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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.

Our water heater is not what you think.

It used be you could walk into the basement or garage of any home and find a tall white cylinder, maybe twenty inches in diameter by five feet tall, filled with hot water. How did it work? Simple. There was a thermostatically controlled heat exchanger inside the cylinder in contact with the water to keep it at the desired temperature. One pipe brought cold water in, another delivered hot water out. The connectors had easily serviceable gaskets. Most units had a pressure relief valve and a drain hose in case it leaked. Gas or electric heaters were available. That’s pretty much it.

Now, have you ever heard of Rube Goldberg? No? Well, there, I linked it for you.

Old Rube had a number of talents but mostly he was known for his cartoons, in particular his depiction of Rube Goldberg Machines, which were:

complicated gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways

Today, if you remark about an object’s design by saying, “Oh, man, that is so Rube Goldbergian,” you mean exactly that, the thing’s design is unnecessarily complicated and convoluted to achieve its function.

Back to our water heater. You can see where I am going with this.

Right.

We have a box in our garage screwed to the wall. It’s roughly the size of Goliath’s lunchbox. It heats water. That’s it. That’s all it does.

And yet to look at it…

… and I’m only showing you part of this contraption! — you’d say, “Man, that is totally Rube Goldbergian.”

It only get worse inside the box.

Therein you’d find circuit boards and connectors and valves and electrodes and expanders and other mysterious parts and pieces all connected together in an arcane mess of machinery. To what end?

To heat water.

But wait, skeptic, hold thine tongue!

The water heater is modern! It’s efficient! — why, should you care to read it, there’s an entire brochure given over to boasting of the unit’s myriad operational efficiencies. And it’s environmentally friendly! And it’s smart! — water is heated “on demand!”

Yet still you may be wondering, at what cost, dear homeowner, does this whizbangery come?

$537.00

“To purchase it?!”

No. To maintain it. That’s what I paid yesterday. Three years ago I paid close to the same amount to have it serviced. In five years we’re into this thing for ~ $1000.00.

What’s a homeowner to do but lament. In Alaska, especially with winter nigh, you do not want to achieve your cost savings by skimping on the maintenance of the machine that makes water hot. Especially since our house is heated hydronically (sub floor heat).

At least the service man was competent. His parents had named him after Alaska’s gemstone. Unusual — I kept wanting to call him Jason — but like I said, he was competent.

But it was one of those service calls where the phases of dis-assembly were punctuated with knocks on the door,” Mr. Nibbe, may I speak with you a moment?”

His face was grim. Uh oh, he’s found something else wrong. He had said when he first arrived and assessed the leakage I told him about on the phone that only the thermal expansion doohickey would need to be replaced ($165, and look here, lucky for you I just happen to have one in my truck!), but now, in the course of removing the thingamajig that connects the doohickey…. “Well, I think you can clearly see, Mr. Nibbe, that this really should be replaced as well.”

Over the course of his service visit there were no less than two separate knocks on the door.

Multiple reassurances ensued that he was not trying to up-sell me on things I didn’t need. I believed him. Because I want to believe in the ethical goodness of mankind. Plus, this man, this “gem” of a man, looked to me like a cross between Jim Carey and Chevy Chase, and who among us would ever suspect either one of them of up-selling?

Although — although! — he did say that if I’d like, he could also replace the gas flame regulator which, although my unit was presently operating fine without it, in his expert opinion it was only a matter of time before it failed. “And when it does, Mr. Nibbe, your boiler will shut down,” he said ominously.

Part $245, plus 1/2 hour labor to install; he’d anticipatively brought one along. But wait, it only takes ten minutes to install? “Minimums, Mr. Nibbe, we have minimums.”

I declined. I put my family in peril and declined. That’s what it felt like, standing there, looking at him with that “Are you certain you don’t want me to install it, Mr. Nibbe?” look on his face.

Warm in the house this morning. I can step onto the tile floor in the kitchen in bare feet and not be chilled. Love that.

But just wait, the very first morning the floor isn’t toasty warm it’ll be -20 outside, and with my luck it’ll be Sunday. Emergency service call to install a flame regulator — time and a half. Oh boy!

I took down gemstone’s personal cell number. “Call me,” he said, “if anything problems should arise.” Muhahahaha…

Q: What’s three thousand square feet and white all over?

…

Happy Wife brought the comfort last night, homemade chicken soup. And for me a grilled cheese sandwich — with thin sliced Claussen pickles, just what I’d asked for!

Go ahead, click it. Embiggen the savoriness.

Except you can’t really “see” savory, now can you?

Imagine a technology to digitize smells. A sort of scratch ‘n sniff for your computer.

Consider: You’re browsing the Internet one day and you happen upon a picture of chicken soup. You click it to make it larger. This downloads the digital image to your computer where it is then rendered in your browser, as happens now. But imagine if, in addition to the digital image, a digital smell associated with the image was downloaded as well, say a unique digital smell representing somebody’s chicken soup. Further, imagine your computer (or smart device) was equipped with an effuser, a hardware device capable of rendering digital smells, just like the screen on your computer (or phone) renders digital images. Now, instead of just seeing the picture of the chicken soup on the screen you literally smell the savoriness coming from the effuser as well. A kind of high tech Odorama. (For an old tech example see John Water’s film Polyester).

Now, as with any new technology, there will be abusers. Sure enough some dude’s gonna digitize his fart and associate it with a picture of a dozen roses or something. We’ll have to deal with that kind of nose porn. But we already have filters for viruses. I see no reason we can’t do the same for smells: “WARNING!, the attached .WHIF file smells awful!” Inevitably, though, some peoples’ devices will get infected. Some could be serious. Imagine: Every time you try to delete a bad .WHIF file it only makes the situation worse — before long your whole house smells a ripe baby diaper.

You can imagine that once Google gets a whif (haha) of this technology we’ll have smell searches. Or smells will be used to suggest shopping preferences: “People who liked this odor also liked…”

The possibilities are endless.

A: If you guessed the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters you were close. Correct answer was our backyard. Freak snowfall sneaked up on us last night.