Icewind's Ramblings

June 5 is National Doughnut Day and today it’s your chance to eat free doughnuts at Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme in USA . The problem that I have is that it’s over 2,000 miles to the closest shop for either franchise. Alaska has a few donut stores to go with the over abundance coffee kiosks all over Anchorage but not a DD or KK to be found anywhere. During some fund raisers people have boxes of the doughy delights flown up from Seattle . A few hours old but it’s not the same as that familiar ‘Hot Donuts Now’ sign flashing in the window. On June 5, 2009, Participating Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants throughout the country promise to give every customer a free donut of their choice, with the purchase of any beverage, limit one per customer. However, participating Krispy Kreme stores will give away a free doughnut to all its customers, no purchase necessary, with a limit of one doughnut per customer. National Do...

This evening while my father in law was outside in the front yard working on deck stairs we have just installed a very clean-cut college age person came up and started a smooth talking sales pitch. He said his name was Justin and he worked for APX Alarm Security Solutions and wanted to talk with us about our alarm system. He came into the house and gave his pitch about window break and door sensors and that his system was cellular based and would work even if a burglar ‘cut’ our phone line. It all sounded pretty good and he threw around names like “Honeywell”, ADT, Brinks, and Guardian which are other local companies who have been around Alaska for many years. He explained they had over 90% of the Anchorage residential market and could “waive” the two thousand dollar equipment fee if we placed their APX sign in our front yard (his hard part) and we could just pay the $ 49 dollar monthly monitoring fee (our easy part) for a period of three years. ...

Yesterday was another one in a long series of days that seemed to go on forever. I had a job meeting for the new super Walmart we are building in Kenai Alaska at 9 am which meant that I needed to be out of the house by four in the morning to make it to the shop, load up items we were taking down, and make the almost three hour drive to the jobsite. We are still in our “light gain” period for another three weeks so we gain about three and a half minutes a day now as the sun slows it trek northward for Solstice on June 21 st . Sunrise is 4:34 AM and sunset is 11: 24 PM leaving the five hours between with a semi-full light for about 3 hours and twilight ‘dusk’ period for the other two. I went to bed Sunday evening just after midnight with the birds still singing their songs and when I awoke at 3:30 AM the light was on again with no clouds to block the soon to rise sun rays peaking out from behind the Chugach mountains to the east of my house. I was not tired as I ...