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.

Margie and I drive into Anchorage and steal Kalib away from his parents

"I am so lonesome for Kalib," Margie said. "Let's go to Anchorage and steal him away." I had big plans for this weekend. Starting yesterday and then going all the way through Sunday, I was going to devote myself to a little proposal that I want to make, one that has the potential to make a big difference in my life. It also has the potential to take up three days of my time and then go nowhere at all.

New Year's Day, I discovered that I was simply too tired and burned out to do it. So I figured, "Ok, I'll go at it hard all day Saturday and Sunday and I can still get it done."

But when your wife announces that it is time to go to Anchorage and steal your grandson away from his parents, then you had better go steal your grandson.

So I warmed up the car and then we got in it.

So off we went, and drove out of Wasilla, headed for Anchorage to steal our grandson. Margie leaves for Arizona Thursday night and won't be back until February 2 (Melanie's birthday), and that it made it all the more urgent to her to spend some time with Kalib.

I'm going to Arizona, too, but I don't leave until the 17th. I will come back with Margie.

When we arrived in Anchorage, we learned over Margie's cellphone that Kalib had just dozed off for his afternoon nap. You can't steal a grandson when he is napping. It wouldn't be right. We wanted to visit Lisa, anyway, so she agreed to meet us at Middle Way Cafe for coffee. Melanie and Rex were both out of town.

Here's Lisa, coming to the back door of Middle Way. She will chide me after she enters; she will say that I looked ridiculous, standing there taking pictures. But, I will tell her, that's what photographers do.

Yes, she will say, but photographers stand there with big, professional-looking DSLR cameras and there I was, standing there with an itty-bitty pocket camera, looking ridiculous.

Well, I will tell  her, photographers can't worry about whether or not they look ridiculous. All photographers can worry worry about is whether or not they get the picture, whatever size their camera is.

As you can see, I got the picture.

I'm pretty sure it will win me a Nobel prize.

This, of course, is Bryce, Lisa's boyfriend. He works at Middle Way. Today, he was being a baristo.

This is Bryce's co-worker, Joel. "Okay," Joel said, "you can put me in your blog," after I told him I was going to. He will probably regret it when he sees this picture. I do have other images in which his eyes are open, but I like this one better.

I tried real hard to catch that blink and I succeeded.

You know what they say, "success breeds success."

This ought to be a successful year for me, now.

Thank you, Joel - I couldn't have done it without you.

Margie and Lisa. We bought one piece of chocolate beat cake to share. I'm not quite certain how they work beats into a chocolate cake recipe, but the result is scrumptious - when its fresh. It was stale today. Not so good. Somebody better get on the ball or I will stop buying beat cake.

Who wants stale cake, beats or not?

Lisa had much on her mind, but not for me to share here.

Bryce has some kind of technique that allows him to put designs in latte's. He put a heart in Margie's.

Soon, we said goodbye to Lisa and went over to steal Kalib. His parents let us in so we could do so, but he was still napping. They had bought him this remote-controlled train engine for Christmas, but had forgotten to buy batteries. 

Jacob had just put some in and was testing it out.

Finally, Kalib began to wake up. 

Now he is awake - sort of.

After Kalib came out, Jacob guided the train engine toward him. Kalib was leery.

He was still tired, feeling a little grumpy.

Then the three of us got in the car and drove away from his parents - back to Wasilla. Now that we had stolen their son, they have a night to themselves. They can go to a movie; whatever they want to do.

They can't make another baby, though, because they already got another one coming - February 27, for those of you don't already know.

I was going to help Kalib feed the fish after we got home, but, I came out to my office and found that Margie had beat me to it. These two were feeding the fish without me.

And then Kalib had to watch his movie, Ice Age. I am certain that he has every scene memorized by now.

After finishing all that precedes this image, I went into the house to see if these two had gone to bed yet. It is 1:00 AM, so I thought they probably would have. This is what I found.

Margie cannot carry him to bed, so, as soon as I save and close this, I will go in and do so.

Well... I went in to carry him to bed and this is what I found... Royce, the frail, aging, old-man orange cat watching over him - just as he did during all the time that Kalib lived with us.

