A hard wind blows, glacier dust tears my throat and sinuses apart; I wish it would snow and bury all that damn dust

I took this from my car about noon - the temperature was 36 degrees, warm for this time of year, but the voice on the radio was saying that the wind was 40, gusting to 70, so if you were to have gone and stood out there, it would not have felt warm.

This is all wrong. Wasilla Lake is supposed to be frozen by now. Some years, it has frozen in the second week in October, quite often by the third and almost always by the fourth. In only one other year do I recall seeing the entire month pass without this and the other lakes freezing.

Of course, October has not completely passed and it could yet freeze before the month is over, but I don't think it will.

The ravens were having fun, riding the wind.

They rode it low. They rode it high. It carried them up, it pulled them down.

She appeared on the trail and she shouted at me, but the wind carried her words away before they could reach my ears.

"What?" I shouted back.

She shouted at me again.

"What?" I again shouted back.

Then she really put her lungs into it: "The birds love the wind! They ride it high! They ride it low! It carries them up, it pulls them down!"

The wind grabs the glacier dust and drives it through the air. Glacier dust is extremely fine, like powdered sugar. It is horrible to breathe. And undoubtedly, it has some volcanic ash mixed in with it.

One year, it froze very early, but no moisture came. It did not snow in October, it did not snow in November, it did not snow through most of December, but it got very cold. Day after day of teens and twenties below zero, sometimes 30's and even -40.

And on many of those days the wind tore, just like this. There was no snow to hold any of the glacier dust down, so the wind just picked it up and in the midst of all that cold, blasted it into you.

It was horrible.

Traveling through the streaming glacier dust. I write this with a sore throat, plugged nose and irritated sinuses.

Kalib was in the car with us - with Margie and me, that is. We had been baby sitting him. Fierce gusts frequently broadsided the car. It would rock, it would jerk.

It was windy in Anchorage, too, but not as windy as out here in the valley. On what they call the Anchorage Hillside, though - it would have been fiercely windy.

This was why we went to Anchorage. Every Halloween, they put on a chili feast at the place where Melanie works. Every employee brings in a pot of their own special chili. Melanie wanted her mom to help her as she cooked hers, so she did.

Me, I went off to try to visit a friend who had been severely injured in a snowmachine accident while returning to Wainwright from an ice-fishing trip.  He was medivaced by air-ambulance to Anchorage and then taken to the Alaska Native Medical Center. Also, I finally got that check that I had been waiting for, so I thought maybe I would buy the new Canon G11 pocket camera, because its high ISO, low-light, capabilities are much improved over the G10 that I have been using.

Yet, when the time came, I could not bring myself to lay down $499 for that camera. I really wanted to, but I just couldn't do it. So here I am, at the chili feed - the perfect place to test out the low light, high ISO capabilty of the G11, but instead I used the G10, which is very noisy and grainy at high ISO, but, oh well, so what?

That's Melanie on the left, of course. The fellow on the right is Chancey. A bit over two years ago, he was one of her coworkers at Duane Miller & Associates, but then he left to go be a Mormon missionary.

And where did he get sent? Japan? South America? France? New Zealand?

No. The Mormon Church sent him to Salt Lake City. For two years. To be a Mormon Missionary. In Salt Lake City. But he did get to learn to speak Spanish.

He is not being rehired, but he remembered how good all the DMA chili feeds were, so he came back to eat chili. That vat of chili in the foreground is Melanie's. Pumpkin chili. It is very tasty. "Don't eat too much, Dad!" she warned. "It's very spicy." It was very tasty. I would never have known that pumpkin and chili go well together, had it not been for Melanie.

I did not get to see my friend. They are being very strict about visitors, due to swine flu, and were only allowing two family members to go in with him. I did see his daughter, but not until after the feast. I was able to introduce her to Margie.

He has not yet come to, but he is in stable condition and his prognosis is good. He is just about to turn 70 and still he is shooting about the country on a snowmachine, hunting caribou, catching fish - doing that kind of thing.

I take a short break to post five pictures of Melanie and her cats, from today; I will get back to the AFN images tomorrow

Here is what happened: both Melanie and Lisa filed a complaint that Grahamn Kracker had not put up a new post on the No Cats Allowed blog for far too long. So, today, while I was in Anchorage on what was the final day of the AFN convention, we all had a late lunch together and then I swung by Melanie's where I photographed Slick and Diamond - this being Slick, or Bear Meech, as Melanie usually calls him.

We then went to coffee with Rex and Lisa, and then to Lisa's, where I photographed her new kitten, Zed, as well as the young adult, Juniper.

I then prepared these five images, as well as six others of Lisa's cats, for Grahamn Kracker to post on his silly blog.

But I am so tired and so desperate to go to bed and sleep, that I decided to allow Grahamn Kracker to only post the Lisa cat pictures and I would post Bear Meach and Diamond here.

Tomorrow, I will get back to the pictures I took at AFN and will put up a few posts - because I can't cover it in one.

Melanie, Slick and Diamond.

Diamond leaps over Bear Meach.

Diamond, Melanie and Slick.

Diamond.

That's it. I'm going to bed.

Goodnight!

Cocoon mode,* day 26: Melanie chats with her mom; two black dogs come after me

Here is Melanie, chatting with her mom.

She steps into the hall, to chat with me.

Her visit is all too short. She turns back, to hug her mom goodbye.

I take a walk. Two little black dogs come charging, yapping, yelping, barking at me. "Get back here! Get back here! Right now!" their man shouts.

