not so overnight delivery (and return)

The last post showed you what the weather has been like around here...sort of. When it snows like that it's actually warmer! It's been cold, seriously cold, here. It got up into the 20's for a few days and I was thrilled that the car wouldn't be suffering so much. It's back to a low of 4ish and I'm worrying about the car again. So...I looked up block heaters on line and discovered, much to my joy, a magnetic block heater at J.C. Whitney. Joy because it doesn't involve surgery for the car, just a magnet an an extension cord and the oil is warm when the battery is trying to crank over a cold engine.

If anyone out there has the clue I was missing when I ordered this thing, dance a little dance of saving a load of money on shipping (23 bucks to the foreign country of Alaska) and another little dance of triumph because you KNOW what I forgot.

Long story longer...the 2 day delivery (for 23 bucks) of the product was more like a week but the post office came through and I got the Fed Ex package. Lesson #1 is a good one, you can make UPS and Fed Ex deliver even when they claim they don't even know your community exists, just put both the street address and your box number on the package.

I got the package, I was all excited, I was worried (mechanical stuff ya know) that I might screw it up...I waited til the next day, I bundled up, I dug out under the front of the car so I could mount the little heater on the oil pan where it's supposed to go. (bored yet?) I crawled under the car... the oil pan has a large sheet of plastic to protect it from debris and stuff when rocketing along the highways and by ways. Plastic is not magnetic at all.

Knowing I have trouble with the hood latch on a warm day with out gloves, I went inside to regroup and rebundle. I really hope that those of you that figured out the reality of all this stopped reading at "I got the package" Ok, I figured out the dangity dang hood latch, I propped open the hood, I looked at the little engine packed into the little space and wondered if there's even enough space on the sides to fit the little magnetic (get the problem yet?) heater. I reached, I groped I looked closely at the lovely little grey silver engine. I swore. I came inside and got a 'fridge magnet. It's a Subaru folks, it has an aluminum engine block.

overnight delivery

Between 8 pm and 8 am about a foot and a half of crazy fluffy white snow was delivered to my house! 5 degrees warmer and there's no way I could shovel the stuff, as it is, it was like moving potato flakes or some other sort of movie snow. (not that I've ever shoveled fake potato snow)

When the doggie and I walked this morning, the snow was up over the top of my boots and she had to snort to keep it from going up her nose as she ran through the (potato flakes) snow.

Again with the nature amazement.

lost stuff

Ok, so I have a little "thing" about losing stuff. I'm sure it's related to the childhood trauma of having my dad tell me he had no more key blanks to make any more house keys...if I lost another one I was forever locked out. He was doing some correspondence locksmith course and had essentially created the first lock our front door ever had. I had lost all my keys and run him out of blanks to make any more. digress...

So...I lost 2 things related to printing. Total tech and total non tech. The disk to reboot the printer attached to this fine piece of computing machine and the brayer I need to roll the ink on to a linoleum block to make prints. I friggin ripped the house apart searching low and near, high and far...found the brayer in a shoe box fulla art crap, but still couldn't find the disk. In every crack and cranny...disks to add "You Don't Know Jack" or "June Flowers" or "Zen" mp3 player to my computer but NO friggin printer disk. Ach, I hate the damn all in one printer/scanner/copier thing anyway, but I'm in the middle of close to nowhere, I can't replace it!

Oh. Wait. The old computer, I needed to print the paperwork for this house from the old computer. Oh. Whew.

It's ok, Dad, I found my keys.

winter color

The sun came in and played with the tomatoes one day last week. I couldn't resist the brilliant color when it's so wintry outside.
I keep meaning to make some art or sew some beads, but my feet are firmly planted on my heating pad today. It's so luxurious to have toasty warm feet when it's hovering around 0 degrees outside!

things that make me smile

The cat pretending she has no front legs while she taunts the dog..."I'm in your living room, whatcha going to do about it, dog?" I'm not sure if the cat is pretending to be a seal, or a partial meatloaf...?

The Chilkat mountains in the morning...sun doesn't come up until around 8 these days, I think that was about 1/2 an hour after "sunrise". On the other side of that mountain range is Glacier Bay one of the most magnificent places in Southeast Alaska. Sadly, it's also the mountain range that took the life of a good friend when he was flying here to go to the fair.


