A duck swam into a moon beam - and other stunning stories from yesterday

I made a big mistake - I promised to bring this blog off hiatus on September 15, today, which is exactly what I am doing. But I should have set the date for September 20. That would have been much better for me.

But I didn't.

I set it for September 15, it is September 15, so here I am, early yesterday morning, where the lone waitress working at Denali Family Restaurant was pouring me a cup of coffee.

She did not want me to show her face, only her hand.

"I never like to have my face in a photograph," she explained.

I don't know why. She had a pretty face. She also knows how to sling two coffee pots at once.

Pretty impressive!

I would have gone to Abby's Home Cooking, which has become my favorite breakfast restaurant, but Abby's does not open until 8:00 AM and I was hungry and did not want to wait that long.

I asked for this table, just so I could sit there and look out at these mountains and watch this guy get out of his truck.

I saw myself, in shadow, sitting with an alien from another galaxy. So I shot a picture of the two of us. That alien really likes ketchup. He drank the whole bottle and then asked for more.

When I got home, I found Margie, Jobe and Kalib watching Chuggington Choo Choo. They had all been asleep when I left.

I had a huge amount of work ahead of me, but I couldn't bear to get into it without taking a walk. As I walked up Wards, a garbage truck passed me and then made a left turn.

I wondered if I would ever see that garbage truck again.

Next, a couple of young men appeared at the top of the hill, their feet on their skateboards, their skateboards on the road. It looked like they were going to roll, but then they picked up their skateboards and just stood there, looking down at me. They appeared not to know what to do next.

"Are you guys going to skate down the hill?" I shouted up to them.

"Yes," one of them shouted back.

"Good!" I shouted back. "That will make a good picture."

So they put their boards back down on the road and their feet back on the skateboards. Down they came.

And off into the distance they went.

When I reached the top of the hill, this gentleman came walking along, just as I did see the garbage truck again. It was Tony, Lola and Wolf. I can't remember which dog was Lola and which was Wolf.

Neither one of them looked a wolf to me.

They were good dogs, though, and I was proud to make their acquaintance.

When I got back to the house, I found Jobe and Kalib in the back yard, being boys.

Their new sibling could arrive any day now. The official due date is October 6, but that baby has already gotten into position, head down, ready to plunge into the world.

And the poor mother has strep throat.

That is why the boys are with us.

Kalib, the eldest of three.

A few hours later, I took my afternoon coffee break. I discovered that the dog, Booger, had been lost. Booger is the close friend of Lisa Kelly, the Ice Road Trucker. Her husband brought the poster.

I hope Booger is found.

The Ice Road Trucker needs her friend.

I then took a short drive to sip and enjoy my coffee. I drove past the Wasilla skateboard park just as a kid went almost horizontal on the ramp.

I was trying to write what will be the final story in what might be my final Uiñiq magazine, but I could not come up with the words to open it. So I took another short walk, saw this bunny rabbit, and pretty soon the lead came to me. 

After I got the lead, I came upon these three in the marsh that has dried out and become a meadow. It was Summer and her buddies, Sampson and Anonymous Dog. Summer has another name that she uses for Anonymous Dog, but I don't know what it is.

I then went into my house, wrote the lead and got to work on the story.

That final story would be very short, but it was taking me a long time to write it. At one point, I realized that I would never finish it if I did not eat a chocolate covered ice cream cone. So I climbed into the car and drove off to get one, but I got to day dreaming and passed right by Dairy Queen. I turned around by Wasilla Lake and noticed the moon. I stopped and took this picture.

Then I saw this duck swim into a moon beam.

"Hey Bill!" the duck quacked. "Is that you?"

"Yes, Fernanda," I quacked back. "It is me! It's been a long time!"

"It has... 1021 years."

It was true. Fernanda and I had not seen each other for over 1000 years.

"How's your report coming?" she asked.

I knew it. She had been sent to check up on me.

"I'm struggling with it," I answered. "But don't worry. You can tell the other ducks that I'll get it done."

I will, too, but in the meantime, I have a Uiñiq magazine to finish.

That final story is now written, but there is still a significant amount of work that must be completed before I go to press Monday.

