A cat full of coffee and other New Year's tails

The New Year began with me sleepy and exhausted and I am sleepy and exhausted right now - too much so to write much with these pictures. So I will simply say that, with breakfast and such behind us, Margie and I are in the car, driving past Wasilla Lake, enroute to Anchorage to celebrate the New Year at Jacob and Lavina's house.

The wind is howling and it is one of those horrible warm winds from the South Pacific that sometimes materialize this time of year and then ruin a good Alaska winter.

There is nothing to be done about it, though, so we just drive to Anchorage.

The New Year got off to a poor start for someone. On occassion, these guys in their patrol cars with their sirens, beepers and flashing lights unnerve me a bit, but I am damn glad they are there.

While I do not believe the US should enforce or coerce its ways upon any other nation, I just cannot help but to think that if in India they set up and enforced traffic laws, honestly, with no bribery, to the degree that they do here, I might have slept a lot better these past six weeks and three people who should still be breathing and walking on this earth would be doing so.

Yes, only two of them went by crash, but the third would not have followed had there been no accident in the first place.

So, yes, I appreciate these uniformed men and women who we call cops, these who we ask to risk their lives to keep us safe even as they sometimes suffer our abuse. Yes, there are some bad ones to be found here and there among them - the same is true of preachers, teachers, astronauts, photographers, and baseball players -but on the whole they do a pretty good job and get cussed at all too often.

Even if they pull me over later today and write me a ticket, I will appreciate them. I will swear and cuss when they walk back to their car, but still I will appreciate them.

When we arrived at Jacob and Lavina's house, we found a bag filled with something in the living room. It was kind of curious, because the bag was upside down.

I wondered, what could this bag be filled with?

Why, it was filled with Kalib!

Remember those dinosaurs Kalib had been surrounded by in yesterday's post? As part of his late birthday present, his parents let him pick one out.

This is the one he choose. They say that it was the most realistic out of the bunch. Some were bigger, they say, but Kalib went for realism over size.

I am jealous. I loved dinosaurs when I was little, too, but I never got to have one like this. I think the biggest dinosaur that I hever had stood maybe three inches tall and was made of hard plastic - and I only had that one because I found it lying in the road.

Jobe had been napping when we arrived, but soon he floated out to join us.

Jobe and his mom.

Did you know that my daughter, Lisa, carried a full semester worth of credits this past fall even as she worked full time, and also made the honor roll?

She did. 

I wonder who she is calling? Could it be me? Is it possible I placed my phone somewhere and could not find it?

I was lying on the floor, in front of the TV, feeling so exhausted that I could hardly move. Yet, I wanted to get a group New Year's day picture of everybody that was there. The light here is very dim, so I wanted to get them in front of the TV, both so that there would be a little more light on them and so I would not have to move from my position on the floor.

I called everybody over to pose.

I could see that it was going to be a challenge to get them to do so.

Still, I was determined to get the photo, and to do so from down on floor.

It took some doing, but finally I got it. You will notice that Caleb, Rex, Ama and Bryce are not here. Sometimes, you can get everybody together and sometimes you can't. So you take a group picture of those who you can.

I am in this picture, too - just on the other side of it, sprawled across the floor in front of the TV.

I was so exhausted I did not know how I was going to drive home. And Margie hates to drive at night, on black, slippery roads.

So Melanie poured me a cup of coffee from her cat thermos. "Charlie and I never go anywhere without a cat full of coffee," she explained. She also said that she was a chick-a-dee, and that in the winter she eats one-and-a-half times her weight everyday.

As for Lavina, she wound up with a cat full of... cat!

Just in case you were worried that with all the new Christmas and birthday toys Kalib might have forgotten about his beloved spatula...

Kalib and Jobe came home with us. Kalib feel asleep in the car. When I brought him into the house, he transferred his sleep to the couch. Then about 3:00 in the morning, he came in, climbed onto the bed and slept right by me.

Margie likes to collect rocks. She keeps some of them in this little basket. Looks like she needs to find a new place to keep the basket.

