It warms up and snows, Carmen and Shoshana, Heaven-bound Christian goes nuckin' futs, dog challenges me to game of chicken; I go bananas

I don't mind cold - in fact, I like cold (although I hate to be cold). But I was getting fed up with this weather: temperatures consistently below zero F - lately most often double digits below, but no real snow on the ground - only ice, crust and frozen earth. I was just getting tired of it.

I wanted some fresh, new, snow to cover it all up but no snow had fallen for weeks. Maybe a month or more. It's been a long time. Down south, I see lots of reports of heavy snow, but up here in the north we have a dearth of it.

And we wouldn't get any more until the temperature warmed up a bit. It never snows when it is cold.

And then... the temperature warmed up to ten degrees above zero - plenty warm enough to snow. And so it began to snow. It wasn't much of a snow, really. Just a dusting.

The ravens enjoyed it, though. Ravens always enjoy the weather, no matter what it is. Or so it seems. I've really never asked a raven about it, but whenever I see ravens, they always look like they are having fun.

I see them in all kinds of weather.

Always having fun.

Ravens enjoy life.

That's why I enjoy ravens so much.

Eagles may be more grand and spectacular, but ravens - they're the smart, clever, mischievous, happy ones.

And the Mahoney horses - they were enjoying the dusting of snow.

And then it turned into slightly more than a dusting. By morning, a few inches had accumulated. Margie took the car, and left me on foot to walk. That other car? That belongs to Caleb. It hasn't really run or gone anywhere in a couple of years or so.

Every now and then, he starts it up just to see if he can still start it up, but it has some problems. Some day, he says, he will sell it.

At 4:00 PM, I stopped at Metro Cafe. The temperature had now warmed up to 18 degrees F. Carmen and Shoshana were marveling over the warm weather and talking about how, when such temperatures first strike right after summer, they come to the window, open it and freeze, then shut it as quickly as they can. Now, 18 degrees feels warm to them. They don't even bother to close the window.

Then Carmen began to tease Shoshana about her new boyfriend. That's what she's doing here. She's teasing Shoshana. When I get a chance to blog the party they invited me to last weekend, I will introduce her boyfriend.

He is very lucky and at the party I told him so.

As Carmen teased Shoshana, I looked in my mirror and saw two of the girls who live just a short distance up the road coming for their afternoon smoothies.

As the girls drew near, Carmen continued to tease Shoshana.

Then the girls were in Metro Cafe. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but, just like that, the oldest and Carmen began to compare their finger nails.

At first, I tried to focus on Carmen's, which were bright red. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus a bit.

Still, you get the idea.

Then I tried to focus on the girl's nails, which were sort of a fluorescent lemon-lime. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus by quite a bit. Still, you get the idea.

I would have stayed longer, tried a few more shots and made sure I got the focus, but I was in the drive-through line and I did not want to make anyone coming in line behind me wait until I had my focus perfect, so I drove away with blurry images.

Some photographers aim for perfection. Me, I just want to get the idea down and to tell a story, even if imperfectly.

I hadn't gone far before I found myself stopped at a red light, right behind this car. This should all be quite legible in slide show view, but just in case anyone is having trouble reading everything at this small size, I will interpret the three signs as I understand them, beginning with the fish at lower left. The name, "Jesus" is written in the fish. This tells me that the owner of the car is a Christian.

The license tells me that the owner is "heaven bound."

And the little bumper sticker in the window tells me that the owner is going "nuckin' futs."

This one puzzles me a bit. I have never heard of either of these words, "nuckin'" or "futs."

What does this mean?

Please, someone, tell me!

I start to wander how the Mahoney horses are doing today, so I point the car in their direction. Along the way, I see many exciting and wonderful sights. Here is one of those wonderful and exciting sights.

"How you doing, Mahoney horses?" I shout out the window.

"We're doing good, Bill. How about you?" they neigh in return.

"Could be doing better," I shout back. "But I'm surviving. Don't know how or why, but I am."

"Good," the horses neigh back. "It's better to survive than not to survive."

These horses are wise.

And yet, the time always comes when each one of us, horse and human alike, does no longer survive.

Make of this contradiction what you will.

Next, I come upon a little dog, standing in the road, facing me as I drive towards it. I wonder what the dog intends to do? I slow to a modest speed.

As if I was going fast to begin with.

Why!? The dog comes charging straight at me! The dog wants to play chicken! Foolish canine! Can it not see that I am driving a hunk of steel and it is just a fragile little skin packet of bones, flesh, blood and fur?