So, forgive me for dragging this out, but I had to take one more picture, come back out here and put it in the journal.

Now, I will go in and carry him into bed.

I stop at Mocha Moose, happen upon a bust on Wasilla Main Street and then photograph a polar bear that is about to travel to India

As I pulled up to the drive-through at Mocha Moose for my afternoon coffee break, I could hear Carmen's voice in my head, "Bill! Bill! Don't you go switching coffee houses on me while I'm gone!" As already stated, Carmen has shut down the Metro Cafe, all the way through the weekend.

When I pull up to her window Monday, Carmen will ask where I went while she was gone. I will tell her, "Mocha Moose." She will scold, "Bill! Bill! no, Bill!" and she will get a distressed look on her face.

I know this, because she always closes on Sunday and when I stop by on Monday, the conversation goes pretty much as stated above.

But, when the coffee you love is gone, you've got to love the coffee you can get.

Wasn't this the theme of an old rock-and-roll song?

There were three cars ahead of me when I pulled in and took the first picture. Now, there are two cars ahead of me and so I shoot the scene from where I stop again. That is Lindsey on the other side of the window and she will soon prepare an Americano for me.

Now there is only one car ahead of me. The people in the back seat of that car are watching an animated film on a tiny, flip-down screen. Lindsey serves them whatever it was they ordered.

Now Lindsey brings me my Americano. She gives the New Year a thumbs up. Optimism is good. I hope she is right.

Sorry, Carmen - but what was I to do?

As I prepare to drive away, three boys run across the parking lot. They seem to be having a good time. I remember when I was that age and would be running like this. It was usually because we were in some kind of trouble, or that we were happily imagining that we were.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not implying anything about these kids. I'm just remembering how we were, at the same age.

Three blocks away from Mocha Moose, on Wasilla's famous Main Street, I saw that the police had something going on. It was obviously not a routine traffic stop. It looked to be a bust of some kind. What I was most impressed about, though, was the amount of daylight that still lingered in the sky.

It was about 4:20 PM. We are only 12 days past solstice, and look how the light is already on the increase! It kind of gave me a feeling of impending spring.

That is a false feeling, and sometimes when people in Alaska get that feeling too early and then realize that it was all a lie, they go a little crazy. Sometimes, they go a lot crazy. Bad things can happen then.

They call it, "cabin fever."

Vidya Dixit, one of my nieces in India, stopped by on Facebook today for a chat. Whenever we get together, in person or online, we chat about animals. She was very worried about this polar bear, Nanuq. Vidya loves animals - even more than people, she says. I have seen her accept a blessing from an elephant. She has a beautiful daughter named Vaidehi, who is just a tiny bit younger than Kalib.

How fun it would be, to photograph Kalib and Vaidehi together!

Vidya is not in a situation right now where she can have any kind of animal living with her - not a cat, not a dog, not a mouse. She can look out the window and see a monkey now and then, but she cannot invite it into the family's living quarters.

So I told her I would send her a polar bear. "Really, Uncle? Really?" she queried.

I then took a quick trip to Barrow, went out on the ice and convinced this one to come back with me so I could send him to her, but in the insane rush that is my life, coupled with the insane crowd that filled the Post Office as Christmas approached, I never managed to send Nanuq off.

Today, I promised her that I will on Monday. She then insisted that I send her a picture of Nanuq tonight.

So, Good Niece Vidya, here is your polar bear. He will be coming soon. I know Chennai can get extremely hot, even though you are right by the sea. Please keep a block of ice for him to hang out on. I do not want him to melt.

On cool days, take him down to the beach and see if maybe a seal will come to him.

Nanuq loves seals.

I was about to go to bed when it suddenly occurred to me that if I were to type, "Vidya" into my computer's search engine, I might find a picture of her being blessed by that elephant. So I typed and I found. It is at a temple in Bangalore, less than a block away from the home of Murthy and Vasanthi, the parents of Vivek, who is married to my niece, Khena, daughter of my sister, Mary Ann. Vidya is married to Vijay, brother of Vivek.

