Detoured by death on the highway as I take Margie to the airport; bright, red, fingernails; Kalib rides the escalators

The plan was for me to drop Margie off at the Alaska Native Medical Center so that she could pick up the medications she will need for the nearly four weeks that she will be in Arizona.

I would then drive to Camai Printing where I had a little business to take care of, come back, pick her up, we would get together with the kids for coffee or maybe even dinner, should time allow.

I would then take her to the airport.

But, just before we got to the South Birch Creek exit, traffic came to a halt. There had been an accident ahead.

I knew that if I could get to the exit, we could get off the Glenn Highway, switch to the Old Glenn and go around the accident.

Several other drivers had the same idea, so it was a slow process, but, after close to half an hour, I made it onto the ramp, where traffic was moving maybe one mile-an-hour - but it was moving.

See all those cars still on the highway? They are beyond the exit and they will be stuck there for hours.

Furthermore, if we had been perhaps as little as one mile further back, we would also have been stuck. We would not have been able to make it to the exit.

As we crept along, a bulletin came on the radio. A very serious accident had happened and the highway was closed at this exit.

It is a strange thing when you find yourself in this situation. You are annoyed at the slowdown. You think of the inconvenience and trouble that it is going to cause you - in this case, Margie could potentially miss her flight, or have to go without her medications, which we would then need to get and mail to her.

Yet you know that, up ahead, at the source of the slowdown, someone might be badly injured, in terrible pain, perhaps facing a different kind of life from here on out. Or someone might be dead, or dying, their entire life now behind them. Several people might be.

And yet, you still want to get moving.

As we crept further, a new bulletin said that a helicopter was coming. We knew then that someone had been hurt very badly.

And still I wanted to get Margie to the airport, on time, with her medications, and I wanted to get my business taken care of.

Finally, we got to where traffic was moving and then arrived in town right as the rush hour was beginning. I dropped Margie off at ANMC, then headed to Camai and arrived just before closing. I took care of my business and then returned to get her.

But she had got stuck in another long line - at the ANMC Family Medicine pharmacy. Kalib was there, waiting for her with his parents. Margie had entered an area in which only patients picking up medicine are allowed, so I sat down as Lavina helped Kalib learn how to operate an iPhone.

See how red Lavina's fingernails are?

A friend at work had chosen Saturday to be her wedding day and had asked all her lady co-workers who would be participating to paint their nails bright red. She also wanted them all to wear black dresses.

So Lavina painted her nails red, went out shopping on her one free day and bought a black dress.

Then her coworker changed the wedding date to June.

Kalib watches the movie, Cars.

Lavina had heard an update on the accident - it involved a pedestrian. That seemed pretty strange, since it happened on the freeway.

Later, on the radio, we heard that a man was trapped beneath a vehicle. I hoped he was unconscious. How miserable would that be, to be broken, injured, and have a ton or more of steel sitting atop you, jamming you into the cold pavement?

By the time Margie finally got her medications, there was no time to get together for coffee, let alone dinner. So all of the Anchorage part of the family came to the airport, to see her off.

Kalib and his dad led the entourage toward airport security.

Kalib soon dashed into the area where only ticketed passengers are allowed. Thankfully, he turned right around and dashed back out before he could get arrested and thrown into jail.

Traffic was very light in the security area. Kalib gave his grandma a goodbye hug.

As Rex gives his mom a goodbye hug, Kalib reaches out to hug one of his aunties. Kalib hugged everybody, whether they were traveling or not.

Then he got to ride an escalator going down.

He rode a series of escalators.

At the entrance to the parking garage, we discussed the matter of dinner. Melanie suggested Pho Lena, a Vietnamese - Thai restaurant that was more or less on the way out.

At Pho Lena, the waitress brought a toy over for Kalib's amusement.

But Kalib was more amused by the paper and coloring marker that she also brought him.

After I arrived home in the late evening, I sat down right here, at my computer and found a bulletin from the Anchorage Daily News in my inbox. Robert Marvin, 76, had apparently experienced some kind of car trouble on the Glenn and had pulled over to the side of the road - but not all the way out of traffic. He was standing in front of a Volkswagon van when it was rear-ended and pushed 50 - 60 feet down the road with him under it.

