Train on the floor, Super Cub over head, bunny rabbits and moose at the window, dog in car, young writer turns 21, boys leaving

Kalib and Jobe have been staying with us for a few days, because their dad was suffering some minor pain that could be major if they jumped on him. Last night, Lavina and Lynxton joined them here, allegedly to give dad even a little more space, but I suspect Mom got pretty homesick to see her two older boys.

This morning, I came out of my office and found them all intently watching something. What could it be?

I was going to run around and take a picture from the other side so that you could see their eyes all focused on Thomas as he rolled 'round his track, but when I tried, Kalib came, too, and took the controls. Then Jobe started to come. Kalib was wary, because Jobe can go into Jobezilla mode at any time and wreck Thomas and his tracks.

It worked out okay, though. Jobezilla did not wreck Thomas. Jobe brought another Thomas onto the scene.

After that, I went for a walk. Soon, I heard pistons pumping and a prop beating the air, the volume and pitch rising. I knew it was an airplane, flying low, coming towards me. I looked and sure enough, it was this Super Cub. I wanted to be up there, not down here, but I was down here.

Two ravens held a discussion in the lower reaches of the sky.

Further on, a pickup stopped beside me. The driver wanted to introduce to his new dog, Juneau. This is Juneau. Sadly, his old dog got sick and died. I have a number of photos of that dog, too, whose name slips me - but it is recorded in my old blog, Wasilla, Alaska by 300 and Then Some.

As I neared my house, I saw Dan walking. Dan lives on the corner of Sarah's Way and Seldon, where the domestic bunny rabbits that proliferated in the neighborhood last summer tended to bunk down. By the end of summer, there were many rabbits. I asked Dan if any had survived the winter. Three had, he told me, and now there was one more, so there were four.

Not long after I returned home, two of the bunny rabbits made an appearance in our driveway.

Lynxton made his appearance inside.

I stopped by Metro Cafe at the usual time. Carmen informed that today was the 21st birthday of the young writer, Shoshana. Twenty-one is still young. She will be a young writer for some time to come yet.

As I drove home, I saw this boy running alongside a hill.

Not long after I returned home, two yearling moose calves took the place of the bunny rabbits in our driveway. One of them had a stare-down with Kalib. Neither frightened the other.

Lavina and the boys had planned to stay one more night and leave tomorrow, but Kalib got lonesome for his dad, so his mom decided to take them home tonight. Caleb said goodbye to Lynxton.

The boys got buckled in...

...and then Lavina drove off with them. I do not remember precisely what the time was, but I believe it was a bit after 8:00 PM. Before I left home, Alaska still had the shortest days of anyone in the country. Now Alaska has the longest - growing steadily longer the further north you go.

India and Arizona never get really long days - although this time of year Arizona gets a longer day than India does. Still, compared to Alaska, Arizona's spring and summer days are short. Even though I have been home for a week now, come night, I am still a bit overwhelmed by the lingering light.

It doesn't help solve this persistent jet lag problem, though. If anything, it just makes me feel sleepier. And I forgot to buy Melatonin today. So I guess I will go to bed pretty soon, then sleep for two or three hours again, then wake up, groggy again, not able to sleep or fully function.

Still, I functioned better today than I did yesterday. Today was the first day that I made what felt like some significant accomplishments. So maybe, despite how I feel right now, I am making progress.

Grandsons: after an absence of more than five weeks, they reappear in the blog to play in the snow, pet Jim the cat, sit on Carmen's lap and don an India Indian suit

Margie informed me that Jobe was standing outside the door, so I opened it up to see if it was true. Sure enough, it was. More than five weeks had past since we had last seen each other. He looked at me with an expression of disbelief, a slight smile upon his face.

He held this expression for a very long time. Then I picked him up and carried him around for a bit.

I actually saw Lynxton and Kalib before I saw Jobe. I had stopped in at Metro Cafe to say "hi" to Carmen and to down an Americano. As I was sitting there, Kalib and Lynxton burst through the door, along with their parents, Jacob and Lavina. Jobe had fallen asleep and so stayed in the car where he continued to doze.

Carmen quickly scooped Lynxton from Lavina's arms and pretty much kept him for herself for the remainder of our visit. Although she had smiled and pleasantly entertained her customers throughout, this had been a bit of a trying day for her. Lynxton gave her spirit a boost.