I took this image in August of 2007, just days after the wedding of Vivek and Khena.

It's funny - when I look at this image now, I feel like I should just be able to close my eyes, open them up in India, walk out the door and go down the street to this place.

There are so many places that I have such feelings about.

Melanie and Charlie give me a gift to take to Sarah Palin's book signing; Funny Face in Texas gives me two gift cards - so does Anonymous

About those HUGE "thank you's" that I mentioned in yesterday's post - I can sum them both up in these two photos of Carmen at the drive-though window to Metro Cafe. Yesterday afternoon, when I pulled up to Metro Cafe, Carmen pulled out this little log book and started reading something that she had written down in it.

I was a little confused. I thought it was a note that somebody had written to her and that she was so proud of it, she wanted to share it with me. She started to read something from a "Funny Face in Texas," who "loves your blog." This was very surprising to me because I did not even know that Carmen kept a blog. She had never given me a hint of any such thing. After she finished she handed me two business-sized cards and I thought that's what they were: business cards, her business cards.

I set the cards down in the little tray-like thing by my gear shift and placed my order. When Carmen brought it, I pulled out my wallet, removed a five and tried to hand it to her, but she would not take it.

"No!" she said. "You've got cards now. From Funny Face in Texas. Use your cards."

Holy cow!

Those hadn't been business cards at all. They were punch cards that cost $20 each but are worth $22. They were a gift from Funny Face in Texas, who reads my blog. So I handed one card to Carmen, she marked it, placed it atop the cup and handed it back to me.

So  again, Funny Face: a HUGE Thank you.

BTW: With a little help from her mister, Funny Face left a comment on yesterday's post. I think Funny Face wears fur - all the time, in cold or warmth.

So what does Funny Face's gift card have to with what Melanie and Charlie gave to me? The same thing this picture of Royce does. See, the above three photos are all test shots that I did with the gift that Melanie and Charlie gave me - a brand new pocket camera: the Canon s90.

It makes even my G10 pocket camera - which I thought was so tiny when I got it - look big.

What an Amazing thing Melanie and Charlie did! I am overwhelmed! And grateful!

Here is how it happened: on Sunday, when Melanie, Charlie, Jacob, Lavina and Kalib were visiting, we got to talking about the book signing that Sarah Palin had scheduled for Tuesday, December 22.

I was wondering if maybe this would finally be the time for me to break down and go take a picture of Sarah Palin. In our 28 years-plus of living in Alaska, I had met and photographed every governor from Jay Hammond on through Frank Murkowski, and had interviewed most of them.

But I had never met, photographed, or interviewed Sarah Palin - the one from my hometown, the one in the news every day now, the one that all America is talking about, everyday, in rage and adoration.

I'm not going to say that I had never seen her. It is possible that, before she became famous, we crossed paths in Carr's or some such place, but I have no recollection of ever having seen her.

Yet, I did not really like the idea of going to the Wasilla Sports Center to wait around for who knows how long just to photograph Sarah Palin when I've got so much to do.

And yet - I keep a blog on Wasilla. There is simply no way around it - news-wise, notoriety-wise, famous-wise, celebrity-wise if not wise-wise, Sarah Palin is simply the biggest name ever to come out of this town - or this state.

I figured that maybe it was time to break down and go get a photo of her.

But, I told Melanie and Charlie, I did not want to go over there carrying one of my big, professional-looking, DSLR cameras. I had read the stories about media people being denied access at some of her Lower-48 book signing events.

Such a camera would immediately brand me as "professional." I feared I might be turned away.

So it would be a job for the pocket camera. But the light in the Sports Center is horrible. Low and of atrocious color quality. I did not think that the G10 would do a very good job with it.

But I had read good things about the s90 and low light; I had seen some excellent samples.

So that was the camera that I needed. Sarah Palin book signing or no Sarah Palin signing, I had been wanting to get that camera.

But I was still too broke to buy it and could not afford to take the time to go to Anchorage, anyway.

Margie went to town yesterday with Caleb and when they got home, she handed me a gift-wrapped package and told me I had to open it, now.