Jobe woke up maybe three times during the night, but went back to sleep after he dined on mother's milk stored in a bottle.

Looks like I wrote a little more than I though I would. I'm still sleepy and exhausted. I need to go back to Barrow before the sun rises, find a nice cubby hole somewhere, crawl into it, pull a quilt over my head and sleep for 20 days straight.

Hey - what would you do if you found a suitcase filled with $50,000 cash?

This actually happened to a friend of mine in Barrow. I will see if I can find him by phone or net and will make this the subject of my next post.

View images as slides

2010: How it ended; 2011: How we have spent the year so far

To close out 2010, Margie and I drove to the new Tikahtnu theatres on the near edge of Anchorage to see a late afternoon matinee showing of "True Grit."

Here we are, approaching the theatre.

Right after we had we taken our seats in the theatre, before I had silenced my iPhone, a message came in. It was from Lavina. She and her boys were roaming about elsewhere in Anchorage and Kalib had found himself holding a snake, surrounded by dinosaurs.

It was a damn frightening scene to see.

As for True Grit, we enjoyed it. It had some moments in it that were extremely emotional for me, due more to the connections they caused my mind to make, rather than to what was happening onscreen itself.

It is at such moments that one appreciates the fact that it is very dark in a movie theatre and that no one is looking at you, but at the one bright spot in the theatre - the screen.

2010 ended with a shockingly warm blast of air sweeping in from the south Pacific, causing a 55 degree rise in temperature at our house, from -10 F to 45 above. Even Fairbanks warmed up, but not quite so much as we did. The roads became wet, dirty, and slippery. By the time we headed home, the temperature had dropped down to 25 and the highway was very slick.  Not everyone who drove it succeeded at staying on it.

Some even wound up upside down.

I hope no one was badly hurt.

After we got home, Margie watched a little TV. I seldom care to watch TV, but was too tired to do anything else. So I sat on the couch next to her for awhile. Outside, on the other side of the marsh, someone was shooting fireworks.

In fact, all over Wasilla and any other place in South Central Alaska where people live, people were shooting off fireworks.

At the moment the iPhone flashed midnight, we toasted in the New Year. I do not precisely remember the toasts, but they did mention grandkids.

I stepped briefly outside to see what I could see. The air smelled of burnt gun powder. Country music blared from two houses down, where people were partying. I shot this image of a rocket blasting over that house and then stepped back into our house.

Margie and I did not last long after that.

2010 had ended hard and had left me exhausted.

I did not get up until about 10:00 AM. I figured a young couple such as us should not dirty dishes on the first day of the new year. "Want to go to breakfast?" I asked Margie, as she lay groggily in bed.

"Sure," she answered.

So I started to the car with the remote.

Soon, the Ford Escape was ready to drive us into the New Year.

Here we are, on Lucille Street, approaching the four-way stop at the intersection with Spruce. Metro Cafe sits just beyond, but they have been closed for two days. Carmen and Scott are in Arizona. Shoshana has been running the shop, but she and her boyfriend headed for Chena Hot Springs to celebrate the New Year. 

I had been a little bit jealous of that idea, to think how nice it would be to soak in those hot springs in the midst of the -40 degree cold, but with the big warmup, I was not quite so jealous anymore.

Still, it would be great fun to be in Chena Hot Springs today.

I wonder if I could ever get Margie to do something like that?

As we walked from the car to the entrance to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, Ubiquitous Raven flew over us. "Chooo'weet!"

The seat in the corner against the wall was not available, so I had to risk getting shot in the back. Still, this is the snuggest, coziest part of Family Restaurant because you are close to the kitchen and can feel the warmth of it.

Not that this made much difference on what is proving to be another very warm day, with the temp above freezing.

I hope it cools off soon.

I hate this kind of weather.

Especially on New Year's day.

As we we prepared to drive away, I saw this doggie in the car window next door.

The scene as we drove away from Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, looking into the new year with both anticipation and apprehension.

