Fun, taxing times - an airplane does touch and goes; Junipurr eats toxic lilies, Zed fetches a red mouse

I had planned to send my broken and malfunctioning camera equipment directly to the Canon repair factory, but instead I decided to take it into Anchorage and see if the guy at the repair shop at 17th and C could fix it. Margie came, too.

When we pulled into town, we saw this character doing touch and go's at Merrill Field.

I used to love doing touch and go's.

So much fun!

Damn!

Touch and go's.

Will I ever do touch and go's again?

Next, we saw a young man dressed up in a Statue of Liberty suit, trying to entice drivers to come into Liberty Tax to get their taxes done.

The problem that I have is with that damn sign behind him, "We make taxes fun!"

I don't want to accuse anyone of telling lies, so I figure the sign must be telling the truth. What I can't figure out is who they make taxes fun for - not the tax payer who brings them business, that's for sure. It is never fun for the tax payer, no matter how loyal an American he or she might be.

So... is it fun for the tax preparer? Perhaps. Maybe the preparer likes numbers and formulas and so has a great time pulling all this together. But then it must get pretty overwhelming as April 15 draws nigh. That could not be fun.

Maybe its fun for the business owner. Maybe it enables the business owner to go hang out in Hawaii for a month or two each year when tax season ends and to have fun there.

I don't know. Maybe the business owner does not even like to go to Hawaii. Maybe the business owner prefers to go to Chicago instead.

Maybe the business owner is a fan of the Chicago Cubs and finds it fun to go Chicago, buy tickets into Wrigley Field, take a seat, then jump up and down, shouting curses and insults.

That's about the only way I can see to make taxes fun.

So here I am at the camera repair shop at 15th and C. On the counter you can see the work that I have brought in. To the left is a 16 to 35 mm f 2.8 L series lens that I broke last spring while trying to photograph Jobe. Of all my lenses, it is my single most favorite (and it is also the hardest to use, because it can really make people look strange and distorted) and I have not taken a picture with it since spring.

I have just not wanted to spend the money on the repair.

But I want the lens at Kivgiq, which begins February 9. 

To the right you see my Canon 1Ds Mark III camera body, which went down in the rain at the Barrow Whalers final football game in Kenai last October.

After that game, the camera lost its ability to format a Compact Flash card.

I thought this might be a problem that would heal itself after the camera dried out, but it didn't. Several times between last October and now, I have tested it again and never would it format the card. The last time that I tested it was less than one month ago.

But guess what? When I tried to put on a demonstration for the camera repair man so that he would know what was wrong, it formatted the card, just like that!

I fired several test shots. They all worked.

So, I don't need to get it repaired.

I just hope it keeps working.

What I kind of wish now is that I could sell the Ds III before Kivgiq and buy a 1D M IV to replace it.

On one hand, I would hate to give up the large, full frame sensor of the DsIII for the smaller, cropped sensor of the D IV, but the D IV does much better in low light and I think that means more to me now than does the size of the sensor.

I don't think I can pull off such a sell and buy between now and Kivgiq, however.

As we drove through Anchorage towards a green light, we saw a homeless man walking away from the corner where he had been holding his sign to the stopped traffic when the light had been red. All of a sudden, as we neared the green the traffic in front of us came to a dead stop. The person who stopped at the green light shouted out to the homeless person, who turned around, came to that person and took the money that was offered.

I believe in helping out the homeless and try to myself, but I am not so certain about the wisdom of stopping at green light with heavy traffic coming behind you in order to give a man on a corner some money.

No. Actually, I am certain.

It is not wise. Someone could get hurt.

Maybe it would be better to keep driving and to drop the money off at Bean's Cafe, where you know it will do good.

On November 22, Lisa's birthday, when I was in Barrow, her boyfriend Bryce did what any thoughtful boyfriend would do and bought her some flowers at Carr's. He did not know what kind of flowers they were, but they were pretty, had not yet fully bloomed, which meant that Lisa could enjoy them longer as they came into full bloom.

He put them in a place where she could see them when she came home and indeed, she did see them, and she liked them.

Junipurr also saw them. Junipurr liked the flowers as well - not so much to look at, but to munch on as a dietary supplement.

When Lisa saw that Junipurr had been chewing on the flowers, she grew a little worried, because she knew that some flowers are toxic to cats.

