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Sucked like a vacuum cleaner

As much as I love Barrow, I must admit that my body doesn’t so much.  Just being in the cold dry air sucks every bit of moisture from my body so quickly you can hear the whooshing sound if you are anywhere near me. My hands feel like dried out old leather. I put about half a jar of conditioner on my hair and it barely looks alive.  I’ve shrunk half a size from moisture loss alone.  Well, hey, now there’s a positive spin on it.  Diet by dehydration.  I could make millions if I could just build a dehydrator

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I’m back

As always, leaving Barrow is hard. It was 50 below with windchill and I felt SOOOO at home in that.  The ocean ice was brilliantly white, the tundra seamlessly melted into it, the air was frigid, the people were warm…really, what’s not to like.  No wonder I made it my home for almost 30 years.  And my little Greta has grown up into such a wonderful young lady.  Instead of me driving her around, she drove me around. I borrowed her car and she cooked dinner.  WOW.  LIfe really does have some great and unexpected rewards.

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Columns 2006

A family tragedy

The story is one we are all sadly familiar with at this point.  Man steals truck, races madly through streets full of traffic, runs a red light and kills a father of three.  A tragic story with tragic consequences that leaves behind unbelievable pain and loss.

So it was with some interest that I read the lead story in the Anchorage Daily News on February 26 about this man, Kris Felber. And when I was done, I put my paper down and wondered why anyone ever thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of his life turning out any

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I leave for Barrow tomorrow

Going home for a few days. Back to Barrow where winter knows how to be winter.  Back to the arctic air that invigorates me in ways I can’t fully explain.  It’s like I’m breathing right again when I get my first hit of that cold air.  My animals will be with my regular housesitter who treats them so well.  All of us who own animals probably have a person like this, a person we trust our precious creatures to who cares for them in our absence so that we don’t have to worry and can just enjoy ourselves.  Over the

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Is this a sign of the day to come

It’s 10 AM. I’ve already spilled a bowl full of birdie kibble upstairs. Came down to deal with the foster birds, tripped and upended some nasty looking water on the floor. I wrote a long e-mail only to be disconnected by my computer or my e-mail provider before I hit the send button.I hope this is not a sign of things to come today.  I think I’ll go get a latte and try to calm down and contemplate life on a different plane…say, one headed for England.

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An unexpected benefit

Well, here’s an unexpected benefit to my website. I get lots of comments from people that are just fun to read…even if some of them are friends who are even weirder than I am….and you know who I’m talking about, Jim.

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I gave in and joined the online world

So I have reluctantly been dragged into the last frontier on the Internet.  At least, this is the last frontier for me.  If I go any further, I’m pretty sure my head will explode.  Either that, or I’ll have to deliberately forget all the lines of “The Raven” that I so painstakingly memorized in my dorky youth in order to make room for more codes and passwords and access numbers and online names. 

The good news, of course, is that I can now never forget my great-grandmother’s maiden name because if I do I will forever be locked out of

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I have become my father

I have become my father.  I found myself sitting at the computer planning meals almost a month in advance with one of my lunch buddies.  I can picture my father sitting in the living room after dinner asking my mother what she wanted for dinner the next night and her look of exasperation at the idea that she already needed to be planning the next meal when the one she just ate had not yet been digested.

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Low rise pants…high rise waist

Need I really say more. My waist, what little of it I can still find, contiues to rise like an old man’s pants. My pants, on the other hand, are designed to stop somewhere around where my hips used to be before they decided to migrate south towards my knees.

I now know why my grandmother wore one rather shapeless black dress from her widowhood till she died. It was just easier. And the support knee highs didn’t show. And she never had to worry that when she raised her arms, her butt crack would show at a time when

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pictures

Frick and Frack

image

This is Frick and Frack, two of my foster birds. They are currently shredding an annoying catalog that is but one of many that comes in the mail all the time. It’s how they earn their kibble around here. They take out my frustration for me on how many trees die so that I can receive catalogs I don’t want that sell items I don’t need at prices I refuse to pay plus shipping which is astronomical because no one believes Alaska is not on the dark side of the moon.

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