Well, I'm trying the dry rice trick to try to save my cell phone today. The kids left a glass of water on the table that the cats conveniently decided would look much better pooled around my phone than in the glass where it belongs. Oh well, if this is the worst thing that happens to me this week I'll consider it a good week! We're now firmly into the teasing phase of winter. We got a little over 2 feet of snow yesterday and the day before and it warmed up to almost above freezing. Now the back side of the storm is coming through. It's 11 now and the temperature is dropping like a stone. It's supposed to get back into the -0 range today and tomorrow and then warm back up again. The endless cycle of life in Alaska. As I told a good friend of mine: If you're weak, stupid or unprepared this state will kill you in a minute, but I guarantee you won't be bored while it's happening. As I was cutting another tree for wood the other day I was struck again by the simplicity of life up here. When you're cold, you cut a tree and burn it. Hungry and you go out and hunt some food. Everything after that is pretty much just window dressing. Really, in the grand scheme of things, life is really as complicated as we make it whether we want to admit it or not. I think it's necessary sometimes to see the purity in simply existing before you can truly appreciate living. Have a great day, everyone!

Well, I'm sitting here next to my stove, relaxing with a good 2:00 AM cup of coffee, planning my next movie script. Nothing real serious, just doing some mental doodling at the moment. I think I'll write a comedy this time. It's always been a dream of mine to write something of the same caliber as some of Mel Brooks hits, or even airplane or Top Secret. Something fun, but with a plot. Something that makes you laugh your butt off but still leave the theatre feeling like you've watched a movie. I don't know if I have those seeds of greatness in me, but it's fun to try anyway. I still haven't given up on the script I sent to Amazon, but it needs a lot of rework and tonight I'm in far to frivolous a mood to think seriously. I just spent the last hour or so joking around with the kids. It's good to see them laugh. It's been a rough couple of months so the moments of levity have been few and far between. It's snowing like crazy out again tonight, looks like we've got at least 6 more inches and it's still coming down like crazy. I finished the last of my behavioral science class. I passed..I think, which is a minor miracle in itself with everything that's been going on in the last month. I'm not really sure what's changed in the last few days. All the problems we've been having are still there, it's still winter out, maybe it's because I'm finally feeling better, but I've been suddenly feeling like everything is going to be okay. I can see in colors again, everything isn't just shades of grey anymore. Sure, it's not bright, gleaming Vegas technicolor, but there's definitely a glimmer I've been missing for a while. I think if we can make it through March we'll be all right. March is, for those of you that didn't know, the one year anniversary of my wife passing away. It's also, on St. Patrick's day, what would have been our 14th wedding anniversary. I still miss you horribly, Glenda, but I have a feeling you're urging me to get on with my life somehow. I was actually amazed the other day, I looked at the statistics for this blog and I saw I've had readers from as far away as Russia, Brazil, Indochina and Germany. I'm not sure what drew you to my site or how you found it, but thank you for reading and I hope I'm at least mildly entertaining you! I'd also like to say thanks to everyone who has left me comments on here. I know I've been horrible about responding to you and for that, I'm sorry. Know that I DO read them, though and I appreciate all the feedback! I know, I'm rambling a bit. What can I say, it's 2:10 AM, I'm drinking coffee and staring at a computer. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn't ramble at least a little bit? I've had some requests for pictures and I haven't gotten around to posting any yet. Honestly, as soon as I dig around and figure out how I'll put some up for everyone to see. Maybe I'll even tag in some of the wilderness survival videos I've been pondering filming. That's right, a very good friend of mine suggested that I should film some videos about survival out here in the great white and I suppose maybe I should. I guess I've ripped on the fake television shows enough that I should either make something better or shut up. Again, still in the planning process, but we'll see. I guess my problem is I don't consider myself a survival 'expert' but, I've managed to not die stupidly even though I live out here all the time so I suppose that's as good a criteria as an expert as any. Oh well, enough rambling for the moment. I think I'm going to finish my coffee, jot down a few more site gags and head for bed. Tomorrow is another day and for a change I'm actually looking forward to waking up. Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!

Okay, so- Winter's back. It was 4 when I woke up this morning and quite frankly, I'm tired of writing about it so I figured I'd post one of my short stories instead. This is one I wrote for my creative writing class at school. I hope you all enjoy it!

Frozen

            Dugan pushed back from the table after he finished eating, his belly full of the savory moose stew and home made biscuits that his wife Greta had prepared. He packed his pipe and touched a match to the bowl, clouds of thick, heavy smoke filling the air as he relaxed after his meal. It was warm in the cabin, something to be greatly appreciated living in the middle of the wilderness in Alaska like they did. The woodstove was roaring, eating almost an entire tree a day to keep the cabin at this temperature. The thermometer hovered at around 65 in the house, quite an impressive feat for the stove since the temperature outside had plunged into the -40 range. Dugan reached over and grabbed the coffee pot, which was bubbling madly, and poured two steaming cups handing one to Greta and taking the other for himself. He watched her as she prepared hers, two spoon fulls of sugar and enough powdered creamer to cut the thick taste of the heavy black brew. He laughed like he always did. “Gonna have a little coffee with your creamer, Hun?”