She thought the flowers were lilies, but she was not positive, so she did some googling. She quickly learned that lilies were toxic and that if a cat were to eat them, it needed to get to the vet within 6 hours or its chances of survival would not be good.

As the flowers had not fully bloomed, she was pretty certain still not fully positive that they were lilies, so Bryce checked with the saleslady at the Carr's floral shop who had sold them to him. She confirmed that they were lilies.

She told him that she did not think the flowers were poisonous to cats, but not to let the cats chew on them.

Lisa and Bryce then rushed Junipurr to an animal hospital, where she was sedated, forced to vomit and to ingest charcoal to absorb as much toxin as possible. She was then put on an IV for two days to flush out her system.

After she had been taken back for treatment, the vet farted while as he explained all was happening and why.

They did not know quite how to react.

Well, everyone farts, every day. Vets - kings, gueens, popes and presidents, too.

If a vet can save the life of a good cat like Junipurr, then so what if he blows off a loud public fart now and then?

Lisa and Bryce did not come to see Junipurr during the two days that she stayed in the hospital, as they feared it would confuse her and upset her more if they came in and then just left again without her.

When finally they did bring her home, she got ornery with Zed, which she never does. Then she zonked out for four hours. After that, she was good.

Next time, Bryce says, he is going to buy plastic flowers.

My own thought is that florists should label flowers that are toxic to pets as such.

As we visited, Lisa tossed a little red fake mouse into the living room. Zed ran in and brought it back. Zed likes to play fetch, just like a cat.

Not like a dog. No, Zed never plays fetch like a dog.

Zed plays fetch like a cat.

Junipurr and Zed chase a string.

And this from India:

Cat at a truck and wayfarers stop in southern India.

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Finally, last Sunday with kids and grandkids, abruptly remembered; jail house romance wrongly credited, near miss

Folks, I feel very abrupt today. For many reasons which I will not delve into, save to note that this damn computer, which has served me so well these past three or four years, seems to be getting ready to fail and it is wasting a lot of my time. This post should have been completed an hour ago.

So I am going to be abrupt today.

Sunday, however, was a good day. 

So I will return to Sunday, and will abruptly tell you how Jobe sat down and the waiter came...

Oh, hell... why should I tell you at all?

Look at the picture! You can see for yourself!

There were adults at the table, too. I was there, as well.

When you are little, you are as aware of the bottom of the table as you are the top.

Honk, honk!

At one point, Kalib got up and ran off to another table, being mischievous. He could have got away with it with his dad, but not his Auntie Mel. He had to come back and sit back down.

This is what you call, "sibling rivalry."

After we returned home, Melanie and Charlie tried to get comfortable on the couch. Kalib whipped them with a blanket.

So they got up and danced instead. Kalib played with the voice mail box on the phone. The first message was, "no new messages." So Kalib made it go, "no! no! no! no new. no! no! no new messages." Kind of like a disk dj. 

Then he got into a message left awhile back that I have not bothered to erase.

A gruff but happy sounding voice comes on talking to me, Bill Hess, saying I will know right away who he is and he leaves a number and tells me to get back to him.

I did not know who he was and there was something about the familiarity of the message coming from a voice that I did not recognize at all that put me on a bit of an edge, so I never called back.

Then one day he called back and got me. Turns out, he had spent time in jail in Palmer with a Bill Hess who was not this Bill Hess and that Bill Hess had somehow introduced him to the woman who became his wife and when he saw that this Bill Hess lives in Wasilla he thought it must be the same Bill Hess and so he was just calling to let that Bill Hess who wasn't me know how great everything had worked out with his marriage and to thank that Bill Hess for bringing the two together.

Sorry, I said. Wrong Bill Hess. I haven't been in jail since I got out of Juarez in November of 1969, just in time to eat Thanksgiving dinner in a casino in Las Vegas.

I don't know why we even bother to keep this phone anymore. Everybody calls us on our cells phones. Except for people wanting money, and folks who think they did time with me.

Then Melanie danced with Kalib, who seemed to enjoy it.

Kalib takes a break.

Caleb watched the NFL playoffs.

Lisa talked to Bryce on the phone.

At 4:00 PM, a bunch of us went out to get coffee. Metro is closed on Sunday so we went to the place at the corner of Fishhook and Seldon. As we waited for our coffee, we saw an exchange being made. Money for pizza. 

Now, there are two things notable about this picture. It is 4:00 PM and look how much light is in the sky! The long nights are in rapid retreat.

