Keeping an Eye on You

Dear Mom: I'm not sure Santa got your annual report on my behavior this year, so I wanted to give you a summary so you can be sure to send an ammendment and have a new truck appear in my driveway shortly. The year in summary: I am alive, the cat thrives. The end.

She's 17 and being the queen. She was most dissapointed in the lack of live mice for Christmas as she knows the season well by now, but she understands the challenges of shipping to Alaska and how cold it has been outside lately.

She bribed the big white cat to get on the counter and distribute the catnip trapped in the package when she deemed the amount left for her to play with while I took the dogs skating was insufficient. He is not stupid and so complied.

She was satisfied with his offering and thus was content to play with last year's fake mouse.

At which point he was allowed to play with all the other toys and the smaller amount of catnip previously deployed. Now that photographic evidence has been submitted, complete with date stamps, please tell Santa how good I have been. Also, feel free to tell him about your birthday present.

Love,

your wonderful northern living daughter

Skating into Christmas

I got an early Christmas present this year: hockey skates. And I have been wearing myself out learning how to use them. Niwt has been showing me around town getting me acquainted with the local hockey rinks (outside in our freezing and below freezing temps) and the local frozen ponds I had no knowledge of. We were all quite sick of being cooped up inside with cold air and no new snow, so we headed out several times to my new favorite winter location: Westchester Lagoon. We drug along my girl, Fitz, and part of her dog herd. Above is the superstar of every day, KC. So far Fitz has been afraid to introduce us to her lab who sounds like Percy on PCP. KC is a darling border collie (be still my heart) with three legs. 5 dogs, 2 balls, 3 humans : KC maintained control of one ball at all times!

Fitz and Niwt were left with one ball and four dogs while I took pictures. You might think hitting that big squishy ball with a hockey stick would be easier than hitting a little hockey puck...but you would be wrong. The darn thing is so squishy you get no purchase on it unless you swing so hard your chest muscles hurt for the next three weeks.

Added bonus: it doesn't seem to matter what time of day we head out there, the dogs are great off leash. Yay for the influence of a three legged border collie and a big golden retriever. We will continue to enjoy the sunshine since we can't enjoy the temperatures. Hope you all had a super merry Christmas and plans for a splendiferous new year.

Take Me to the Moon

A few weeks ago I noticed Niwt had a telescope in his back room. And I asked him why he never took it out and played with it. Sounds like a simple enough question, but life is not simple.

If you haven't been following the weather in my fair city of late, here's an update: it's been freaking cold. Not as cold as when I lived in Fairbanks, but cold. Too cold to ride my bike to work while I contemplate what to do about my frozen truck sitting in the driveway. Anyone who might still be shopping for me, here's a hint - all I want for Christmas is a heated shop.

Where I'm going with this is that I have seen a lot of the night sky lately. Pretty much the telescope lives in Niwt's yard. Which is super fun when you have two big black dogs who are tired of being cooped up in the house all day and one who demands constant fetch with his huge ball in the yard and the only way to get him enough of a run to make the slightest dent is to kick the ball from your front porch over the fence to the far corner of the yard with the gate between yards open. A little more challenging when taking into account the telescope.

When you ask someone a seemingly innocent question it may turn into something like this. Now that I have Niwt looking at the night sky, I have Niwt telling me about the night sky and demanding I come out and see it. And can I say anything about how darn cold it is outside and that I'm nice and toasty in here with my book/tea/elfing? Nope, not a good idea. Now I just have warm clothes staged at the front door and I'm pretty quick at layering the hat, scarf, two coats, mittens, and boots on to go spend 13 seconds outside looking at something cool I have always wanted to see, just not at this temperature.

Last night was one of those things. We went outside approximately 400 times to watch the moon dissapear. It was really cool. And I mean that literally. I eventually got all my presents wrapped and ready to mail, but it took a few hours.

New Digs - 6 Months Delayed

As a study break between finals and final papers and final presentations I would like to take this opportunity to catch up on blog posts that should have occurred six months (or more) ago. I don't even have a clue where most of my pictures are at the moment, but I found these on the camera. As you can see, I have a very light living room that plants thrive in. No furniture, so plenty of bike parking. The dogs love the low windows. And the queen approves of her throne.

I do have one folding butterfly style chair in the living room and Frog totally digs it. Someday I will have a second chair so I can sit without fear of fur.

The new digs are a duplex, which is a nice halfway house between Heaven and Hell, my last two places. This one comes with Niwt, my neighbor/landlord/dog sitter/friend. He sometimes likes to borrow my dog for errands, and now I ask a lot more questions when he does. Last time, he also took Tatonka's harness and together they drug this spool home. Niwt has painted it neon green to stave off the winter blues.

I have the street side unit, but from my front door I can see the park across the creek. There is a major trail along the creek; 4 miles to school by foot, bike, or skis.