Way back in October, I signed up for a little game on Return to Rural. She gave me the letter B. Sorry this is late, Tenzin!

The premise is that if you have a blog and leave a comment on this post, I’ll assign you a letter. You take that letter and make a list of 10 things you love that begin with that letter. Then, you pass on the letter love to the bloggers who make comments on your post. It’s creative and social!

Ten things I love that start with the letter “B,” in random order:

1. Bakers. Especially Skippy Baker, which works out well, since we’re married!
2. Bagels. Toasted, with both butter and peanut butter.
3. Busy. A trait I inherited from my father and grandfather, it seems. I like to be occupied, either mentally or physically, most of the time. I’m currently working 3 jobs, presenting to the local Mac User Group tomorrow, volunteering for monthly technology help sessions, and building my own business. My leisure time is spent doing photography, videography, blogging, some video games, and reading. And I sleep and eat too.
4. Bacon. Yes, I was vegetarian for a couple of years, but I really like bacon. Especially thick, slow-cooked, chewy bacon. Especially good wrapped in toast slathered with butter…which I only eat once a month or less, so no, I don’t weigh 800 pounds.
5. Buckets. If it weren’t for buckets, I would have a really hard time feeding the dogs, getting water, and containing trash, among other things. Yay, buckets!
6. Blogging. 4 years of my totally awesome and interesting life and counting!
7. Bill of Rights. (Mostly) Guaranteeing freedoms since 1791. Somewhat trampled since 2001. Still worth fighting for.
8. Buffs. Sara P. (no, not “Palin,” though that was her Halloween costume) got us these last year. They are awesome. Less cumbersome than a scarf, more versatile than a neck gaiter, perfect for Alaska.
9. Baked goods. Especially sweet baked goods. There are several excellent bakeries in Homer. Fortunately, I don’t usually drive past them when I’m in town, otherwise I’d be a lot poorer. (Strange that I married a Baker? I THINK NOT.)
10. Blankets. On the bed, on the couch, in the car…I love blankets. So warm. So cozy. So…blankety.

By the looks of my list, if I had gotten an “F” instead of a “B,” I could have just written FOOD really big and called it good.

Who wants a letter?

I had planned on setting up my video camera this morning, to catch the sunrise. Right as I went to the door to setup, it started sleeting. I held off on recording until it finished, and you’ll see the results later.

This has happened before, this sleeting in the early morning hours. Usually the sun comes out, and the temperatures rise to the mid-fifties.

However, later today, I looked outside and saw this:

Yes, lots of snow falling! It stopped before we went out this evening to feed the dogs dinner.

I seem to be crashing big-time today, after a month straight of working with no time off, so I went back inside to rest and snooze while Skippy did some last minute cleaning before the boss arrives home tomorrow night. After a couple hours, I got up to feed and walk Ashlee and Macgee. This greeted me at the front door:

Now it’s accumulating! I don’t recall seeing snow on the 3rd of October before, in Indiana. I wonder how long until it actually sticks around?

Jerry showed me a nifty little plugin for WordPress that takes all the categories and tags on a blog and turns them into a little Flash tag cloud animation. Let’s see if it works.

EDIT: Well, it works, but it places itself over the edge of the post outline, so I temporarily enclosed it in a list tag until I figure out a better solution. I also need to start tagging my posts, I suppose. The categories are a little sparse.

EDIT 2: Apparently I can only have one instance running at a time, so I’ve gone ahead and moved it to the sidebar. I’m in the process of tagging the posts. Exciting!

Skippy and I just prepared a supplement to the sled dogs’ regular diet: boiled salmon. Here’s the recipe:

Take 3 to 4 whole frozen salmon. Chop them up with an axe. Put them in a big vat, and cover with water. Place the vat on a large propane burner (for you outdoor folks, picture a knee-high Dragonfly). Bring to a boil, and use a giant potato masher to stir.

Salmon bones turn soft when they are cooked, so we can use the whole salmon.

Now, I like eating salmon. But there’s something about this particular soup that really turned me off. In fact, I might not have dinner tonight. Maybe it started with being sprayed by frozen salmon chunks as I hacked at them in the driveway. Or perhaps it was the consistency of the frozen salmon itself, since I’m so used to fresh salmon. Or maybe it was the smell of cooking salmon, combined with the visual of their heads and tails floating around in a pink stew, peeking through a yellowish, oily froth.

Yeah, that was it. Blargh.

Around 8:30 this morning, I was driving Skippy, our friend and neighboring dog handler Tiffany, and a sled dog named Opal into town, because Opal was scheduled to get spayed, and we all needed groceries.

It, of course, has been raining for the last couple days. After passing Fritz Creek (about 7 miles from Homer), I watch a big Chevy Tahoe in the opposite lane drift off the side of the road right as we pass it. I continue to watch it in my mirrors, waiting for the driver to pull back onto the road. Instead, the truck veers further off, and disappears down the hillside the road is cut from.

“What are you doing?” Skippy asks.

“Watching a car wreck.” I responded. “We have to go back!”

Both Skippy and Tiffany agreed, as I pull into the next driveway and drive back to where I saw the Tahoe vanish. The driver is already back up by the road, seemingly unharmed but extremely shaken. About 20-30 feet down the hill are the remains of her vehicle, resting on and against some smallish trees (they looked like birch trees to me, but I’m not quite versed in the local arbor yet), smoking. Skippy leans out the window and huggs her, and asks if she was hurt. The driver says no, and start crying, so Tiffany gets out to take care of her while I drive a little further down the road to find a safe place to park.

Fortunately, there is a gravel pull-off about 50 feet away, and Skippy calls 911 while I hike back up the hill to see what I can do. Tiffany had already climbed down and turned off the ignition, but found smoke inside the truck, and had called the fire department. I take the driver back down to our car, so she can sit and also so she does not have to look at her crumpled truck.

A woman stops to see what is wrong, and then brings us back a flare to put at the top of the hill so we don’t get creamed by some other speeding vehicle. Tiffany and I walk back up the hill while Skippy stays on the phone with 911 and keeps her arm around the driver. I’ve never lit a flare, and while Tiffany and I try to figure out the simple 3-step instructions (the flare was old, and the instructions were hard to make out. Really, they were!), another truck pulls over and a woman hops out with orange cones. All of this is before any emergency personnel have shown up.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is, Alaskans are awesome.

About 20 minutes after the accident, and 15 minutes after the initial call to 911, a volunteer fireman arrives. Shortly thereafter, an ambulance and a firetruck pull up. I stay on the hilltop, waving at the occasional person who continues to drive fast, past a flare and several orange cones, on a wet road.

An amendment: Alaskans are awesome but can sometimes be a little slow on the uptake. Some of them, at least. :-)

Finally, the driver is declared undamaged, though she apparently got verbally ripped apart by the paramedics for not wearing her seatbelt. Her story, as told to Skippy and the paramedics, was that she was between shifts at her job, and was trying to get home in a hurry (20 miles away). She took a curve too fast, and the rear of her truck slid out. She over-corrected, and that’s when she went off the side of the road. So…we arrived just in time to help, and just late enough to avoid getting smeared.

We agree to give her a ride back into town, and drop her off at a towing company, so she can begin the process of recovering what was left of her car.

Then we take Opal to the vet clinic and start our day. I’m only just now able to sit and write this all out, at 9pm.

So, no pictures tonight. Instead, picture yourself not in a hurry. Plan your days out with your full attention, to avoid over-scheduling and feeling like you need to rush to accomplish everything. What is it worth, really? If you have trouble meeting deadlines, perhaps you should adjust your expectations, instead of your speed. Please take care.