Margie goes to town and drops me off at the edge of the highway, I find food to eat and see some fascinating sights

Margie had a physical therapy appointment in Anchorage this morning, so I had her drop me off at the side of the Parks Highway as she left town. I then went looking for food, and wound up at Mat-Su Family Restaurant, about 30 feet away.

This is my waitress, waiting on someone else.

I am a generous person and am happy to share my waitress with others.

Here is a fellow who has already finished his breakfast, walking back to his vehicle, keys ready to be inserted in the ignition.

She came by refilling coffee cups.

This is the view that I see as I look out my Family Restaurant window: Alaska.

Now I am walking home from Family Restaurant - close to four miles. A dog comes riding over the hill. There is a man in the vehicle with him.

The dog wishes the man would get out for once, and let the dog drive.

But the man won't. The dog does not understand why.

Bill. I think you should go to bed. Get some sleep.

A military jet passes overhead.

Then a military raven flies by. It is carrying little bombs. They will not kill you, but you don't want to get bombed - not by a raven, anyway.

This is Ken Clark. He is wondering why a strange looking man is walking down the street towards him, taking his picture.

He was very amused once he found out.

Now he will be remembered forever.

Just by looking, you can see that this was a very warm day. It got above freezing.

I suppose some people like it that way, but not me.

Not this time of year.

It's just not right. 

It's like mother nature has forgotten where we're at.

Through the Window Metro Study, #42A. That's Karl, Carmen's brother-in-law, and Cindy.

On my way home from my coffee break, I had to stop for these moose. Some may not believe this, but if this had been a cold, snowy, winter, instead of the warm farce that it has been, we would be seeing many more moose.

The number of horses would remain the same.

He came walking through my town in the snow; Royce setback; an accident, a horse and a few teenagers

As I have written a few times, I keep experiencing odd coincidences. This has been going on for years now and it happened again today. When I took this picture, I had A Prairie Home Companion on the radio and a Utah Phillips song was being performed by Robin and Linda Williams:

I'm walking through your town in the snow,
I'm walking through your town in the snow,
I got no place to go, all the trains are running slow
And I'm walking through your town in the snow

I carry my home on my back,
I carry my home on my back,
But the police only frown, every time I lay it down,
And I'm walking through your town in the snow

The train track was just across the street and the Wasilla Police station just ahead. The man wasn't carrying a pack, though. He was pulling a piece of rolling luggage.

So we finally got a modest dropping of snow to coat the old stuff. Nothing to brag about - six inches, maybe. Still, I was glad.

I suspect that this fellow could have just as soon gone without it.

I wonder why he was walking through my town in the snow?

I'm afraid Royce has had a couple of bad days. Something is leaking out of him and it stinks terribly. It has almost made me barf a couple of times and has left me feeling sick to my stomach, but different than the usual way. I haven't yet figured out how to describe it. Yesterday, I gave him a bath, but it all came back and I fear it would be too hard on him to have another bath right now. I have made a warm place for him and try to keep him off the furniture, because whatever he comes in contact with stinks, too, but he managed to slip by and get onto the couch. Once he did, the damage had been done.

I did not have the heart to make him move until he was ready. 

I called the vet this morning, hoping to get him in. They could not get back to me until nearly closing time (they close early on Saturday's). I explained what was happening and they had a couple of theories, but did not see it as an emergency.

So he is scheduled to go back to the vet Monday morning at 11:00 AM.

We may have to postpone, because I think Lavina is likely to be giving birth at that time.

Two snowmachines coming down Wards.

Pickup truck on Seldon. The ISO control on my pocket camera had inadvertantly slipped to 2500. I don't care. It just gives the picture a different feel, that's all - more contrasty and grainy.

Ditto.

Minor traffic accident near the corner of the Palmer-Wasilla and Parks Highways.

Horses on Sunrise.

Through the Window Metro Study, #9701. These numbers are completely arbitrary, because I cannot remember them from one post to the next. The tall man is Nick and he used to work at Northern Air Cargo in Anchorage with Carmen. That's his son on the left, but they had already moved on when I got the ID's and his name had slipped out with him.

A group of teens caught in my rearview mirror.

