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Looking outside it’s as if the world has its arms folded, tapping its foot and checking its watch, “Any day now.” The trees are leafless. The grass is desiccate brown. Hibernators have gone to their shelters. Year-rounders brace themselves. The air is cold, the mountains restless, the sky a dingy gray. The sun? Ha! Nothing more than a dim orange smudge o’er the southern mountains this time of year, where it makes it o’er the mountains. And where it doesn’t, or it’s cloudy — Fuggetaboutit. Around the neighborhood tarpaulins cover boats and trailers and other summertime conveyances. Anchorage denizens lumber about, hooded, gloved, booted. Waiting. Every body and every thing, it seems, is waiting.

Overheard banter in the elevator: “I heard snow by Friday.” “Nah, they’ve been saying that for over two weeks now.” A hearty, mocking laughter goes up. These are the skeptics. For them forecasters are no more than witless soothsayers. Very often the skeptics are correct and so it justifies their philosophical swagger. The laughter has not died when the doors open on floor seven. The three who board wonder what they missed, sorry they did. Lightness and laughter are summer’s expressions, winter demands its solemn reflection. You take your relief where you find it this time of year. The doors close and the elevator continues its descent. Near floor two someone offers the culprit may be global warming. Ding: Lobby. Some shrug, gather themselves and exit. The shrug says it all. These are the conformists. They want to be on the right side of consensus, of course they do, but unlike the guffawing skeptic most prefer to remain quiet about it, just in case.

Keeps coming.

8:30 am again, this time from our backyard. I never jade to a pretty sky. A sucker for one really. Set against the haunt of Black Spruce — priceless.

Looks even cooler when embigened. Just sayin. It’s not like a single mouse click is going to be a major impediment to the important progress of your day.

A November sky over our fair city. ~ 8:30 am. Tangerine or Apricot? Possibly some Puce in there.

Busy the past few days. No time for wit until the weekend.

Sorry Midwest, Our bad. Judging from the wind that battered our house last night and continued into the wee hours of the morning, typhoon Nuri looks to be a real doozy. The temperature soared into the forties and every flake of snow that was in the backyard is gone this morning. Green grass! If I didn’t know better I’d mow it today.

Elsewhere on the Internets Nuri is being called the Bering Bomb. 924 millibars at Nuri’s center. I’m no meteorologist, but from what I gather that’s not very many millibars of pressure. In fact, it’s supposedly near the record of the lowest ever measured. Consequently, the jet stream, which placidly moves along west to east under ordinary circumstances has been shoved northward by Nuri, which in turn will pull a lot of really cold air from the Arctic down over the Midwest. Get out your jammies, folks, it’s gonna get chilly your way for a while:

I know, I know. We — Humans — have only our greenhouse-gas-belching selves to blame for the increase in the severity and frequency of these calamitous storms (although it’s a mistake to hold cows blameless). But while the scientific witch hunt for the real culprit of global warming is conducted I would just like to point out that forties in November in Anchorage ain’t such a bad thing.

Muktuk anyone?

Recently, near Barrow, Alaska.

More pictures of the harvest available through pic’s link. Caution: Sturdy gastric constitution required.

Jade stopped by again yesterday to service the water heater and its tubular appurtenances. He replaced a gasket and the heater cone. The latter being a thingy he identified during his last call that had been improperly installed two years earlier by another serviceman. A lesser serviceman. A serviceman who should have known better, been more careful. A serviceman who no longer works for us, Jade said, ruefully.

Consequently, for this call, I was only charged for a gasket and an hour of labor (no charge for the new cone), plus the $89 just for stopping by. That last is clever, isn’t it? The second he pulls into the driveway I’m already on the hook for $89. I could run out of the house in my bathrobe screaming I want him to go away, I never want to see him again, refuse to let him perform one second of work, and I’d still owe him $89. Nevermind that I don’t wear bathrobes. You get my point.

Cabbies don’t do that. A cab shows up in my driveway and I say, “Sorry, my bad, I don’t really want a ride to the airport after all.” And I don’t owe him a penny. Plumbing and heating contractors, electricians, etc. — these guys want money just to appear. I should’ve tried that shtick with my former employers: “Merely exiting my pajamas, showering, and driving to work is gonna cost you, pal.” Nevermind that I don’t wear pajamas either.

TMI!

Winter’s arrived, but less like a lion and more like a sloth. Only a smattering of stubborn snow patches remain around town. The mountains hold theirs, but this is usual. Cold at night — teens — but 30s by day.

As of Tuesday, the Will Of The People has it that adults may now enjoy marijuana in Alaska without fear of legal retribution. Well, at least by state law enforcement agents. The Feds are another matter. I admit to being deeply confused by this — how a state (Washington, Colorado, Alaska, etc.) can get away with telling the federal attorney general, in so many legal words, he can go pound salt. My guess is it’s because forcing acquiescence is sometimes easier than obtaining permission? Who knows. I certainly don’t. I have never claimed to be a legal scholar or anything even remotely close. I don’t understand a fraction of the laws I’m subject to, much less the basis of their enactment or abolition. (By the way, have you noticed how infrequently the latter occurs? Lawmakers make laws. That’s what they do. If you ask me we need more people repealing laws. Laws which no longer makes sense, if they ever did. I’m talking to you Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah). Nor do I understand the shenanigans engaged behind congressional doors by those who have been appointed to draft laws which are supposedly — supposedly — enacted to make We The People a safer, or nobler, or a more just citizenry.

If you do, I humbly admit you are a better citizen than I.

I could start my own recycling business with all the political mailings we got.

Oh? You too?

“He voted with Obama 97.7895% of the time!”

