A Time of Catching Up....

I know... I am being told that I have not blogged much lately, and all of you who have mentioned it are correct... I have been neglecting the blog.  But when I looked to see when I last blogged, I was shocked.  It had been a looooooonnnnnngggggggggg time since I put words to my life, so I will play a little catch up.

I spent a week in Alaska visiting my son, Rob Cermak, and his wife, Kate Hedstrom.  It was a delightful visit.  Kate seems to be doing really well after her battle using chemo and radiation to kill the Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma that was discovered last fall.  Her hair is  coming back but it is extremely short.  It looks really good on her but after years of long hair, I am sure she will be letting it grow.  Both of them had taken the week off while I was visiting.  We went up to Murphy's Dome and walked around the facility.  We did some shopping, played Empire Builder with neighbors until way past midnight... but the sun was still shining on the mountain top....., had a covered dish dinner with the knitting group and I even did the beginners class of Tai Chi one night, much to my knee's lament.  It rained a great deal, so we spent time dodging raindrops.  We went to the Alaska Bowl Company, the museum at the University which was fascinating.  There was lots to see there, but it was the day after Tai Chi, so I found the standing and walking a bit difficult after a while, but I am hoping that we can go back on my next visit as I know I glossed over some really interesting things.  We went out to eat on my birthday at a wonderful restaurant whose specialty was prime rib.  And it was good, good, good!

The hardest thing I had to get used to and never really did was the 24 hours of daylight.  It was most apparent on the night we played games until the wee hours of the morning.  I can remember sitting there playing this fun game and wondering why I was feeling so tired.  I kept blaming it on the fact that it was well past 4:00 AM EASTERN time when I was feeling tired, but it was also my body fighting to understand why, at a time that is always dark here at home, it looked more like early evening in the summer.  Even when we left sometime after 1:00 AM ALASKA time, there was bright sunshine glistening on the mountainside on the drive home.  It was unnerving.

I did enjoy living off grid while I was there.  Rob and Kate built a lovely two story house about 45 minutes outside of Fairbanks.  They are outside of the area where electric lines run.  They have a very complex system for supplying power to their house.  A bank of 24 batteries store power that they generate either using the power of the wind with a wind turbine, the power of the sun with a solar panel (not so good while I was there with all of the clouds and rain) and finally a diesel powered generator that they use when all else fails.  They also have several smaller backup gasoline generators that they use when there are issues with all of the major generating plants fail.  They have to have water brought out to them and stored in an underground tank.  They cannot drill a well without chancing wasting a lot of money.  There are gold deposits in most of the ground where they are.  Perhaps not enough to mine, but enough that would likely make any ground water poisonous as naturally occurring from gold in the ground is arsenic.  They have very thick walls and special windows that seal very tightly against -40 degrees temps in the winter.  The house is so tight that they actually had to install an air exchanger to bring fresh air into the house when it is all closed off.  I was really reminded about how frugal they must be when Rob got really excited to have some significant wind forecasted for the next morning because we could use the toaster (an energy hog of an appliance) for toasted muffins, a special treat for them.  I applaud their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint, but I also like making toast whenever I want some.  They are young enough to realize quite a savings from their effort.  I am old enough that should I  install a turbine or a solar panel, I would not get enough of a savings to make it a value to me.  Different stages of life, I guess.  It changes as move from child to youth to young adult to adult to older adult to senior with a closer proximity to death.

My next adventure was picking up Winston...