The dog on the couch...need I say more?

fish in the city

I went down to Juneau, the big city in southeast Alaska, this past weekend. I was raised there, it's all of 35,000 people, less than most stadiums...but after you've lived in Haines for a while, it's a metropolis! I love when something I've known all my life becomes shiny and new. Big stores! Movie theaters! Restaurants open year 'round! Sushi! Music! (and best of all) good friends!

Juneau has had a full year of truly crappy weather, people used to living in a rainforest are leaving town or taking anti-depressants. The record rainfall shows on the sides of houses where green stuff is creeping up the sides and on the faces of normally happy people where smiles aren't creeping in as often. I'm glad I don't live there, but so very glad I got to visit again.

I stayed with my former landlords who're also old friends of my folks. They were getting ready for a concert the first night I was there, so I got to hear free music, then they were relaxing after the concert the last night I was there...more music! There was some foot stomping mandolin whanging guitar banging music Sunday night. wow. (glancing over at neglected banjo...)

I had to catch the early ferry Monday, the normally nocturnal F got up to say good bye and tell me "see you at Christmas". Stopped at a drive through coffee stand (Big City love), the ATM and the gas station ($1 less in the city) then got out to the terminal early, but they were loading cars anyway. No time for the dog to get a leg stretch, but she's a veteran ferry rider and just deals with it by barking at anyone she can see outside her car.

Haines is beautiful of course, I'm glad to see the cat and the house, butthe reality of work settled in before I got off the ferry when a coworker gave me a dead eyed stare when I smiled at her. Haines wins the beauty contest, but Juneau gets Miss Congeniality any day.

The snow is insanely deep after a full on blizzard that arrived minutes after I did...we actually had one of those EBS warnings that said "Blizzard". I've heard plenty of Emergency Broadcast System storm and wind warnings, but Blizzard is serious. Shovel time this morning.

proof of life

I used to paint with my watercolors all the time, little sketches of life large and small. I put them aside for beads and fabric, sort of forgetting the small joys. I've been struggling a bit learning about making fabric do what I want, though beads are fairly cooperative. I sort of lost sight of my former artistic life.



I was determined to not go directly to computer and coffee this morning and let myself get distracted by potential collage on a cigar box when I came across some of the paintings...made me really happy to see them. I don't feel quite so artistically adrift now.

a couch

I went to the furniture store thinking I might buy an overstuffed chair to sit and knit or sit and read or sit and contemplate the internet. I didn't realize that an overstuffed chair might cost the same as a couch! ...so I wandered the store until I saw this:


I just love the wood, and the oak leaf pattern and I didn't even sit on it until they delivered it! I spent a load of money on something I think is pretty, so unlike my pragmatic miserly self.

A friend said he believes that if a person has the right couch, the rest will fall in to place. It makes a house homey. I hope this is that couch. (I think it might be)


The reality of the couch...

stitching the days together

Dark most of the time. Must add color to days. Can't just play word games on Facebook all day. Must DO something. Must create.

So...I have lots of small projects going to keep from focusing on the number of hours until the solstice.

This is my first attempt at french knots, thanks to a tutorial on Purl Bee a terrific sewing and knitting and generally thready site. Does that look vaguely like a chrysanthemum to you?


The wee little afghan was one of those projects started some other winter and put away for a couple of months...it gained that weird voodoo that put away projects sometimes get where they seem to have grown more difficult by being stored. When I took it out of the cedar box, it wasn't messed up! It hadn't grown more difficult or crooked or weird, it was fine thank you.


Last night, I accidentally made only three sets of crochet in the middle of this one...didn't even notice until I got to the dark purple! I kind of like it. I'm going to try to add a line of triangles to the fine thank you afghan.

art for coffee

When I want a cup of (free!) coffee at work and my favorite barista is there, I illustrate my request. I've drawn giant cups rising like the morning sun over the mountains, a zombie chasing the cup, a cup with a woman diving in to it, a glow in the dark cup, a cup with a sort of Venus on the half shell figure and so on...all on scraps of register tape. I decided I should paint a cup portrait to end the scraps of paper art...but I like the doodles. I think I'll keep the paint cup.

Messing with the black gesso is fun, the colors were fun and coffee cups are fun...so there ya go (Bob's yer uncle, as T. would say)
I took a photo on the diagonal, cropped and rotated it to see what blogger would do with the rotated drawing, yuck. I was hoping the yellow would not show up, it's the default 'there's nothing here' background of psp. The wall is actually light blue so the colors in the top photo are washed out by the flash, but that's better than yuck yellow.