“Yeah. Well He wants to throw women seeking birth control into a deep well, play terrifyingly loud music, and dance around them terrifyingly wearing women’s clothes.”

“He’s a job killer!”

“He’s a baby killer!”

Decisions decisions.

But you have to vote for one of them, right? Musn’t we? Lest the will of the people atrophy and the entire edifice of Democracy crumbles. What then?

“Anarchy — that’s what! Is that what you want, Anarchy, hmm? Why don’t you go live in Somalia for a while and see how that’s working for them (wink wink). Come back and let us know, kay?”

Never before has the exercise of patriotic duty felt so… so good, so personally rewarding, so properly motivated. So proud!

Need to remind myself to bring a fair coin with me into the voting booth. Heads it’s the job killer, tails the baby killer.

Remember those bloody bags? The contents? The sinister agent in my dream, Lee?

Well, Lee stopped by yesterday. I was awake this time. Although I admit I was napping when he came a tapping at our front door. I asked him in, hesitantly. He presented me with a box half-filled with frozen protein. I took an incredulous step backward.

The baleful stare of my dream was gone, replaced by a warm, neighborly smile. “Brought you some moose.”

So those weren’t people in the bags after all.

I lifted the flaps and looked inside. Pounds of breakfast sausage, ground meat, and steaks. “You brought us so much.”

“Nah. Processed four hundred pounds. Caribou’s coming next week. I’ll bring you some.”

Breakfast this morning:

Even the sound of game meat crackling in the pan is different than commercial pork or beef. The smell is beyond compare. One day you’re foraging, weeks later you’re being foraged. Life in the food chain. I prefer my place at the top.

Later, Lee stopped by again with his little granddaughter. She was pink head to toe. Superwoman! She didn’t have a bag but Happy Wife was the first of the night to treat her anyway. Chocolate covered kid’s protein bar. Left over from the bike tour this summer. Stingy? Oh, stop it; it’s all we had for goodness sake. The peculiarity of our location keeps trick-or-treaters away. I don’t think we’ve had a one in any of the five years we’ve lived here and I kinda doubt there will be very many out tonight at 28 degrees. And it’s breezy. Superwoman was shivering standing in our doorway. You think maaaybe her parents might have suggested the Bigfoot costume for its practicality over pink tights and a paper thin cape?

“I want PINK!”

“Okay okay, settle — we’ll get you a pink Bigfoot.”

Dog sitting today. Buddy. A fine beast overall but he’s kinda clingy. Why, not even a quiet moment of erudition can be enjoyed without him hovering, watching your eyes consume every sentence:

Mood (mine): Edgy.

We dined last night at Haute Quarter grill. We being myself, Happy Wife, and a colleague/friend up from Seattle. By the way, when is it appropriate to stop referring to a professional acquaintance as a colleague and begin calling them a friend? Must certain requisite sentiments be exchanged, or certain favors given? Or is the transition gray; is friendship an emergent property that cannot be predicted but is unmistakable when eventually it appears? Do I sound like Carrie Bradshaw musing in a diary entry?

How bout I just make up a new word, a combination word, a portmanteau, “Friendleague.”

So our friendleague works for a major genetic diagnostic company in Seattle. She’s in Anchorage semi-frequently to drum up new business but also to stop in at the offices of existing customers to “touch base.” Her company paid for dinner. A gesture that in my opinion moves her swiftly closer to the friend column. I added her, along with her snail-mail address, to my Contacts because she had asked to be added to the list of victims recipients of our annual newsletter — The Nibblet. I promised the picture I took of her (actually HW snapped it) would not appear on this blog. A promise I will honor. However, I must say, and in fact did say as the three of us strode into the restaurant, that she and HW looked mighty fetching and as such would they mind if I sidled in between them, have each take an arm and become candy thereon, such that as we approached the door I might appear to the patrons within as a real “Player.”

To this they agreed.

I wish I had obtained a picture of the trio so you could judge for yourself. Regrettably, I did not.

My cocktail was expertly prepared by Tanya. Who deserves a shout out because she really is, qua bartender, expert at her craft, and is also always happy to share her suggestion for which wine to pair with your entree.

I went to straight to the hard stuff, as Players are wont to do:

The novel presses on. One word, one sentence, one slowly written paragraph at a time. I’m hopeless. I can’t seem to stop editing what I’ve already thought was done. But I know one thing for sure, regardless of what you’re writing it’s important to get your best writing down early, in the first few pages, that is if you’re going to have any chance of grabbing and holding a would-be reader’s interest. So I think this is time well spent on my part.

Oops, it’s after 10:00 am and Harry is reminding me it’s time to go to the park. “Yes your highness.”

Til next time…

Happy Wife is at our Nest in Seward with a friend this weekend. I was left with only two items on my Honey-Do list.

1) Prune Arctic Willow bushes in backyard.

2) Touch up paint in bathroom.

The most important thing about lists, a husband might lament, is not the items so enumerated, but the un-enumerated items.

Readers — Honey-Do list victims in particular — familiar with the 9th amendment to the U.S. constitution will already see where I’m going with this. For all others, a short reminder:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

My thinking is that way back when, under the cover of night, wives co-opted the language of this amendment and ratified it into the Household Constitution to serve their own treacherous purposes. Without the assent of husbands! Why, just one look at it and the resemblance leaps off the page:

The enumeration in the Honey-Do list, of certain chores, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others the wife wants done.

Basically says that just because I’ve listed two things I want you to make sure you get done while I’m away playing, dear, this does not mean there aren’t other outstanding chores you might want to consider doing as well.

Did you see what The Wives did there? How we, The Husbands, subjects to the household constitution (never mind that we didn’t give our assent), are nevertheless bound for life to complete chores — even those not explicitly listed. Sheesh. So much for spousal sovereignty.