I know for a fact that the year ahead will be a terrible one, and it will be an excellent one. This is the conflicted state in which it has begun and in which it will remain, because that is the state of all of our lives, all of the time.

May the excellent times outnumber and overpower the terrible ones.

That is my wish and prayer for the new year, for us all.

View images as slideshow

I begin 2010 with a series of errors that destroy my documentation of its arrival; my two New Year's resolutions: blog and surf

I feel a little sick inside right now. I took a nice little series of pictures to welcome in the New Year year and then I destroyed them. The above scene is from a little earlier, before the destruction, in the final hours of 2009. Those of you who followed my mad dash to finish my review of 2009 before 2010 began saw the final picture, taken late in the after of December 30 at Metro Cafe, just before Carmen shut down for four days to welcome in the New Year.

Still, late yesterday afternoon, I wanted to take a coffee break and I convinced Margie to come with me. We drove over to Little Miller's on Bogard and, as we pulled into the parking lot, I saw the moon rising over the mountains.

As it happened, Little Miller's was closed. So we drove to Mocha Moose, which never closes. We ordered two Americanos and a cinnamon roll.

We then returned to the house and I began the process of rapidly finishing my 2009 review. I took a break for dinner, then worked on the review a bit more before deciding that, it being New Year's Eve and all, I should have a chocolate-dipped, vanilla cone from Dairy Queen.

I invited Margie, but she refused to come.

"It's cold out there!" she said.

So off I went, by myself. Here I am, pulling up to DQ, the moon now much higher in the sky.

Here I am in the drive-through line at DQ. Those of you who have spent all your winters in warm places might think the truck in front of me is burning oil, that it needs a ring job, but this is just what cold air does to automobile exhaust.

If you go to Fairbanks in midwinter during one of those periods - not so frequent as in the past but still they come every winter, when the temperature hangs out below the -40 mark day and night - yet the traffic keeps rolling along as usual, the air becomes so thick with the frozen exhaust that hangs in it that you don't even want to breathe, but, really, you have no choice.

When I pulled up to the intercom, I suddenly remembered how good Dairy Queen banana splits had tasted when we would buy them in Arizona, 30 years ago.

I figured I would splurge, and order a banana split instead of a chocolate dip. It was New Years Eve, after all.

Please note the orange crates against the wall. They are about to ruin my next picture.

Ruts form in the ice of drive-through passage ways, causing one's vehicle to slip sideways as he drives through. The lady behind the window had put those crates there as a buffer between her and cars that might slip off a rut in her direction.

There was a little ridge right in front of the window and I slipped off it to the left - right into one of her crates, which then got stuck between my tire and the fender.

"Most cars slip the other way," she told me.

I had wanted to get a decent shot of the banana split as she handed it to me, but now I turned my concentration towards freeing myself from the crate. I put the car in reverse, turned the steering wheel to the left so that it would push the front end to the right, and slowly back away to the sound of grunching, cracking and grinding, as my tire and car body wrestled with that crate.

Finally, I popped free. She handed me the banana split.

"Wait," I said, "I want to get a picture of the banana split."

But she didn't wait. I barely got this one, unappetizing, out-of-focus shot off as she retreated back into the warmth of her cubby hole for a few seconds until I could pull away and the driver behind me pull up.

I parked in the lot and ate the banana split - which was not as delicious as the ones I remember from Arizona. Still, it was good, but I think I would have enjoyed the chocolate-dipped cone better.

Then I went home and got back to work on my review.

There was one month that I finished - October, I think, but I can't remember for certain - that disappeared when I clicked the "save" button. I had to start over again. Pure Squarespace! (my blog host)

So I redid that month, did the remaining months, and finished the review with just minutes to spare.

Margie had bought a jug of sparkling grape juice. She poured us each a serving. We raised our glasses. I framed the image on the glasses, with her eyes above and two cats on the floor, looking up at us.

"To 2010!" we toasted, "may it be a good year." I clicked the picture.

