Catching up and my first moose sighting of the year.....

 It has been a relatively quiet and boring time, here in Fairbanks.  I was grateful, as the hustle and bustle from the kitchen project had taken a toll on my sleep patterns.  I can get really off-step when my sleep gets out of the normal cycle.  I do not like setting alarms, and I had to get up early every morning, so I was dressed and ready for the worker(s).

Then we came upon an issue after Rob installed the new kitchen faucet.  It is always a crapshoot when you are dealing with an older home.  Things wear out over time.  And things may work just fine until you mess with them.  That is exactly what happened when Rob installed the new faucet.

The shutoff valves under the sink were tight.  He managed to get one to work, but the other did not, so we had to shut off the water to the entire house.  He got everything installed and the faucet worked just fine, but we left the cabinet empty so we could check on possible leaks.  It took a week before Rob found water under the sink.  It did not look like a great deal, but the issue is that it had been oozing out of the old valve and running down the pipe, before dripping into the ceiling in my craft room.  I am not one to look up at my ceiling much, so it was not until I found a bit of water in one of the measuring cups on my counter that we realized what was happening.  We had to get a plumber in to replace the two valves to make the kitchen watertight again. (Still have not put things back under the sink... just in case!)

I have not been doing very much.  I have been laying low, staying out of public areas, and just allowing Rob and Kate into the house now that the workers were finished.  I was scheduled to get my first COVID-19 vaccine on March 3rd.  I need to stay as far away from people as possible until then.  I got a call on Thursday from the folks at Chena Health.  They had opened up some days in February and wanted to know if I wanted to change dates.  And, you better believe I was all in for that!  So now, I will be getting my first vaccine on February 15th with my second shot scheduled for March 15th.  So the light is getting brighter about 3 weeks faster!!!

Now, to some fun stuff...  So far this winter, we have not gotten very much snow.  We got the big dump in early November.  Then I did another snow blowing job just before Brian came at Christmas to remove several little fluffy storms from the driveway.  But since then, I have not seen enough snow to even get the snowblower fired up.  I am not complaining.  The snow has not melted as temperatures have not gotten much above 40 degrees and are usually around freezing or below.  Once in a while, it dips to the 20 below temps, but it has not been bad at all.  Still have all of February and March, but so far, the weather has been very nice.

I installed a new WYZE camera outside of the garage.  Their new version 3 camera was designed to be either inside or outside, so I have one facing up the driveway from the garage.  It has been fun seeing Miles when he is outside on his lead so I no longer have to walk him all of the time.  Of course, he has a landmine field of little poops on one side and a trail of little pee spots on the other side of the driveway.  When the snow finally begins to melt, I will have to go out and pick up a winter's worth of piles.  I tried keeping up with them, but even going out within an hour or so of his 'deposit', the piles have sunk into the snow and are frozen solid in place.  So I will wait until they thaw and get them all at once.  They do not pose a problem as walking on them does now result in adding anything to your shoes.

From time to time I go through the little 12 second recordings of some of our cameras to see what or who is moving outside.  Most of the time it is Miles or Miles and I walking, or lights from cars reflecting off the snow at night.  Yesterday it caught my first Moose sighting for 2021.

Mid-afternoon this large, female moose stepped out from beside my garage and meandered up my driveway.

Just calmly walking from the direction of the woodshed and taking a leisurely walk across the driveway.

She must be taking her time and must be smelling Miles on the driveway.

Still taking her time...

This video shows my lady moose making the entire trip.  She comes out from the woodshed area, goes up the driveway while checking out all manner of things, including the decision not to jump over the fence and continuing up the driveway.  If you have the ability to enlarge this video, when she turns the corner, she stops and spends some time listening.  Then she appears to call out into the woods before cutting through an opening in the fences and heading back into the woods.

This is a camera that is in our front window.  You get to see her beautiful face and get a better idea of how big she is.  But as beautiful and elegant as this animal is, they are mean and nasty, so there is no going out to try to entice them to come to you for a quick pet!!  We just admire them from afar.

Enjoy!!!