kitty porn

Come hither:

Ladies he's got it going on:

Our cat gets really upset when we leave him alone for a few days, no matter how much love is doted on him by neighbors or relatives, he freaks out without his mama. Then he starts to pull out his hair in a form of protest.

It's definitely stress related, it might be allergies. At one point he was treated with hormones and HE started to lactate, (sorry no video available).

He has decided that no form of antihistamine is going in his body any more (the only thing that has helped so far). We are up to three different forms and no luck yet. Apparently cherry flavor is to cats as rancid flesh is to humans.

The Mrs. says it's getting better, I'm not so sure. Time will tell.

So what do you do when you have to keep your dog from licking a wound and she is flexible enough to get around the standard plastic head cone:

That's right: make it longer! She is not amused. She hated the original cone so much it became dubbed the cone of shame. She's one lucky puppy.

Hopefully she'll be healed enough by next week that she won't have to wear this contraption any more.

last post of the trip

I was starting to get tired on day three, but I rebounded on days four and five and was "in the zone."

Here is a mounty keeping track of the traffic:

This is after day four:

We made it as far as Weyburn tonight before forward progress was halted by snow.

Today went really well and while the original plan was to get to Minot tonight, this works out a little better to use up the rest of our Canada money.

Depending on what kind of weather we get tomorrow in Dakota and Minnesota will determine when we get home. I'm pretty sure we can get through as much snow as we had today, it just might be a long day (the roads were much worse the next day due to drifting, but once we crossed the border it was smooth sailing).

If we get good roads it will be a 12 hour day (turned into 14 hours).


This is on the last day at the alleged geographical center of North America. It was so cold (the windchill finally got us that day) that it was hard to smile. I think I frost burned my teeth:

The last day took longer because we couldn't go diagonal across ND on 52 or straight south to Bismark and then over, but instead went east on 2 to Grand Forks and then south because of snow.

I got to show the Mrs. around the old stomping grounds although I don't recognize much of it anymore.

Here is after the last day:

We just got home. Today was a long one, but it's nice to be back. We drove through some pretty good snow drifts right before the Canadian border this morning, but the Saturn chugged right through.

At one point we had to share the one clear lane of the two lane road with oncoming traffic.

The parking lot wasn't plowed this morning at the motel, so we got stuck and I pushed us out onto the road after some effort. Lot's of people took the time to watch our struggles, but ironically no one stopped to help until we were already on the road.

I was happy to not have to use the tire chains this trip.

I was not happy being down 3 quarts of oil when we pulled into Devils Lake ND today. Sounds like it was caused by the extreme temps. because it's been holding oil since then.

We ended the journey by chipping out our garage door which had become frozen to the cement in our absence.

The next day:

We are starting to get used to me not having to scramble to get things done before rushing back to Anchorage. We are all unpacked and now it is on with the task of finding me a job.

The road trip went by quickly. I wish more of it had been during the day to take in the great scenery the first three days.

Here is a pix that shows all the stuff I had in my car:

The car is running great and we spent a little over $600 on the whole trip, so I'm glad I didn't sell it in Anchorage.

more from the big drive

So we did 3200+ miles in 5 days (we had to add some travel distance/ time to get around snow in North Dakota).

Check out those Buffalo that hung out near the road:

That is much of what we saw on days two and three because we didn't get much time driving in the day.

Here is the capital building in Edmonton:

Some stuff I wrote after Day 2 was done:

We made it to Fort Nelson. The car started just fine after a night at -33C. No problems today as the temp didn't get below -35C (that I know of).

Right now it is -33C and the overnight low is supposed to be -42C. It feels strange when you get out of the car somewhere and -10F doesn't feel that bad.

We saw a bunch of moose today, a heard of elk and had a wolf run along side our car for about 30 yards!

The mountain roads from Watson Lake to Fort Nelson were challenging (I have never longed for boring prairie driving as much as I did tonight).

It was dark and there was flurries the whole way so I couldn't use the brights very much. The speed limit is around 60MPH but we could only go 40-50 MPH for the most part.

That's it for now. Time for bed and then off to Edmonton tomorrow.

Here is a guy (I think his middle name is HARDCORE) biking at about -20F:

Here is the impressive border sign between provinces:

Here is what I said after the 3rd day driving:

We made it to Edmonton. It was not without challenge today: snow and black ice were the challenges of the plains, but we still got to travel faster which made us "feel" better.

We did go slow on the black ice so as to not join the 5-6 cars in the ditch lying on their sides and up-side-down.

One thing I did not account for: we've lost 2 hours in three days because of time changes. We keep trying to get up early to squeeze every bit of daylight out that we can, but we are working against the sun and will lose another hour tomorrow.

Not sure where we'll wind up tomorrow: original plan was Minot, but may stop short of there depending on how we are doing.

The time thing was really challenging. Basically we stopped for about 10 hours each night and about 30-45 minutes for one meal a day (except day two where we didn't have a place to stop for dinner).

The dinner stop was always at night so we didn't burn up daylight. But we were basically on a constant time challenge from the start and wound up simply driving later each day to make it to the next big town.

We could have spent less time driving each day, but we were trying to make it on a budget and lodging was our biggest expense...or was it gas?