"I can't wait until Christmas?" I asked.

"No!" she said. "Open it NOW!"

So I did. It was an s90 - a gift from Melanie and Charlie. And so, to test it out, I shot the above three pictures at 1600 ISO, jpeg, because I had not figured out how to make it RAW.

I told you that I kept some pictures of Kalib in reserve from last Sunday. Here, he has just thrown a squishy ball to Melanie. What a great stretch she made to catch it!

Then, to amuse Kalib, she put it on her head.

To amuse him even further, she bounced it off his head.

And then of all things, today, after I photographed Sarah Palin with the s90 pocket camera, I pulled up to the drive-through at Metro Cafe.

Carmen handed me two more punch cards.

An anonymous lady had come into the store and bought them for me, she said. Carmen had begged her to share her name, but she would not.

"You're rich!" Carmen exclaimed. "A lot of people come in and tell me they love your blog. They're all women! I'm jealous!" 

Anonymous lady - a HUGE thank you!.

So this evening, I finally found a little tree in our backyard that would do. Here it is.

So, what about the picture of Sarah Palin?

Look - I got to bed at 4:30 AM Tuesday and then woke up just a few hours later. Now it is 2:07 AM Wednesday. I need to go to bed. I need some sleep! It will take me some time to put the Sarah Palin book signing entry together.

I will do it tomorrow.

I know - the news value will be all gone by then. So it won't be news, just a record of what I saw.

Tomorrow I will put Sarah Palin in this blog.

Unless I decide to do it after I get up Wednesday morning. That could happen.

Either way, I will probably have all kinds of people yelling at me afterward - from both sides of the Palin fence.

As for my fear that my pro-camera might have kept me out, you will see that fear was justified.

The blogger Gryphen tells how he was banned from the event.

Three of my neighbors: Tim builds his shop casually, Patty fights off her cancer intently, Michael blows away the snow; umbilical cord discussed at IHOP; coffee-dogs-Kalib

This is my neighbor, Tim, the carpenter who lives kitty-corner across the street. Sometimes, people who in their professions do things for other people have a hard time getting around to doing the same things for themselves.

Some of you who have been with me for awhile have probably noticed that my walls are almost bare. Photos do not hang on them. True, there is one of Kalib when he was little more than a newborn wedged into a cabinet door in the kitchen and another of him crawling with Marty past Muzzy that hangs at the opening to the hallway.

Other than that, there are none at all and these two are only recent developments. Prior to Kalib's birth, in all the time that I have been married, not one photo has hung on my wall.

Not a single one.

Tim is doing a little better in this regard than I. He started work on the shop that you see going up behind him four years ago. There wasn't much visible sign of it until early this summer, when a foundation began to appear.

Now that it is cold and snowy, he built two opposing wall frames just last week. He says the entire shop will be done soon.

Regular readers have already met my neighbor Patty, who I sometimes refer to as "The Fit Lady" because she has always kept herself so busy and fit walking, skiing, biking, sailing and such.

Just last summer, she discovered she had a cancer that the doctor said was terminal - so terminal that it was pointless for him to treat her further. He sent her home to die and said it would happen in just months.

In fact, according to that doctor, she is supposed to be dead right now.

She's not - because after he told her she was finished, she told herself she was not.

As I have reported before, she took up holistic healing and found a doctor who would work with her and give her chemo as she set her mind and dietary intake towards healing.

That doctor now says Patty is a miracle woman. He has her come and talk to other patients who have "terminal" cancers.

She was just tested. The tumors in her colon have all disappeared. Her liver tumor is still there, but is a tenth of its former size.

There are many reasons for her success, she says, including just putting herself "in touch with the universe." She says that sounds corny and strange, but "it's true."

I am sorry that this picture looks so ratty, but I took it at about 4:00 o'clock and it was dark - considerably darker then it appears in this picture. There are cameras that handle this level of darkness pretty well, but not this G10 pocket camera.

They say its successor, the G11, is much improved with low light. When I can, I will get one.