Then I stepped outside into the brisk air. Around the neighborhood, people were shooting off rockets, popping firecrackers. I heard gunshots, and the staccato fire of automatic weapons. I hoped the gunners were shooting blanks - but you never know.

Holding my newest pocket camera free in my hand, I waited for bursts to appear in the sky and if they were close enough, turned my camera toward them and fired.

And so 2009 had fallen into the past. 2010 had begun.

We went to bed early - by my standards, anyway - but people in the neighborhood kept blasting rockets off until well after 2:00 AM, so we didn't get to sleep early.

I got up late and did not want to cook oatmeal. I decided to go to Family Restaurant.

"Want to come?" I asked Margie.

"No!" she said. "It's too cold out there!"

It wasn't that cold, -6 (-21c) when I left, -10 (-23c) when I returned, but Margie and I perceive cold differently.

That is why we will be in Arizona soon.

When I got to Family, my neighbor, Michael, was there. He appeared recently in this blog, blowing snow out of his driveway.

So I joined him. He has been doing a lot of cross-country skiing at Hatchers. He says its just beautiful right now, especially under the moon. I have yet to make my first trip - in fact, my first trip since I shattered my shoulder 18 months ago. We lamented the passage of the old days, before Serendipity, when we would just step into our respective back yards and then go out and ski through all the series of swamp and marsh lands and over the little hills inbetween, for the whole day if we wanted.

Sometimes, we would cross paths. Sometimes, he would be with his wife, children, too.

I was always alone, as Margie never got into skiing. My boys were strictly down-hillers at that time and my daughters skaters.

Michael finished before me and left.

Soon, this couple came walking by. I still had the camera set at a slow shutter speed and so their movement blurred the image.

The perfect moment - the only moment when their passage would have been worth an image - caught imperfectly.

And what makes it the perfect moment to me is because it was taken on the morning of the first day of the New Year and when you look at it, you can see that the subjects have weathered years that have been tough as well as good. Now, they enter a brand new year, a new decade, with the hope and optimism to step forward and move into the future, yet with wariness and uncertainty, for who can know what 2010 will bring?

Me, I blew the very beginning of it.

When I took off toward Family Restaurant this morning, I saw that I still had several days worth of images in my camera. I looked at the most recent of them - the rocket exploding, the toast with Margie, the cats - and remembered seeing them on my computer screen, so I reformatted the disk - which, in reality, had ample space left on it to cover all of my breakfast happenings.

But I remembered wrong. I had seen those images on the LCD of my camera, not my computer screen. I had downloaded nothing past Dairy Queen.

So those images - those moments of Margie and I beginning the New Year together - are gone.

They exist only in our faulty memories, and when we go, they will go with us.

Not that it will matter one whit over time, but, right now, thinking about it, it matters to me.

I am very sorry to have lost the images of that moment, the moment 2010 began, Margie and I alone with the cats.

Now, my two New Year's resolutions, both of which seem impossible:

1. This blog. Anyone who reads my purpose as stated to the right will clearly see that I have fallen far short of my original goals. So this year, I resolve to make this blog into what I want it to be. To do that, I must find a way to make it generate income, to free up the time that I need.

Readers have given me suggestions, I have ideas of my own, but when the problem is looked at frankly and honestly, it is clear that this is an unreasonable, if not impossible, goal. Yet, it is my goal and I hereby resolve to meet it.

2. Surf on birthday. Nearly four decades have lapsed since I last rode a surfboard. Hell. It's been that long since I have even done anything that I would call swimming for real. If I were to try to surf right now, I would surely drown.

But I've got to do it, this year, on my birthday, July 14, before even more decades pass by and I am obliterated.

And here is where I want to do it: The Tlingit village of Yakutak, under the slopes of 19,000 foot plus Mt. St. Elias. Yakutak has become the surfing capitol of Alaska, so this is where I want to do it. If Barrow had good surf, I would do it there. But Barrow doesn't.

Will I succeed?

We will see.