Musings of an old man

D

Don Alaska

Well-known member
Widespread power outages all weekend, but we only went out this morning. I waited for a couple hours, then started the generator, so I am on generator power now. Trees blown down every where and wind gusts exceeding 70 mph. It is still cold--about 12 F.--but it would be much colder if the wind were to stop or lessen. Wife went to church and there was a tree partly obstructing the driveway but she managed to get by it. I will take care of it with the tractor in a short while. I worried the most about the canning jars in the garage that are full of food and the plants in the attached greenhouse as the rest of the house can be heated with the wood stove. I have a kerosene heater to heat the garage if there is no other option, but that is a last resort. Who knows when we will be back up. I can run the router and small electronics form a battery, but that is mostly used in summer when we don't need heat and light. Life goes on....
 
I have been seeing the pictures on X about the terrible storm and high winds up there in Alaska, and was hoping that you were doing okay. Since you have still been online and able to post, I thought you must be at least somewhat sheltered.
They had pictures of the wind almost blowing small airplanes off of their tie-downs and the wings actually came off of at least one plane in Palmer.

I also saw that there was another earthquake up there, plus now a 7.1 in Japan that is predicted to have a tsunami.
It seems like we are having a lot of weather events all over the world right now. I guess we will be starting the severe weather thread pretty soon, too, at this rate.
Stay safe up there, @Don Alaska , and sending prayers for you and your family.
 
Thank you @Yvonne Smith. We are back on grid power, but much of the area does not have power restored yet, reportedly including the hospital in Palmer. They, of course, have Emergency and Back Up power, but running on diesel is always tough for a hospital. We put our generator back inside. We do not have one of the big generators, in part because an earthquake can shut off the flow of natural gas. The earthquakes and tsunamis have not affected us, but the windstorm did. There have been two trees across our driveway--both have now been cleared--and another tree is down on one of our outbuildings which will wait until weather is better to be addressed.
 
Above 0 F. for the first morning in a while--+5 F. this morning. I think some clouds moved in, but no snow. Wife has gone to a Christmas market with DIL and two grandsons., so I am "home alone". I was called out yesterday to help my wife at the church office where she works part-time. Someone had tried to break in, probably to steal food, and jimmied the door. If people come when she is there, she gives the food away, but I guess some people can't do that. Because of damage, she could not lock the door. With a heat gun to melt the ice around the door that kept the door from completely closing, and a couple C-clamps and carriage bolts, the problem was solved and it is probably more secure than it was. It appears the break-in was unsuccessful, as it didn't appear that anything was missing and the door wasn't completely opened. Security footage showed a known drug-addicted woman trying to access the door, so she is the prime suspect. She, however, is now in jail on charges unrelated to this incident, so everything is safe for the time being.
 
Temperature is getting cold this morning, but interestingly the electronic thermometers are reading higher than the two "standard" thermometers near the house. I wonder if the batteries are freezing even though we have lithium batteries in them that are supposed to be good to -40. We use a thermometer near the house as our standard because it precisely matched the thermometer we used to have on the goat barn.

Daughter and her family were here for Christmas but went home before New years. It was nice having them for a week, but it is nice to get back to the old routine too. We have a big event coming up and we will have every room and bed occupied for the first time in many years. We'll see how everything develops. It will only be for a weekend, but it will be a zoo during that time.
 
My wife was constructing her scrapbook page as she is beginning to put Christmas stuff away. As she read the old newsletters--they began when the kids were little and they would each write an article relating their accomplishments for the past year for relatives and such. When the kids moved out, wife took over the chore and told what the kids had been up to over the year as well as anything we did. She was reading about sitting in the barn a -40 F. waiting for goat kids to be born as they had to be caught and warmed to keep them from dying of hypothermia, and loading dogs into the dog truck for transport to some race somewhere, or loading pigs to go to market. She said she was so glad she had done those things, but equally glad that she didn't do them now. One famous year--2008--we had 15 people in our house for Christmas and 21 goat kids in the garage. It was below -40 for two weeks and everybody was more or less trapped inside. We didn't normally have that many kids born in the cold of winter, but we had travelled that year and the buck had gotten in with the does. The house sitter didn't know how to get him out, so she just left them together.

I had sad thoughts too, but I will leave them for later.
 
Don Alaska said:
Widespread power outages all weekend, but we only went out this morning. I waited for a couple hours, then started the generator, so I am on generator power now. Trees blown down every where and wind gusts exceeding 70 mph. It is still cold--about 12 F.--but it would be much colder if the wind were to stop or lessen. Wife went to church and there was a tree partly obstructing the driveway but she managed to get by it. I will take care of it with the tractor in a short while. I worried the most about the canning jars in the garage that are full of food and the plants in the attached greenhouse as the rest of the house can be heated with the wood stove. I have a kerosene heater to heat the garage if there is no other option, but that is a last resort. Who knows when we will be back up. I can run the router and small electronics form a battery, but that is mostly used in summer when we don't need heat and light. Life goes on....
Click to expand...
I just saw this, my goodness that is some storm.
 
