iPhone portrait of Charlie, in Melanie's absence

Charlie, on Alaska Street in a hold over snapshot in front of Vagabond Blues, last night after the Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks concert.

Melanie is in Nome so Charlie takes me to see Dan Hicks and his hot licks

Charlie called this afternoon. He had tickets to see Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks at Vagabond Blues in Palmer he had bought for himself and Melanie. Melanie is doing a complicated job in Nome and hasn't come back yet. So he asked if I wanted to go in her place. I feel kind of bad about taking my daughter's ticket, but she couldn't use it. So here I am earlier this evening with Charlie at Vagabond Blues waiting to see Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, who had come all the way from San Francisco, California.

Break to update on the home front: Melanie and Charlie come - we all head to Vagabond in Palmer, etc. Internet Explorer proves faulty in displaying this blog's pix

When Melanie and Charlie came out yesterday afternoon, they parked right behind our Ford Escape. This meant that when it came time to go get coffee, Charlie had to move his car and park behind Caleb's rig. Caleb was asleep, not planning to go anywhere, so it was okay.

Then he walked back to get into the car.

As you can see, I have once again pulled back from my Loft series to catch up a bit on the home front. I have two conflicting feelings about doing this. First, I know this breaks the flow and is probably frustrating for some readers and might lessen the experience for them - although some readers have told me it is okay. 

Second, once I finish, I will have a record of the entire event as I experienced it. It will all be there. People can then come and go as they chose - they can read it all at once, if they want. They can start at the beginning and move to the end.

Or, as people tend to do when they come upon a blog series they have never read before, they can start at the end and move to the beginning.

They could start in the middle and zig back and forth.

They could read just one entry, or maybe two, spread apart.

Anyway, it will all be done and it will be there.

Melanie about to get into the car. The temperature is -26 F, or 32 degrees of frost, as the British of old might say (-32 C). Sometimes, I fear we put too much trust in technology. We are all dressed this way - very light clothing to go out into the kind of cold that can quickly rob you of toes, fingers, hands and feet, or even kill you altogether.

But the car has a good heater, we are going to a warm place, so we just go, and don't worry about it.

It used to be that I always kept a bag filled with cold weather gear in the car, but I have gotten lazy about it - at least for short drives in populated areas.

If we broke down, it could be trouble - but we do have cell phones.

Still, I think I should go back to keeping a bag of cold-weather gear in the car.

Every time I leave the house now, I seem to come upon a moose. On Thursday, when I drove to Metro for my rolling coffee break, I saw six moose. I photographed them all and I was going to put up a post and title it, I take a six moose coffee break, but I had too many other things to do. All six moose slipped into my archive, unseen. Likely, it will be that way for eternity.

This time of year is very hard on moose. The snow gets extremely deep out in the foothills and places where they like to hang out. Many die; they starve, get killed by wolves and so on. So they move into the populated areas, where the snow is not as deep, and there are roads and railroad tracks to walk upon.

Many die. They get hit by cars and trains.

Little kids throw snowballs at them.

Life is hard for our moose.

Later, after the weather gets good and they get nice and fat,people shoot them and put them on the dinner table.

They taste good, too.

Better than deer.

Better than beef.

Off we drove. Metro Cafe was closed, so we decided to go to Vagabond Blues in Palmer. The Talkeetnas stood frigid and beautiful.

On Seldon Street, headed toward Palmer, 12 miles from the house.

At Vagabond, we were briefly joined by 17 month old Carre. The temperature was much warmer there than here: only about -8, or maybe it was even as warm as -4.

Melanie, at Vagabond Blues in Palmer.

Charlie, at Vagabond Blues in Palmer.

On the way home, we passed by the Mormon church house across the street from Colony High and Middle schools, where Rex and Lisa graduated. Their older siblings all graduated from Wasilla High.

As we neared home, we saw a pickup truck stalled in the road, someone in a car trying to jump start it. After the warm temperatures we had experienced in Palmer, we were, once again, back in -26 degree weather. That's why the exhaust looks this way.

This is from this afternoon's coffee break. As you can see, we have had a big warm-up. Plus, look at the time, and look at the light. Remember when, so short a time ago, it had been pitch dark for a good hour by this time?

The season of light approaches. Give it a little time and it will bring summer with it.

We will forget all about darkness then. Pretty soon, we won't even remember what it looks like.

Awhile back, the folks who owned this house had a moving-out sale so Margie and I stopped and bought some worthless junk. Among the items they were selling was the house itself, and the property it sits on. I don't remember the exact price, but it was in the $40-thousands.

We wanted to buy it, but we didn't have the money. We even thought about selling our house, then using part of the proceeds to buy this place and put the rest to retiring our debt. Then we could live here simply and quietly, our cost of living dramatically reduced. I could write all my books - right here, in this house.

The owners wanted to sell soon. No way could we pull something like that off, soon.

Plus, we like our house. We raised our family here. And we have internet. There is no internet in this house - except maybe if we had put up a satellite dish. 

Two more things:

1) I must drive Margie back to Anchorage tomorrow, so she can resume her babysitting duties. There are a couple of other things that I must do while I am in town. I believe I can still get my next Loft post up tomorrow night, but I won't know for certain until it happens.

2) Some readers with Internet Explorer, including IE8, have discovered that some of the pictures that I post do not appear in their browser. Firefox works well - although on my computer it throws the color balance off on the magenta side, which makes snow in particular look bad.

Safari works great, color balance and all.