Ordinary errands are different in Fairbanks

My errands on Saturday and how they went:

1) Let dogs drag me up and down a frozen river. Fun! Dogs got appropriately tired so they'd sleep the rest of the day and let me work in peace without sticking their noses in my face. :)

2) Went to Alaska Feed for a bag of dog food, a gallon of honey, and a gallon of milk. Found that I had just missed, by twenty minutes, a customer who had come in with a day-old baby yak. WAAAAAAAHHHH!!! I would have wanted to meet the baby yak! This had me bummed all afternoon. Baby yak! And I missed it!

3) Went downtown on another errand. I strongly dislike, and rarely go, downtown. In the one block I had to walk in between my car and the building, I was accosted by three derelicts. Charming.

4) Went to Freddie's to pick up some groceries. On the way out, the light got stuck in its cycle, as it frequently does, so it never turned green for us. We all had to turn right against the red light. Half of us, of course, were headed in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go. I looped around University Avenue to find a moose clomping down the sidewalk, likely on her way in between the Chena river and the University campus. Clomp, clomp, clomp. She loped politely and unhurredly up the sidewalk as people smiled at her. Totally cute! My first sighting of a hip, urban, streetwise moose! :)

By the way, after multiple sightings I can now give you a fairly accurate census of the moose population in my own neighborhood:
*1 mama with twins
*2 mamas with one calf each
*2 childless gals who hang out together
*1 lone gal who hangs out alone, or maybe this one is a small bull