It remains difficult for me to believe that Pistol-Yero is not going to appear at any instant and leap onto my lap, or my keyboard, or sleep by my head at night. I know he is wrapped up and in a box waiting to be buried, but still I keep expecting him to show himself.

He is not here anymore, but Jimmy is and so is Chicago.

We were going to try to bury Pistol-Yero today, but the truth is it was going to be too much of an ordeal, given the frozen earth and the depth of the snow in the cemetery where the fur-clad animal members of the family lie.

There are many places in Alaska where communities wait to bury their winter dead until after breakup. I am told that March has been a very cold month here, with sub-zero F weather (0F = -18 C) on an almost daily or at least nightly and morning basis, but it appears that the thaw is about to begin in earnest.

So we are going to wait for two or three weeks and see if it will be a little easier then.

Melanie is doing a job on the Arctic Slope and won't be home for three weeks. Hopefully, by then, it will be a little easier to make a grave out back.

A little after noon, I took a walk and Jacob, Kalib and Muzzy followed. The air was brisk when we left, the temperature still well below freezing although later in the afternoon it would go above. I did not wear a jacket, because after all my time in the heat of India and then Phoenix, I wanted to feel the cool air.

It felt wonderful!

Kalib plays in the snow.

After we returned home, Lynxton took a bath.

After he got all cleaned up, Lynx tried on his India Indian suit that his Aunt Sujitha bought for him. Everyone was quite pleased, because the colors were just right for him and he looked pretty damned handsome. Suji bought such a suit for me, too, and I wore it to her wedding... as you will see when I reach that part of my story.

So far, I have made no progress at all. 

I have some problems to solve and I am just flat-out jet-lagged and jet lag makes it difficult to solve such problems.

Jobe and Kalib are back in Anchorage and they should be going to sleep right about now. This is what they looked like when they dozed off here.

Rex came too, and so did his and Cortney's dogs.

One raven feasted, the other complained; Kalib battles Melanie over her cake; train wreck - Friday, I will begin my gray whale rescue series

This morning, I saw two ravens in the road. One was eating something. What could it be?

It was a toad! One of those famous Wasilla Anti-Freeze toads! As the raven gobbled up the toad, the other raven grew upset and began to shriek at it. "Share the toad! Share the toad!" the second raven screamed. "I always share my toad with you! Share the toad! Share the toad! Mabel! Share the toad!"

But Mabel did not share. She gobbled down that toad and didn't even care that the other raven had none.

Thereafter, I went out for my daily bike ride. I have riden every day this week. I am kind of sad, though. I have just over two weeks left to ride and then I leave for Arizona and from there on to India. I will not be back until March 23. My winter bike riding will be over, so soon. Maybe I will be able to get in a little more winter biking after I return, but not much.

I might not be able to get any more at all. March 23 could be cold, March 23 could be warm, with slush everywhere. There is no way to know just yet. If I have my way, I will go to the Arctic Slope not long after I return. It will still be cold up there, but I won't be able to take my bike with me.

And I don't know if I will be able to go, anyway. I have no contracts with anybody right now. I have no paying work lined up. I do not know what will become of Uiñiq. Maybe its day is past. Our cash is just about gone. I am expecting one more check for another project I did and I am hoping that can carry us through until I get back from India and can figure out how to carry on, but I don't know.

Still, I am optimistic I will get paying work and I will get up to the Slope this spring. I have to. I must. The Slope is in my DNA.

As I drew near to home on my bike, this dog came chasing after me, barking. The dog that I believe was the mother to this dog once teamed up with another dog, who might also have been a forebearer to this one, invaded our yard and killed our wonderful orange and white tabby, Thunder Paws.

After that, I had a lot of hatred in me for that dog and its people for awhile, but I have pushed that hatred away. At their core, the people are good people and the dog was just being a dog - albeit a mean dog. Plus, after it raised some bloody hell with someone else's pet, it got put down.

It does one no good to carry a grudge against a dead dog.

In the early evening, I got in the car and drove towards Anchorage. There had been a super warm up. The temperature was a couple of degrees above freezing. The roads were treacherously slick. Lots of cars had slid off.

I drove kind of slow, but not real slow.

I went to town because it is Melanie's 31st birthday. Kalib tried to prevent her from blowing out her candles. He wanted to blow them out. Funny - on his last birthday, he did not want to blow out the candles at all.

Finally, Kalib let Melanie blow out her candles. Except for Caleb, the whole family was there, but I am lazy tonight.