Also, the temperature stood at about -10 F (-23 C) but no real snow on the ground. Just ice and a hard crust.

Lisa and Jobe, back at the house.

After we returned home, Kalib laid his spatula upon the floor and ran circles around it. 

As always happens, it was soon time for them all to go. Lisa and Kalib head out the door.

Melanie and Kalib walk to the car.

They backed out and then, with their headlights shining through their frozen exhaust, began the drive back to Anchorage, where they would drop Kalib and Jobe off with their parents.

"It sure is quiet in here," Margie noted, after they had been gone awhile. 

I had not seen Chicago since Kalib and Jobe had arrived. Now that they had left, she came back out. 

Quiet is how Chicago likes it.

And this one from India:

This is what it is like riding on the Indian highways. Constantly. While it is exhilarating to a certain degree and on the surface seems to carry a bit of romance, it is deadly. And once that deadliness catches up to you it is awful and that, more than all the other reasons combined, is why I feel so abrupt today.

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The wind tries to blow the moon away; Jimmy is a bad good cat; we pick up Kalib and Jobe; beauty at the cave temples

Again, I found myself walking in the hard, cold, wind which has seemed to become perpetual lately - temperature about 0 F. Yesterday afternoon, I heard a forecast on the radio calling for an overnight high wind advisory, with winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 km/h) at some places in this valley and temperatures going to -20 F (-28 C).

That would be quite a wind-chill factor.

Well, the night has past and none of that quite came true here - maybe it did somewhere else in the valley but not here. Still, it was a mighty cold brisk wind out there and when you went walking in it, it let you know it.

Even so, Ubiquitous Raven came sailing by.

On the moon, there was no wind at all. See how still it is up there?

The day before, a triple stop sign had ordered me to stop three times. Now, I was ordered to stop once, but I was on foot, so I did not obey that order.

Well, I guess I stopped to take the picture.

But not because I was ordered to.

If I were a child, and  had a sled...

So, just why did the chicken cross the road? I don't know, and this dog doesn't either. Furthermore, neither one of us cares. If a chicken wants to cross the road, that's the chicken's business.

Why do people make such a big deal about a chicken crossing the road, anyway?

When I left to go on my walk, Jimmy had been sitting on the sill of my office window, looking out. This had made me a bit nervous, as Jimmy can do some pretty bad things when he has the office to himself. He turns off hard drives, erases things from my computer and types gibberish into my stories.

I am not making this up - he does all of these things.

Plus, he loves to push things off counters, desks and tables and watch them fall to the floor.

Even so, he looked so happy in the window sill that I decided to chance it and leave him there.

I came home the back way, through the marsh, hoping that I might find some moose there.

I didn't, but when I came up through our back yard, I saw Jimmy sitting right where I had left him about one hour before.

He had been a good cat.

But then Jimmy is always a good cat, even when he is bad.

I don't know how there could be a better cat than Jimmy.

He is ten-and-a-half years old now.

If he goes before me, which seems quite possible, it will be very hard.

Jacob and Lavina wanted to do some major house cleaning this weekend, so they asked us to take the boys. We agreed and in the late afternoon drove into Anchorage to get them.

As you can see, Anchorage has not been scoured by the same high winds that we have - except for the Anchorage Hillside, populated largely by rich people who every winter endure 100 mph plus winds, but they have a really good view from up there. They can see Cook Inlet, Denali, Foraker and a host of active volcanoes.

The snow did not mostly all blow away there the way it did in Wasilla. Plenty was left behind to weather the big warmup - that warmup now being history.

Here we are, picking up the boys. Muzzy wants to come, too. We will not let him.

Now we are getting ready to leave, but before we do, Lisa stops by. That's her and Jacob in the driveway.

On the way out, we stopped at Taco Bell on Muldoon and found a cop with his lights flashing, parked behind an empty vehicle.

I have no idea what the story was. You could look in the Anchorage Daily News, but I doubt that you will find it there, either.

I could have played the role of the true reporter, gotten out, interviewed the officer, took a picture of any suspect with her hands over her eyes. I could have done something like that. I have those basic skills, you know.

If I had done it, then I could tell you why the cop had stopped behind the empty car.

But I was more interested in eating my burrito than in getting the story.

Nobody can fire me.

This is my blog and if I would rather eat a burrito than report on a cop-stop, I can.

