All posts by jkkblog

I'm a freelance editor and writer with a background in history and foreign languages.
Homeownership

Looks like someone barfed in my sinks, bathtub and shower

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Fortunately, no one did.  When the plumbers came recently to address our water pressure issues, I asked them about drain cleaner.  They don’t recommend Drano (what plumber ever does?), but instead, an environmentally friendly cleaner (what environmentally friendly cleaner ever works?). Because I was not getting anywhere with my toxic chemical soups full of sodium hydroxide, I was willing to explore a new option.

This stuff looks a lot like coarse goldenseal powder, costs about $55 a can, can lasts about a year.  It is insoluble in water, so the water you mix with it basically is there to wash it down the drain.  Its enzymes, which are all -ases of some sort, are supposed to eat hair, slime, anything of biological origin, yet be safe on skin and even if you ate it.  I think not.  You have to treat all your drains with it, then not mess with the water system for about eight hours.  I have been doing this before I go to bed, and am supposed to do it for five days.  Four down, one to go.

Of course, you may imagine the visual effect.  I’m not supposed to wash the stuff down the drain after dumping it in, so it looks like our drains have been the target of the Kennewick Serial Vomiter.  Kind of reminds me of 5th Floor McCarty Hall men’s room at the UW on a Friday night.  I know (at least, I tell myself, and hope) that this is beneficial in the long term, once the -ases finish chowing on all the disgusting things slowing down our drains.

In the short term, though, it looks like we got attacked by a rogue drain puker.  Good thing I did this when Deb was out of town–her commentary would wither my spirit and blister the paint.

Book reviews, Social comment

Tom Sawyer

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I just finished re-reading this eternal classic, and I hope some of you will do the same.  As a child, I had no idea of Clemens’ social commentary, which I can now appreciate a little more.

Then again, as a child of five, living in Kansas, I read it and immediately began to talk like a Missouri 1840s hillbilly kid.  What you may not know about Kansas is that while there is definitely a fair bit of Cletusism in the state, the population is rather divided about it.  As in:  there is one segment that embraces country everything, speaks with a rural drawl and makes no apologies for it.  My father comes from that stock, but more or less abandoned it to get an engineering degree.  My mother doesn’t, despite her ranching upbringing, and always wanted not to be identified with backwoods habits.  Not one bit.

Back home, this is somewhat accentuated by stereotypes and prejudices specific to Kansas and our Missourian neighbors, in which the perception is that Missouri has only one tooth and shares it out without even washing it.  Of course, it’s not true; it’s mostly good-natured joshing but underneath it lie some authentic prejudices with deep roots more terrible than the rest of the nation understands.  One of these days I’ll write about it.  Suffice it to say that the folk memory runs deep on both sides, and neither side was a wagonload of saints.  It’s a miracle we get along as well as we do now, probably because most sensible people realize the two states are not as different as the more prejudiced citizens of either would like to imagine.

So, along comes their son, a fairly precious little fellow whose idea of fun is to read through the whole encyclopedia, and he begins to talk like Tom Sawyer.  As you may know, erudition ain’t a feature of Tom’s character.

It did not go over well at all.  “But we wanted him to have access to great reading!”  Oops.

Fortunately, I got over it.  I still say ‘ain’t’ sometimes just to annoy her, or in cercles litteraires.  I’m at ease with both.  I like the down-to-earth rural life and basic practical wisdom of it all, and I like Brie.  Zero reason one can’t have both, as I see it.  If that doesn’t fit someone’s mailbox, they can refuse delivery and send it back.

This is the part where it’s about time to explain to why Tom Sawyer would be a good re-read.  Where Clemens shines for me is in his cynicism about mob mentality, stuffiness, pretense and the fickle nature of mass opinion.  The reader cannot miss it.  Clemens is laughing at his characters, which seems to be his literary wheelhouse.  In a lesser author, his laughter would come off mean-spirited and snooty; that’s probably how I’d ring if I set myself to the same storytelling task, which is why I don’t.  Clemens laughs at people without malice, and has you laughing at them too.  He ranks among our great.

Definitely a happy reunion.