She failed to blow out the last candle. So Kalib blew it out for her.

Jobe got tossed almost to the ceiling. I was tired and lazy, and did not want to move from the couch where I sat, so I didn't. Then I felt kind of bad about that, because I could see that picture was directly below, where I could have caught Jobe rising into his own shadow.

So I moved to the floor to get it, but Jobe ran off. The opportunity had been lost. Photography is like that.

Baby Lynx seems to be all better now. He has put his viral infection behind him.

Just before I left, bringing Margie with me, one night early, I found Kalib, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas and Thomas's friend, James, pushing Thomas over the edge of a cliff.

This is why I do not let Kalib and Jobe play unsupervised with the electric HO Thomas the Train that Sujitha gifted to us at Christmas.

Tomorrow, Friday, February 3, the movie Big Miracle will be released nationwide. I also plan to start blogging my own experience. I usually don't get my post up until late at night or even after midnight, but I will try to get my first post, which will start out where the movie starts out, up fairly early.

Lynxton is ill, gets three shots; boys who love trains; January ends in a snowy heatwave

When I drove into Anchorage Friday evening to pick Margie up from her week of babysitting, Lynxton was sick with a viral infection. It was hard on him and we could not explain to him why it was so. It was also hard on his parents, as he needed round-the-clock attention.

So we brought Kalib and Jobe home with us. They brought Thomas the Train and a few of his friends. And yes, we spent some time playing with the electric HO Thomas that their Aunt Suji had given us at Christmas as well, but for some reason, I forgot to take pictures. I shot this and the next few that follow with my iPhone.

Every now and then, as I would be sitting at my computer working, or maybe just goofing around, my office door would fly open and the boys would come bounding in. "Grampa!" Kalib would tug at me. "Your train! Go fast!" So I would have to get up and turn the train on.

Invaribly, by the time I returned to my chair, they had taken it over. Here they are, watching the train from my chair as Jimmy, the black cat, takes a drink from the large aquarium.

Oh, my goodness. The large orange fish in the large aquarium is staring at me RIGHT NOW! He wants to eat. "Get up out of that chair, Bill, and feed me!"

Kalib keeps his eyes fast on the train as it goes around, but Jobe gets distracted by Jim, who has finished his drink and is now looking for a good place to nap.

Kalib continues to watch the train. Jobe follows Jimmy with his eyes as Jimmy jumps up onto a crude cabinet I made from fibreboard. There, he will curl up and take a nap.

This morning, after getting nowhere near enough sleep, I had to get up and drive Margie back to Anchorage to spend another week babysitting. The boys had returned home yesterday, after their parents picked them up from us at the movie theatre.

When we first arrived, Lynxton was not home. He had gone to see the doctor with his dad. I hung around for awhile. Finally, Lynxton returned. He had gotten three shots. Kalib watched Thomas the Train on TV - or maybe Thomas the Train watched Kalib.

So I drove home alone, through a light snow flurry. The temperature had really warmed up. It was 5 above. It felt so warm and balmy. They say it could go up to 20 soon, maybe even warmer. After going down as cold as -65, it also warmed up in the Interior today - into the -30's and -40's.

Yes, I also got my daily school bus picture, my daily raven, and my daily moose, but I am tired and this is enough for now.

I feel like I might be getting what Lynxton has. If so, at least I can understand why.

Technical glitch causes Loft final day delay, so I go local: the wind blows; my weekend wife; when the night lights of Wasilla outdo those of Times Square

Damn! I had stated that I would finish up my David Alan Harvey Loft Workshop series without any further breaks to update locally, but here I am, updating locally. This is because I ran into a technical glitch. I have a copy of the slideshow of all the student work that was shown the final night of the workshop and it has to be included in my next post.

I thought it would be a simple matter, because, just like there is a photo icon in my blog tools that I use to begin the process of uploading photos, there is also a video icon. I had never uploaded a video into either this or my previous blog and I thought it would be a simple matter of clicking that icon, then navigating to the video file and uploading it - just like I do with photos.

Instead, when I clicked on the icon, I got a window that instructed me to insert the code. I had absolutely no idea how to do this. I am sure it is a simple task once you understand it, and tomorrow I will understand it. But right now, I don't.

I don't feel too bad about the new delay, though. I will get it and in the meantime I can catch up locally a bit, and, while Times Square is fresh on reader's minds, prove to you that right here in Wasilla we have nighttime lights that are far more wondrous and spectacular than what you will find in Times Square.