The man who owns a '56 Chevy; a school bus goes off the road; dusk horse raises its tail

This is Bill, who lives two houses down Sarah's Way in the opposite direction from the one I took yesterday. Bill owns, rebuilt and maintains a very sharp looking, smooth-running, classic 1956 Chevy that he bought for $100. He painted it black and red/orange and when you see it coming down the road, it catches your eye right away and you wish that you were riding in it, Buddy Holly on the radio, that you were young and had a pretty girl clinging to you, nibbling at your ear, giggling each time she almost makes you crash.

Perhaps next summer, I will build a blog post around that Chevy. I know there is a good story in it.

Almost nine years has now passed since my first black cat, Little Guy, the one who passed straight from his mother's womb into my waiting hands, stepped out the back door on a day with three times as much snow as this one and disappeared.

I was devastated to lose that cat and I went up and down the street, knocking on every door to see if anyone had seen Little Guy.

For weeks afterward, whenever he would see me walking past, Bill would ask me if I had found my cat. He always looked very concerned. I know he was keeping an eye out for that cat.

I still appreciate that.

Bill blows the snow off his driveway.

A cottonwood tree, bent down toward Tamar.

Muzzy and a snowplow.

As I walked one way, this school bus came driving the other. Shortly after it passed, I turned just in time to see its right wheels slip off the shoulder of the road and then slide right into the culvert. 

Anyone who lives up here long enough will do this kind of thing sooner or later, probably a few times.

It can be embarrassing, but it must be worse when you have a busload of students.

One of the students looks out at me.

As St. Bernards do when people get into trouble in the snow, Muzzy comes to help out. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring his little barrel of brandy.

It's a good thing, because the driver shouldn't be touching brandy and the kids were all too young.

If someone had brought a dog harness, we could have hitched him to that bus and he would have pulled it right out.

But nobody had a harness.

I walked on, leaving the bus and kids in it to be rescued by the school district.

Margie is in town with Lavina and Kalib and will be staying with them overnight in their new house. She left some bills on the counter for me to pay. Along the way, I saw this guy on a green snowmachine waiting for a green light so he could cross the road.

When the light changed, the left turn arrow turned green for me, which meant this guy's light was still red. As I began my turn, he gunned his throttle and shot straight across the road directly across my path. Maybe he was not waiting for a green light at all, but only for a gap in the traffic passing in front of him so that he could run a red one.

I believe this falls into the category that Melanie AND Lisa* calls, "soooooo Wasilla!"

This is what it looked like in front of Wasilla Lake. 

This person got stuck on the divider.

A school bus passed by without mishap.

I took my coffee break at the usual time. After I stopped at Metro Cafe, I took the long way home and passed by this horse as darkness drew down. The horse raised its tail and then dropped something.

*updated to include both coiners of the phrase: see Lisa's comment

I pass by a lady Santa on a horse; the new house gets torn up a bit with Kalib in the middle; Jacob is named Employee of the Year by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium

Today, as I was driving out of Wasilla to go to Anchorage, I saw a woman on horseback, wearing a Santa hat. It was a beautiful, wonderful day for a horseback ride, with the temperature at that moment four degrees above zero.

I continued on to Anchorage through what was another hoarfrosty day.

Someone had slid off the road.

As you can see, things are changing inside Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's new home. I told you that Lavina did not like that old rug. Kalib went about the business of taking measurements for the new one.

Kalib looks through the window as Melanie arrives to help.

Rex seals off the tracks for the track lights in preparation for tomorrow's spray painting. There was some discussion about whether those track lights should go or stay, because they do look kind of strange.

Yet, as a photographer, I could see a use for such lights.

Once again, Kalib got to feeling worn down and a bit cranky.

So Grandma took him into what I believe will be his bedroom once he gets a little older. There, she made him sweep the floor.

That cheered him right up.

He also enjoyed watching some Cars animation on Caleb's iPhone.

After that, Lavina and I headed over to the Denaina Center, where the 1800 people who work with Jacob at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium were having their Christmas party. Jacob is still in Washington, DC, so he couldn't be there.

We came very late but still just a little bit early and so they sat us down at one of the many tables and fed us halibut and a chocolate desert that was very tasty.

At the next table, I saw this lady concentrating on her phone.

This is why Lavina and I came, even though Jacob was not here. ANTHC gave out seven Employee of the Year awards. Jacob was named Employee of the Year in engineering.

Lavina accepted his award for him. They said that Jacob gets along with everybody that he works with, and with all the people in the villages that he travels to oversee the installation of sewer projects where there has never been sewer projects before and where, what with permafrost and all, conditions can be extremely challenging.