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Passing airplane still generates magic; a man, a horse, and Catahoula; two girls on a riverbank; four-wheeler in the river; ice cream on the face

Despite all the work facing me, I remained lazy throughout the remainder of the day. One should not work on magical days such as yesterday, especially when his grandsons are present.

I was out in the back yard with Margie and the boys when an airplane passed overhead. I remembered when I was a child how wonderful, mystical, and magical it was to see an airplane pass overhead. What with their constant viewing of videos, the trips to the 3D movies and all that, could Kalib and Jobe ever possibly get that same feeling from watching an airplane pass overhead?

Ha! Kalib got the feeling!

And so did Jobe!

In the afternoon, I took off on a 16 mile bike ride. It wasn't long enough. It was too short. I wanted to go and go, but I figured I would be gone too long. Down on Sunrise Drive, I saw a man, a horse, and a dog coming toward me.

It was these three - the man is Jim, the horse is Warrior and the dog is Chain. Chain is a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a breed that I had never heard of.

"I never thought I would wind up with a Catahoula," Jim said. "But I did."

I looked Catahoula up on Google and found they originated in Louisana. Here is part of what I learned about them:

The Catahoula Leopard Dog is independent, protective, and territorial. Loving with its family and all people they know well and reserved with strangers (this would include strange children)...

These dogs need attention. This is not a dog that can be tied to a doghouse, fed, and ignored. Chaining and or ignoring a Catahoula Leopard Dog will either make them shy or aggressive. They need human companionship. This breed needs direction, training, something to do, people, attention...

A Catahoula Leopard Dog enjoys the company of a good horse...

Maybe I made up one of the above lines.

I pedaled until it looked like the road was about to end in someone's yard.

On the way back, I decided to stop, climb up the rise over the road and see what I could see. This is what I saw - the Little Susitna River, with two girls sitting on the bank. Hence, this series of studies, beginning with:

Two girls on a riverbank, study #4,328: They stick their feet in the water.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #2: The sky overhead.

Two girls on a riverbank, study #282,881: they are joined by a dog.

I shot this four-wheeler image as I pedaled across the bridge that crosses the Little Su.*

*In comments, reader AkPonyGirl has pointed out that it is illegal to drive a four-wheeler in the Little Su, due to the damage they cause to salmon spawn.  Thank you, AkPonyGirl.

About 10:00 PM, I mentioned the words, "ice cream cone" and Kalib got excited. So I loaded up the boys, left Margie home for some moments of solitude and headed off to Dairy Queen. On the way, we saw a rainbow and began to chase it.

We did not catch it, but we did overshoot Dairy Queen, so we turned around at the next stoplight and headed back in the direction of ice cream.

At Dairy Queen, we got our cones, then parked for awhile. In the outside driver's rearview mirror, I saw two Dairy Queen workers, taking a break.

The boys and their cones. After I took this picture, I started the car back up and drove home.Jobe was a sticky mess when we got home, but the cone made it all the way without being dumped on the floor, in his lap or on Kalib and that was a first.

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We dine at the hog shak; dog lunges at bike - I am off to Kaktovik

Atop the bluff overlooking the once fine meadow that, despite the developers promise that they would leave a nice lake behind, is now a barren gravel pit Margie and I spotted a new kiosk. The sign in front of it said, "The Hog Shak"

So we pulled up to find out what it was all about.

Turns out, it is a new eatery featuring hog products.

So we both ordered a hog sandwich and a bottle of water.

As we waited, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw these two passing by.

This is Eric, who founded the hog shop three days ago, and his mom, Margaret, who is giving her son a helping hand to crank up his new little business.

The hog sandwich was pretty good, too. I kind of wanted a hog burrito but Margaret was still making the tortilla dough.

After I return from Kaktovik, I intend to try a burrito.

Late Thursday night, as I was pedaling my bike home on a shorter-than-usual ride, this dog charged me. I could see that it was just a silly pup and it did not frighten me, but it did give me some interesting moments.

Joseph was out walking his dog. The pup went and gave them some interesting moments, too.

If all goes according to plan, by the time this posts, I will be in Kaktovik. Now - perhaps you see a picture at the top of this post that I took with my iPad inside the Era Aviation flight that just brought me to Fairbanks, enroute to Kaktovik. Using the Squarespace iPad ap, I just tried to add it to the bottom of this post, the rest of which I put together last night before I went to bed for three hours.