She smiled at him, her features lit by the flickering oil lamp on the table. It was mid January and there was no more gas being delivered until at least March, so running the generator was reserved for very brief periods such as watching a movie together or going online to shop for supplies. “You know I can’t stand drinking that tar that you make without diluting it a little, Dug. That stuff will stand a spoon straight up until it melts it.”

He looked at his cup thoughtfully, puffing on his pipe. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, it is a little thick. I better cut it down some myself!” He winked at her as he grabbed the bottle of Crown Royale on the shelf and poured a liberal shot into his cup. He tasted it and sighed in satisfaction. “Now THAT is coffee!” Suddenly, over their lighthearted banter the howl of a wolf was heard. His bearded face went white as he listened for a moment and he bolted to his feet, coffee and pipe forgotten as he shrugged into his parka and stepped out into the frozen night.

He stood outside for a few minutes, listening. The northern lights flamed above his head, blazing streaks of green and blue dancing in the heavens as he stood completely still, ignoring the stinging cold on his face. It was quiet. So quiet that it was deafening, the silence an almost tangible thing that wrapped around you and squeezed until you nearly wanted to cry out, just to make it stop. The only sound for several minutes was the strange, deep booming of the Aurora as they put on their show. Greta stepped outside, a bit more careful to bundle up first, and came up behind him, handing him his thick fur hat. “Was it him?” She asked softly, a tinge of fear in her voice. Suddenly the howl came again, sharp and distinctive. He was close this time, just over the ridge. The sharp yaps of the first howl were quickly joined by several others, a ring around the small cabin of eerie, echoing howls. “It’s him.” Dugan said tersely. “Dammit, I was hoping that sonovabitch would have died over the summer. Sounds like he’s got himself some friends, too.” Greta slipped her gloved hand into his, squeezing his hand gently. “It’s not your fault, Dug. I thought it seemed like a good idea, too. Crossing a wolf and a husky just made sense. He should have been a great working dog. Hell, He probably would have been, if he hadn’t broken his chain that day and started running with the pack.”

Dugan offered her a brief smile for the encouraging words. “Yeah, I know, Greta, It was a good plan, but now we’ve got a 200 pound wolf dog running out here that isn’t afraid of us or anyone else. He’s taken on the alpha role of that pack, too. They’re dangerous now. We have an entire pack of wolves that have completely gotten over their fear of people. He’s going to have to be dealt with. I’m going hunting in the morning.”

As they lay in bed that night sleep eluded Dugan. The next day he was going out after an unknown number of wolves, tracking them for as long as he needed to kill Ole Blue. Finally he fell into a fitful sleep. Suddenly the door to the cabin burst open and the huge form of a wolf leapt up the 6’ distance to the loft where their bed was. Greta screamed as the wolf grabbed her, teeth gleaming in the muted light as he tore into her throat and begin shaking his head viciously. Dugan felt her hot blood spray across his face as he punched at the wolf, screaming in rage and frustration. Suddenly he sat straight up in bed, hair matted with cold sweat as he heard that howl again, off in the distance, taunting him. He looked over at Greta who was still sleeping peacefully and sighed in relief. Just a dream, but far to real a possibility as long as that damn animal was alive. He slid out of bed without disturbing her, climbed out of the loft and poured himself a cup of coffee, sipping it and trying to ignore the shaking of his hands as he lifted the cup to his lips. He finished his coffee quickly and set about gathering his things. As he put the layers of clothing on he thought about what his plan was going to be. Blue had been hanging out up on the ridge, among the rocks and hollows where the snow wasn’t as deep. He was going to have to climb up after him. He wrapped the belt around his waist which had his pistol and knife already attached, checking the load in the pistol and making sure the knife was free in the sheath, easy to remove if he had to. He made a quick breakfast of leftover stew and biscuits from last night and climbed up into the loft, kissing Greta gently. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Luv.” He whispered to her. She opened her eyes sleepily and looked into his for a moment.

