Just before I jump back into and complete the Master Chef piece, here is a local, near-present, update: Grandkid and mom; Pioneer Peak; bunny rabbit; Allie pours coffee

I promised that even as I blog my Arizona/India trip, I would keep posting little local blurbs, just to keep this blog in the near present. On Monday morning, I drove Margie into Anchorage so that she could spend the week babysitting Lynxton. Jobe and Kalib are both enrolled in Day Care now.

When we arrived, this was the scene at the top of the stairs.

The view as I sipped Metro Cafe coffee from my car, Monday afternoon.

This was a tough winter and it killed hundreds of moose. I don't know how any of the dozens of bunny rabbits that proliferated last summer got through it, but, as already noted, from what I can learn, at least three did and now there are four - yesterday.

This morning, Allie, the poet who waitresses at Abby's, served me sourdough pancakes, eggs over easy, bacon and coffee. She said I looked sleepy. I said I was sleepy - always sleepy in the morning, I said sleep doesn't come easy for me. She said she loves to sleep, but thought maybe that was just because she is a teenager and teenagers love to sleep but maybe when you get older, you don't love to sleep so much.

No, I said, you always love to sleep, it's just that sleep doesn't always come easy.

She said she thought if I got a certain kind of pillow, then I would sleep good every night.

No, I said, I am just a person that sleep comes hard for - it's genetic, I told her. I sure do enjoy it when it comes, though.

She said she just got a new bed, a queen bed, and now she sleeps better than ever because she can spread out any old way she pleases. She can sleep on one part of the bed for awhile, then shift to another part. That way, she said, the bed will never sag in the middle.

Abby cooked the sourdough pancakes, eggs and bacon. Very good of course.

Within ten seconds after this posts, I will pull up my Master Chef Nephi Craig draft post and interview notes and get back to work on the story. Right now, I have about 45 pictures processed and placed in the draft post, but even though I think they all work, that is way too many so I must remove at least half of them. I have yet to write the first word. It will take me awhile yet to figure this all out, but, barring calamity, it will be up today.

David Alan Harvey Workshop, entry 5: I determine the location of Mormon missionaries; I take a break to shoot a "young writer study" and drive to Anchorage to get Margie

As my apartment mates and I prepared to head to the loft Tuesday morning, I felt a certain dread. We had all had one shooting day to work on our essays. David now expected us to come back with an edited selection of no more than 10 images to project in contact sheet mode onto the screen, then he and our workshop mates would critique each take, reject most of the images but maybe hold on to one or two - at least temporarily.

My first day's shoot had been a disaster. I had nothing to show - not one Mormon missionary picture for an essay on Mormon missionaries. I did make a couple of selects of the Angel Moroni statue, but I knew they would not make the cut. I did not even want to show them - but I had to show something.

I wasn't at all certain that I had even made the best Moroni selection. The monitor on my laptop had gone bad. Instead of presenting clear images, it subjected the eye to a brain-destroying lightshow of flashing and jumping lines, solarizations, negative colors and lightning flashes.

It was impossible to edit pictures on a such a screen. I had brought my iPad with me, along with an ap I had paid $10 for so that I could enable it as a second screen. I soon discovered that it did not work well at all. In fact, it also proved impossible to work with.

So, after downloading my pictures, I put the compact flash card back into my camera and scrolled through my Moroni pictures, editing them off the camera monitor. When I picked one, I would note the number. Then, with difficulty, I would study the chaos happening on my screen until finally I could pick an image number - until finally I could find the number that matched the one on my camera LCD.

Then I would pull that number into the edit folder. This was not really a good way to edit at all.

In the morning, I again started calling Mormon numbers and soon I was successful at reaching a human being. I told her what I wanted to do. She told me that it just so happened that right now every Mormon missionary in the city of New York was gathering at the LDS Stake center, housed in the same building as the temple, for a mission conference. She told me they were already going into session, but would break for lunch sometime between noon and one.

So I joined my housemates in a cab. The driver took off, I saw this lady looking out this window, shot three frames and shortly afterward walked into the loft for the morning session.

I informed David of the conference. He said I should get down there right now, and not wait for lunch. He did not want me to waste time walking to the subway and then making the long ride from Brooklyn to Uptown Manhattan. He pulled what money he had out of his wallet, asked for further contributions, got a few, then handed me somewhere between $25 and $30 and told me to take a cab.

So off I went. I missed the morning's presentations, I missed the critiques; I did not have to subject my miserable take of the day before to a critique. Perhaps I could really get something today and then have something good to show tomorrow.

For now, I will leave it right there, because on late morning of this day, Friday, January 6, 2012, I had to drive to Anchorage to pick Margie up from her week of babysitting and bring her home. We did not return until early evening. 

So I am going to hold off and begin anew tomorrow.

On my way to Anchorage, I stopped at Metro Cafe and bought a cup of Trail Mix instand oatmeal. As I was eating it, a young writer study materialized right in front of me:

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #22,742: she chats with a customer at the drive-through window.

Here I am, stopped at the light on the corner of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways. I took no more pictures after this, because my battery died right here, at this light. Once I got to Anchorage, I called Stewart's Photo and asked if the batteries they have in stock would have any charge at all in them.

"Yes," the salesman told me, "about 25 percent." So I drove over and bought one - but, when I put in in my camera, it had no charge all.

That's okay. Otherwise, I would now have to edit a bunch of pictures of Kalib, Jobe and Lynxton - but now I can't, because I took no pictures to edit.

So I am done for tonight. I can relax with Margie. She has been gone for a whole week. We will catch up on "Hell on Wheels" and eat popcorn.

Tomorrow, I will return and show you what happened once I found the missionaries.