odds and ends

 The picture only sort of does it justice....make it big and you will realize that the pile of snow on top of the car is higher than the windshield. It makes me wish we were already in our own place---still waiting for the sellers to get approved and all that jazz.

Some days the snow comes faster than others.
The last two, not so much. Let me tell you. I prefer white snow to yellow snow and there are a lot of doggies in our apartment complex.

Luckily, the temperature has been hovering respectably just below freezing--meaning i don't have to zip my jacket to take neah out or worry about frostbite. It also means i could wear a dress and leggings to work and not worry about getting lost and dying in a snowdrift bigger than i am. a very real challenge of driving is that the large amounts of snow mean you drive through valleys....and often have to ease out a little into the road to see what is coming.
More importantly, however, is that it means that Bob and Lissa might not freeze to death when they abandon the balmy tropics to come hang out for a few weeks (read: the Baha'i Fast month) with the grand-dog, party it up at the Fur Rondy, and watch the Iditarod. Parental bucket list item: Iditarod, check.

I have been doing some cooking again--trying to find new and fun things to eat. So the other night it was citrus collards and chard with a breaded garlic orange tilapia and sweet potatoes. mmmmmm.

being southern it is hard to imagine how to cook collards that doesn't involve bacon, ham and hours of slow simmering---but they turned out super yummy and much more fresh tasting with the blanching/simmering in fresh orange juice method.
 Which leads me to the less impressive meal concoction of the week.....affectionately known as "laundromat dinner".

Chinook Winds

Neah was going ballistic....and then i realized,
she was defending the house from this moose,
who was looking for her because she's so loud.

The other week my girl Amelia was dissapointed when we started talking about the weather. I didn't know how to explain its central role in my existence, that each day is determined by what's brewing, and that i never know for sure what lies in my future because the weathermen are less right here than they are in seattle---which is to say NEVER.


However, there's a storm a brewin in the Gulf of Alaska--set to bring blizzard conditions to some areas (not ANC) and perhaps (hold your breath for it) warm up the weather enough for RAIN.  i know. there are two burning questions in your mind:

1. Mar, you said it was like 6 degrees, how on earth is some storm in the GULF of ALASKA going to warm it up enough to make it rain.
2. Rain on top of that 31.4 inches of snow this month you've been whining about--how does that work?

Well, good points my wise friends!  A Chinook wind is a very strong and brings with it warm winds. It can dissapate up to a foot of snow a day by causing evaporation and blowing it away. Also, it can change temperatures by up to 30 degrees in a matter of hours, although not usually that extreme. It can also cause blizzards in places that don't get warm enough. here's the wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_wind .

Apparently this happens here sometimes in like January---looks like we are in for a long winter and makes me think of Chris and Leili out in Ft. Smith and wonder about their weather. Point being, no one likes when this happens---because, in answer to number 2, it invariably turns all roads/surfaces/etc into ice skating rinks.

Yuck. On a brighter note, it warmed up to 21F yesterday and i was so excited that my nose hair wasn't freezing that Neah and I played outside for 45 minutes. Small victories.

snow?

8 am bore an uncanny resemblance to 3am this morning--dark, cold, cloudy. The air is getting drier and i think the humidifier may have to come out from wherever we managed to stash it last spring.

As we headed for doggie day care (the once a week sojourn where neah learns that she is in fact a D-O-G), i realized i didn't have my glasses on. Oh well, technically i don't need them to drive, it is just a preference thing....but i could swear that i kept seeing precip falling out the sky. it was sporadic--i couldn't prove to myself i wasn't seeing something.

The windshield had tiny microscopic wet spots; but, there was no freezing rain sound and i was suspicious of the way the mysterious precip was falling. After dropping Neah off--(for her grandowners: she couldn't get in there fast enough or be more excited)--i called Adam who confirmed my suspicion:

Mystery Precip: World's tiniest snowpellets. And so it is....

Termination Dust

"Termination Dust" is an Alaskan phrase for the first time the snow falls on the mountains....terminating summer (and effectively for me, fall) and announcing the beginning of snow tires and winter. my fearless co-workers gave me advice today on how to not get killed driving the first time it snows and it sticks (expected in roughly a month). per ususal, i stole the shot from the local webcams at borealisbroadband.net. Here's what to do, click on the photo so it becomes giant and look at the mountains for the "dust".

"moose don't scare us, we scare moose!"

"that's a good one right?" he asks in response to my question about the title of this post. Adam is refusing to write it himself....so that means the story will undoubtedly end up much more exciting and enthralling than it really was.

he came back in the house (read: hovel) from a long walk with neah in the snow and low double digit weather and said, "um...so...". my heart kind of froze for a second, but i could see neah and hear adam, so i figured, whatever it was, they were still alive. first a momentary preamble, adam likes to let neah run around off lease up the street in this weird deserted turn around with a creepy cabin in the woods. it makes me nervous because its wooded and when she gets stuck on the opposite side of something that frightens her from us, she tends to run the wrong way. Anyways, he started again...so we found the moose.