Adventures

The abrupt truncation

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I apologize for the lack of further galleries.  Here’s what happened.  I tried to post a third, but WordPress barfed it.  Unfortunately, I learned that if that occurs, the only ways to get it are 1) start playing with a bunch of HTML code (which I simply am not going to do), or 2) re-upload the whole batch of pics.  Which takes about an hour including ordering, captioning and so on.  WordPress’s blithe expectation is that one shouldn’t mind doing either, as a tech support answer told me after about three days.  It is not my doing that the software barfs, and if there is one area in which I am impatient, it is in doing a lot of drudgery twice for no good reason other than ‘our software is faulty, sorry’.  It is very difficult to force myself to do an exacting task all over again, with no guarantee it won’t all throw up a second time.  How many times might it take?

What will probably happen, therefore, is that I will either load smaller galleries here (so that when WordPress barfs and I am handed a lame solution, I will lose less work), or I will just load the rest of the photos to Faceplant and caption them there.  If you have a preference please comment.  Mainly, I wanted the kind and faithful readership here to enjoy them first, in something of an intimate setting not dependent upon being my FB friend, and for the pics of the animals at least, we got there.

Adventures

Alaskan images #2

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We continued through the Alaska zoo, and it got special.  Here is the blog post that went with these.

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Adventures

Alaskan images #1

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I promised.  This first post is a bit of  test post.  I’ll eventually load them all to Facebook, but I prefer to share first with you all.

Adventures

All that said about Alaska…

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…there are a few other key caveats to offer you here, dear readers who have come north with me, and whose readership and interest and wishes for our health warm the soul.

Alaskans joke (some are dead serious) that the great benefit of Anchorage is its proximity to Alaska.  In other words, compared to much of the state, this is coddled luxury.

These conditions are not particularly snowy or harsh for an Anchorage December.  As I type, it is 12 F (about -10 C) outside.  It can be better but it can be far worse.  No one here is walking around like a Michelin (wo)man.  No one is refraining from living life.

Winters in Glenallen are far harsher, as are those in Fairbanks–where they are also darker.  We have some five hours of dim daylight now.  Fairbanks has less.  Barrow has two months with no sunrise.

Eight days of this was a vacation.  Six months of it, as normal life, is no vacation.  They get real sick of it by February.  In short, we have had a great time, but all it proves about me is I’m okay with a week of sustained cold and snow.  Anyone who knows me already knew that.  I am not at all sure I could handle a full calendar year here.  It’s not easy in this Alaska–it’s tougher in the rest of it.

I didn’t bring a USB cable (stupidity), but when we get back, I’ll have some images for you.  While they’ll be on Faceplant at some point, I want to caption and share them with you all specifically.  I’m looking forward.

Adventures, Married life

“There are some popsicles out on the grill.”

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Yet another on the List Of Statements Made Mainly In Alaska.  I just made it, and I was not wisecracking.  I brought my wife home the fruit popsicles she enjoys, but there was no room in our hosts’ freezer, so I stuck both boxes in the snow piled atop the grill on the back porch.  They’re still out there.

In a normal place, the response might have been:  “Honey, have you been drinking?”

In Alaska:  “Great, dear, will you please bring me one?”

Adventures

That place used to be a strip joint

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That’s the most common comment from Deb as we drive through the snowy streets of Anchorage.  It makes me wonder if 1970s Anchorage had any establishments that were not strip joints.  Maybe some were just bars, which is why they’re out of business–they failed to offer the necessary entertainment.

To go out and about:  wade through the snow to your car, start it.  Don’t lock the keys in.  Go back inside.  Come back in fifteen minutes, and brush 6″ of snow (that’s about 10 cm for our metric friends) off your car.  Brush it all off, don’t just leave the roof covered in it.  Get the lights, breaking off the ice.  Lift up the wipers and smack them down hard enough to break the ice off.  Back out of your parking with a burst of speed, but do not do this when a road grader is plowing the street.  Get ready for streets narrowed by snow berms on each side.  The sidewalks are buried in the berms, so do not hit the young lady walking down the side of the road in her toque and bunny boots.

It is overcast, the daylight is dim to begin with, and powdery snow swirls through the wheel ruts on the main drag.  Visibility ranges from a couple of miles to a few hundred yards.  Most road activity happens with the slowed pace necessary when it’s possible to skid nearly anywhere.  Your wife (your chauffeuse) swears at anyone who blasts past her, appears about to pull out in front of her, straddles lanes, or commits some other breach of good driving etiquette in her estimation.  Corners involve a certain caution, plowing through churned snow.  Roundabouts, which I’m not sure really suit Alaskan conditions, need special care, especially those double lane roundabouts as macho road warriors skid around them and think it’s great fun.  In essence, there is a mudbogging feel about Anchorage winter driving from start to stop–just replace the mud with snow.

