Thursday, October 13, 2005
38. Miscellania...I
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Apparently, people misunderstood post #35. There was just a temporary problem with the phone system. It has been fixed, and now we can use debit cards at the store and make long distance calls. Sorry for any confusion.
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After not getting any packages, I just got a whole bunch at once. Three big boxes of stuff from Portland that my parents sent, the answering machine I ordered from WalMart, my glasses I ordered from an optometrist, and a game I ordered from ebay. One of my students was in the post office and she went and got her ATV and drove my stuff to my house in a couple of trips. So now I have lots of stuff.
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The store also got a shipment, and we can now get apples (but only red delicious, the one type I don’t like), pink grapefruits, oranges, carrots, lettuce, and pears.
.
Fred Meyer (for those who don’t know, that is a hypermarket) in Anchorage will ship. Someone has to shop, but after paying for the groceries you can tell them that is a “bush order” and for 10% of the price they will package and ship it. Stephen (my ex) went through Fred Meyer while on the cell phone with me and I told him what to buy. For those who don’t know anyone in Anchorage, there are services that will shop for you if you fax them a list. They charge 17.4%.
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30° F with no wind is actually quite pleasant. I took Max for a long walk.
.
The oil truck is gone. Across the road from me and down a bit is a house. Apparently that house was at one time an oil station. There was an old oil truck behind it (or gas, I’m not sure which) that had been there for years. How it got there, I have no idea. Well, they moved it to somewhere else, but I don’t know where. Good. I was not wild about being near an old truck with an unknown quantity of highly explosive liquid in a big tank.
.
We only get one radio station out of Kotzebue. It plays country music, which fortunately, I like. I woke up the first day to “All my exes live in Texas”. Today I woke up to some Johnny Cash song bout a guy who worked on a Cadillac assembly line and snuck out a piece a day in his lunchbox for years until he was able to assemble his own Cadillac at home. They also make personal announcements like “Garage sale at whatever address this weekend” and “Mary, Susan wants you to call her tonight between six and eight”.
.
I woke up about four in the morning. I thought I heard a knock at the door. It could have been someone coming to visit (a possibility) or I could have dreamed it (also a possibility). Max didn’t hear it, so I probably dreamed it. I had no idea who could be coming by at that time of the morning and was not in the mood to go check. I stayed in bed, but then it occurred to me that it could have been someone coming around to warn us that a tsunami was coming and we needed to evacuate. I lay there for a while, debating whether or not to get out of bed and check. I decided that if a tsunami was coming, they would be warning people on the radio by my bed. They were talking about something else, so I went back to sleep.
.
My clock radio is losing about 6 minutes a day. I wonder if the electricity here is weak or something.
.
It is impossible to keep my floor clean. I keep getting in a layer of sand. (Remember the episode of Friends when they went to Montauk to find Phoebe’s whatever and the house was filled with sand? Well, OK, its not that bad.) Some people here have everyone take off their shoes by the door. I could try that, but I don’t want to walk around the sandy floor barefoot. Besides, I think Max is the biggest offender, if for no other reason that he has twice as many feet.
.
A number of people here make ivory carvings. Most of the ivory comes from walruses (walri?). Some comes from mammoth tusks.
.
It is 17° F with windchill of 7° at 10:30 pm. Today’s day was 9 hours, 50 minutes long. Days are getting shorter by 7 minutes a day.
Apparently, people misunderstood post #35. There was just a temporary problem with the phone system. It has been fixed, and now we can use debit cards at the store and make long distance calls. Sorry for any confusion.
.
After not getting any packages, I just got a whole bunch at once. Three big boxes of stuff from Portland that my parents sent, the answering machine I ordered from WalMart, my glasses I ordered from an optometrist, and a game I ordered from ebay. One of my students was in the post office and she went and got her ATV and drove my stuff to my house in a couple of trips. So now I have lots of stuff.
.
The store also got a shipment, and we can now get apples (but only red delicious, the one type I don’t like), pink grapefruits, oranges, carrots, lettuce, and pears.
.
Fred Meyer (for those who don’t know, that is a hypermarket) in Anchorage will ship. Someone has to shop, but after paying for the groceries you can tell them that is a “bush order” and for 10% of the price they will package and ship it. Stephen (my ex) went through Fred Meyer while on the cell phone with me and I told him what to buy. For those who don’t know anyone in Anchorage, there are services that will shop for you if you fax them a list. They charge 17.4%.
.
30° F with no wind is actually quite pleasant. I took Max for a long walk.
.
The oil truck is gone. Across the road from me and down a bit is a house. Apparently that house was at one time an oil station. There was an old oil truck behind it (or gas, I’m not sure which) that had been there for years. How it got there, I have no idea. Well, they moved it to somewhere else, but I don’t know where. Good. I was not wild about being near an old truck with an unknown quantity of highly explosive liquid in a big tank.
.
We only get one radio station out of Kotzebue. It plays country music, which fortunately, I like. I woke up the first day to “All my exes live in Texas”. Today I woke up to some Johnny Cash song bout a guy who worked on a Cadillac assembly line and snuck out a piece a day in his lunchbox for years until he was able to assemble his own Cadillac at home. They also make personal announcements like “Garage sale at whatever address this weekend” and “Mary, Susan wants you to call her tonight between six and eight”.
.
I woke up about four in the morning. I thought I heard a knock at the door. It could have been someone coming to visit (a possibility) or I could have dreamed it (also a possibility). Max didn’t hear it, so I probably dreamed it. I had no idea who could be coming by at that time of the morning and was not in the mood to go check. I stayed in bed, but then it occurred to me that it could have been someone coming around to warn us that a tsunami was coming and we needed to evacuate. I lay there for a while, debating whether or not to get out of bed and check. I decided that if a tsunami was coming, they would be warning people on the radio by my bed. They were talking about something else, so I went back to sleep.
.
My clock radio is losing about 6 minutes a day. I wonder if the electricity here is weak or something.
.
It is impossible to keep my floor clean. I keep getting in a layer of sand. (Remember the episode of Friends when they went to Montauk to find Phoebe’s whatever and the house was filled with sand? Well, OK, its not that bad.) Some people here have everyone take off their shoes by the door. I could try that, but I don’t want to walk around the sandy floor barefoot. Besides, I think Max is the biggest offender, if for no other reason that he has twice as many feet.
.
A number of people here make ivory carvings. Most of the ivory comes from walruses (walri?). Some comes from mammoth tusks.
.
It is 17° F with windchill of 7° at 10:30 pm. Today’s day was 9 hours, 50 minutes long. Days are getting shorter by 7 minutes a day.
# posted by Amy W. : 10:30 PM
