Well, my friend Dan has confronted me about the egregious condition of my blog. He said- here let me look up the exact phrase from my IM log, ah yes! Here we are, he said that "it's starting to reek of dust and mildew."

I believe that he is in fact confusing my blog with my boots. (Or in very damp hot weather, with my feet- rubber boots you know.)

Anyway, now that I'm emerging from a period of confronting winter underemployment and rising bills- collectively known as The Forces of Darkness, I now once again have the equanimity, goodwill and lack of mindless rage to resume my creative writing activities.

As I think about the term "Forces of Darkness," I'm reminded of the time honored old saw, "it is better to set yourself on fire and incur huge medical bills than to curse the darkness." Or something like that.

One of my big news items is that I've been asked to create some web pages for the Yakutat Ranger District (US Forest Service) over the next few weeks. So I'll be asking for critiques from my Loyal Readers. Lets see, Mary, Sarah (do you use an "h?") Dan, of course Mom, and "Wildebeast", my intelligence contact who is authorized to receive secure messages through this forum, as very few others will see it.

My one April Fools Day joke fell entirely flat. I told one of our biologists that due to fears of the Bird Flu, he would have to remove and examine the liver of the dead eagle we have in the freezer. Instead of getting all bent out of shape and disgusted, his eyes lit up like a six year old who has been told that he can take Grandpa's pocket watch apart to see what makes it tick.

Oh, before I forget, Bob M of Yakutat asked me to comment on the fact that the at the community Easter Egg Hunt, eggs for small children were placed among the thorny plants appropriately called "Devil's Club." Consider it mentioned Bob! [Easter Eggs among the Devil's Club **repressed snicker**.]

So, even though this is a minor post, I'm back!

P.S. Dan made me feel guilty- ha! Little does he know how that tables will soon be turned!

Loyal Reader Brad (http://soporverity.blogspot.com/ ,) has threatened to turn me in for "digital neglect" for not blogging in twenty days. As I wrote him a note explaining why this is so, I realized that I had a topic for this post.

Right now,I am going through an annual event in which I have managed to get so sleep starved that my intelligence and creativity have been reduced nearly to the level of someone who calls Michael Moore a "documentary" film maker. We can call it the yearly Circadian Crash.

What happens, is that I get in a reversed cycle during the darkest part of the winter. I tend to stay up later and later until I'm not going to bed before 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.

Unfortunately, I don't compensate by sleeping in until evening. Other people think it a moral failing to sleep the murky, dark, frozen, wet day away and encourage me to get up and involve myself in cheerful activities like early unscheduled Parks board meetings, jail guarding, EMS runs, harassing phone calls and so forth.

I should mention that this week, I'm engaged in one of my favorite sleep-starved activities, namely, upgrading the several databases and their interfaces that I've put together for my Forest Service Supervisor, "C."

C's idea this week, is to give several people who are unfamiliar with the structure and protocols of my databases access to them, for the purpose of altering the data. So, between bouts of falling asleep at the keyboard, I am wildly entering code to make the interfaces bullet proof and giving the structures error trapping routines in a no-doubt futile effort to keep the data more relevant than that provided by say, a Magic 8 Ball.

C is not a computer person, statements to him to the effect that "whatever you do, don't press that button," will almost inevitably be followed by a small "clacking" sound. So he doesn't really seem to understand why letting people who think that "data" is an android enter information at will into complex matrices is a bad idea - scratch that - a terrible idea.

Analogies such as recruiting organic farming majors to perform watch repair go quite unheeded. Disaster looms.

I feel quite comfortable mentioning this, as he has about the same chance of navigating to this site that a duck has of getting first class airline seating for the annual migration.

For two weeks, I'm being forced back into "regular waking hours" by working at the Forest Service office. Sadly, I'm not yet getting a healthy amount of sleep. Sunday and Monday nights next week, I'll have 6:00pm to 6:00am power plant shifts followed by 8:00am to 4:00pm Forest Service shifts. Once this hurtle is cleared, I hope to be blogging once more with the finesse, style, consistency and charm that my adoring droves (a drove is here defined a six persons) have come to expect. Well, "drove" anyway.

One of my readers was kind enough to e-mail me and ask me to post some pictures of the Yakutat Area. I happened to have what I hope will be received as an interesting set taken in the summer and fall (Calendar fall, not Alaska fall, which begins around September first, and generally dies of exposure by mid-October.)

So, here's to "JD," a.k.a. "Girlonaglide." I hope y'all enjoy them. Please click on the wee thumbnail pictures to see the full sized versions.

First let's begin with some wildflowers, mostly because it's hard to go wrong with flowers. (And yes, I know that Indian Paintbrush isn't a true flower.)



Red Indian Paintbrush


Orange Indian Paintbrush


Lupine, with strawberry runners in the background. The wild strawberries that grow here are some of the best I've ever had.


A yellow something or other.


I don't have any good pictures of wild animals immediately available, but this can easily be mistaken for a particularly unhealthy Sub-Artic Golden Rock Squirrel sunning itself on a rounded river stone.

Actually it's a hair styling disaster perpetrated on my next door neighbor.

