Scenery Doesn't Move

At the beginning of the school year, our principal was asking for volunteers to head up different committees. Knowing these kind of commitments can raise the level of insanity in one's life, I did my best to lay low and then the I heard him say, "Yearbook?" Well, my interest was aroused, guilt kicked in and I found my hand going up. For the first half of the year, I managed to ignore this obligation. It is easy to do that when you're a teacher because almost every minute of the day is filled with little children asking you important questions and telling important stories that need your attention now, so the yearbook can easily fade into the background.

January rolled around and I realized the yearbook wasn't making itself. Yearbooks generally look better with pictures in it, so I decided to take my camera to school and take pictures. Lots of them. To the point that one of the four pregnant teachers in my school started to call me the paparazzi. I dutifully reminded her that I too have a due date of March 9th. However, my picture visions I had of kids intent on learning, sharing, and enjoying school were crushed when I realized that kids move, they move a lot, and they move quickly. And if I made the fatal error of asking them to look this way, I received the cheesy grin, high chin, and bunny ears. I think after this experience I'll stick with scenery. Scenery doesn't move or talk back!

Lights and Sunshine in Vegas

We enjoyed the phony materialistic lights of Vegas . . .

. . . for one evening's walk. Then enough is enough and we drove around to see what else the area had to offer.

Hoover Dam and Lake Mead were both on my list to see, so we spent the day touristing those two areas. On another afternoon, we headed up toward Mt. Charleston, a nearby peak over 11,000 ft. As we gained elevation, the Joshua trees and other desert landscape were replaced with juniper, pinion, and ponderosa pine.

On our last afternoon, we toured Red Rock Canyon. Every day the high temperature was in the mid-60's and the low in the 40's. It was like our Alaskan summers. Then I remembered that we aren't blessed with that many days of sunshine in a row!
For more pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/jillcaho/VegasWebPictures

Full Moon Setting

This morning I was outside taking pictures of the full moon as it was setting. I thought is was pretty cool that I could see the craters in the moon through the camera lens and I busily snapped away, but then as I downloaded them on the computer, I decided that the moon alone in a picture is pretty boring. What really makes a moonrise or set interesting is the big picture surrounding it like the mountain scenery or the reflective light cast on the water. Seeing as I was unable to capture the surrounding scenery and the craters in the moon, the pictures turned out only mediocre.

Clouds rolled in today and the high temperature hovered around zero for the first time in 2 weeks. Our high prior to today was 10 below and the lows were between 30 - 35 below. We don't really know the exact temperature at the house, because our thermometer stayed stuck at 20 below for 2 weeks, but at our neighbor's house lowest low was -34. The temperature near Butte Elementary, where I work, was -38 at its lowest point and -28 was the average temperture though January 1st - 9th. Keep in mind though the extremely low started on December 27th. We are generally a few degrees warmer than the school, because we live a couple hundred feet above the river bottom where cold air settles. Large body movement activities like walking or chopping wood aren't impossible at those temperatures as long as your face is covered, but the bottom line is that is just isn't much fun.

So overall, I'm not disappointed to see this unusual cold spell (the coldest for Southcentral AK in the past 10 years) end, because nothing really good happens after 20 below, cars don't start, pipes freeze, hot tub pumps break, and wood piles disappear. And yes, poor Wyatt (or so he thinks, but doesn't dare voice) still walked to and from the bus stop.

Happy Birthday Alaska - 50 years of Statehood

On January 3, 1959, Alaska officially became the 49th state in the union.
Photos courtesy of the Anchorage Daily News.

My Mountains are Closer

The new camera Santa sent my way brings the mountains outside my window much closer, and I thoroughly enjoy playing with it. I think I will like my new toy much more than Bryant will his, which is a new snowblower. We went over to the property a few days after Christmas to show Autumn, Bryant's daughter, what we've been up to and realized that if we have any intention of finishing it anytime soon clearing the driveway becomes a top priority. Seeing as we haven't been there since before Thanksgiving, the snow was about 1 1/2 feet deep - too deep for our 4-wheeler plow and a little too time consuming for the people power shoveler. A snowblower made the most sense, so we returned a few days later with a snowblower. When the temperatures are 27 degrees below zero, machines don't work too well, even new snowblowers. We ended up bringing a canvas tarp, draping it over the snowblower, adding a propane buddy heater and after about 15 minutes the snowblower started. And about 2 hours later, Bryant's job with his new toy was complete.

Clear Skies and -25

The scenery is beautiful, but the fingers get cold!