. Yes, the very same car that some cowardly, anonymous, person had used to insult and slander me by scrawling "dumbass" into the mud caked on the doors.
I am happy to say that the car has been pulled out and is now gone. The insult has been removed.
Undoubtedly, the anonymous person who scrawled it read yesterday's post. Undoubtedly, that person felt shame and humiliation for ever having slandered me in such a way and so went and removed the epithet.
I thank you, anonymous person, for coming to your senses - and yes, I accept your apology, abstract though it may be.
;)
So my walk was very short and I saw no one. But I did see this Cessna flying overhead. One day... one day... it has to happen... it has to!
;)
It was still stultifyingly hot today. At one point, I saw the thermometer reach 34 degrees. But in the same folder referenced above, I found this image, from three years ago, taken on a much better weather day than today.
For you Celsius people, that is - 32 degrees. The thing to remember is that when a cold snap settles in here, it tends to be 10 to 15 degrees colder out here where we live than in downtown Wasilla.
I always knew it was colder out here and there was one time when Melanie put a Pepsi thermometer in the yard and it went down to something like -46, but in town the temperatue was in the lower -20's. I was not certain that we could fully trust that Pepsi thermometer, but, since we bought this Ford Escape, the built in thermometer has confirmed these kind of temperature spreads between here and downtown Wasilla.
Oddly enough, on a day like today, when it is warm, I have discovered that it is actually a few degrees warmer out here than downtown.
;)
From the same folder. That whole mall in the background, Cottonwood Creek, is gone now. Target is there instead.
;)
From the same folder.
;)
From the same folder - shoppers leaving Wal-Mart.
;)
From the same folder - raven and stoplight in blowing snow.
And to you who are suffering down in the Lower 48 because of this recent cold snap that has frozen you and warmed Alaska, I am not making this stuff up. In winter, I truly prefer the cold weather to what we are having now.
If I didn't, I would live down there instead of up here.
It makes me feel good when it's cold - as long as I don't freeze, as long as the cold does not overcome me. Once it does, there is hardly anything more miserable. When the cold overcomes you and you become cold, life becomes hell. Yet, I love the cold.
It's not this warm everywhere in Alaska right now. I see that Fort Yukon was -20 today, Barrow -9, but what you have to understand is that, in those places, in January, those are warm temperatures.
Well, I am very tired. I have been playing with pictures and words all day long. I am growing incoherent.
So that's all I have to say.
Tavra!*
*Iñupiaq for "that's all I have to say."