The Ant and the Grasshopper...

This weekend I stepped in a puddle that went up to my ears. I am now using the baseboard heaters to dry my running/hiking/walking/snow shoes.

Up until today it has rained for about 17 days straight. Usually it was just a light rain, but for the past 2 days, it has been a constant non-stop downpour. The rivers are swelling, and the Parks highway (road to Denali and Fairbanks) has been washed out in at least 2 places. Great. Now not only can I not get to Denali, but the second largest city in Alaska is out of my reach. We are an island unto ourselves.

Fearing the worst, yesterday Dianne went to Blockbuster and rented 47 movies. Since they are due back in 5 days, I figure that if I watch them back to back I should be done with them in a week and a half. Luckily I really don’t want to watch most of them. It seems if you let a wife alone in a video store, they tend to get the more, “girlie” type movies. Luckily for me she is very much “girlie”. I on the other hand I will be forced to watch Kung Fu theater. I purchased the entire 1st season, and it appears to have about 50 disks with about 532 episodes. I have already watched the first disk and a half. It was about 12 hours of Kung Fu. I figure by the time I finish watching the series, I should be a full blown Showlin Master. I will be able to snatch the grasshopper, and walk on the pebble, or something like that…

I was woken up this morning by hurricane force winds blowing my blinds open and shut. What was worse was that someone was shining a zillion watt flashlight through my window making it hard for me to sleep. After about 15 minutes of slamming the blinds open and shut, I decided to get up and close the window. What I saw was amazing. It was sunshine. I looked directly at it. I was blinded. I looked away. I saw spots. It had been 17 days since I had seen sunshine, and I was happy to see it still existed. I quickly woke up Dianne and we made plans for a day filled with sunshine. We talked about the park, walking on a trail, going to the zoo, and many other things we could do. We jumped into the shower so that we could get going as soon as possible. We only had one fight over the soap, and several scuffles over who would rinse off first. Dianne won on account that she is the wife, and sets the mood for the house. I figured the extra “soap time” would just get me that much cleaner. After she was done, she hopped out and dried off. When I came out I was informed that we would not be doing anything today. I had let her rinse off first, so I knew that was not it. She told me that it was raining again. I thought she was kidding until I looked out the window. She wasn’t kidding. I told her that I had a back up plan. We would go looking for sausage. She quickly told me that she was not in the mood and she had a headache. I then explained to her that we were going to look for Reindeer sausage. She quickly agreed and off we went. Our search for sausage was fruitful, and we ate many samples. The only problem was that the sample that we liked the most was just sold out, and a new order will not be in until Friday of next week. I will have to wait for my sausage.

After having been disappointed by the weather and the sausage, we decided to get a bite to eat - nothing fancy, just something under $245. That limited our choices, so we decided to go to a dinner. We were seated, ordered or meals and received our food. The meal was unimpressive, but listening to the Strange conversations around us made up for the mediocre quality of the food. One table was debating where the worst coffee was served, while another was discussing the merits of flannel vs. wool (I was wearing cotton). My favorite was when we were leaving. A bunch of guys were discussing the merits of sleeping in a rental car while in Las Vegas to save money on a hotel room. Another one in the group suggested sleeping at a slot machine in a corner of one of the smaller casinos ( I believe I have done that before - not on purpose, but staying up for 36 hours at a time tends to do that to you).

Now on our way home, the rain starts to lighten, the mountains become visible, and that is when I saw the problem. You see, the mountain tops were covered with dandruff. Ok, it was snow, and in some places it looked like a lot of snow. Now I am no expert, but isn’t this is the middle of August? Are we supposed to have snow on the mountains this soon? This little bit of information tells me that from now on, it is only going to get colder. That means that I will have to go get winter clothes. Yes, I am still wearing shorts and a t-shirt, even though it is like 42 degrees outside. I am hoping that they sell really cheap winter clothes, because I still haven’t paid off the bed yet. I also need to get studded tires. We have a rear wheel drive car and I could just see us spinning in circles on the first day that the roads ice over. Oh yea, and that pesky little block heater. That will need to be installed also. I really am going to need my car to start in the morning after it has been sitting all night in sub zero temps. So yes, I do have a lot to get done next week. I may even have to start one of those to-do lists that people talk about so much.