They especially praised him for his work in the Yup'ik village of Quigillingok and said that wherever he goes, he understands the peoples and cultures and works good with them all.

They said more after that, too, but I lost it because I was trying to figure out how to photograph Lavina receiving his award.

It was kind of tough, but this what I came up with.

Lavina with Jacob's awards, outside, on the way back to the car, beneath a hoarfrosted tree. The soapstone figure with the ivory face is an Eskimo dancer.

He also got $1000 - but, as he is now a Lieutenant in the Commission Corps, that check has to be sent to the federal government and they may or may not decide to let him keep it.

It kind of looks like yesterday, but it isn't (and yet, by the time this post appears, it will be)

No, you haven't accidently logged on to yesterday's entry. It's just that today's begins just as did yesterday's. Once again, Kalib was ill and had to stay home from daycare. Once again, despite having worked all night, his Uncle Caleb devoted himself to his care and entertainment.

Lately, I have been working on a story about the role of Iñupiat uncles play in teaching hunting skills to their nephews. This is because a father can be so overprotective of his own children out in the dangerous Arctic environment that he can fail to teach him what they need to know to survive.

So I thought about that. In both the Apache and Navajo cultures from which Kalib hails, the uncle also traditionally plays a teaching role that the father does not, and for similar reasons.

But I tell you - no one is more protective of Kalib than his Uncle Caleb. I have never seen a relationship quite like the one these two share. Kalib and Caleb - what a bond they share!

I wish I had had such an uncle.

Four dogs that I saw as I took my walk. It was warmer today - just a few degrees below zero at this point. And snow is forecast sometime within the next couple of days, so it will get warmer yet.

I just hope that none of those "Pineapple Express" storms blows in from the South Pacific. They make a mess of everything and just ruin winter.

But it is an El Niño winter, and these are the winters that the Pineapple Express gets completely out-of-hand, so it is inevitable. Just watch.

And whenever it gets really warm up here, it gets cold down in the Lower 48. You will see.

I used to park my airplane right about there, where this playground sits in Wasilla's downtown park. Yes, this used to be Wasilla's airport and the Iditarod Sled Dog race would start right here. It was a terrible place for an airport, though, as Wasilla Middle School and High School both sat under the flight pattern.

During take offs and landings, I would see the buildings and kids outside, beneath my spinning prop, doing PE, practicing football and such. It seemed to me that it was just a matter of time until an airplane went down there.

In fact, one day, a Super Cub did, crashing not far from my son, Jacob, who was a middle school student at the time. Fortunately, nobody was hurt except for the pilot. He was hurt pretty bad, but he survived.

Somewhere in my files, I have a picture of that crashed airplane.

Today, I passed by on my coffee break. I took it early, at 3:00 instead of 4:00, because I could hardly stay awake.

Again, I took the long way home and saw this horse. "Hey Bill! Come ride me!" it neighed out as I drove by. I ignored the invitation.

Someone might have thought I was a horse thief and shot me, or lassoed me and then hung me on the spot. That's what they do to horse thiefs, you know.

I think that horse was trying to trick me, to get me in trouble. Look closely at it. You can see that it is a very mischievous horse.

A short distance later, I saw this guy pedaling his bike. All that conditioning I did pedaling my bike is gone now! I missed five days in a row during AFN and then two days after that, my back tire went flat and I still haven't fixed it.

And whenever I ride a bike in the winter, sooner or later it slips on the ice and slides out from underneath me and I go down. This was not so bad in the past, but now that I have broken my shoulder and have this titanium one, I really don't want to fall.

I'm going to get my cross country skis out real soon, though.

I don't want to fall on them, either. But I will. But I will have snow beneath me. I think I will be ok.

After the bike, I saw a school bus.

I am now nearing home. It is 4:00 PM. The sun has gone down. Alpenglow lights up the Talkeetna Mountains.

Today, in Barrow, the sun rose in the south, then set in the south an hour later. On the 19th, the Barrow sun will come up for just half-an-hour, will go down and then won't rise again until January 23.

I will get there sometime between now and then and I will show you the dark noon.

Of course, if you are already there in Barrow, or anywhere on the Arctic Slope, as many of you, my friends are, this won't be anything new at all.

I am just about home now. Look how much traffic rolls down Seldon! I wonder why?