“You be careful out there, Dugan.” She said softly. “Don’t you go making me a widow because of some damn wolf.” He grinned at her and shook his head. “Nah, It would take more than a wolf to make me not come back home, Hun. I like your biscuits to much.” She slapped him playfully on the shoulder and he winked at her and went down the steps. “I’ll be back soon.” He grabbed his rifle and his bag, fastening his thick fur hat to his head as he stepped out into the darkness. It was 6 A.M., it wouldn’t be light for hours yet so he turned on his headlamp and quickly put on his snowshoes, heading into the mountains. He climbed quickly, being used to walking on snowshoes. By the time dawn came, around 10:00 he was already at 600 feet high. He slipped on his sunglasses to shield his eyes from the brilliant reflection coming off of the pure white snow and started looking around for any signs of the pack. He found their tracks before very long and began to trail them, pausing for long periods to glass the hillside around him. Finally, around 3:00, as it was starting to get dark, he spotted his target, far off in the distance, around 700 yards away, to far for a clean shot. He started moving quickly toward them, hoping to get a shot at the monster he created before dark. He should have been more careful moving over the ridge. As he was cresting a snow berm it broke underneath him, his weight quickly taking the entire drift down in a mini avalanche, carrying him over a 50’ cliff in a matter of seconds. He felt himself falling suddenly, letting go of his rifle and tucking into a ball, waiting for the inevitable painful impact. There was a sharp pain in his knee as the snowshoe twisted, popping the joint with a painful Crack of electric fire up his leg. He was very lucky, though. Instead of breaking his body on the jagged rocks he landed in a massive drift of powdered snow that had been left on the far side of the lake after the last huge wind storm. He lay for a while, bruised and bloodied from the fall, his knee throbbing in pain. By now it was fully dark, the moon casting eerie shadows over everything as he slowly dug himself up out of the snowdrift. He thought about his situation for a moment. He was several miles from home, his knee was throbbing and would never support his weight, his rifle was gone, somewhere under several feet of snow, and there was an angry wolf pack in the area that wasn’t afraid of people. He sighed, not happy with his situation. “Well,” He said out loud to himself, “I guess we do what we gotta do, Dugan.” He removed his snowshoes and quickly began digging himself a snow cave, using them as shovels. After his shelter was completed, packed and firming up, he turned his attention to firewood, half crawling, half swimming through the snow to reach some nearby trees. He still had his knife and his pistol and he quickly used the knife to cut some dead wood as well as some live spruce branches to make smoke for a signal fire. He dragged the wood back to his makeshift camp and dug into his bag, taking out fire making supplies. Quickly he had a small, warming blaze going that reflected heat back into his snow shelter quite well. He chewed on a piece of beef jerky and drank some water, occasionally feeding another stick into the flames. He sighed. “Well, It could be worse, I suppose.”  He wrapped himself in his emergency blanket and fell into a fitful sleep. Sometime in the night he was awakened by a low growl. Cold chills ran down his spine as he opened his eyes and saw the dark shadows of several wolves just outside the dim red light of the ashes of his campfire. “Hello, Blue.” He said softly, his hand moving slowly toward his gun. “I guess it’s about time we finish this, you and I, Huh?” The largest of the wolves moved closer to him, eyes gleaming green in the dim light. Dugan reached up slowly and flipped on his headlamp, raising the gun at the same time and pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. The cylinder of the pistol must have gotten moisture into it in the night and was frozen solid. No matter how hard he tugged on the trigger, it wouldn’t move, wouldn’t fire. The sudden movement spurred his monster to life, though, the huge wolf/dog hybrid lunging forward, teeth bared in a fierce snarl. Dugan hit the beast on the nose with the barrel of the pistol, receiving a satisfying yelp of pain in response, and then threw the useless gun at another member of the pack that was considering joining the attack. He yanked his knife from its sheath and dove at Blue, wrestling the beast, stabbing viciously even as he felt the animal’s teeth sink into his shoulder. He yelled in pain, pulling the wolf’s head back as he buried the knife in its chest. The others in the pack, stunned by the cries of pain from the Alpha dog, backed away in fear, finally turning to run as Dugan yelled at Blue hysterically, quite insane from the pain and adrenaline coursing through his system as well as in shock from the vicious bites he’d taken. “Dammit, Blue! I didn’t want to do this, you made me do it! It wasn’t supposed to be like this, you stupid mutt! You were supposed to be Man’s best friend, you son of a bitch, not some kind of crazy man eating monster!” The dog finally went limp, staring up into Dugan’s eyes as he died in his arms, blood soaking into Dugan’s clothes. He lay back, exhausted, sore, and dizzy. He had done it, He’d faced his monster and won. The pack would know fear of people once more, they would no longer be a threat. He closed his eyes, relaxing, consciousness fleeing for a while as the body of the wolf lay over him, warming him, his blood and the wolf’s blood mixing freely. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when he heard the sound of a snow machine in the distance, Likely Greta out looking for him since he didn’t come home last night. He piled green spruce branches on the coals of his fire, blowing on it carefully until billows of blackish/grey smoke lifted into the sky. He grinned widely as he heard the snow machine coming closer, limping from his snow cave and waving as he saw he come over the horizon. As the snow machine pulled up alongside him he gazed regretfully at the cold, dead wolf laying in the cave. He nodded once in respect to the once proud animal and, gathering his few belongings, collapsed the cave around the beast, offering him a respectful burial. He smiled at Greta and limped over, half collapsing onto the seat behind her. “Let’s go home, Luv.” He said. “I’m starving.”