I will win this game of chicken, easy.

But I don't win. I chicken out and brake to a complete stop.

The dog stops, too. I would call this a tie.

The dog disagrees. The dog calls this a clear win for the dog.

I'm going nuckin' futs!

Whatever that means. I don't know. I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure that it describes me right now.

And this one from India:

See the hands on this side of the bananas? They belong to my nephew, Vijay Dixit, brother of Vivek who is husband to my sister's daughter Khena and first cousin to Soundarya, which in India makes him kind of like her brother.

One afternoon, Vijay treated Melanie and I to a feast of bananas - including bananas of varieties that we never see here in the US, let alone in Alaska.

For over a year-and-a-half now, Vijay has been waiting for me to post a picture sequence on that feast.

At the beginning of this week, I told him that I would post it for certain this week.

Each day, I thought that I would do it the next day, but then the next day there would be too many images in my regular, current, series for me to post the banana series, as to do so properly I must use several images.

Today, once again, my regular post came in with too many images. I don't know why. It just happens that way. Tomorrow is the last day of the week, so I decided I would post the bananas then. Then, this morning, it occurred to me that tomorrow is a doubly significant day and I must post something else.

So I decided I would wait until Sunday - but Sunday is next week.

So, in order to somewhat keep my promise to Vijay and get at least some banana material up this week, I now post this picture of Vijay in a Chennai fruit store, looking for just the right bananas to stuff into Melanie and me. 

I promise, Vijay - I will keep Sunday's Alaska material light - maybe just one image, perhaps two, no more than three, and I will post the full banana experience that you treated us to.

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Fun, taxing times - an airplane does touch and goes; Junipurr eats toxic lilies, Zed fetches a red mouse

I had planned to send my broken and malfunctioning camera equipment directly to the Canon repair factory, but instead I decided to take it into Anchorage and see if the guy at the repair shop at 17th and C could fix it. Margie came, too.

When we pulled into town, we saw this character doing touch and go's at Merrill Field.

I used to love doing touch and go's.

So much fun!

Damn!

Touch and go's.

Will I ever do touch and go's again?

Next, we saw a young man dressed up in a Statue of Liberty suit, trying to entice drivers to come into Liberty Tax to get their taxes done.

The problem that I have is with that damn sign behind him, "We make taxes fun!"

I don't want to accuse anyone of telling lies, so I figure the sign must be telling the truth. What I can't figure out is who they make taxes fun for - not the tax payer who brings them business, that's for sure. It is never fun for the tax payer, no matter how loyal an American he or she might be.

So... is it fun for the tax preparer? Perhaps. Maybe the preparer likes numbers and formulas and so has a great time pulling all this together. But then it must get pretty overwhelming as April 15 draws nigh. That could not be fun.

Maybe its fun for the business owner. Maybe it enables the business owner to go hang out in Hawaii for a month or two each year when tax season ends and to have fun there.

I don't know. Maybe the business owner does not even like to go to Hawaii. Maybe the business owner prefers to go to Chicago instead.

Maybe the business owner is a fan of the Chicago Cubs and finds it fun to go Chicago, buy tickets into Wrigley Field, take a seat, then jump up and down, shouting curses and insults.

That's about the only way I can see to make taxes fun.

So here I am at the camera repair shop at 15th and C. On the counter you can see the work that I have brought in. To the left is a 16 to 35 mm f 2.8 L series lens that I broke last spring while trying to photograph Jobe. Of all my lenses, it is my single most favorite (and it is also the hardest to use, because it can really make people look strange and distorted) and I have not taken a picture with it since spring.

I have just not wanted to spend the money on the repair.

But I want the lens at Kivgiq, which begins February 9. 

To the right you see my Canon 1Ds Mark III camera body, which went down in the rain at the Barrow Whalers final football game in Kenai last October.

After that game, the camera lost its ability to format a Compact Flash card.

I thought this might be a problem that would heal itself after the camera dried out, but it didn't. Several times between last October and now, I have tested it again and never would it format the card. The last time that I tested it was less than one month ago.

But guess what? When I tried to put on a demonstration for the camera repair man so that he would know what was wrong, it formatted the card, just like that!

I fired several test shots. They all worked.

So, I don't need to get it repaired.

I just hope it keeps working.

What I kind of wish now is that I could sell the Ds III before Kivgiq and buy a 1D M IV to replace it.

