October 15, 2004

• Three ayem…

  That’s what my computer clock says right now.  I’d no idea it was
  so late.  I don’t know what time I got home, but since I limped in
  here I’ve been putting away groceries.  As a gauge of how
  exhausted I am, when Doug made a little joke about my “decorative
  arrangement” of winter squash needing some dried flowers (actually it’s just piles of squash in baskets
  wherever there’s room for them — food for the winter), I was more
  annoyed than amused.  My sense of humor suffers when I’m fatigued.

  This was my first trip to town to drive the rehab van to the NA meeting
  in over a month.  The meeting was good, and I felt great being
  back among those people.  The rehab residents were appreciative of
  my being there to take them to the outside meeting.  But I’m
  terribly tired now.  It was a full day.

  I got to the tire place right after they opened at nine this morning,
  got my winter tires put on, loaded the summer tires in the back of my
  station wagon, and went to breakfast with Greyfox while the tire guys
  replaced one of the worn tires on his car with a better one that I’d
  taken into town for that purpose.  Then we picked up his car from
  the tire place, went back to his place at Felony Flats, and shifted
  junk around, made space in my car for a collection of things he’s
  scrounged out of the dumpster there and collected thereabout.

  There was a little time for shopping and a taco before I had to go to
  the rehab ranch to get my load of passengers.  Around that time we
  went through a hailstorm.  Things at the ranch were
  uncharacteristically chaotic when we got there.  A “ranch hand” is
  supposed to check the signup list against the sign out sheet, count my
  passengers and give me the keys, but one hand had recently been fired
  and the new one was clueless.  I’m glad I knew what had to be
  done, and there were a couple of women employees there to do the
  checklist business and all.  If I hadn’t know where they kept the
  keys for the van, the trip wouldn’t have happened.

  Then, after the meeting, once I’d returned my passengers and the van to
  the ranch, the serious grocery shopping started.  Two treks
  through big supermarkets and some artful packing of purchase in among
  the tires, a crippled end table Greyfox salvaged and wants me to
  repair, and the case of motor oil, big bag of dog food and other bulky
  items we’d gotten earlier in the day, then I was on my way home…
  after I stopped to gas up the car, of course.

  I ran into the first patch of pea-soup fog about ten miles from
  town.  A couple of miles in it and then a few miles of relatively
  clear visibility, then two more extensive thick fog patches in the next
  25 miles.  About four miles from home I had to stop to let the
  heat from the engine melt the ice in the carb intake that was choking
  off my car’s air supply.  That’s routine in wet or foggy weather
  when the temps are within ten degrees or so either side of the freezing
  mark.  I’m just glad I’m on the ground when it happens.  That
  could be messy in an airplane.  But it only takes a minute or two
  with the engine off, and it’s ready to go again.  We (Streak
  Subaru and I) were going slow through the thickest fog yet, when we got
  to our turnoff here.  I almost missed it, the fog was so thick.

  First thing Doug asked me was if I’d felt the earthquake.  He
  described it as just a sudden hard jolt, nothing broke or fell from
  shelves, which suggests it was local and minor.  We’re only a mile
  from the big Susitna Fault, and the area is riddled with smaller
  faults.  We get little quakes all the time.

  Well, I hope this made sense.  I’m too tired even to proof it
  tonight.  But I don’t have to do that drive to town again for two
  weeks.  G’nite all.

  

  • 7:30 am
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