Icewind's Ramblings

Or what I discovered about home remedies! For some people as you get older there are many weird things that happen to your body. Things change, move around, and just create new things to deal with. For some your eyes do funny things and you have to start wearing bifocal glasses so you can read. For others those parts of the body that were at one time firm and uplifting have fallen or gone to other unknown places. There is the stomach which was once flat and firm that has seemed to bulge out of nowhere and for some even Dunlap . . . its dun lapped over your belt. One of the minor problems I had since a young age due originally from the bouncing motion of flying helicopters was a condition known as hemorrhoids. Not a pleasant condition when they flare up and one that luckily is only a sometime occurrence. When I have a flare up or actually a ‘drop out’ there is a medication I have sparingly used for relief of the itch and burning sensation called Preparation...

I returned home tonight for an odd mixture of things. Anchorage opened its first Target store in Alaska today so there was this mad rush of people heading to see everything that wasn’t available in the far north until today. The store is 172,000 square feet (about four acres) and the ‘official’ opening is not until Sunday but they opened a few days early so everyone could get a brief look and bargains before the weekend. The mad house today was like the opening of the Golden Corral restaurant a few months back . . . packed house with a full parking lot overflowing into the spaces of the soon to open Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and several other stores. I think Target’s red bull’s eye found its mark in Alaska . I sat down and flipping through the channels came across the movie ‘Transformers’ thinking it would be a stupid silly movie. I started watching and could not turn it to another channel. It was fun, witty, and sci-fi entertainment. As I sat there watching thinking ab...

It’s fun going to work on the first workday snowfall of the year. Every year there are those who have sped their way back and forth to work or home during those long summer days without a care in the world . . . there’s plenty of light out and animals are easy enough to see . . . but then that transition time comes when we lose between 5 to 6 minutes a day and that darkness grows across this northland. These first days of the winter driving season brings about this little game that the Glenn and Seward Highway commuters play on almost any snow day. I like to call it “Count the Cars in the Ditch”. Its fun . . . it's free . . . it's mean . . . isn’t it great! All those who blast by you giving you the finger . . . you can just give them that big smile as you slowly make your way by. Winter driving advice . . . the skinny pedal on the right is not the brake. The ones flipped onto their roofs, tires straight up like Roadkill, fetch extra points. This...

I watch reality shows for the express purpose of escaping from the demands of my work giving me that needed mental break and an escape to probably my somewhat less than exciting life. The crazy demands of work, raising a granddaughter at this time of life, so many things so I guess I can live capriciously watching The Amazing Race. I have jokingly told my daughter that we should apply as we both enjoy the strange things they do on the show. Now I’ll let that sink in for a second, for those of you who’ve met one or both of us. Now you can laugh right along with me but there has always been that competitive spirit in me . . . the problem solving that goes with the varied tasks on the program fits right into my normal mindset. It would be a hoot to say the least. With our zeal and the associated clumsiness one or both of us would end up maimed in some horrid way. I can just see it before the commercial break . . . trampled by a wild animal . . . maybe the victim of a zip...