Michelle came home Friday evening. I broke trail with snowshoes to the bay to meet her and help her haul in her gear. Welcome home!
I passed my time alone on the homestead well. I cooked regular meals, and ate them all at the table—I didn’t eat over the sink. I got lonely, but not morbidly so; I didn’t talk to myself anymore than usual. I didn’t eat gingerbread at breakfast, lunch and dinner on more than two different days. I never ate breakfast cereal for dinner, even when I was busiest with other projects. The coffee liqueur jug is still almost completely full. The house is clean, the dishes have been washed regularly. I didn’t grow a beard, or eat popcorn as a meal, both of which would have been perfectly acceptable to my bride. The cat is still alive.
Having done so well, perhaps you’ll allow me to indulge in some hermit-like mutterings. A lot of random things happened that seem worthy of comment, but not enough to build a whole blog post on. To wit:
We lost cell phone coverage and weather radio when a relay tower in the wilderness far to the south of us lost both its generators. Ironically, Michelle and I often went most of the day without talking on the phone, only checking in with each other in the evening. But, because I called her in the morning, thus discovering the outage, it threw my whole day off.
Shrew tracks. Looks like it dragged its tail. Bet that was cold! (Photo: Mark Zeiger).
A blizzard is defined as “heavy snowfall, winds of more than 35 mph and temperatures below 20°F.” Last Wednesday we had a blizzard. I put the brake on the wind generator, but a gust started it up and cranked it hard over into feathering mode anyway (before I went to bed, thankfully!). The next morning, the eggs and sourdough starter in the cool box had frozen (I managed to save both). There’s word that Bud Barber tried to get over Mud Bay Road where it skirts Letnikof Cove. He couldn’t make it, even with a snow plow blade on his truck. If Bud can’t do it, I figure it cannot be done.
A quote I really like from my Franklin-Covey Planner: “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” —Jacques Barzun.
Thursday morning, Margot Adler reported on NPR that she’d met some people from Haines at the Occupy Wallstreet protests. That is so cool!
Rambling, disconnected, but not that many after all. I must be doing all right.