Well, I think my funk is beginning to fade a bit. I'm starting to notice things again, some of the miracles of nature that are around me all the time that I haven't been able to see for a while. The snow is starting to melt a bit, some amazing icicles forming on my eaves now. They should grow for quite a while unless the kids decide to play baseball with them again like they usually do every year. The snow has begun a migration off my porch roof and because of the freezing and cooling it's actually made an impossible 90 degree turn so the outside edge is actually underneath my roof. This is the kind of thing that I haven't been able to see for the last few weeks, even though it's been around me the whole time. Winter up here numbs the mind after a while. When it finally warms up to above 0 on a regular basis it is like the blood begins flowing to your brain again. It's getting light for longer now, I think we're gaining around 5 minutes of light a day. It seems like last week it was dark by 4:00, now it's after 6 before the last of the light fades. I was struck by the difference in people's attitudes based on geographical locations today. A lot of my friends on Facebook that live down in the lower 48 were complaining because there was 5" of snow forecast. We've been getting snow nearly every day again and all of us were ecstatic when it started because it meant it was warm enough to snow again. (It rarely snows at -20, all the moisture freezes out of the air to fast) I think most of us up here would agree that we'd rather have snow every day as opposed to such painfully cold temperatures again. I'm always amused by the survival shows (I know, I've been going on about them lately, I'll stop soon, I promise!) When you see a nameless survivor outside in an arctic setting and he's wearing a light coat and no hat and the caption of -25 degrees comes across the screen here's a tip- It's not real. I've made the mistake of ring without eye protection at -25 and have had my contacts literally freeze to my eyes. it hurts! Everything about -25 hurts. You have every inch of exposed skin covered as much as possible, trust me! I swear, as soon as I'm able I'll be in Barbados or Maui or someplace equally as warm and pleasant as soon as the January freeze starts! Anyway, enough about the cold- It's FINALLY over, we made it through another year, tough as it was and we're starting to look forward to breakup now. My posts SHOULD start getting a lot more interesting, we have a lot of plans for hunting, fishing and camping trips this spring and summer which I'll be sharing on here. Thanks for bearing with me as I went through this last few weeks, I know I haven't been entirely entertaining, I promise I'll try to do a lot better! ;-)

I've been in this horrible funk for the last few days and it's driving me crazy! I'm not even sure what the problem is. Nothing seems to inspire me at the moment. The world is various shades of grey and I can't seem to find the energy to care about anything. It's like the gas is on, but the pilot light has gone out. Hopefully it's just the final throes of winter kicking my ass and when breakup finally hits everything will begin to be better again. Right now I think I have to be content to just exist.

Okay, I've been bad, I admit it. I haven't written in a few days. I've been sick (Unofficial Dr. diagnosis is whooping cough), Valentine's day left me pretty depressed, and I've been totally consumed with worry about losing my house. All those things combined have left me REALLY pre-occupied. Well, I FINALLY talked to a real person at WF today and she helped me out. The sale has been put off for a couple of months and we're trying to figure out a refinancing plan that will work with my altered financial circumstances. I'm feeling better and another holiday has passed. I won't say I won't disappear again in the next month or so for a little while, it's coming close to the one year anniversary of Glenda's accident, so I may be feeling a bit anti-social, but for right now I'm back. The temperatures have warmed up a lot and I'm starting to ponder bear hunting again. We've been amusing ourselves watching survival shows on net flix for the past few days and I have to say: Please- Whatever you do, do NOT try to mimic the survival tactics of those shows! They are totally for entertainment purposes and, while they do contain SOME useful information, trying to decipher between that and the utter BS would be difficult, if not impossible unless you knew what you were doing. Anyway, I'm not going to hang out long tonight, I just wanted to say Hi to everyone and let you know I was still alive. I'm planning on going to bed and sleeping tonight, a rare thing indeed for the past month or so! I'll be writing again soon, hopefully something fun and exciting will happen to keep everyone riveted! Have a great day!

WOW is it warm out today! 35 and climbing as I write this. it's like a tropical paradise out there! I might even have to take a hike later, even though it gets interesting when it's this warm and you're wearing snowshoes because they want to slip around a lot on you. Things are pretty quiet around here the last day or so. Not a lot going on, just been doing a lot of recuperating from that crud that knocked me out for a while. It was pretty nasty stuff. I'm ready for it to go away and never come back. I'm going to work on getting some pictures up on here, I figure maybe some of you will be interested to actually see how we move wood, what we wear when its crazy cold, etc. Ah, the warm breezes making my thoughts turn to Spring and al that it entails..Bear hunting anyone?