Rescuers managed to get him out without help from the helicopter, but he was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Traffic had been stopped for three hours.

Now, as I write these words, Margie is in Seattle, where she has a seven-and-a-half hour layover before catching her 7:25 AM flight to Phoenix.

How miserable she must be!

I am afraid to call her, though - she might be napping.

Anonymous coward retracts the insult; on a stultifying, hot, winter day in Alaska, I remember a more agreeable one

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."

A cowardly, anonymous, individual hurls a vindictive, obscene, insult at me, but, after surveying the bigger picture, I find comfort in my afternoon coffee; a cat forces me to take a break

When you blog, you know that sooner or later, some cowardly, anonymous, person lacking the guts to even identify him/herself is going to slam you bad, hit you with an obscene insult - even call you a dumbass. Well, it happened to me today, on my walk.

Remember that car that I found stuck in the snow two days ago? It's still stuck in the snow and someone took advantage of that fact to scrawl an insult to me in the mud stuck to its doors.

I wonder who this person was? What did I write that upset him/her so?

I reject this criticism. I'm not the dumbass here. Whoever wrote this - that person's the dumbass. 

It isn't too smart of the owner to leave this car sitting here for days, either. I've seen a lot of cars lose all their windows and get trashed this way.

Of course, that's assuming that the owner left it here. There are other possibilities.

I had hoped that I would meet someone to photograph on my walk today, someone who could tell me an interesting story, but I saw only person my whole walk. That was a jogger, and he crossed an intersection more than half-a-block behind me.

If I hadn't have turned around at just the right moment, I wouldn't have seen him at all.

I didn't even see a dog.

That's mighty unusual.

I did see a squirrel, dashing through these trees, too tiny to show up in a photograph.

Given the time of year, that seemed a bit unusal, too.

And I saw a few ravens, but none came close enough to get a decent photo.

Later, as I drove Margie to get a burrito, I saw a surveyor, through the dirty windshield of my car as I came to the four-way stop at Lucille and Spruce streets.

Some of you who visit here have been reveling over the fact that it is colder where you are right now then it is here. You might want to pay attention to this guy - particularly his feet.

Those are bunny boots that he is wearing. If you are going to be out for awhile and you can find some, they will keep your feet warm.

But if you wear them for several days in a row and you are in the cold all the time, then their linings will become saturated with sweat and the cold will gradually penetrate and freeze that sweat and then these boots will become pockets of frozen hell.

So if you are going to be out for days on end, what you want to do is have two pairs of boots, so that one is always drying out.

"Bill! Yesterday... where were you?" Carmen asked sternly after I pulled up to the window. You will recall that she closed the Metro Cafe down for four days over the New Year's weekend and that she had expressed great fear that I would abandon her for another coffee house.

And then, yesterday, Margie took the car to Anchorage so that she could return Kalib to his parents, so I had no transportation.

"You could have walked!" Carmen said. "You always walk."

And it's true. Metro Cafe is only two miles from my house and I could have walked.

"Yeah, but I have to listen the NPR news on the radio at four," I defended myself. "I can't listen to it if I'm walking."

"You can get one of those things and put an earphone in your ear," Carmen said.

Well, she had me there.

She told me that she was having an open house at 7:00 and that a candidate for governor was going to be there. She told me I should come by, take a few pictures, but I had to decline, as I had too much work to do.

"You work all the time, don't you," she said.

"Pretty much," I said.

That's Rhonda who was serving the coffee so Carmen could prepare for the open house.

You will recall that I had a proposal that I had planned to spend the three-day New Year's weekend putting together - a proposal that could make a significant difference in my life, or could eat up three days of my time for nothing.

I barely managed to touch it all weekend long, for reasons already explained.

So after I got up yesterday, I said, "I can do it in one day."

I then worked into the wee hours and realized I couldn't. (In fact, it is the wee hours again. Today is over, tomorrow has already come, but it still feels like today.)

So, this morning I said, "I can finish it up today."

Late in the evening, I was working furiously on it, when Pistol-Yero positioned himself by the keyboard, making it very hard to work.

