Bacon Chicken Narwhal!

So yesterday my friend P took it upon himself to make bacon chicken narwhals:

The carnivore's complement to my watermelon shark!

The girls sitting under the draft from the window:


Sammypants taking over their bed. Sam never gets too warm!


Outside my window late this morning. Snow was just starting to fall:


Also, also: Wood bison coming to Interior Alaska! How cool! The question is, how much wood would a wood bison buy if a wood bison could buy wood?

By the way, do you know what mama bison say when their bison boys grow up and leave them? You do, don't you? They say, "Bye, son!"

HAHAHAHAHA

Oh dear.

Walking the ski trails

For the first time this year, I saw the thermometer outside my window approach 0F/-18C. Brrr!

The girls are bouncy and happy!


The temperature fluctuations and lack of recent snow made this. You can't see it too well, but it's hoar frost growing on top of old snow.


On overcast days, sometimes the ridge tops are still blue:

Your awwwww for the day

Nicest Canadian couple in world dole out lottery winnings

She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.

"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."

Awwwww...

My sister's cats

This is Naya, my sister's nice cat:

Like Linden, she sleeps like a pocket knife.

This is Lemma, my sister's evil cat:


My sister has this taped on the wall above his bed:

It is a screen capture from this. I highly recommend the video. It's hysterical.

Does this mean I'm a secret genius?

People like to tell anecdotes about bumbling genius scientists, such as how Einstein would forget to cash his pay checks, or whatever. The trouble with taking comfort in these anecdotes is that it just means that smart people sometimes do dumb things; it doesn't mean that when you do dumb things, it's masking a closet genius.

Here, I made a Venn diagram:


If you are in circle B, knowing that some people in circle A are also in circle B is trivial comfort, no?

Anyway, today I went to vote at the Wood Center, which is UAF's student union building. I've moved house too frequently to have any confidence that things will work out as expected when I go to my official polling place, so I go to the Wood Center, where they let you file absentee ballots for any district.

There were three lines, clearly labeled 1, 2, 3. You get into 1, do what they say, then go to 2, do what they say, etc. I somehow missed those signs, and got into the longest line, figuring that's where everyone was, so I belonged there, too.

As I stood there in line, my eyes wandered around, and because I am a compulsive reader, I read the poster board beside me, which read:

STEP 1: Stand in Line 1 and blah blah.

STEP 2: Stand in Line 2 and blah blah.

etc.

I read it several times, with what I am sure was a fantastically vacant look on my face. I probably also had a trickle of drool running down the side of my chin.

Finally a lady asked me whether I had completed step 1, and no? Then why was I standing in line 2?

I hrrmphed about how, well, they ought to label stuff and tell us what to do! Sheesh!

Whereupon an acquaintance saw me and literally marched me through the whole thing.

I'm sure he was so proud to know me!

Miss Millie at her repast

Here is Miss Millie B. Doofus, Supreme Ruler of the People's Independent Republic of Bunnistan, at her hay box:

I keep a litter box in front of her hay box, because she's an "in one end, out the other" kind of girl.

Cute, isn't she? The dogs' bed is adjacent to her pen, and Autumn sometimes stretches out along the pen wall. Millie grooms her ears when they stick through.

Caution: Contents under pressure

The dogs whined the whole way home. Now, it's probably pretty obvious that I'm a pushover as a dog owner, but I cannot abide whining in any species, so I dutifully scolded along the way. When we got home, they veritably exploded onto the property, running laps round and round the cabin, basically doing this, only at twice the speed and in thirty times the radius.

Then I took them for a walk along the now-frozen ski trail to let them burn more energy before I locked them back into the cabin for the day.

There are a few inches of snow on the ground now, and it's cold enough that the snow is sugary and dry. But there are still quite a few weeds and sticks sticking up into the trail. Think we should try skiing yet?


The girls are happy! Happy! Happy!


Rosie Creek is frozen solid, enabling access to the trail system again at last:


Another little creek flows into it from the side:


How fast can you run?