On one hand, I would hate to give up the large, full frame sensor of the DsIII for the smaller, cropped sensor of the D IV, but the D IV does much better in low light and I think that means more to me now than does the size of the sensor.

I don't think I can pull off such a sell and buy between now and Kivgiq, however.

As we drove through Anchorage towards a green light, we saw a homeless man walking away from the corner where he had been holding his sign to the stopped traffic when the light had been red. All of a sudden, as we neared the green the traffic in front of us came to a dead stop. The person who stopped at the green light shouted out to the homeless person, who turned around, came to that person and took the money that was offered.

I believe in helping out the homeless and try to myself, but I am not so certain about the wisdom of stopping at green light with heavy traffic coming behind you in order to give a man on a corner some money.

No. Actually, I am certain.

It is not wise. Someone could get hurt.

Maybe it would be better to keep driving and to drop the money off at Bean's Cafe, where you know it will do good.

On November 22, Lisa's birthday, when I was in Barrow, her boyfriend Bryce did what any thoughtful boyfriend would do and bought her some flowers at Carr's. He did not know what kind of flowers they were, but they were pretty, had not yet fully bloomed, which meant that Lisa could enjoy them longer as they came into full bloom.

He put them in a place where she could see them when she came home and indeed, she did see them, and she liked them.

Junipurr also saw them. Junipurr liked the flowers as well - not so much to look at, but to munch on as a dietary supplement.

When Lisa saw that Junipurr had been chewing on the flowers, she grew a little worried, because she knew that some flowers are toxic to cats.

She thought the flowers were lilies, but she was not positive, so she did some googling. She quickly learned that lilies were toxic and that if a cat were to eat them, it needed to get to the vet within 6 hours or its chances of survival would not be good.

As the flowers had not fully bloomed, she was pretty certain still not fully positive that they were lilies, so Bryce checked with the saleslady at the Carr's floral shop who had sold them to him. She confirmed that they were lilies.

She told him that she did not think the flowers were poisonous to cats, but not to let the cats chew on them.

Lisa and Bryce then rushed Junipurr to an animal hospital, where she was sedated, forced to vomit and to ingest charcoal to absorb as much toxin as possible. She was then put on an IV for two days to flush out her system.

After she had been taken back for treatment, the vet farted while as he explained all was happening and why.

They did not know quite how to react.

Well, everyone farts, every day. Vets - kings, gueens, popes and presidents, too.

If a vet can save the life of a good cat like Junipurr, then so what if he blows off a loud public fart now and then?

Lisa and Bryce did not come to see Junipurr during the two days that she stayed in the hospital, as they feared it would confuse her and upset her more if they came in and then just left again without her.

When finally they did bring her home, she got ornery with Zed, which she never does. Then she zonked out for four hours. After that, she was good.

Next time, Bryce says, he is going to buy plastic flowers.

My own thought is that florists should label flowers that are toxic to pets as such.

As we visited, Lisa tossed a little red fake mouse into the living room. Zed ran in and brought it back. Zed likes to play fetch, just like a cat.

Not like a dog. No, Zed never plays fetch like a dog.

Zed plays fetch like a cat.

Junipurr and Zed chase a string.

And this from India:

Cat at a truck and wayfarers stop in southern India.

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Finally, last Sunday with kids and grandkids, abruptly remembered; jail house romance wrongly credited, near miss

Folks, I feel very abrupt today. For many reasons which I will not delve into, save to note that this damn computer, which has served me so well these past three or four years, seems to be getting ready to fail and it is wasting a lot of my time. This post should have been completed an hour ago.

So I am going to be abrupt today.

Sunday, however, was a good day. 

So I will return to Sunday, and will abruptly tell you how Jobe sat down and the waiter came...

Oh, hell... why should I tell you at all?

Look at the picture! You can see for yourself!

There were adults at the table, too. I was there, as well.

When you are little, you are as aware of the bottom of the table as you are the top.

Honk, honk!

At one point, Kalib got up and ran off to another table, being mischievous. He could have got away with it with his dad, but not his Auntie Mel. He had to come back and sit back down.

This is what you call, "sibling rivalry."

After we returned home, Melanie and Charlie tried to get comfortable on the couch. Kalib whipped them with a blanket.

So they got up and danced instead. Kalib played with the voice mail box on the phone. The first message was, "no new messages." So Kalib made it go, "no! no! no! no new. no! no! no new messages." Kind of like a disk dj. 

