Royce and his fellow patients at the vet; Art blows the snow away; linemen and At&t iPhone limbo

These are symptoms that an aging cat with thyroid problems can be expected to exhibit: voracious appetite, gorges food, vomits often, powerful thirst, becomes very vocal, meows more than ever, once-beautiful fur coat becomes ratty and ragged.

I learned this from Dr. Gerald Nance of the Wasilla Veterinary Clinic, seen here giving Royce a good look-over.

Royce is a bit nervous, but he enjoys attention and he is getting it.

Whoa! Maybe a little bit too much attention! Royce gets his temperature taken.

The only way to know for certain that Royce has a thyroid problem is to take a blood sample and get it analyzed, for several conditions. So Dr. Nance took Royce into the backroom and got a sample taken. We should know by Friday.

Up front, a tiny patient named "Teddy Bear" waited in the arms of a clinic receptionist.

And a dog named "Gunner" waited his turn. I wonder what kind of guns he uses, and how does he shoot a gun, as he lacks both thumb and fingers?

Or could his name be "Gunnar," not Gunner?

It could be, I suppose.

That's what they teach you in "Newspaper Reporting 101":

"Always ask how the name is spelled - never assume." A boy's name might sound like "Jim" to you, but it might actually be, "Gym."

And no boy named "Gym" wants to see his name in print spelled as "Jim."

But this is not a newspaper. This is a blog. The rules for blogs are different than newspapers. In fact, there are no rules for blogs. A blogger can do whatever he pleases.

And no dog that I have ever met gives a whimper how you spell it's name. Call it what you will and it will still wag its tail if it likes you and growl at you if it doesn't; maybe even bite you.

Gunner wouldn't bite. He would just shoot.

Unless he is Gunnar. In that case, he has no need for guns.

Still, at some point, I think I should adopt that old newspaper standard when it comes to the spelling of names, dogs included.

And this is Buttercup, who is not sick at all, but just hangs out at the clinic with her people.

Gunner(ar) goes in to get checked up.

Shortly after I returned Royce to the house, I took my walk. I took a picture of my hand, just as an exposure check. I had no intention of putting this image in this blog, but, what the heck. Surely, this is a picture I should give the entire world the opportunity to gaze upon.

I will probably win a big prize for it.

I walked and walked without seeing another person. And then I saw snow blowing. It has not snowed here since well before Christmas, but the winds of the past three days have blown snow around, sometimes putting it back from where it had already been removed.

So Art removes the snow from his driveway again.

"It's practically as hard as concrete," he told me.

That's what a driving wind does to snow - it makes it hard, so that you can walk right on top of it without breaking through. 

On my coffee break, I saw this lineman at work in the face of Wasilla's own little "Big Ben." Notice how the clock says 4:15 and look how light it is. The light is coming on fast now. The official sunset time today was 4:12, four minutes and nine seconds later than yesterday.

Remember how a couple of days ago I noted the cold temperatures to the north of here and speculated that they might soon slip down?

So far they have not. On my coffee break, depending on where I was, the temperatures ranged from 13 to 19. It will probably go a degree or two below zero overnight. I just checked to see what the temperatures are in two of my favorite communities:

Fort Yukon is -56.

Barrow is -25, fairly warm for January. Barrow doesn't get as cold as Fort Yukon, though, because Barrow sits at the edge of the ocean and even the Arctic Ocean moderates temperatures a bit.

Still, Barrow can be a lot colder than -25 this time of year. And Fort Yukon can be much colder than -56. Barrow gets cold earlier and stays cold longer. The wind blows more in Barrow, and harder. Still, Fort Yukon gets the colder temperatures. Fort Yukon gets hot, too: 101 degrees. The very coldest places in Alaska are also the hottest - not counting the tops of mountains. It must get colder up there than anywhere else and it never gets hot, but they don't keep official weather stations on the tops of Alaska's big mountains.

And the places that get the most snow are much warmer than the places that don't - like Valdez. The snow piles past the eaves in Valdez, but super-cold temperatures don't happen. I've found both -20 and -24 listed as the record low in Valdez. The wind can really blow in Valdez. 

Anyway, now that I am not going Arizona next week, I am going to go to Barrow instead.

I will tell you what the weather is like when I get there.

There were actually two line men working.

And no, I still don't have my iPhone. I have spent hours on the phone this week, talking to a friendly woman from At&t who genuinely seems to want to get the problem solved, but so far she hasn't been able to.

Each day, she says she will have the problem solved by the end of the day, but when the day ends, the problem is not solved. I still do not have my iPhone.

I could describe the problem as she has described it to me, but it is totally illogical and she doesn't even understand herself why it has played out as it has and I lack the energy to explain.

It's enough to know that I still don't have my iPhone, and I damn well should.

Yet... off and on throughout the day, I have been seeing images coming in from Haiti. It makes me wonder why I am even concerned about such a small matter. In time, it will get worked out.

Probably most people have figured this out by now, but here is the same address that I posted yesterday where people can go to help those in Haiti:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/01/haiti_earthquake_how_to_help_a.html?sc=fb&cc=fp