I know, I know, I’ve been too quiet on the blog.  I’d like to give you some advanced reason for it but to be honest, I just haven’t been in the mood to blog.  The last few days have been “not in the mood for much” weather in Anchorage.  Combine that to significant Auggie time required & work coming pretty heavy, and being creative with words and such isn’t not easy and junk.

When I said I was moving up here, many people focused on two things:
1)  It gets dark
2) It gets cold

Well, y’all were right because:
1) It’s Dark
2) It’s Cold

Right now, we get so little sunlight you can say that its just mindblowing for a guy that’s lived below Canada for his whole life.  Keeping in mind that the sun has to get over the 5000 ft Chugach mountains to the east, we don’t see sun until about 10:30am.  Think about it, when the sun comes up I’m about to head to lunch! By the time I get off of work, the sun is down, sometimes its full on dark too (no Mountains to the west, to block the sun, so when its down it’s DOWN).  The official records (that don’t take the mountains into effect) say that the sun is up for only 6 hours a day right now, and we are still losing 3 minutes a day – come the solstice we will be down to only 5-1/2 hours.  This means we are just not getting anything as far as sun … and when it is up, its so low on the horizon that you spend all your time shielding your eyes from it.

And … yeah … its cold.  Last year, Anchorage had way more snow than the average, there was a good foot of it on the ground by this time last year, while this year we haven’t even had a full foot fall including the stuff that came and melted a couple times over.  Instead we have two things … cold for one.  Average temperatures for this time of year is usually lows of 15°F to highs of 25°F; the last week we barely pushed above 10° during the warmest part of the day.  An odd effect, as the second thing, is that its still fairly humid out there – so what has been happening is that ice crystals have been forming on everything.  It gives an effect sort of like snow on everything and you get a little more every day, but nothing is falling from the sky.

Thing is, we are deep into the “worst of it” time of year in Alaska.  Each day it gets a little darker, and each day seems a little colder.  It doesn’t leave one to be too fired up to do much.  I’ve fallen off the wagon to going to the gym, I’ve fallen off the wagon to keep up on my blog, and even Auggie doesn’t like to do much but lie around.  But the holidays are coming, and the energy from the spirit of the season floats around wherever you go.  In a few short weeks we will be in the depths of the true Alaskan Christmas.

I just wish someone would have told me it was going to be dark and cold.