The fact is, this time of year, even in the middle of the day, the light here is pretty dim. We plan to go to Arizona next month and when we first step into the sun down there, it will shock us.

And this is my neighbor, Michael, two houses down, who works in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, two weeks on, two weeks off. I most often see him when I'm riding a bike one way and he is riding the other, or when we meet on skis. He is often with his wife and his children were growing, they would often be with him, too.

Of course, I have not met him on skis for a long time, because after they built Serendipity, I could no longer step off my back porch, take off on my skis and go and go and go and go, because they put the damn subdivision in my way.

And I still have yet to take my first ski since I shattered my shoulder 18 months ago.

But Michael has been skiing - at Hatcher Pass. He says it is wonderful right now.

I told him I am going to try to go up there next week. He said we should go together.

I haven't done anything physical since I put down my bike to attend the AFN Convention and then it had a flat tire and before I could patch it the snow fell.

I don't think I could keep up with him.

"I think you could," he said.

That reminds me - Patty went skiing at Hatcher Pass last week, too.

Here is a bigger snowplow, coming down Lucille.

Here it is again.

This is one of the pictures from yesterday that I did not post because I had to go to bed. I took this picture from my car and when I saw his man, I had no idea what his sign said. I had to stop at a red light and that gave me some time to concentrate on the sign and try to read it, but I simply could not make it out.

I did make out the words, "Happy" and "birthday." So I figured it must be a Christmas message. The fact that he was dressed in red reinforced this idea. I figured maybe he was wishing Jesus a happy upcoming birthday.

But when I pulled the picture into my computer and was able to examine it, I saw that he was actually wishing happy birthday to the US Bill of Rights and that he had singled out the Second Amendment - the right to bear arms - for special good wishes.

To all others who might want to stand on street corners waving signs, let me suggest that you make your letters big and bold and even colorful, so that passers by do not mistake you for Santa Claus - especially if you are going to wear red during the holiday season.

This is also from yesterday, when I was at IHOP. I swear, I was not eavesdropping on these people's conversation, but all of a sudden, in a very animated and amplified voice, so loud that no one anywhere nearby could have missed it, the fellow on the other side of the table blurted out, "when the baby comes out, you just snip that umbilical chord."

Then, speaking just as loudly, the fellow at left said that he had heard that when you cut the umbilical cord -sploosh! - the stuff inside it just comes gushing out to squirt all over you and everything else.

At that moment, my waitress came to my table and laid my ham, eggs, and strawberry-banana pancakes in front of me.

On my walk, this dog ran out of a driveway and took off down the street. Pretty soon, this car pulled out of the same driveway, drove to the dog, stopped, and then the lady got out to catch the dog.

As I pulled up to the drive-through of Metro Cafe yesterday, I was listening to All Things Considered on the radio, where I heard what an important fellow Joe Lieberman is trying to be. He is saying that he is following his conscience. Another person contends that the real argument is how many hundreds of thousands of people will die from lack of good health insurance.

After Carmen opens the window, she tells the beautiful lady on the other side of the counter that I always take pictures of everything, that I even photographed the grand opening of Metro Cafe and that she can find it all on my blog.

Her name is Sherry and the kid wearing the hat is Greg.

Or is he Doug?

I'm pretty sure he's Greg.

If not - Doug, I apologize.

And if by chance he is neither Doug nor Greg, well, hell. I apologize twice.

Sherry and Carmen ham it up for the camera. Today, Carmen told me that Sherry comes in every morning at 7:30 AM. "Just like you come in every day right after 4:00," she added.

I wonder how it happened that Sherry and I came at the same time?

Tamar Street.

Yes, I took Muzzy on another walk.

 

When we got home, Muzzy flopped down in the driveway and began to pull the snow out from between his toes.

And here is Kalib and Margie with two stuffed Muzzies, this evening.

Now I might not see either of them for a few days. The new house is airing out pretty good, so Lavina and Kalib plan to stay in town tomorrow night and Margie is going to go with them. Caleb, of course, works all night.

Party time.

I will get out the cat nip and pop some corn. The cats and I will party like crazy.