Next to the creepy little deserted cabin in the woods, there's a turnoff that appears to be where the driveway plow push all the snow. if you walk down it, you are raised up on a small hill and can see all of southeast anchorage through the treetops. Clearly, the best view of southeast anchorage is from the top of the snowplow snow pile. So, loose Neah and Adam were headed to check out the view. the snow is super light and dry right now, so it makes a musical crunching noise--sounds pretty and really great for not getting snuck up on by anything. Anyways, Neah was leading the way and was about to start up the mound when, rising like a "moose out of the snow, a moose rose out of the snow just on the other side of the snow pile." This is maybe 5 feet from Adam and 3 feet from Neah. As Adam points out, where else can you accidently sneak up on a moose?!

Adam's not a good story teller, so here's my exaggeration of what happened next. The moose, having been rudely awakened and not quite yet all with the program, stared at Adam and Neah. Lucikly for Adam, Neah chases you if you so much as jog somewhere (herder instincts). So, when Adam turned and bolted, Neah chased along after him. Also, lucky for Adam because i might have sacrificed him to the moose if she hadn't. He ran, with Neah nipping at his heels like it was a great game, checking over his shoulder to make sure the semi-conscious moose wasn't giving chase too. Nope, moosey just wanted to go back to its nice peaceful nap....and here they were, back in the hovel, only slightly surprised and apparently no worse for the wear.

And thus ends our Sunday adventures. Hope all of you have an adventure filled day too ;)

halfdollars

i was busy reading facebook, rueing the thunder-snow the east coast is getting. apparently it has taken over the 1-95 corridor from DC to Baltimore. anyways, i was muttering to myself about how i wanted snow, not just cold, when i finally looked up from the mound of evidence i'm perched upon to discover it is in fact snowing. farwell green eyed jealousy monster--alaska came through.

and so all was right again in the world. since it wasn't yesterday when it was raining here and snowing in nashville.

the snow here always amazes me. the flakes are from tiny to the size of half dollars drifting across the sky. snow always makes me calm--mutes the world and lets it breathe with deep breaths. it is indiscriminate--landing with the same self-righteousness on post, tree, snowbank, car and puppy alike.

i got an alaska driver's license.

It was a much more involved process than any of the other's i've been through. This is the fourth state i've acquired a license in and the only one that wanted my social security card. Bummer. haven't seen that sucker in a couple of decades. Enter unforseen trip to the social security administration. Aaaand, i almost failed the DMV test. There are like 8 questions about alcohol related things that i just honestly have no clue about...nor do i need to.

Couple of quick stories. First, today it is snowing for the first time in almost a month. I finally noticed the strangest thing, but a reassuring thing. The snow blows across the road the same way the sand used to blow across the roads on the Outer Banks in NC. It makes misty sorts of patterns--beautiful, but totally obliterates any kind of lane demarcation--of which there isn't much to start with up here. That all has nothing to do with how cute my dog is.

Random cute Neah picture

Second, i'm a genius. Our door--as previously mentioned like 8 times--gets iced on the inside. As of yesterday, we realized it was time to vaccuum and it was in outside storage. The entire thing was frozen shut. Nevertheless, the door HAD to come open. Adam wanted to use a hairdryer. I wanted to chisel that *&^% out. We started with Adam's way--epic fail--when we realized that the water it was creating would just refreeze, making the problem considerably worse. Here's the chisel adventure--I'm about half way done. Score one for Mar.

windstorms and strange clouds

Here's a list of crazy things that have happened in the last week:

1. I saw my first moose-in-a-neighborhood. Here Moosey is:

2. As I was leaving Anchorage, there must have been snow falling on Hillside at sunset. The result was a fuschia curtain over part of the city that already looked totally steel blue with white snowy mountaintops. It was amazingly beautiful and taught Adam and I to carry the camera EVERYWHERE.
3. Last night there was a crazy windstorm and at one point I thought all the windows in the apartment might cave in. This prompted a need to make stew for dinner tonight :) I can't tell you why those are connected....just that they are.

The truth is that I really enjoyed Anchorage. The weather is drier there and so low 30s feel more like mid 40s in Seattle. Again, no explanation for that, just how it is. The wind, however, is mighty chilly and I think a balaclava is in my future (that face covering thing....not to be confused with Baklava). We are into the final push folks. Anna arrives in two weeks, my parents in three, and Adam in four. I am absolutely thrilled that friends and family from around the world will be pouring in and cannot wait to show them the city we have been calling home for the last four years. I also cannot wait to get started with our life in Anchorage, find a job, and learn to cross-country ski.  Bring on the snow!

s-n-o-w

Good Morning Anchorage--it appears it finally snowed.

http://www.borealisbroadband.net/vid-4thandd.htm