We then drove on to Wasilla. The winds weren't bad at all until we reached the hay flats. Then it felt kind of like being in an airplane, flying through turbulence, except that the bumps and jolts were all lateral - no up and down.

A couple of times, we damn near got blasted out of our lane. I could hear the sound of dust and small pebbles smacking the car.

But we made it. I was glad, too, because if we hadn't have I would never have seen this tanker truck roar through the intersection of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

I don't know about you, but, at the end of a long, hard, tough, day, I really enjoy seeing a truck blast through the intersection like this.

It just takes all the stress that I feel and carries it down the road with it.

Poor truck driver! Now he must deal with that stress.

Better him than me.

He's probably tougher than I am, better able to take it.

Truck drivers are known for being tough, able to take it.

Once in the house, Kalib found a flashlight. I found another. We played flashlight games.

Jobe does not know how to use a flashlight, but that did not stop him from joining in the games.

Yes, Kalib had brought his spatula - none of the expensive, fancy toys that he got for Christmas and his birthday. Just his spatula.

And this from India:

Two girls in front of the cave temples of Badami.

I hate to say this, and I mean no offense to any of my fellow Americans, but after one spends a little time in India and then returns to the US, the way people dress here - at least the women - just seems kind of dull and drab by comparison.

The women in India just dress beautifully - even poverty stricken women, begging in the streets.

They remind me of the Navajo saying, "I walk in beauty."

Badami is a long way from Navajo land, but the red rocks kind of remind me of it, as do temples, built in caves - not the same at all but yet evocative of cliff dwellings.

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My dream of Jobe, the momma grizzly and cub; Six studies of Chicago and the great fire; boy with tire

Chicago and the great fire - Study # 1: After eating her breakfast in the cold garage, Chicago enters the living room in search of fire and warmth.

Although it had already been going on for awhile and Jobe and I had experienced some great adventures out in the country, the dream now comes sharply into my memory only at that moment when Jobe and I walked out of the woods and into a large, grassy, meadow.

Yes, I say "walked" because in the dream Jobe had grown beyond toddler stage and was able to walk quite nicely all by himself.

As we stepped into the meadow, my eyes were on Jobe and I smiled as he ran ahead of me, until we were separated by about 50 feet. I then turned to my left and was startled to find myself looking right into the eyes of a grizzly bear, standing on all fours, perhaps five feet away from me, staring directly into my eyes.

Chicago and the great fire - Study # 2: Chicago finds fire and warmth.

About 30 or 40 feet beyond her, I could see a cub playing.

Oh, boy! The only way the situation could have been worse would have been if I or Jobe had come between the sow and her cub. Even though we hadn't and that neither of us were in a position to logically threaten the cub, I was not certain just how much logic the momma bear would apply to the situation.

Momma grizzlies are not known to be rational in such a situation. If a momma grizzly perceives a threat, real or imagined, she is going to do all in her power to kill that threat.

Chicago and the great fire - Study # 3

This momma studied me intently, as I tried to keep my eyes on her, the cub and Jobe.

"We mean no harm to you or your cub, Mamma bear," I told her.

Just then, the cub started to bound in a playful way straight towards Jobe.

When the sow saw this she charged, her legs churning hard as she bound straight toward my grandson, fast. She quickly outpaced the cub and then bore down on Jobe. I felt so helpless. I had no gun and I could not run nearly so fast as that momma grizzly could.

Chicago and the great fire - Study # 4: It is a warm fire and that makes it a great fire.

"No, bear!" I shouted out a plea. "No, bear! No, bear!"

The bear quickly reached my little grandson and then stopped right beside him. She brought her nose right to his left cheek and she sniffed. Then she nudged him, gently, almost affectionately.

Then the cub reached them.

Next thing I knew, the three - momma bear, cub and Jobe were walking away from me. They all looked quite happy together.

Chicago and the great fire - Study # 5

I did not know quite what to do. I could not just let Jobe walk off with two bears, no matter how friendly disposed to him they were, but if I were to insert myself in the scene and try to remove Jobe from it, that momma bear just might kill me - and Jobe, too.

It was a hell of a predicament, I tell you.

That's where the dream ends.

Chicago and the great fire - Study # 6: Chicago is content.

And this one from India:

Boy with bicycle tire, as photographed through the open window of a taxi-cab as we passed through his village in southern India.