*After I added it, it simply disappeared from the working window of the Squarespace ap. I opened up Safari and saw that it had gone to the top, sideways. So I came back to the Squarespace ap window to see if I could fix the problem, but the photo still does not show here, at the top or the bottom.

Given the general troublesome nature of Squarespace, I am not really surprised.

*This is the image that was at the top, as described above. As that was how it happened and how I described it, I was just going to leave it that way, but it bother me too much to look at it. So, I just now happened upon an online computer here in Kaktovik on which I could work on this without using the Squarespace ap and so I moved the photo down to the bottom where I had tried to place it in the first place and rotated it.

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I walk to breakfast at Abby's and see bunny rabbits hopping

This is not part of my walk to breakfast. This from my bicycle ride last night as I was returning home, pedaling down the Seldon bike trail somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 PM.

There was a little bit of magic going on in the sky.

This morning, I decided that I would take advantage of the fact that there is now a restaurant with a good breakfast in easy walking distance and so set out to walk to Abby's Home Cooking. It is a mile-and-a-half away and so I told Margie that if she decided she wanted to join me she could drive over in 15 to 20 minutes.

I had barely begun to walk, when I saw two bunny rabbits hopping through the grass. This is one of them. I have been seeing these bunny rabbits all over this end of the neighborhood ever since breakup. Two, sometimes three. Bunny rabbits being bunny rabbits, there might be more than that.

Given the number of loose dogs around here (two of which reside at this very house) I am kind of shocked that these bunny rabbits have made it this long.

I have asked a couple of neighbors whose lawns the bunny rabbits frequent if they are theirs, but none of them have had any idea where they come from.

Me, I've got an idea where they come from. It would be right in keeping with so much that has poured out from a certain place. But I do not know for certain. There could be other explanations, so I will keep my theory to myself, for now.

On the Seldon bike trail, I met Sugar - a good and friendly dog. She had been having digestive problems the past couple of days, but, as of this walk, everything seems to have come out okay and she is feeling better.

Here I am at Abby's. I hope one day to come in and see butts sitting on all these stools and all the tables full, except for one, where I will sit down, hopefully with Margie - Kalib and Jobe will be welcome, too, of course, and all other members of the family who might help us manage them. That's Jeremy she's talking to and he came in to order an egg sandwich. Jeremy works in the convenience store next door and did a lot to help Abby get started.

Today, Abby was working alone - cooking, waitressing, bussing - the whole works.

She received a couple of take-out orders while I was there, but I was the only sit down customer.

Here she is, having just served me my order. And I have to tell you - and I mean no offense to either of the family restaurants, Mat-Su Valley or Denali, or to IHOP, but this was simply the best eggs and potatoes breakfast that I have had anywhere in Wasilla - and I have never had better hashbrowns than what I was served today.

Monday's hashbrowns were good, but today's - oh, my goodness! She started out with a whole, uncut, Yukon Gold potato that she did not take a shredder to until after I ordered.

Boy, was it good! Margie never did show up. After I walked back home, showed her this picture and told her how good it was, she wished that she had come.

I don't know what she ate. Oatmeal Squares, I would bet - from the box that Charlie gave us.

Abby's brother, Tim Mahoney, father of the Joe Mahoney who made the stools, came in and got his mug filled. If you missed the picture of Tim working in his field, click right here. 

As I was walking out the door, her son Justin came in with his beautiful girlfriend, Stephanie, and gave his mom a hug. I should have got a picture of Stephanie, too. I don't know why I didn't. I guess I'm still a little bit shy.

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A brief, incomplete, look at Father's Day just past - furry Jim and Furless Jim

My documentation of Father's Day began in the morning, as I returned home from my walk by coming in through the back, through the remnant of now-dried up marsh and woods. I found Jacob, Kalib and Muzzy in the back yard, Jacob pulling old stumps and such.

Kalib was wearing a red t-shirt that hung nearly to his ankles and gave him kind of a mischievous, sleepy-angel look and he wanted his dad to walk off into the trees with him.

His dad did not want to stop what he was doing and so told him grandpa would walk with him.

Hence, Kalib walked into the trees and I followed, taking pics as I did.

I think I captured something unique and special on that short little walk, but readers will not find it in here, at least not today. A read of yesterday's post will reveal the kind of problems that I am currently experiencing with this computer.

