Lies, all lies!

     Oh to be pregnant and living in Alaska with no power.  I really am living the dream.
     The storm did turn out to be a storm, but I don't really know how to describe it, because it isn't what we identify as a storm.  Our storms come with green (and various other colored) skies, lightning, hail, wind, maybe spiky clouds, rain, thunder- all sorts of stuff.  This was just wind.  I guess there was rain, but no more than any other day so I'm not going to count it.  From what I know they had unverified record breaking wind gusts, like 60 mph here in the valley and from what I can tell about 90 on the hillside.  Okay, I accept this as windy.  Fine. We, however, have not had power for 40 hours.  The houses across the street have power, across the block to the east has power, quarter mile to the north?  Yep, power.  Dan's church is a half mile to the east.  Power all over the place, including many houses in between.  It is a bit on the cold side to have no power.  Dan and I sleep on the futon huddled together in sweatsuits being continually taunted by the streetlight on the opposite side of the road that turns on and off every minute casting light onto our walls.  If we are without power tonight, we may accept an offer to sleep elsewhere.
     Silent buildings make me angry.  I can not sleep in silence; I've tried.  This explains me waking up at 1:00 and being awake until around 6 from what I can tell.  Add a pregnancy, the fact that none of our cold food is cold, we can't make anything hot, and I have trouble sleeping anyway.  This creates a crazy version of me crying out of frustration in the absolutely deafening silence, still being taunted by the damn streetlight 40 feet from our window.  It may paint a comical picture now, but pregnant lady on 3 hours of sleep found no humor.  I was able to watch some of Harry Potter (#2) on my computer and that helped and eventually I was sleeping a bit.  Please bring back the power so I can sleep in a building filled with clunks, weird refrigerator noises (that I keep thinking sounds like a moose, and no I don't know what a moose sounds like), and the glorious hum of electricity.
     So, when do we get our power back?  Why, how sweet of you to inquire! On Wednesday morning, they said Wednesday night.  On Wednesday afternoon, they said Thursday morning.  It is now Thursday at 1:45 p.m. and they say hopefully by tonight, but it could possibly be 3-5 days total.  So, they have no idea and chose to tell me lies.  What could possibly be taking so long?  There were neighborhoods with electrical fires that got their power back after 12 tiny hours.  They keep saying how unseasonably early this storm is, which makes me wonder how this scenario being possible in 20 degree weather makes it any better.  From what I've worked out, I guess something with the frozen ground prevents so many trees from going down, so power outages are less common then.  Part of the problem is that I think they just don't have the man power to deal with outages like this since they don't really get giant storms like we do.
     Wednesday, after the stormy overnight hours, they had an actual downpour that even got a bit slanty in direction and that freaked everyone out too.  They don't get downpours apparently.  I would have enjoyed it more if at the time I wasn't getting drenched by it because a stupid lady pulled in front of me at the gas station leaving me to make a giant circle and having to use the unprotected pump on the edge.  Yea, I didn't care for her much.
     I am sitting here at the church, overhearing conversations, enjoying my tombstone pizza (that thawed out, got refrozen and is still delicious), and enjoying a small glass of Dr. Pepper.  People have come in and keep saying they can't remember anything like this storm ever happening.  Apparently we moved to Alaska and brought our erratic weather with us.  I refuse, obviously, to be held responsible for this storm and its repercussions.  Where we come from, this storm is not a "lose power for 3 days" storm.
     For those of you interested in keeping up with our local news and weather issues (probably only our parents) here are the links I've been using: Alaska Daily News, KTUU.  One neat thing is that a flag pole fell over.  Apparently it had dry rot, brown rot, and white rot in it.  This means nothing to me, but they did find a time capsule underneath that was buried in 1961, and that's always fun.  There was a guy's ID in there and they were able to contact him and talk to him which is neat. More on that here.

     Finally: the termination dust.  A couple of days ago I posted a picture of the mountains, one will note that there was not really any snow.  Well, there is snow now, as you will observe below.  This is called the termination dust.  Apparently its a sign that if you are working on an outdoor project, you stop now because winter is coming.  We are learning so much!

     It is kind of hard to see with the clouds, but you get the gist.  This is the view on the walk home from the church by the way.  It's not so bad.  Many of you know that we are really close to the ocean and might be wondering why I don't often post ocean pictures.  Well, we can't really get to the ocean.  The land near the ocean is incredibly unstable and since Anchorage is an earthquake prone area, they have not let people build on the coast since it all collapsed in 1964.  It is now full of beautiful parks and trails.  Which is good, obviously, but makes it much harder to drive up and get a pic.  Hopefully someday soon I'll be up for a big walk and we'll head over to Kincaid and see a moose and the ocean.  Yes, I realize that I chose a link that sends to to Wikipedia.  I don't care.  Look how pretty that winter ocean picture is.  Very pretty.