Then he got into a message left awhile back that I have not bothered to erase.

A gruff but happy sounding voice comes on talking to me, Bill Hess, saying I will know right away who he is and he leaves a number and tells me to get back to him.

I did not know who he was and there was something about the familiarity of the message coming from a voice that I did not recognize at all that put me on a bit of an edge, so I never called back.

Then one day he called back and got me. Turns out, he had spent time in jail in Palmer with a Bill Hess who was not this Bill Hess and that Bill Hess had somehow introduced him to the woman who became his wife and when he saw that this Bill Hess lives in Wasilla he thought it must be the same Bill Hess and so he was just calling to let that Bill Hess who wasn't me know how great everything had worked out with his marriage and to thank that Bill Hess for bringing the two together.

Sorry, I said. Wrong Bill Hess. I haven't been in jail since I got out of Juarez in November of 1969, just in time to eat Thanksgiving dinner in a casino in Las Vegas.

I don't know why we even bother to keep this phone anymore. Everybody calls us on our cells phones. Except for people wanting money, and folks who think they did time with me.

Then Melanie danced with Kalib, who seemed to enjoy it.

Kalib takes a break.

Caleb watched the NFL playoffs.

Lisa talked to Bryce on the phone.

At 4:00 PM, a bunch of us went out to get coffee. Metro is closed on Sunday so we went to the place at the corner of Fishhook and Seldon. As we waited for our coffee, we saw an exchange being made. Money for pizza. 

Now, there are two things notable about this picture. It is 4:00 PM and look how much light is in the sky! The long nights are in rapid retreat.

Also, the temperature stood at about -10 F (-23 C) but no real snow on the ground. Just ice and a hard crust.

Lisa and Jobe, back at the house.

After we returned home, Kalib laid his spatula upon the floor and ran circles around it. 

As always happens, it was soon time for them all to go. Lisa and Kalib head out the door.

Melanie and Kalib walk to the car.

They backed out and then, with their headlights shining through their frozen exhaust, began the drive back to Anchorage, where they would drop Kalib and Jobe off with their parents.

"It sure is quiet in here," Margie noted, after they had been gone awhile. 

I had not seen Chicago since Kalib and Jobe had arrived. Now that they had left, she came back out. 

Quiet is how Chicago likes it.

And this one from India:

This is what it is like riding on the Indian highways. Constantly. While it is exhilarating to a certain degree and on the surface seems to carry a bit of romance, it is deadly. And once that deadliness catches up to you it is awful and that, more than all the other reasons combined, is why I feel so abrupt today.

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Charlie: Two studies; bubbles in the Indian wind

Those who visited this blog yesterday know that I posted only the first image that I shot from a day that was spent with Kalib, Jobe, Lisa, Melanie, Charlie, Caleb and Margie. Since then, I have been debating with myself as to whether or not I should go ahead and post a series of photos from that day or just move on to other topics - as I do have many items backing up, including Junipurr's scary fight for life and a Metro Cafe event where I found myself warmly engulfed by a horde of beautiful women.

I decided to post and I have now spent at least an hour-and-a-half preparing the photos for that post, but I can't afford to spend anymore time at it.

So, I will save it all for tomorrow, except for these two academic studies of Charlie:

Charlie Study, #3982: Charlie sitting on a chair, caught by window light

Charlie Study, #67692: Charlie, caught by headlights, as he prepares to drive from Wasilla to Anchorage

But I must also include one from India:

After we passed the elephants, Anil and Melanie made bubbles in the wind.

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Knocked down by bugs in the throat and computer

This is the very first frame that I shot yesterday. Five-hundred and sixty-three more would follow before the day ended, but so far this is the only one that I have pulled up and looked it, because last night and today has been such a mess that I decided just to grab the first picture that I shot, post it and be done with it.

The mess last night happened because a bug of some kind got into my throat and kept me coughing violently all through the night. I did not get to sleep until it was time to get up and then I did not get up.

Then, this program, Lightroom, that I like to use to edit pictures, even though it can be very buggy and exasperating itself, misfired and set off a chain reaction of computer calamities that have taken me two hours to resolve.

Anyway, this was how we began yesterday, at Family Restaurant, where Charlie took us all to breakfast.

I have lost too much time. I am exasperated. This is all that I am going to blog today.

Well, one more, grabbed at random, from India...

...just to leave no doubt...

Two boys at Badami.

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