Don Alaska said:
My wife was constructing her scrapbook page as she is beginning to put Christmas stuff away. As she read the old newsletters--they began when the kids were little and they would each write an article relating their accomplishments for the past year for relatives and such. When the kids moved out, wife took over the chore and told what the kids had been up to over the year as well as anything we did. She was reading about sitting in the barn a -40 F. waiting for goat kids to be born as they had to be caught and warmed to keep them from dying of hypothermia, and loading dogs into the dog truck for transport to some race somewhere, or loading pigs to go to market. She said she was so glad she had done those things, but equally glad that she didn't do them now. One famous year--2008--we had 15 people in our house for Christmas and 21 goat kids in the garage. It was below -40 for two weeks and everybody was more or less trapped inside. We didn't normally have that many kids born in the cold of winter, but we had travelled that year and the buck had gotten in with the does. The house sitter didn't know how to get him out, so she just left them together.

I had sad thoughts too, but I will leave them for later.
Click to expand...
I love reading these kinds of stories, Don. Thanks for sharing with us.
 
We had cats during our early married life and when the kids were home, but toward the end, they were all outside cats. My wife ran a vet clinic when we lived in the bush for an Anchorage vet who flew out every 2-3 weeks, or at least once a month. I helped with the stuff she couldn't do or whatever. We both became certified vaccinators as "regular people" cannot give rabies vaccine in Alaska, and the requirements in bush areas here is annual vaccinations. On the road system it is every three years. We also had a lot of animal injuries and accidents, mostly involving dogs. We rescued two kittens who were removed from their home due to neglect when we moved to the "civilized" area of Alaska. Shortly after the adoption, both kittens began to exhibit strange behavior. We took them into the vet who we had previously worked for, and he diagnosed them with cerebral palsy, probably due to exposure to toxic substances after birth. It was a substance abuse household, so anything was possible.

In any case, when we moved into this house, the cats' symptoms were pratty severe, the male being the worse of the two (1 male and 1 female). They were named Topsy (male) and Turvy (female) by our daughters since neither cat could walk very well. We used to let them outside and watched them very closely as they were subject to all sorts of predation.

A few years later, we took a trip to the Lower 48 for about a month and hired a woman we knew well to house sit our home and its collection of critters while we were gone. When we returned, only one cat was found. Our house sitter told us that she had let the cats out as normal about two weeks prior and Topsy disappeared and couldn't be found to come back in. Our girls searched and searched and found the bloated carcass several hundred feet down the shore amongst the weeds and flora. They were heartbroken, but they still had Turvy, and turvy survived until they left home for college and we had a couple more outside barn cats by then. I believe Turvy lived to about 13, but she had to be moved into the garage, as she could not get to a litter box and had started going wherever she happened to be when the urge hit.
 
My wife's big birthday party week has now ended and all have returned home. She was totally surprised when she was fooled into "picking up a package from a friend" at the local VFW. She saw a grandson first and was puzzled momentarily, but when granddaughter stepped up an put our first great grandchild into her arms, she broke into tears and 70+ people were there to congratulate her on her decade maker. This was in the works for almost a year and how it remained secret is amazing. For the birthday weekend, we had our two daughters and some of their children as well as the granddaughter and great grandson--10 people in all in our house. Those people left last Monday and we had #3 son and his family of 5 move in. They had been stuffed into a local son's small house and were relived to get out of the 4 boys under 6 in the same raucous bedroom. They stayed until last night when they flew home to Omaha. He had brought his girlfriend up here to meet the family some years ago, and she, who had been raised in a family of two kids, was excited by a family of 6 plus children. She told son, "I want to be a part of this!" so they drove down to a beach on the Kenai Peninsula and he proposed. They now have three sons. Wife of Son #3 and wife or son #4 have no sisters, as each has only one brother, so I told them they now each have the sisters they "never had".

Alaska was good to the visiting family except for the days of their arrival when we got rain that melted about half our snow and made driving from Anchorage airport treacherous with ice. We had moose in the yard, brilliant dancing aurora overhead, and moderate temperatures in the teens and twenties F. during the day and not much below zero F. at night. They rode snowmachines around the property which some had never done and had a general good time.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
I have been seeing the pictures on X about the terrible storm and high winds up there in Alaska, and was hoping that you were doing okay. Since you have still been online and able to post, I thought you must be at least somewhat sheltered.
They had pictures of the wind almost blowing small airplanes off of their tie-downs and the wings actually came off of at least one plane in Palmer.