Leaving Alaska

Well it's actually happened: the Mrs. and I have packed up my Saturn and drove from Anchorage back to Minnesota.

The weekend that we left was celebrating Alaska's 50th anniversary as a state. The fireworks were great, but it was hard to feel celebratory.

We got to listen to a couple of mediocre and one horrid bands, but one was really good: Bearfoot. They do blue grass the way it should be done.

It was so cold the shutter froze on this one:




So that was Saturday and we held off Sunday to start driving to avoid some snow (which it turned out was UN-avoidable.

Here are some Caribou along the ALCAN that Sara didn't shoot yet:


Here is a demon moose (you'll see it in her eyes if you click on it to make it big):


This is from the first day: Just got into Whitehorse (15 hours in the car) and staying at a backpackers hostel.

Drive was good, the frost heaves made it slow going at times. Had some snow and fog past Haines Junction but no big deal.

Got a little concerned when the clutch got stiff and sluggish but I guess that's what you get when you drive through -40 for a few hours (and colder it turned out). It's worked itself out.

I'm having to add heat to the gas because the gas tank door isn't keeping the snow out and some is getting past the cap into the tank..On to Fort Nelson tomorrow.

Much later in the trip this was the sign that I thought would impress my friend Allen:


Here are some of the splendid mountains we saw so much of the first three days (when it wasn't dark from 4PM to 10AM):

sara-meat

So my roommate tells me he has never liked summer sausage. I have never met anyone who hasn't but I grew up very close to Wisconsin. Along with my German relatives almost half the population of Minnesota has roots back in Germany.

For Germans sausage is like water for the rest of the world. There are many different kinds, and I've never had a sausage I didn't like.

My roommate had a shaft of moose summer sausage in the freezer and it's been staring at me since I moved in last spring. I asked if I could try it and that's when I found out he didn't like it and that I should go ahead.

I tried it out and I now have had a sausage I didn't like. My old friend Craig would be so disappointed.

The sausage in question is gamy in the extreme. It might be my imagination but I keep thinking there are tufts of hide stuck in my teeth.

Since trying it I've discussed it with some hunters and they think it was made wrong. Sausage made wrong??? Who knew???

I used some suggestions to tame it a bit: I made a vat of spaghetti sauce (acid from the tomatoes) with lots of garlic, and added vinegar to further up the acid content (which is supposed to numb down the gamy-ness).

It still didn't work! I had some friends over and they were very polite about it, but I knew it was still too gamy.

I have since finished it off (too cheap to waste even this food). I meant to bring my roommate some fine sausage from http://www.louiesfinermeats.com/, but I forgot.

and the beat goes on...

Yep, still here. It's been a busy season. The Mrs. has joined me in Anchorage for the last days of my job. She will be driving with me back to Minnesota on Jan. 4, weather permitting.

She got to come to Lihue Hawaii with me for Christmas and we attended a nice glow-stick Christmas eve service. The facility owners did not allow candles.

It sure was nice in Hawaii because it's been COLD in Anchorage (I don't think it's gotten above 10F since the 19th). Today it was -40 C/F in Fairbanks when I was there. (I love that -40 is the same temp on both of those scales. My favorite conversion is 61F = 16C).

I've been trying to get the Mrs. out hiking but she is having a tough time with the cold. If it weren't for our soon to be lack of income I would buy her a fancy mask, but instead she suffers the cold she avoided for 20 some years in Texas.

I've gotten her up along the gasline trail a couple times. Today (-5F) we went up to the Denali lookout trail and back up the powerline trail back to the car. Probably a solid hour and she was hurting pretty good.

I made the mistake of pointing out that it's not just the cold but the fact that she's no longer in good shape...turns out that's not a good thing to say.

Tonight we are nursing our sore limbs with hot chocolate and maybe some post-Christmas cutout cookies if they are finished this evening.

Doom and Gloom

That's what airline folk say when we hit the lows of our roller coaster careers. I guess this time it is for real for me: I'm getting laid off in January.

So that's why I haven't posted in a while. The job market is bleak my friends. Turns out Obama doesn't want my help righting the ship, so I guess it's time to eek out a living doing a real job-type-job.

I've been using the MN Work Force Center to aide my job search. Not too many jobs I'm qualified for that meet our expenses (which we cut back to bare minimum a year ago to take my new job pay cut). The MWF has nothing to do with unemployment payments.

The MWF makes everyone attend an orientation meeting where they talk about some programs that interested me buuuut there's a catch (didn't see that coming didjya?): before you can sign up for the program you want you have to attend Employment U for five days a week for two weeks!

Today I found out that I can't do a week now and a week when I come back in January: all at once or nuthin! So when would the classes be in January? No one knows. They will call me when they have it figured out...or they won't...matterz.

So the hunt is on and I did find a snow shoveling job...if only my winter gear were here and not Anchorage (I don't think it got above 5F today and there are nasty windchills with the associated advisories going since last night).

The Mrs. will join me in January for the trek from Anchorage to Minneapolis in the mighty Saturn SC2! Yep, we're going over the Canadian Rockies in January. WOO HOO!

It will either be gorgeous, or miserable. Maybe we'll dress like this and see who can go the longest without car heat: