Alaska Home and Garden

It is damnably cold out there, which by extension means that it is also damnably cold in here.  My fingers are cold as I write this, so please excuse any typos I might miss having made.  tyk.

I went into town with my dad yesterday and we decided what kind of stones he wants to have installed with the fireplace when it is installed.  I will be creating a faux old world kitchen hearth look with the Franklin fireplace, should work out really good if I can make it look how me and him have it designed out.  Now I just have to get prople to come up and help me get the thing into the house.  I’ve tried to get help long enough on getting the heater fixed, however, so I might just say to heck with it and bring the thing in on my own when I am to the line where I can’t wait on anyone else any longer.

It is a fact that I think most Alaskan women eventually sort out, and one me and my mom have always known.  Never wait for a  man to do something if it needs to be done - just do it yourself and to heck with the guys.  It’ll get done faster, better and with less hassle if you just do it yourself.

I finally got my desktop computer back from HP, which is so much nicer than I could hope to express.  I was having a lot of trouble trying to keep up using my laptop, since I did not want to abuse the poor little thing too much.  My mom had bought that for me so when I went to Vegas on that business trip last year, so it would have seriously broken my heart to burn it out trying to keep up with everything I do during a work day.  Which means I had let a lot of things slide as I waited for HP to get my desktop repaired and back to me.

The savings grace on the desktop was that HP paid for everything, even though it was no longer under warranty.  I could never have afforded even shipping for that, so I am extremely grateful to them for getting my computer fixed and back to me.  Now I can get back to work and hopefully start getting something saved up toward saving my parents house from getting foreclosed on if something happens to my dad one day.

It seems kind of silly, me wanting to stay in this cold state, but Alaska is my home, has been for… well… I guess it has always been my home, even the few times I was out in the lower 48.  That was not often.  So… what is it about this state that drew me and my parents to want to call it home?  I don’t know.  It… it’s special.  When you stand out in the cold with the snow all around you and look up at the curtain of lights high above you, a soft sound of millions of tiny crystal bells filling the air as though the aurora itself were creating the soft tinkling sound of crystal - a sound so pure and magical in its very nature that it touches your soul and leaves its song etched in your heart for the rest of your life… When you watch a child pull in a fish larger than he is, smiling with pride as he holds it up, tail dragging the ground… watching one of your nephews catch their first salmon and forever getting hooked himself on the lure of fishing… Fireweed in bloom across the side of Hatcher Pass… Wild Iris covering the fields of the highway driving into Anchorage… a simple garden that while it never quite turns out how you wanted it to is each year marked by vibrant colors of nasturtiums and pansies and other assorted flowers that date back into your childhood… a small glitter of color in the bottom of a pan, striking a fever in your soul not for riches, but for a treasure hunt that will bring far greater treasure from the searching than you could ever find in the finding…

Alaska is a truly magical place where the sight of a mountain, raising high on the horizon,  brings to mind the same feelings one gets as the sight of an eagle soaring free and proud through the sky.

I may one day be forced to leave Alaska, but Alaska will never leave my heart.

Winter is here now, and it is time to think about winter driving.  For some reason it seems like every year when the winter months begin, everyone on the road forgets how to drive in winter conditions.

The first thing to be aware of is that the moose are all headed down to the low lands for the winter, so watch out for moose crossing the road.  Those suckers can stand just a few yards off the road and be completely invisible, then decide to bolt across it at the last moment to try and beat that big thing they see barreling at them - they don’t always make it.  I personally think there are several more moose in the sidelines egging him on.  “Come on Harold! You a chicken or something? Go for it, you’ll be in the club if you make it.”

Watch the school buses as well, they are back out there on the roads making their stops.  Always keep in mind that you need to stop fully, NEVER try to pass a stopped bus for any reason.  There are children present, so put them first.  Even if you are late.

And speaking of children, watch out for snow machines.  They’re out there and most of them you’ll see in the area of roads have a kid on them who won’t be thinking to double check the road before they cross it.  So keep aware of where the snow machines are if you see one while you are out.

On the subject of snow machines, I noticed in the paper that there was a free two-hour workshop on Avalanche Awareness & Snowmachine  Safety through the 18th at Wasilla High, I hope all you snowmachiner, particularly the ones with kids that will be riding this year, got the chance to get out there and participate in that.  Wish I had seen it sooner, I would have given a headsup here.

If you know of anything like that going on, please feel free to poke a note in the comments here letting me know, and I will make a post about it to let everyone know.  Thanks.

I have a lot more to get done tonight, so I will end this here.  I’m hoping that in the next couple of days to be able to get my desktop computer back, then I will be able to update this site’s look and get it to a more membership friendly level.   Until then, take care.

The cold weather has most definitely set in to stay now.  I really want to get some kind of wood stove put in here, but first I will need to rearrange everything in the front half of the house to make room for getting one put in here.  That makes me rethink installing one on a permanent basis and maybe instead put one in temporarily that I can later on replace with a fireplace.  I really want a fireplace.  Have always wanted to have one in my house.

The other night the lights here flickered really bad and threatened to go out.  It made me think seriously about the fact that our heat depends on the power and the need to get a wood stove put in the house.  I think it is time to rearrange things in the front room so I can get a wood stove put in here and get some firewood stocked up.  I don’t need a lot, just enough that I can run the stove occasionally to supplement the electric heat and if the power goes out.

There is already a stove pipe installed from when the house was built, so all I have to do is rearrange the living room and install tiles where the stove will go, then set up the wood stove in that area.  When I get to that point I will, of course, be creating a tutorial for doing that for this site.