We have a New Neighbor

A noisy owl has moved into our housing addition and apparently the best "who who" -ing time is about 1am. I heard it one other morning and thought it was the wind blowing through something. Last night though, the owl was calling for quite a while - long enough for me to wake up Robert and say "Hear the owl?". I'm not sure Robert truly appreciated the notice!

Anyway, from the information off of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation site, it appears we have 3 common possibilities:

1. Great Grey Owl
2. Northern Hawk Owl
3. Great Horned Owl

While I was hoping it would be a Snowy Owl, my guess is it is a Great Horned Owl because the site talks about them nesting in old raven's nests and we have a plethora of trash scattering ravens here. (Just so you know, our ravens can tell days of the week. Trash day is normally on Wednesday but was delayed to Thursday due to holidays and no one bothered to tell them. They were here Wednesday and were hungry!)

Regardless, I now have another animal to watch for and try to capture on film. If he/she only shows up at night though, chances of that are slim!

Skiing Today!

Finally!

Enough snow fell to hit the slopes. While I still skied over grass here and there and it was a little icy, we were downhill skiing. It was beautiful.

Bonus!

I only fell one time!

Of course it was the last run of the day and Robert had zoomed off down the hill. Yet I succeeded in getting my skis off, getting up, getting the skis back on and successfully catching up with him.

By that time, it had started to get busy and we were cold. Time to go home!

However, I see some more ski runs in the near future!

Merry Christmas to All!

Our turkey is in the oven and it is snowing like mad. It just doesn't get any better!

Have a wonderful day!

Squirt and his Christmas presents

Someone was a bad little boy yesterday.

Sure enough, Squirt opened not one but two of his Christmas presents early and repeatedly. I caught him one time...the telltale rustle, rustle, rustle of tissue paper ripping even though he was completely under the tree and couldn't be seen. Just the occasional movement of a bottom branch and a swinging ornament.

He was extraordinarily repentent and asked me not to tell Santa.

Now I am wrapping them again.....

Eagles, Moose, Bears - Oh My

And now, add one more thing to the list of things we (especially Squirt) need to be wary of....wolf attacks. Anchorage and Fairbanks have had a huge increase in wolves attacking and killing dogs this year over last year. Up until yesterday, the reports have always been of dogs either loose on a walk where they run into the woods or dogs on a lead in a yard when no people were around. This time, the dogs were on leashes and there were people attached to the dogs.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/12/22/alaska.wolf.attack.cnn

According to the experts, Anchorage has about 25 - 30 wolves in 5 packs (related story) and this behavior is more common when there is minimal snow and the moose can maneuver quickly to get away from the packs. However, Anchorage coveres a LOT of ground and I have no idea how close any of the packs live to us. So far, the attacks have all been in East Anchorage about 9 miles away as the crow flies (or the wolf runs) and we live in West Anchorage. However, I will probably start carrying pepper spary on our forays.

On a brighter note, Mars will be playing peek-a-boo behind the moon today. It will happen between 4:52 and 5:43 pm this afternoon (8-9pm hour CST). If it is clear and not windy (dark isn't a problem), we may have to dig out the telescope for better viewing!

Welcome to the shortest day of the year!!!

We will have about 4.5 hours of good sunshine here today (unless it's cloudy....I can't tell yet) and a brisk 7 degrees. We have already been out to shovel last night's 1" dumping of snow.

Christmas vacation has started! Twelve whole play days with Squirt. Robert actually gets 17 days. (I have to go back early for a special project...it's good to be wanted!) Regardless, after 17 fun filled play days, Squirt will be extraordinarily tired and very thankful for that first day when we leave him to "guard" again.

We will have to go check out the ski area tomorrow and maybe do a few runs!!!

Something new to try…

OK – the next time it gets down to -30, I’m trying these things!

http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/news/news_shorts/icebubbles.php

We have only hit -11 so far this year! Another 20 degrees will be a tad chilly!

The Grouse lived to see another day!

None came home with Robert.

Thank goodness we have grocery stores! (hahaha)

While Robert was out hunting, Squirt decided to nap on the Christmas decorations. It's a good thing Grandma made a bear or he wouldn't have anything to sleep on!!!

And...He's Off!

It's clear, dark and cool this morning....no wind and 4 degrees and Robert just left to go Grouse hunting. He has the ATV, guns, ammo, hunting license, snow shoes and arctic gear. I cooked him a hearty biscuit and red-eye gravy this morning and off he went. He will be driving to Wasilla to meet up with his hunting partners and then they will head north. (Guess I should get out the Alaska recipe book and see how to cook grouse!)

Since we have only one car that runs on ice, Squirt and I are on foot today. I am sure we will get a lot done around the house!

What should I do with the extra eggs???

As a continuation of last post....

