Caveat: Tree #1496 “The tree outside”

This tree was outside the window.

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We skipped our trip to town for Thursday “shopping day” due to poor road conditions. We have well-stocked cupboards, so we’ll not starve.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 2km; snowshoveling, 1hr]

Caveat: Tree #1495 “Add snow, add rain”

This tree was along side the main drag in town yesterday, as I took this picture looking out the window at the store where I work, at the Thompson House (supermarket) across the street. I wanted to capture the Minnesoteque scene.

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Today, in fact, I didn’t go to work, as normally scheduled. The road has gotten very bad and treacherous with ice and slush, and only foolhardy or brave people were driving on it. We got a total of more than a foot of snow over the last 2 days, but then today we got more than an inch and a half of rain on top of the snow. Slushforest, indeed!

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 2.5km; snowshoveling, 2hr]

Caveat: Tree #1489 “The local gloom is an objective fact”

This tree was touched by the morning sun at around 8 this morning.

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That’s the tallest tree on lot 73. It means that the sun is only a few days or a week away from touching the ground there, as the sun’s angle in the sky steadily increases with the approaching equinox. Because of our position on the north side of a steep mountain, for 13 weeks each year the sun is too low in the sky to reach us – we live in perpetual shadow. That’s one reason why ice persists so effectively on the road. Because of this shadow, the south side of Port Saint Nick (the environs of the vast metropolis of Rockpit, Alaska) is a fundamentally gloomier place than the sunny north side – that’s an objective fact!

Well the gloom is just about over. Which doesn’t mean an end to winter weather: we’re forecast a snowstorm this coming weekend.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]

Caveat: Tree #1487 “Deep in the southeast Alaskan slushforest”

This tree was feeling white at the top of ten-mile hill.

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Yesterday our telephone landline and DSL stopped working. It was puzzling and distressing because its shutdown was correlated with a moment when I was vacuuming the living room and had moved a piece of furniture, where the telephone happens to be plugged in. So at first I thought the failure of the phone was somehow related to my having accidentally unplugged it or something like that. But after a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error, it seems the whole telephone line (including internet DSL) is dead.

I called APT (Alaska Power and Telephone) but all I got was a machine. I left a message. Maybe because it was presidents day yesterday?

But then this morning I decided to mess around more with the wires involved. Specifically, I switched out the wire connecting the DSL router to the wall – it’s probably 15 or 20 years old, after all. And it had a kind of janky-looking connector on one end. Somehow, my brain works better in the morning than it had been working yesterday afternoon, and I got the right combination and suddenly our phone service was working again. So it was something I’d knocked loose after all – just needed the right things plugged into the right places.

That’s the main adventure here. A bunch of snow yesterday but then rain on top of that, and it all melted again. Just that continuous precipitation with temperatures in the mid 30’s, which seems pretty typical. Not a “rainforest” but rather a “slushforest” really.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8hr]

Caveat: Tree #1481 “Slushfest”

This tree began the day amid heavy falling snow in downtown Rockpit.

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Later the snow turned to heavy rain and by the time I left to go to work it was just a messy slushfest. When I got home, I saw on our rain gauge that we got over 2 inches of rain today. Definitely a precipitous event.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8hr]

Caveat: Tree #1473 “Abandoned among rocks and snow”

This tree found itself among rocks and crusts of snow.

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Arthur has a daily ritual: at bedtime, he asks me “what’s happening tomorrow?”

Last night, I answered, “I’m going to work.”

“And what am I doing?” he asked.

“Not working,” I replied.

“Thank you,” he said, with immense sincerity and relief – as if it was I who’d offered him this reprise.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]

Caveat: Tree #1470 “Half-wet”

This tree was half-wet.

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I overheard this, the other day, while entering the library in town. A man and his son were talking.

“Dad, when is this rain going to stop?”

“This rain will never end,” the dad answered, sagely. The dad clearly was familiar with the weather in Southeast Alaska.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]

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