I sing out. "Here pups! Here pups! Come see me, pups!"

They make it to me. I scritch their ears. The man retrieves them. The three then take a few seconds to pose for a picture and then the man takes them back to the house. I walk on.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode,* day 25: I lost my G10 pocket camera for nearly a week but now I have found it: the once-missing images

On Monday, September 28, I tried out a hot dog from Ididadog for the first time and documented the moment with my Canon G10 pocket camera. Later, that same day, I lost the camera - that is why you have not seen this week-old image until now.

Margie and I first became aware of the Ididadog hot dog kiosk about the beginning of September. Despite her pain, suffering and the resultant lethargy, I was actually able to use this news to excite her enough to hobble out of the house on her crutches and into the red Escape. Eager to try the dogs, we hurried over to the well-camouflaged kiosk on the Palmer-Wasilla highway, right across from the bowling alley, but we found a sign posted on the drive-through window: Closed. On Jury Duty.

Some damned alleged criminal had robbed us of the opportunity to try the hot dogs.

I checked back a few times afterward, but always found Ididadog closed until this day. So I bought myself a quarter pounder Polish Dog with mustard, onions, dill pickle relish and saurkruat, with potato chips grown and made right here in this valley, plus Pepsi.

Oh, it was exquisite! Superb! It reminded me of being in Chicago, hanging out outside of Wrigley Field.

If fortune should smile upon me, I will buy many hot dogs here in the future.

This is what Wasilla has long needed - a really good hot dog stand.

Later that day, after my coffee break, I stepped into the house, came out here into my office, but then had to go back in to help Margie with something, I forget what. After that, I could not find my G10 pocket camera. I looked and looked, but I could not find it.

"Oh, well," I thought, "it will show up in an hour or two." I typically lose the camera three or four times a week and within an hour or so it always pops up, right were I left it.

Not this time. The whole day passed by. Night came.

No camera.

I grew very worried.

This is among the images that was lost within it. Melanie and Charlie, the day before, when they had come out to visit us.

After I ate the hot dog, I stopped at the post office, hoping that someone might have sent me an unexpected check for $250,578.12. I figured that would solve my problems and allow me to write my books and go at this blog full time, as I want to, undisturbed by anything else.

Instead, I found some bills in my box, plus this car intentionally parked so as to take up one designated parking space, plus half of the walk way.

This happens frequently around here, although its usually one car intentionally parked to take up two parking spaces. It is what Melanie would call, "So Wasilla."

Some people think it is a really cool thing to do.

Others think it really cool to carry loaded pistols in their pockets.

Potentially deadly combination.

Furthermore, from the way she is parked, you can tell that the driver drove the wrong way through the one-way traffic lot to get the spot. Yes, it was a "she," because I saw her and she was not a teenager, either, but a mature adult - mature in terms of age, anyway.

At some point before I lost the camera, I saw Caleb in the backyard, washing his bicycle. Afterward, Margie had him undo the hose and drain the water out of it, because most mornings now we wake up to frost.

Not as much as would be normal by this time. It has been an unusually warm fall, just as it was an unusually warm summer. We are about ten days to two weeks away from when the lakes usually freeze over, but I think it will take longer this year.

Even so, it was time to undo the hose.

This is the last picture that I took with G10 pocket camera before I lost it. Many people began to doubt me, to believe that I had never brought the camera home but had left it somewhere. Yet, I had this recollection of taking this picture as I drove home from my coffee break in the late afternoon, so I was certain I had not left it somewhere.

In time, I myself began to doubt, to believe perhaps that I had never taken this picture at all, that I remembered something that had never happened and that I really had left the camera somewhere else and would never see it again.

This would be worse than forgetting something that had happened.

But I found the camera today. In a place that I looked at least 20 times. My work table. Under some papers. I had lifted all those papers up and looked under them before. 

And just in case you wonder about the pictures that have appeared here in the meantime, I took them mostly with the other pocket camera, the G9, the one my kids gave me after I got hurt. The series of Kalib falling was done with my Canon 1Ds MIII, as was the one of Jimmy sitting on the scanner and maybe one or two more.

There is more that I want to say about this, but I have already exceeded my Cocoon mode time.

I must better discipline myself.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode* - day 4: The firewood twins, bike at the Little Su, an old van at Metro Cafe

This was actually yesterday, when I came home from my coffee break and found these two identical guys throwing split birch into our yard. It was a big surprise to me because I had not yet ordered any and I was wondering how, at $200 a cord, I was going to pay for it.

Turned out Jacob, Lavina, Caleb, and Melanie bought four cords for us. It usually takes about five - six cords to get us through the winter, but since this is going to be an El Niño winter, and the north is growing warmer, anyway, maybe four will do it.

We used to gather all of our own wood and saw it up and split it. It was great fun, but those days are gone. I had told myself that this year I would get all of our wood in June, but I didn't.

Before I got to work today, I took my bike out for a ride. I went down to the Little Su the long way, about five or six miles. I wanted to try to pedal across the Little Su through a shallow stretch, but I have never succeeded in the past and I did not want to soak my shoes, so this is as far as I went.

Margie, Lavina and Kalib all accompanied me on my coffee break. We went through the drive through at the new Metro Cafe. That is Carmen, the owner, waving. Remember the cute car and van?

Just today, this old van showed up, too. They bought it somewhere down in the Lower 48. They plan to fix it up nice, like the others. They plan to park a fleet of such vehicles.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.