Once it takes a few minutes to figure out where it is and what program it is, the computer can handle word processing and basic internet tasks just fine, but when it comes to photo editing and photo processing tasks, it turns into an absolute nightmare.

As simple click that, when the computer is working as it should will result in almost instantaneous completion of the task can now result in ten minutes of doing nothing but watching the Mac colorwheel spin. It is not a bug, it is not a virus, but something has gone fundamentally wrong with this computer - maybe in the RAM.

So, it would probably take me an entire day - certainly half the day - to sort through the photos of that walk in Lightroom and then open them up in Photoshop just to complete the series that I believe is in the photos from that walk.

And I took many other pictures - Lavina barbecuing meat and veggies to all of us - and there were many of us - gathered around the backyard picnic table where we began to eat, but then it started to rain and I didn't care but everybody else did so we moved inside.

There, I took more pictures. I knew I faced an impossible editing task, so, when I took this one, I said to myself, "I will run that one and that can be it for the whole blog."

It is furry Jim sitting on the lap of Furless Jim while Muzzy sits out on the porch, wanting to get it, wanting to get at the beef and pork that Lavina had barbecued.

"Furless Jim," longtime readers will recall, is Jim Earnshaw, Charlie's dad. He and Cyndy came out and joined us. So all the kids were here (although Caleb slept through it all in preparation for his nightshift), grandkids and Charlie, who I also consider to be one of the kids these days.

Furless Jim is a genuine cat person - and dog person, too. Furry Jim knows this and took full advantage of it.

Shortly after I took the one picture that I marked for today's blog, Jobe came by to communicate with furry Jim as he rested on the lap of Furless Jim and I thought, "what the heck, these two pictures are right close together and so I will add it in, too.

So here they are, Jobe, furry Jim, and Furless Jim.

Although at this point I do not know where the money is going to come from, I have made up my mind that I am going to return to India in November for Soundarya's one-year memorial - and if the timing works out, for Sujtha's wedding as well. That will take me away at a bad time, because Sandy's death came on Lisa's birthday and it will also be Thanksgiving weekend, so I was talking to Lisa about that and she decided to come with me.

She can't afford to do that, but not being able to afford something is not always a good reason not to do it. So it looks like she will be coming with me. I hope so.

Jim and Cyndy brought some excellent potato salad and some celestial rhubard/blackberry cat; Charlie baked cookies and prepared black coffee, which we took late with the pastries.

Superb.

People began to depart a bit after 9:00 PM, with Melanie and Charlie the last to leave, shortly before 10:00 PM. Since they were the last, I figured it would not be that huge of an editing problem to go to the very end of my take and include this picture of them driving away, waving goodbye, on today's blog.

I then faced a minor writing task that I figured would probably take me until 3:00 or 4:00 AM to complete, but I needed a little exercise and some air first, so I got on my bike and pedaled off into the rain.

As I was nearing home, a little before 11:00 PM, some neighbors who are among the many who migrated to Wasilla from the former Soviet Block as it came apart and who live down the street, around the corner, down that street and around another corner, pulled up alongside me.

They matched their car pace to mine, rolled down the window and asked how I was doing.

We had not seen each other for many months, maybe over a year.

I told them I was doing good, and asked how they were doing.

They were doing good, too.

As I pedaled and we conversed, I shot a few frames, not looking through the viewfinder but just pointing my camera in their general direction.

That made this the last picture of the day, right next to Melanie and Charlie departing. So I decided to add it into the blog mix. 

I arrived home about 11:05 PM and found Margie on the couch, alternately watching Law & Order and dozing off for a few minutes. She was exhausted. So I sat down with her until the show was over.

Now I figured it would take me until 4:00 or 5:00 AM to finish off that minor writing task and I was tired.

I said to hell with it, I've put in too many all-nighters in my life and that probably has a lot to do with why I live in an almost perpetual state of brain-fried exhaustion.

I decided just to go to bed and do the writing task today. That means I cannot take my computer into the shop until tomorrow.

Oh, well.

Everything will get done and we will survive - perhaps not in grand fashion; maybe we will have to sell the house and move into a small RV and live on the road, but we will survive.

And I got to sleep a little bit.

I still feel tired, though. Brain-fried and exhausted.

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