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Two views of the cats on Charlie's t-shirts: full front and rear, too; Ketchup in an empty restaurant; big mid-winter meltdown; Ramz - the girl who defended the tiny goat

Charlie showed up wearing this t-shirt. This is the front view.

This is the rear view. Charlie suggested that we all go to Anchorage and stroll through the Fifth Avenue Mall together, drinking coffee from cat mugs, but none of the rest of us wanted to join him there.

It seems that I have lost the ability to sleep - except for those blessed moments when I just crash. I find myself typically going to bed between midnight and 2:00 AM. It takes me too long to go to sleep and after I do, I might sleep for close to an hour and then I wake up and just keep waking up, multiple times each hour until finally I just give up and get up.

So far this week, I have not felt like cooking and besides, the steel-cut oatmeal was gone and so were the frozen berries that I put in it.

Family Restaurant opens at 6:00 AM, so for the last two days in a row I have headed over there at that time.

Both days, I have found the restaurant eerily empty.

Just me and the ketchup.

And a waitress or two.

Cooks in the back, cooking just for me, waiting for the crowd to start coming in.

I get in the car and leave to drive home. The fringe edge of the crowd has finally begun to arrive.

Corner of Seldon and Church Roads, on my way home from breakfast.

Despite the fact that I am peripatetic by nature, I have not had much energy for walking lately. Still, I must walk - especially since I have begun to lay the plans for a big Brooks Range hike this summer.

So I go walk, and this dog comes barking. Back in the trees, I hear a man shouting at the dog. He orders the dog to come back. The dog does not. The dog keeps following me, barking and barking.

The man keeps shouting orders, all of which the dog ignores.

In time, the man's voice fades into the trees.

The dog is still following, but barking less now.

The dog seems unsure of itself, now.

Maybe this is the farthest the dog has ever been away from home on its own.

The dog is probably wondering what it got itself into.

Soon, I will be home in my office with the cats, Jimmy and Pistol-Yero. 

They do not bark and they do not chase people down the road.

They just hang out in my office, knock things off my desk, counters and work table, spill my coffee, break my cups, prance across my keyboard when I am typing, interrupt my work and sit down on my lap every time I get on a roll. Sometimes, they even delete pictures!

So far (I think) I have always discovered each deletion in time to undo it.

They drink water from my fish tanks and throw up on the rug.

I sure do love these damn cats.

I see the tail of one them right now. It hangs down from the window sill beneath the cat, who is covered up the drape. He is looking outside at some creature that he would like to hunt - a raven, maybe. A moose, perhaps.

If so, that creature is damn lucky there is a pane of glass between it and the cat.

This is about as bad as a mid-winter warm-up can get. Well, not quite as bad. It hasn't rained all that much. The problem is, even through all the cold weather, we have had a dearth of snow and much of that had already been scoured away by the wind, even when the temperature was still cold, where it ought to be.

I read the part in the Anchorage Daily News that said this warmup was the result of Chinook winds. The Daily News is wrong. These winds have blown in off the Pacific. Chinook winds are caused when air flows down off mountains, warms up and spreads across a valley or plain.

My dad was a meteorologist, so I know these kind of things.

The Daily News is wrong.

This blog is right.

Here I am, on my 4:00 PM coffee break, which I got started on just a bit late. I have been to Metro. where Shoshana served me my Americano and cinnamon roll and told me that she and her boyfriend greatly enjoyed their New Year's jaunt to Chena Hot Springs, even if the temperature was 40 above instead of 40 below, where one would want it to be.

And here is one from India: Ramz my niece and Facebook friend

Recently, Ramz invited me to become one of her friends on Facebook. Ramz Iyer is Soundarya's cousin, but sisters is also a word they use.

I accepted the invitation, of course, and was very touched when I looked at all her profile pictures and saw one where she was hugging a small goat close to her chin and was smiling big. I have pictures like that of Soundarya, too.

Another of her Facebook friends, one closer to her own age, responded with this comment:

"dont u feel eeew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Ramz retorted:

"i feel more eew wen ppl eat it ! rader dan carrying it ! i luve animals ! nd nyways .....it was neat nd tidy !"

The friend eventually replied:

"i was just kidding,"

Ramz stood her ground:

"but I was not !"

I was pleased and proud.

I just went and took another look at her page. Her new profile pic depicts her as a platinum blond with blue green tint in her hair, dark blue eyes and a tattoo on her pale face!

I remain: pleased and proud!

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