Further down, I have a couple of photos of a quasi-domesticated animal, in the Unexplained Mysteries Section.


I'm fortunate enough to live across the street form the shore of Monti Bay, which is an is an extension of Yakutat Bay, which abuts the Gulf of Alaska.

This is looking out from the front of my house, out towards Ocean Cape and the Gulf.


The Alaska State Ferry System services Yakutat for part of the year.

This is one of the ferries at our main dock.

When I first moved into my house the weather had been cloudy and I wondered why the front windows didn't look to the mouth of the Bay.

The the sky cleared and I understood. This is Mount St. Elias, the third highest peak in North America, and a few other mountains of the St. Elias Range, as seen across Monti Bay.



Most small towns and villages in America have an annual fair of sorts I suppose, and we're no exception. Our celebration is "Fairweather Day", and it's held in August. This year the weather was delightfully warm, in the eighties some days.

Yup, that's a beach in Alaska.



More festive swimmers. We have a surf shop in town, appropriately called "Icy Waves."



I wish you knew how cold these pictures are making me feel right now.


And now our Unexplained Mysteries. The first two shots in this section are of what appears to be a crater that was discovered on Cannon Beach this summer. It was about fifteen feet across and six to eight feet deep when discovered- although since tidewater have entered it, we don't know what its original dimensions might have been.

Speculations about its origin range from meteor strike, to World War Two munition, to kids paying with dynamite, to "I'm gonna fill that cat box just one time this decade."



Eventually the tide erased the evidence.


Now, are there things you are asked to do at your job that make you feel uncomfortable, that make you think that they don't take you seriously? Well at least you have never had to be Sammy Salmon. Sammy is one of the Forest Service mascots. In case you're wondering, no, it's not me in there.

We'll just let the poor guy remain anonymous, OK?


And here is a brief guide to the Sammy Phenomenon.


Anyway, I hope that y'all enjoyed this little Special Edition, Visual Oftencold Presentation.

:-)

One of my Loyal Fans warned me yesterday that if I didn't post more often I would lose my audience (except for her mother she pointed out who "doesn't have anything to do.") So tonight, I apply personal discipline and sit before the keyboard to type.

This week I have created art by leaving a leaky water hose outside in the freezing weather. The resulting ice sculpture now is about three feet high and fifteen feet long. It incorporates a bicycle that I had meant to move for some time, and the stones for my someday-to-be-built barbecue.

of course, this piece of art represents Man's struggle against the Machine. (I have no idea what this means, but it seems to be a safe and oft repeated bit of positive commentary on other pieces of art that are just as pointless as mine.) It also represents Fred's Amusement at filling his Absent Neighbor's Yard with a small glacier.

I continue to spent about two hours a day gathering, chain sawing and splitting fire wood. I am beginning to notice tat some of the nearby woods have taken on a park-like appearance as some strange force removes all the fallen trees and deadwood from among the boughs.

Those of you without the Spirit of Volunteerism have absolutely no idea of what you're missing. Unless of course you've been the recipient of particularly virulent curse. Two recent examples will illustrate my point.

[Note: this is a rambling post, but tough, I've been called in to jail guard after about three hours of sleep, on New Years Day, I'm entitled to ramble.]

The Great Yakutat Bird Count

Two days ago I showed up at our local Forest Service office where I am a sometime employee. This was so I could participate in the 105^th Annual Something-To-Do-With-Audubon Bird Count. Now, I volunteered for this activity because it's good to find excuses to be out of doors during the winter, and I genuinely enjoy the company of the Forest Service folks.

Now, remember that this is the "Christmas Bird Count," and it's been going on for over a century. My personal theory is that a bunch of bird watchers got together early in the twentieth century over some really strong eggnog, and began whining about the fact that no one in their right mind goes out in the snow to admire the avian wildlife, at least nobody without a shotgun.

This is the scene I imagine in a long ago Audubon clubhouse: "Say," said Non-Consumptive Bird Enthusiast #1, "we are all so bored this time of year, what with no sapsuckers, grackles, or moorhens to stare at. Maybe there is some excuse we can contrive to get our friends and wives outside with us to watch whatever birds haven't frozen to death."

"That is a swell idea," said Non-Consumptive Bird Enthusiast #2. "Except of course, that all of our friends are here in this room, and I for one don't have a wife."

"Funny," said Bird Geek #1, "now that you mention it, I don't think any of us have wives. Huh."

"I think that's fantastic idea! You should put out a call for civic minded volunteers and have them count and categorize all the birds in the area. Noting the birds' locations would also be a great help!" Said Bill the Delivery Boy, who was just stopping by on his rounds to drop of a mail order copy of Men Who Love Birds, and the Women Who Don't Know They Exist. Bill was planning to do some duck hunting that weekend and thought it would be pretty helpful to know where the ducks were this season.

Flashback to the December 30^th 2004.

So, there I was in the meeting room, looking forward to a day roaming the countryside with one of my coworkers in a toasty warm truck looking for examples of our splendid wildlife in the sprawling Alaskan outdoors. I started to worry that this vision wasn't to be fulfilled when I noticed that there was an odd number of volunteers around the table- someone would be partner-less. And someone would have to stay in the village to count the hylophobic birds. I volunteered for the job- Satan was whispering in my ear.

