July 2, 2007

• Current Events

  One way I know for sure that it is summer is that we are not sleeping much.  It doesn’t get dark and I forget to look at the clock and before I know it I notice that the light coming in the windows, which had been dimming, has begun to grow brighter.  Doug doesn’t know how long he had been up this time, before he wandered off to bed around 11 AM.   I remember him getting up around 11 AM on Saturday, and neither of us is sure that he has had any sleep since then.  That’s 48 hours… not unprecedented, and not really uncommon this time of year.  We will make up for it in a few months when it’s time to hibernate.

  The alcohol rehab ranch in Wasilla, where I was a volunteer van driver a couple of years ago, has received a telephoned bomb threat.  State Troopers are seeking information.  I’m curious.  It could have been a prank by someone unassociated with the place, or done by someone with a personal motivation to disrupt the program or inconvenience those who run the place.  I hadn’t known they had a website until I saw the news story about the bomb threat.  First thing I noticed when I went to the site was that they had misspelled, “alcohol.”  Why does that not surprise me?

  Down in Seward, people are gearing up for the 80th running of the Mount Marathon race on the Fourth.  The footrace goes up (the strenuous part) and down (the dangerous part) Mount Marathon.  Legend says that it started with a bar bet between two sourdoughs who disagreed on whether it was possible to climb the mile and a half and descend in less than an hour.  The winner of that first race did it in an hour and two minutes.

  Here in the Susitna Valley, it is raining again.  For the past week, it has been raining for more time than it hasn’t been raining.  No complaining from me, even though our roof is leaking in six different places.  The Susitna River fire, out across the river a few miles from here, is now contained.  Down on the Kenai Peninsula, however, the big fire in the Caribou Hills continues to spread.  For me, rain is ideal weather for the Independence Day holiday.  For one thing, it probably means less noise and traffic because more weekenders will stay in Anchorage. 

  The other thing, of course, is the decreased danger of fire from the celebratory fireworks.  Even though it isn’t dark enough at night for a good show, people still set the things off.  Occasionally, we will set off some colored smoke or firecrackers, but we save the skyrockets for New Years.

  While I was writing this, there was a power outage that lasted over an hour.  I’m so pleased that I’m using Firefox.  When it gets interrupted like that, it lets me restore my internet session, so I didn’t lose this post, which had been about two-thirds written when the power went out.  That’s the third power outage here in about a week, too.  I wonder what’s up with that.  Oh, well….

  Yesterday, I did some reading and revising of old memoir segments, made one of them protected, added all their links to the sidebar here, and removed them from the old list on the hub page.  It seemed like a lot of time and work for only a little progress, but at least that much is done now.  I’m on  a roll, and if all goes well I may get another memoir post done today.

  

  • 6:29 pm
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