White New Year's

To no one's surprise, I'm sure, we had a white Christmas up here. Not only was there good snow on the ground, snow was actually falling on Christmas day. SO pretty.

The snow kept up til Boxing Day, when I went back to work; fortunately my plow guy had been and gone; I'd have been surfing my truck backwards in snow up to the bumper otherwise. The truck on the left has not been shovelled out and is sitting on bare ground under all the snow (this is my "extra" truck, which I should probably find a home for, although it is almost old enough to order its own drinks if I took it to a bar.) The truck on the right is the one I drive; it's not really higher clearance than the other one, it's just sitting up on the snow pack.


Sunday the wind started; it knocked all the pretty snow off the branches and dropped the chill factor into the below-zero range. I tried to take pictures of the pine grosbeaks; it's tough to get a clear focus when the branches are swaying in the breeze. It's also tough with the wind numbing your fingers to the stiff-and-clumsy level and making you shiver so hard your whole body is shaking hard enough to clack your teeth together (hence the imperfect focus, sorry about that.)

Monday driving to work was interesting: all that beautiful snow on the ground, now being driven across the roads. Some places it becomes a low, fast-flowing river across the road, swift and opaque, obliterating all signs of the road itself. There you have to guess where the lanes are, where the shoulders are, where the pavement edges break off into the ditches. Some places it eddies in whirling snow-devil funnels, glittering and brilliant in the headlights. Some places it is flung thick and hard into the air, giant billowing sails of it, now hiding the oncoming traffic from view, now drawing aside its curtain of sparkling white to reveal the headlights in the other lane. Some places your best hope of avoiding a crash is to follow the red glow of the tail lights on the vehicle ahead of you. Some places you can't see beyond your own hood, let alone to the tail lights ahead of you.

For fun, in the places where the wind hits hard, driving the snow up to hiss and scour like sand against your windows, it also grabs your truck and bounces it around, tugging it fitfully toward the ditches and rocking it on its suspension.

Kind of makes you happy to get to work, you know?

The wind is gone now, but it's a good 25 degrees colder than normal for the time of year. One of my clients reported - as I was standing on tip-toes in the icy parking lot, trying to reach high enough up into his dog boxes to vaccinate his sled dogs - that he had 39 degrees (F) below zero at his house this morning. I feel like a piker: I had a balmy six degrees. (I even plugged my truck in last night. What a wimp.)

It looks like it will be cold and clear at the turn of the year; all the better to view the planetary conjunction that I hear will be occurring that afternoon (or night, I presume, for people in the lower 48). I'm on call New Year's Day, so I plan to have a quiet New Year's Eve at home, stuffing diazepam in to my dogs; two of them, plus the BFs' dog, have fireworks phobias, and we always have a lot of those on New Year's Eve. We kinda get screwed on the July 4th fireworks, as it isn't really dark enough to enjoy them, so people go nuts at New Year's. I live on a lake, so every last echo rolls across the ice to the waiting ears of my pooches. On the plus side, I get a great show (for free), and the one dog who isn't troubled by the noise runs from window to window looking for the best display.

All things considered, it's unlikley to be a restful night, even with a diazepam assist for the dogs; people are likely to go even crazier than usual, since it's the 50th anniversary of Alaska's Statehood. We're unlikely to get to sleep before one in the morning, if we're lucky. The next morning, we'll be trying to sleep in (calls permitting); it's likely to be a bit cold for skiing, and besides, I have to stay within striking distance of my truck for the on-call duties. We usually get to sleep in at least a little on New Year's; the people who stay in have been watching their dogs and keeping them home, for the most part and don't need me; the people who went out and partied, on the other hand, are all hung-over or tired and hence sleeping in. If all goes well - and no one needs my help - we'll be cozying up in our little house, tying to stay warm and wishing everyone all good blessings in 2009.