I also saw that there was another earthquake up there, plus now a 7.1 in Japan that is predicted to have a tsunami.
It seems like we are having a lot of weather events all over the world right now. I guess we will be starting the severe weather thread pretty soon, too, at this rate.
Stay safe up there, @Don Alaska , and sending prayers for you and your family.
Click to expand...
My youngest daughter lives East of you in N.Georgia, she said, hardly any food in the stores yesterday.
 
Don Alaska said:
Widespread power outages all weekend, but we only went out this morning. I waited for a couple hours, then started the generator, so I am on generator power now. Trees blown down every where and wind gusts exceeding 70 mph. It is still cold--about 12 F.--but it would be much colder if the wind were to stop or lessen. Wife went to church and there was a tree partly obstructing the driveway but she managed to get by it. I will take care of it with the tractor in a short while. I worried the most about the canning jars in the garage that are full of food and the plants in the attached greenhouse as the rest of the house can be heated with the wood stove. I have a kerosene heater to heat the garage if there is no other option, but that is a last resort. Who knows when we will be back up. I can run the router and small electronics form a battery, but that is mostly used in summer when we don't need heat and light. Life goes on....
Click to expand...
Don,

Yup!!
My dog and I have a bad case of cabin fever. But thank God I don't have to go outside and use the lawn.

Bill


Bill
 
Don Alaska said:
My wife's big birthday party week has now ended and all have returned home. She was totally surprised when she was fooled into "picking up a package from a friend" at the local VFW. She saw a grandson first and was puzzled momentarily, but when granddaughter stepped up an put our first great grandchild into her arms, she broke into tears and 70+ people were there to congratulate her on her decade maker. This was in the works for almost a year and how it remained secret is amazing. For the birthday weekend, we had our two daughters and some of their children as well as the granddaughter and great grandson--10 people in all in our house. Those people left last Monday and we had #3 son and his family of 5 move in. They had been stuffed into a local son's small house and were relived to get out of the 4 boys under 6 in the same raucous bedroom. They stayed until last night when they flew home to Omaha. He had brought his girlfriend up here to meet the family some years ago, and she, who had been raised in a family of two kids, was excited by a family of 6 plus children. She told son, "I want to be a part of this!" so they drove down to a beach on the Kenai Peninsula and he proposed. They now have three sons. Wife of Son #3 and wife or son #4 have no sisters, as each has only one brother, so I told them they now each have the sisters they "never had".

Alaska was good to the visiting family except for the days of their arrival when we got rain that melted about half our snow and made driving from Anchorage airport treacherous with ice. We had moose in the yard, brilliant dancing aurora overhead, and moderate temperatures in the teens and twenties F. during the day and not much below zero F. at night. They rode snowmachines around the property which some had never done and had a general good time.
Click to expand...
Don,
What a great experience. I'm late but Best of Wishes to your wife for her BD and the days ahead.

Tony
 
We got back from San Diego last night. We visited with granddaughter and her husband and our only great grandchild. It was 68 F. when we left there and 24 F. when we landed in Anchorage. It was 7 F. when we got home some hours later and was -11 F. when we got up this morning. It seems like the folks in San Diego have an ideal climate--no A/C really needed and no heat either. Granddaughter lives a few hundred yards from the Pacific, and that regulates the temp pretty well. A far cry from us who have the heat on almost all year. Wife may be going back down in May and perhaps in September for baby sitting chores. You grandmas and great grandmas know what a chore that can be:)

We only had a bout 5 inches of new snow, and the car could negotiate that easily. I cleared it from the drive with the tractor this afternoon. It is our youngest son's 30th birthday, so we are going over to his place to celebrate his new decade. He loves to cook meat and has an assortment of devices to cook it on. I think it will be steak of some sort tonight.

Planting will probably begin tomorrow after the laundry from the trip is done and everything is put away. One of the high points of the year for me is the beginning of planting season.
 
Don Alaska said:
We got back from San Diego last night. We visited with granddaughter and her husband and our only great grandchild. It was 68 F. when we left there and 24 F. when we landed in Anchorage. It was 7 F. when we got home some hours later and was -11 F. when we got up this morning. It seems like the folks in San Diego have an ideal climate--no A/C really needed and no heat either. Granddaughter lives a few hundred yards from the Pacific, and that regulates the temp pretty well. A far cry from us who have the heat on almost all year. Wife may be going back down in May and perhaps in September for baby sitting chores. You grandmas and great grandmas know what a chore that can be:)

We only had a bout 5 inches of new snow, and the car could negotiate that easily. I cleared it from the drive with the tractor this afternoon. It is our youngest son's 30th birthday, so we are going over to his place to celebrate his new decade. He loves to cook meat and has an assortment of devices to cook it on. I think it will be steak of some sort tonight.

Planting will probably begin tomorrow after the laundry from the trip is done and everything is put away. One of the high points of the year for me is the beginning of planting season.
Click to expand...

Glad you had a nice visit, and happy late birthday to your wife.
Do you plan to retire in Alaska?
 
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