Deb felt strong enough today to get out and about, which was just as well because I broke Herb’s snow shovel early in the visit, and I was overdue to replace it despite his protestations that we didn’t need to.  That was a good excuse to go back to Title Wave Books, one of the great things about Anchorage.  Do you like travel books? Our Barnes & Noble in Kennewick has one section of ‘travel essays’.  Title Wave has six times that.  It has even more books about bears.  If there is anything about bears, from lies told to cheechakos (‘tenderfeet’…’Outsiders’…’people from the lower 48’) to authentic treatises on the habits of the grizzly, that Title Wave’s bear book section cannot answer, that’s because everyone who learned it got mauled to death before being able to put it into print.

I begin to think that Alaskan isn’t a state residency, but a citizenship.

Adventures

Hacking your way to the store

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Unfortunately, everyone but Herb came down sick last night.  Though, since Herb has battled two different kinds of cancer and is still trying to get off the feeding tube, I frankly would rather it were me than him that was sick any day.  I know it’s not dysentery, but the symptoms are about the same.  Last night was a bad night for Lynda, Deb and me.  I’m better today but still shaky, shivery and such; the women are both miserable and do not go too far from a bathroom.

It was necessary for us to run to the store to get them stuff like crackers and ginger ale, especially in Deb’s case as she must not let her sugar fall too low.  That meant we had to battle our way out into the night, neither of us at 100% but we’re what they’ve got.  Unfortunately the snow had narrowed the driveway, and Lynda’s car wouldn’t start.  We had to jump it with Herb’s truck, which due to the narrowed driveway couldn’t quite back out without scraping her car.  It took about an hour of hacking away at ice, jumpstarting, shoveling, and so on, but we did it.

(Ever wonder how someone could build anything out of snow blocks? When it accumulates, the stuff at the bottom is more like soft ice.  Just cut it up and start building.)

The point:  this is how they live up here.  This is normal life.  Cars don’t start, snow accumulates and narrows pathways, and people battle through.  This is Alaska.

And Fairbanks makes this look like cosseted, pampered living.

Adventures

Into the interior: where Bullwinkle watch is no joke

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Today we went to our friends’ daughter’s home in Wasilla.  (Yes, that Wasilla.  No, we did not see Levi, Bristol or Sarah.)  You know the DEER XING signs in many states, depicting a leaping stag on his way to a party? Alaska has the same thing, but silhouetting a creature six feet high at the withers with antlers the size of large dogs.  Once again, that was my job:  keep an eye out.

The interior of Alaska (this part, anyhow, and at this time) in winter looks forested, frosty, snowy, hazy and chilly.  You know how some places don’t look as cold as they really are? Alaska looks even colder than it is, which is fairly cold.  I think this is because so much of it is unoccupied that anyone could walk a mile off a main road, ill-prepared, and choose to freeze to death if one failed to take the climate seriously.  Chances anyone would blunder across you are low.  If no one knew where you had gone, it would not be needle and haystack but needle and hayfield.  Snow tracks would be a factor–unless it snowed again.  I alluded to Jack London in an earlier post.  Come here, and you can see just what he meant about the darkness of the wild.  In fact I’d recommend a winter pilgrimage for any truly serious London enthusiast.  (You can hire dogsled rides.  That’s one way mushers pay to keep up their dogs.)

The road wasn’t bad, but don’t tell that to Lynda, my hostess.  Riding with one of the most terminally reliable and responsible men I know, her husband Herb, of 35 years, she was as nervous as I am when riding with a tailgater.  I don’t know how she survives six months of this, much less how she has done so since the Carter administration.  A very nice time, though, afternoon with children and a puppy plowing over, around and through presents.  Can you picture me helping a little girl assemble her Barbie Veterinarian Set? Hey, I had a meaningful role.  That stuff takes muscle to fit together.  I had to horse on it.  Perhaps the only more comical picture than me helping put it together is me barely having the physical strength to do so.

A wonderful time, all told, delicious dinner by niece Lisa (by mutual adoption), no one hit a moose and only one person got their vehicle stuck in a snowbank.  By Wasilla December standards, that’s all kinds of win.

To the faithful readership of the ‘Lancer, good holidays to you all in whatever form you may celebrate or enjoy them, whether they are solemn times of faith or just reasons to overeat.  Thank you for every single time you checked in, and as the year winds down I look forward to keeping the blog up in the coming cycle.