"Get down, Pistol-Yero," I said.

So Pistol-Yero got down - onto my lap. He forced me to take a break.

And now, at this very moment, another cat, the black one, Jim, has just stepped onto my lap and I am forced to reach around him just to put my finger-tips on the keyboard.

I guess I am done for the day.

Tomorrow, I will finish that project. That will be three days - just like I originally planned for, just three days later.

Kalib feeds the fish, waves goodbye and then he leaves to be surrendered to his parents

I didn't really settle down to sleep this morning until about 7:00 AM, so I did not get out of bed until after 11:00. When I came out, Caleb said that I had a Kalib hairdo, kind of like what you see here, on the real Kalib. Except that mine is thinner, of course.

Judging from the look of things, Kalib must have been playing indoor golf.

Margie planned to drive him into town to surrender him to his parents, so I would not have a car for the rest of the day. I would not be able to go out for my late afternoon coffee break or anything. I pulled out the oatmeal, but before I could add water to it, Margie said, "why don't you go out for breakfast? Then you at least have some kind of outing today."

So I did. And as I backed out of the driveway, Kalib came to the window.

I ate breakfast with strangers, but that was okay, because the food was truly excellent, even the hash browns. Sometimes, at Family, they turn the hashbrowns into mush with a hard, crispy coat, but today they cooked them just right. They were excellent.

On the way home, I passed by this dog.

Right after I got home, Kalib decided that he wanted to feed the fish. When they saw him coming, the fish got excited and came to greet him. The fish know that when they see Kalib, they are going to get fed.

Kalib feeds the fish.

Then it was time for him to go. He gave his grandpa a hug. It still annoys me to hear the word "grandpa" applied to me, but I sure do enjoy having a grandson.

He reached the door, turned, and waved bye-bye.

He was anxious to get going.

Uncle Caleb buckled little Kalib into this car seat.

Uncle Kalib then cleaned the headlights off. As you can see, the weather has turned dreadfully warm. It was 31 above at this moment.

Margie gets into the driver's seat, Caleb says goodbye to Kalib and then my wife drove away with my grandson.

When she returned many hours later, she informed me that Kalib and his mother were both delighted to see each other.

As I have already informed you, Margie leaves for Arizona Thursday night.

"Somehow," she told me, "I have got to find a way to spend some more time with that little boy before I leave."

What will she do? How will she do it? How is she going to bear being gone from him for almost a full month?

She has gone to Arizona a few times since Kalib was born, but he and his mother have always gone with her - or she has gone with them.

Except for a very short walk, I spent the rest of the day, into the wee hours of this morning, right here, at my computer.

The three missing images that I had to drop from the previous post

Okay - you would not believe it, but I have spent HOURS on this since I posted the previous, incomplete, post. It was incomplete, because the Squarespace upload feature would freeze whenever I tried to add in one of the last three pictures. I spent an hour going through all kinds of things - cache clears, page refreshes, browser restarts, computer restarts - all to no avail.

I sent a message to Squarespace support and two hours after that, making it three hours total wasted time to that point, they sent me a message telling me that my storage space was full and, in order to continue, I had to buy more.

So I set about to do so, but received a false and erroneous warning before I could complete the transaction. So I let Squarespace know, gave up and went to bed.

I did not believe the warning because it made no sense, but still I worried that if I proceeded, there was a tiny chance that something would go wrong. 

So, after eating a late breakfast, I again initiated a process with Squarespace to ensure that this would not happen. That process dragged out for over four hours.

Now, the transaction, which took maybe 30 seconds, is made, nothing of value was lost and I am once again able to upload pictures.

It feels kind of pointless to now finish up with the images that were supposed to complete the previous post, but, after going through all this, I will do it anyway.

I am too drained to write anything clever or intelligent.

So - above you see Margie feeding Kalib.

And here you see Kalib and his buddy Royce.

And here are the four of us, watching "Desperate Housewives." I hardly watch any TV at all, but, somehow I got into watching "Desperate" a few years back with Margie and then Lavina and I still do. As often as not, it is the only TV program that I watch in the course of a week, but I watch it anyway, because it has become a family tradition.