Icewind's Ramblings

It seems sometimes I live within my own inner sunset. This winter has been colder than normal and we are finally breaking this subzero freeze that has had us in its ugly grasp for the last two weeks. Things have been almost in the brutal range as there have been pipe freeze ups, water main breaks, house fires, and accidents all over Anchorage and we have had things in the ‘better than them’ category at only minus 25-30 below zero. The interior of Alaska has been in the -50 to 75 below for almost the same time period. This cold spell is coming sooner than the normal mid February time frame and seems our normal twenty degrees is a thing of hopes and dreams now. We will get through the winter so the fun of spring and summer can begin. Summer last year was a cold and cloudy affair. I only hope things will return to normal for another great fishing season. Recently, there have been kids getting signatures for a variety of causes around town and out by my house. ...

Or when will they come up with waterproof phones? What would you do . . . when you've dropped your cell phone in the toilet? Sometimes we get in a hurry and do stupid things and recently I did one that gave me a pause . . . as in should I or shouldn’t I? I was in my office and it was the typical morning with several phones ringing at the same time, the office phone, 2 cell phones, and a fax machine. I had tried to go to the bathroom several times and it just was not happening so I figured I would do the next best thing since the restroom is only about ten feet from my desk. Yes, it’s fun right after one of my chili eating, Chinese or sushi eating lunches. I happily did my thing and turned the water on to wash my hands as I reached across the toilet, bent down to flip the handle as I watched one of my two cell phones fly out of my shirt pocket doing a two and a half gainer before hitting the water with a near perfect splash. There is t...

Sex sells or have the headlines over the years been misleading us? It seems with the downturn of the economy and the problems stacking up in everyone’s lives there has been a huge deflation . . . of our libido. CNN is reporting that the porn industry wants a bailout. First it was the airlines, then the auto makers, and now porn is struggling to keep it up as it were. I’m never too amazed by the outrageousness of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. You might remember him from being shot in 1978 in Lawrenceville Georgia coming out of the courthouse where he was on trial for obscenity charges. He became paralyzed but continued his empire but now Flynt and “Girls Gone Wild” CEO Joe Francis seems to take the absurdity of what is going on now with our federal bailout program to a whole new level. According to their press release, the adult entertainment industry needs $5 billion of your tax money because it, too, has been hit by the economic downturn. No...

Anytime anyone leaves Alaska and heads Outside to any other state for any reason, there is a certain protocol that must be followed. With all of the media attention recently surrounding Sarah Palin there were scores of media personnel scouring the state looking for any story they could dig up . . . or make up to put out there for the world to see. If you are a member of the media and are from another state, it is imperative that you take the following lists seriously, lest your written or broadcast piece read as "untrue" or "unrealistic." When writing about Alaska it is acceptable to pull a Jayson Blair and use a movie and a few stereotypes as reference material. You must use the following adjectives somewhere in your piece for it to read true: Wind-swept Tundra Glacial Icy Lonely Aurora Sparse Native ANWR Solitary Mountainous You must make reference to the movie "Mystery Alaska ". Mention “Deadlie...

I have been asked by several of my friends and business associates what I think of Israel 's fight with Hamas in Gaza . I thought about that last weekend while the buildup of forces looked like a ground battle was forthcoming. Over the last six years there have been over 6,000 rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel . Many of those rockets were fired from Hamas terrorists and others from the different splinter groups within that area. Fighting has been ongoing in the Middle East for several thousand years now and no real cease is likely to come anytime soon. I thought for a few minutes to try to put things into a context that I could understand or convey to my friends and this is what I came up with in how I feel on the subject. I came to the conclusion that if Canada started lobbing rockets from Toronto across the border into say Buffalo , New York or Vancouver into Bellingham , Washington then I think it would only take this country about three ...

Modern Living I wanted to do a little something for the New Year to improve a few things. In the past I have not tried to take pills or medicine unless it was ‘really’ needed for something particular. For many years I have taken two Advil in the morning and another two at night to take the edge off my normal aches and pains from many years of plumbing or from past injuries when I was young. I wanted to start off the New Year with something slightly different with a little more in the health conscious department so I started on the first day of the year. I realized something as I peed yesterday. Sorry to sound blunt, but revelations come where they do. I had taken a multi-vitamin a few hours before and of course my urine was a bright iridescence yellow. I am told this is because the body can only absorb so much of the nutrients. Most of the excess vitamins just pass through your system and into the toilet. Later that day I gave into my whi...

Before I start tonight’s post I wanted to add another perspective from events of today. I awoke this morning to another day well below zero and was notified that the downstairs bathroom was only giving us hot water; no cold water was coming out of the shower. This led me to think that there was a frozen pipe and also that one of the pipes was touching one of the hydronic heating pipes. This in turn was making the ‘cold’ water pipe seem to be giving hot water. The cold pipe was robbing the heat from the hot pipe that goes to our baseboard heaters. I knew this was going to be a long day having to repair a busted pipe when I returned home and not something I could deal with right then at six am so my mindset was not negative but also not the start of a ‘happy day’. The day progressed and I received a call around three in the afternoon that the pipe had thawed and was now leaking water out of the ceiling in the mud room leading from the garage into the stairway into the ...

Blogging and the internet. It's a source of endless wonder and a powerful educational tool. For instance, I never would have learned that I like to see young ladies in cheerleader outfits bent over the stairs of the Brady Bunch house, but because I have access to the internet, I did learn that about myself. Luckily it was only a curiosity and I moved beyond those into more fact finding uses in researching some of my blogging subjects. Then came blogging. Now here's the thing, you put stuff out there and give people the option to post a reply anonymously; people are going to use that option. I understand that. Sometimes I think I may get some negative responses for some of my weird takes on Life or providing a different take on a subject. It really doesn't bother me when someone posts a less than flattering reply. In my head, I expect the bad. What surprises me though are the cool posts from people I have never really met. The ...