So most of the rest of the day was spent throwing bread to crows (cheating?), waiting for a couple of diving birds to surface long enough to match their markings to one of the hundreds and hundreds of pictures in the field guide book, and trying to decide what sort of bird what later turned out to be a Styrofoam crab pot float was.

There also was no warm toasty truck as I had imagined, just me on foot in 8°F weather. I had never realized before that ice forming in one's beard could effectively cement one's mouth shut. There are people on this planet who would have paid good money to have seen me with my mouth frozen closed. (You know who you are!)

---

Why I don't Like My Neighbor So Much Anymore

I'm proposing, right now, an amendment to the Alaska State Constitution making it illegal for any promise made in summer to be binding in winter. A classic case in point involves my next door neighbor "K," who is spending over half of the year away at college working on his masters degree so that he can be a highly paid professional that doesn't feel obligated to volunteer for things.

In our delightful, balmy summer this year just past, I foolishly volunteered to shovel the snow that fell from K's roof from the yard on the other side of his house. (Satan wants nice people to be good neighbors to punish them.)

It seems that "K" recently raised his house to two stories, meaning that the snow that used to fall pretty close to his wall now goes sailing through space into the adjacent yard. (Please note, that the snow that falls on my side of his roof just creates a small glacier, as I don't have time to remove that snow pack too.

Now I have always thought that "K" was a pretty swell guy- but that was when it was easy to think so. Then came a recent single day and 11½ inches of wet, heavy snow.

So armed with a dented aluminum snow shovel, I promptly gave up. Then I went to the hardware store and bought a $350 "snow thrower." This is small electric device for flinging snow. It runs off of an extension cord.

Men who buy wimpy electric power tools are not allowed to have tools called by more manly names like "snow blower," reserved for gas powered devices.

During two hours of foot numbing snow-extraction, I had to endure the comment by a man out walking his pet llamas, that my snow thrower was "cute."

So, in order to volunteer to be free slave labor, it only cost me two hours of back-breaking labor, some minor humiliation, the possible loss of some toes and $350.

Next week I'm doing some volunteer work for the Parks Board. Do I smell brimstone?

I just popped in to the Forest Service office between an all day stint at the police department, and a session of the borough assembly that I agreed to speak at as an expression of my degenerating mental condition.

I'm here because one of my supervisors, who for purposed of decorum shall remain anonymous^* decided that one of the deep red Outfitter-Guide cards that I have entered into the database that I created for him is in error. He'd like me to just correct it. That is, one card in a stack of nine hundred and twenty two. So here I am after hours burrowing through the stacks of blood colored cards, looking for just the one he wants corrected, like some odd ground dwelling rodent creating a den for winter. Oddly though, it isn't the number of cards that had me agitated though, it's the color.

For, what does all this redness remind us of? It reminds us of the tragic discovery I made Saturday when taking pictures of the local children meeting Santa. I volunteered to do so to raise money for the cub scouts, a worthy cause to be sure. But as the afternoon wore on, I discovered my breathing growing shallow and rapid, my pulse pounding and my body contorting in awkward poses, without being consciously aware of why. Imagine my dismay when I paused to consider the matter, and was shocked to discover that it was all because I was fearful of making eye contact with Santa.

I'm forty four years old, and I'm afraid of Santa Clause. At least since I lost some weight I'm not asked to play Santa anymore.


^*Darryl, you hear me?! It was Darryl! D,A,R,R,Y,L- Dar-ryl, DARRYL!

A big "thank you" to Internet Explorer's new pop-up blocker that made my long post go away before it was published.

Bitterness Level:

The Bitterness Report is a new feature that we hope to produce monthly at what we assume to be the point of maximum bitterness for that month.

Bitterness Items:

• 
  Well here I am at the High School. I have to attend the ambulance for several hours yesterday, today and tomorrow becuase the students are engaged in a basketball tournament. These kids get flown by jet around the state to engage in High School sports. The school sports I'd like to see are: sweep the school, paint the scool, mop the school and cook the meals for the school, and the almost forgotten game- read the flippin' books.


• 
  I should be at home fixing my broken oil heater, but as stated above I need to be here in case some kid injures himself in a pointless activity.


• 
  None of the kids that have been in the computer room since I got here have ever heard of a blog, but thaey do no how to stream what might be loosely termed "music" by someone deaf since birth with such wholesome lyrics as "it's hot in here, take off your clothes."


• 
  I have to take pictures of kids visitiing Santa tommorow afternoon to raise money for the Cub Scouts- before I have to come back to the school with the ambulance. This requuires that I disassemble my home computer and trudge it across town tonight. What am I supposed to do at home then- housework?


• 
  I am stuck amoung teenagers today. I didn't like teenagers when I was a teenager.


• 
  I'm having to use a Mac. Why do they have all these Macs in the school? I mean if you're going to teach kids to use computers, shouldn't they use a type that they might actually see out of a classroom somewhere?


• 
  My walkie talkie battery just died, so I have to go out and sit in the ambulance for the rest of my stint.