First, I must tell you that since I last posted anything local, the wind picked up, to about 60.

I found a raven riding the wind. A very strange thing happened, temperature wise. In one place, the temperature would be - 20 F. A few blocks away, it would be +15. A few blocks beyond that, - 10. And it did the same in Anchorage. On the radio, I heard the announcer that it was -25 in this neighborhood, and 15 in that neighborhood.

When the wind quit blowing, it warmed up everywhere to about 15.

But now it is cool again; - 17 when last I checked.

I don't know what it is in the cold places of Alaska, but much colder than this, I am sure.

Here she is - my weekend wife. She is my weekend wife because she spends her weeks in town with Lynxton, Jobe and Kalib and so I am alone all week.

On Friday, Lavina brought her back to me for the weekend. Kalib came too. The first thing he wanted me to do was get Thomas out, set up the track and send him rolling around it. So I did. Just as I had hoped, the disappointment that he felt Christmas night when he had to go home and leave this wonderful gift that his Aunt Sujitha from India but now in London had given us has all gone away.

Now, when he comes, he is excited. He is eager to have his grandpa get Thomas out and when he goes, he is happy, because he knows Thomas will be waiting for him when he returns.

So, Monday I drove Margie to Anchorage, to begin her week babysitting. I found Jobe playing with Muzzy.

On the way home, I saw Denali, standing above everything. I am afraid my hoped for plan to climb Denali this May has fallen apart. Shingles just kicked the hell out of me physically. My conditioning is all gone. I was nowhere near ready physically, anyway, but had figured I could get ready.

But now I don't think it is possible. I am slowly trying to get in shape, but for whatever reason the shingles, while not so severe as when they hit, just seem to linger and linger and linger. There are days I think they are about to be gone and then they just come roaring back.

Late next month, I will join Margie in Arizona and then I will go to India for Sujitha's wedding and won't be back until late March. There is no way I could possibly get in the shape I would need to be in to climb Denali between then and May.

With Margie gone, I can hardly make myself go to bed at night. Even after I finish posting this blog, I will sit here at my computer for hours. By the time I get to sleep, it is time to get up. Instead, I sleep in. Then I get up late - noon, today. I do not want to cook oatmeal and eat it by myself. So, today, I headed to Abby's.

Shelly cooked me an excellent omelette and Abby cooked the hashbrowns. I think it was Shelly who toasted the homemade wheat bread. Afterwards, her shoulders were sore. So Andy gave her a little massage.

I listened to Obama's State of Union Address in my car. The moon was out. Just a little while ago, it would have been completely dark at this time.

Even in Barrow, the sun has come back. Two days ago.

I thought the President did a pretty good job with this speech. I could elaborate, but I'm too damn tired. It is 2:55 AM. I am going to try to get to bed a bit earlier than I have been lately.

Tonight I drove over and out onto Anderson Lake. In the wintertime, when I had my plane on skis, I used to tie it down on the lake, right about where this plane is now.

See? The lights of Times Square are something, but can they compare to this? 

A dramatic display of the Northern Lights had been forecast, but it didn't materialize - just a weak one.

Maybe tomorrow night.

I'm still a little chilled from taking this picture. I could not find my tripod head, so I decided to use the snow as a tripod. I did not want to rest my camera directly on the snow, so I covered the snow up with my jacket and put my camera on my jacket.

I spent some time at it - no jacket, no gloves, no hat, kneeling down and lying down on the snow atop the ice, the temperatue at - 10 when I started, - 12 by the time I finished up. When I would get cold, I would get back in the car for awhile. The ice was making those popping and hollow cracking expansion noises that it sometimes makes -- occasionally it sounded just like a rifle shot. It did so directly underneath me a couple of times. I knew it was too thick to crack open and drop me through, but it got my attention, anyway.

God! I love Alaska! I absolutely love it!

Damn! How could I be so fortunate as to live in this magnificent land? You've heard about God, and how he made the earth in six days and then rested on the seventh? He spent the first four of those six working days practicing on the rest of the earth, so that He could get Alaska just right. Then, on the fifth and sixth days, he took all that He had learned and then, very carefully and lovingly, shaped Alaska into the most wonderful part of all.

I will poke my head outside before I go to bed. Maybe that magnificent display of Northern Lights will finally have materialized.

If so, what will I do?

It doesn't matter. This blog post is up now.