There are some things you just can't find here such as Head Country BBQ Sauce, Williams Chili Seasoning (as a starting point for chili), spices at a reasonable price ($13 for a store brand, large garlic powder - we have to watch for sales!) and Reams Frozen Egg noodles to name a few. Because of the expense and sometimes lack of products, I have cooked a LOT more staple type items since moving here.

Most of the time, regular old American Beauty Pasta works fine. However homemade chicken noodle soup is the exception. It requires something different. Since we had extra eggs we weren't going to eat very fast and it is winter, sounds like the perfect time to have soup with homemade noodles.

Making noodles is similar to making bread. It requires lots of flour and I always manage to wear dark clothes so it is obvious where I am covered with it. Mix, roll them out, let dry for a couple of hours. Cut them to what ever size you want and toss around so the other side can get dry. (I should write a cookbook.) And this is where the mistake started....

I was going to put 1/2 in the fridge and the other in the freezer. Ziplocks have always worked fine but we have a vacuum sealer and trying to improve on the original idea I thought we should seal them instead. The sealing went fine. Two days later when ready to dump them in the soup to cook, we opened the package and had a brick. A solid, you could build a house with this - brick.

Luckily, after warming for a few minutes, I could pick them apart one by one from the brick making noodles again. However, dinner was late as it took a good 1/2 hour to do it.

BTW - our simple chicken noodle soup recipe....

Water
Cut up chicken breasts
little celery
salt, pepper to taste
Bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes
add noodles (whatever your preference)
serve when noodles are done!

Freezes great!

Note to young chefs...

Don't use the vacuum packer to seal home made egg noodles.

Ziplock Bags do just fine and you don't have one giant noodle when you open it up.

WooWoo! Here comes the Pineapple Express!!

It's that time of year! We have our first Pineapple Express going on right now. All of those warm winds from Hawaii swing up here for a visit to our beautiful state and they come with a vengeance! You can hear it coming, roaring down the mountains and when it hits the house, it sounds exactly like a freight train passing. Right now, we have a steady wind of about 25-30mph gusting to 75 mph or so and it went on most of the night. Our huge, ~300 pound, 'we can feed and army', stainless steel grill rolled across the deck last night. Thank goodness it didn't move into the yard. I wonder if our reindeer are still in the raspberry patch? Too dark to tell now. These are the days I just hope all of our shingles stay on!

And to top it off, it is 42 degrees at our house. The tiny, tiny dusting of snow in our yard is gone. The ice on the deck is gone (which is good!). Of course, we are supposed to have rain turning to snow later today but this eliminates any skiing for another couple of weeks.

We are coming up to the shortest days of the year now. Only 14 left before we start having more sunlight signifying summer is on its' way! Of course one of the best things about this time of the year is I get to see most of the sunrises and sunsets. The other day we had a sunset so spectacular, I had to email my friends in their offices to go look out the window. The setting sun was a giant ball of bright orange coloring the low hanging clouds an amazing hue. Other days, the alpenglow is spectacular. Well worth the few minutes away from the computer.

Time to go see what treasures blew into our yard last night. Maybe we have new lawn furniture now!

The Earth Moved Today

There I was, sitting at my desk, discussing something with a co-worker when I heard a loud pop, like a big wind gust blowing the window, and then my chair started moving. I was feeling an earthquake...my first earthquake. It seemed to last quite a while and ended up being a 5.0 magnitude. It was centered 65 miles NW of Anchorage. More information and the location can be found at the Alaska Earthquake web site.

Of course I had to immediately check Squirtcam to see what he was doing. Nothing different from normal late afternoon woofing and spinning.... Doesn't look like anything fell off of shelves in the house. (whew!)

Since we got home so late on Monday night, I really didn't get the chance to look around outside to see if anything changed while we were gone. From all appearances (several new moose nugget piles) Momma and Calf were busy in our yard this week. My huge, overgrown into the pathway Black Currant bushes have been SEVERELY trimmed. I planned on trimming them this spring...I am just not sure I would have trimmed quite that much. Hope they survive.

Of course, to get to the currants, they had to walk over two of the reindeer and knock them into the third. Robert had to replace about 25 bulbs across the three deer. The moose won that battle...we have moved the reindeer to the raspberry patch. (From all appearances, raspberry stalks aren't that tasty to moose.)

Speaking of moose - here's an article no one should miss out on! Drunken Moose Who would have thought. I'll bet he was pretty funny to watch and pretty cranky as it wore off!

Of course the best part of coming home....

was seeing that cuddle puppy Squirt. We really missed him.

However, he was at his favorite dog sitter's house most of the time and got to go to two Thanksgiving feasts.

I'm not certain he was happy to see us walk in this morning!

(OK - he was but he wasn't unhappy about leaving to go with her last week!)

