January 14, 2008

• Back in Touch

  At least one of you has been wondering if my prolonged absence signalled a setback.  I’m still not in tiptop shape (ooogha, understatement alert!), and the temperature is 24 below zero right now, but it was a technical setback, not a physical one, responsible for my failure to blog last week.

  Suddenly one day, the file I was writing would save to the laptop’s hard drive but when I’d try to save it to disk, it would say, “cannot create file.”  When that happened, I stopped writing, being not particularly inspired nor urgently driven to write, when whatever I would produce would be forever trapped in this old Compaq.

  I fiddled with it, tried using a different diskette, restarted the thing half a dozen times, then turned the problem over to Doug.  He may or may not know more about computers and their problems than I do.  He certainly has more of that wild talent that Greyfox calls the “technological laying on of hands,” than I have — and I have my share.  The old GMC Jimmy Greyfox used to have would get cranky for him occasionally, stalling, sputtering, hard to start.  I’d drive it a time or two, and it would straighten right out and drive fine until Greyfox bollixed it up again.  But I digress….

  After procrastinating for a few days, and taking a different, presumably usable, previously used disk from the file box next to the printer, Doug plugged in ol’ Schpeedy Trackbawl and booted him up.  First I heard the odd double beep I’d noticed upon startup a few times right after Doug had installed the Breeze word processor.  Then I heard a grunt from Doug that seemed to have a question mark or two after it.

  I returned a questioning grunt and he explained that he’d gotten an error message, “checksum invalid,” and then the machine went on and started DOS.  I said, “Hey, I’ll bet it will work now.  It was giving me that for a while, then about the same time it wouldn’t save to disk, it stopped doing that when I started it up.”  Sure enough, it worked for him then, and this morning when I started it up, it gave out with the extra double beep and the “checksum invalid,” and was able to save to the A drive.

  Last week was largely uneventful in that except for a couple of days, all I did was rest and take it easy.  I still don’t get any farther from my bed than the kitchen, haven’t been outside since getting home from hospital, except for the one trip to the clinic for followup.  Wednesday and Thursday were eventful enough to make up for the rest.

  Wednesday, Hurricane Greyfox blew through.  The supply run had been scheduled and delayed time after time for a couple of weeks.  Weather, his health, road conditions, other things to do… one thing and another came up to delay the trip, until finally, just as it started to snow and more heavy snow was forecast, he went through with it to beat the blizzard.  His plan was to bring up the groceries and a few books and videos, spend some time on our computer, take Doug and a few water jugs to the spring to load up on water, and do a few loads of wash for me at the local laundromat. A day or two before he came up, the Wasilla library had a bag sale, all the books a big  paper grocery bag would hold, for $3.00.  He filled two bags with a total of about fifty books, and credited me with having taught him how to pack the maximum load in the available space.  I won’t be running out of reading material for a while.

  The following day, on Thursday, I had a visit from the grader operator who plows the snow around here in winter and smooths out the gravel roads in summer.  I heard the grader approaching — hard to miss, kinda noisy.  Then, it stopped out front.  As it idled there, Koji started barking frantically, then I saw someone walk past my south window.  By the time he knocked at the door, I was halfway out of bed.  Koji got to the door ahead of me, woofing loudly, protectively, threateningly.  I got a firm grip on his collar before opening the door. 

  The man asked me, “Are you Kathy?”  I said yes, and he said, “Your husband’s in town?”  I acknowledged that fact, and he went on:  “You just got out of the hospital?”  I said, “Recently, yes.”  Then he got to his point.  “Is everything okay here?”   Greyfox had been trying to phone me, and the phone just rang and rang, with no answer.  He had called the State Troopers and asked them to make a welfare check.  Either the troopers had been otherwise occupied, or the unplowed road had been too deep in snow for them, and the dispatcher had sent the snowplow driver to check on me.  Just another of the wonderful things I love about living in Alaska.

  I smiled at the man, thanked him for stopping by, said that my cats had probably unplugged my phone again, and told him I would check the phone line and call Greyfox to let him know I was okay.  I did that, and our conversation was interrupted by an incoming call from Trooper dispatch, letting him know that I was okay.  When he called me back, he said he had apologized profusely to the dispatcher for his panic, and had been assured that it was all in a day’s work for them.

  Greyfox was uncharacteristically emotional.  Not that he does not get emotional, but his usual strong emotions are of the anger and outrage sort.  Anxiety, for him, usually relates to weather or finances.  He has seldom if ever expressed any concern or anxiety over my wellbeing.  He said several times how glad he was that I was still breathing, which sorta surprised me.  Before the end of our conversation, he said he was getting all misty, teary-eyed, with relief.  Go figure.  Maybe his sticker shock over the hospital bill has begun to wear off.

  

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