Back Home Again

We have been traveling. This year we went outside (Alaskan for anywhere other than Alaska) to Kansas and Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. We arrived our house in Anchorage at 1:15 this morning. LONG flights but luckily no travel delays. Sadly - almost all of the snow has once again melted - no skiing today!

Egad was it hot down south. Those 70 degree days were tough. I wore shorts more last week than I did last year. There we were dressed in shorts, t-shirts and sandals looking for air conditioning when others had jeans, sweatshirts and coats with household heaters running. It finally cooled down to the 30s and snowed a little. It is nice to be able to share our weather. :) It was fun to people watch in the airports - it was sunny and 50 in Houston yesterday which means winter coats, snow boots and ear muffs. Isn't it interesting how a human body can acclimate itself?

All of our Christmas presents made it to relatives without breaking (we shipped them) and hopefully the packages we shipped back will make it in the same condition. Our families were in good health and it was so wonderful to see them. Plus - we successfully chose for the 3 and 4 year old fabulous, noisy toys for their parents to enjoy!

It had been one year since I last left Alaska and I am pretty sure that is the longest time span I have stayed in one state let alone one country since graduating from college. I discovered I missed the hustle and bustle of the Lower 48 - the 4 lane highways - the option of choosing different roads to get to the same place - the tons of places to stop and get something to eat - not that we ate a lot just the ability to do it. But coming back last night, I so was glad to get home - ironically away from the hustle and bustle. Looking out of the window and flying over the snow covered mountains awash in moonlight, no little communities to interrupt the darkness, the clear, starry skies. We had a six mile cab ride or so from the airport in the city and stopped at two stoplights. Even though most of the snow is gone, the dusting in our drive showed momma moose and calf had recently been through. While many people would never live here because of the weather, extended winter dark and summer sun along with the "isolation", to me this is paradise and I am so thankful I have the opportunity and plan to take advantage of it while we are here.

Now it just needs to get cold enough for me to dig out my fur coat and mukluks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your turkey be moist, pumpkin pie sweet and journeys safe!

Oh No! Guess Who Just Turned 50???

Yes - it's a sad day for one of us....Robert turns 50 today.

One half century....

Glad I'm still several years away :)

The Snow arrived again today!

After a good - 3 shovel Saturday, we had a "snow squall" this afternoon.

Hadn't been in one of those before.

The sky turned black - just like a good, old Southern thunderstorm. The fog moved in - I couldn't see anything out of my office window.

Except - it wasn't fog. In a matter of minutes, we had 2 new inches of snow on the cars in the parking lot. (Time to find the scraper!) Complete white out conditions in the Anchorage Bowl. Traffic going home today actually reminded me of Houston...

After dinner, Squirt and I headed out to shovel the deck. I think Squirt wanted to go play as after only one toss of snow, he was ready to go inside. He then proceeded to watch all of the work from his perch on the couch. Oh the irony of it...there I was shoveling trails in the yard for the dog and there he was watching from the nice comfy couch.

He has me trained well.

It's Here! It's Here!

Snow Has Arrived!

We have started shoveling season. Finally - skiing can't be too far away!

A Two Moose Morning!

What a perfect start to the day! Robert had to be at work for a 6:30am meeting which means we were up earlier than normal but all else was just a typical “go to work” day. Get ready…go downstairs…look out the front window for animals…forget to look out the side window for animals…put on coat and shoes…take Squirt outside…walk towards the gate to the yard…

That’s when it got exciting!

Squirt was standing at the gate and on there on the terrace just outside of our corral (decoration only) fence, severely trimming our bushes, were Momma and Baby Moose. (If I had looked out the side windows I would have seen them.) Momma heard Squirt’s tags jingling and stopped eating – ears went back to unhappy moose mode. We quickly turned around and went to the other side of the house to avoid the trampling of either one of us. Squirt was very good. He didn’t woof once (of course there was no glass between him and the moose).

After Squirt finished, we went inside and promptly went to the windows to watch the duo. They continued to trim bushes (I’m OK with that – if they don’t we would have to in the spring) and then nonchalantly stepped over the corral fence even closer to the house. (FYI – the top of the fence is about 8 inches below their bellies.) Momma came so close to the house, if I had been on the deck, I could have pet her…although that would have probably lead to “unhappy moose mode”.

Quite frankly, Robert is very lucky he got breakfast AND we made it to work on time because moose in the yard could have kept Squirt and me entertained for HOURS. They were still in the yard as we pulled out of the driveway. At noon, when we were home for lunch, we discovered they ate the pumpking offering....(note to self - must buy another pumpkin!).

Even the drive to work was great – we saw a fox running on the road.

Obviously, today was not supposed to be a work day. It was supposed to be a “go watch wildlife” day. I am confident if we had gone uphill to the mountains instead of downhill to work, we would have seen bears also.