another day another vocanic eruption...

so the volcano, mt redoubt, continues to be very active. more on that later...today we walked at the dog park. the ducks hang out on the bits of lake by the creek. blossom likes to go take a dip in the water as well. silly dog. it was snowing,but pleasantly warm...almost 40 degrees. it's break up...we are there. break up means dirty snow melting everywhere and very large pools of water on the roads. the snow is unpredicatable...you start walking and end up postholing. it's a great time to get out of town. i always find it funny that you hear the shovels in the neighborhood as many try and rid thier driveways of the thick slab of ice that has formed. not sure if it's just our desire to end winter or if it's so warm out that we all just want to enjoy temperatures over 30 as much as we can. i occasionally will take a whack at the ice on my driveway as well, but i'm more of the opinion that eventually the ice will just melt. does that make me lazy or practical...hmm?
another phenomenom that one must be mindful of during melt is what i refer to as "poop soup". this occurs when you neglect to keep up on your dog poop in the yard. it may also become an issue if you put alot of frozen poops in your garbage and then the temperature increases before the trash pick up. i learned my lesson my first year in this house. the garbage men put a tag on my garbage can and refused to collect my garbage that week. at first i was a bit miffed and then i lifted the lid of the trashcan. words cannot describe the horror found within. i do not fault the poor garbage dudes and now am a very careful poop collector. i'm outside often in very low temperatures chipping frozen poops out. it is easier to just wait a few hours til the poops freeze...no odor and less mess....unless it all melts. enough on the poop.
this time of year i end up doing more neighborhood walks and will soon begin to avoid any bodies of water for fear that blossom will try and walk on it and the slush will break through. besides...the bears are out. the sign below is more often seen in summer. the fish and game folks put warning signs out on trailheads with recent bear sightings and especially for bears that have been a problem already. apparently, this bear has been tracking people and showing no concern. the moose are also coming into town in droves. the are chipping away at whatever bark they can find to feed on. if i ate bark only at this time of year i'm sure i could easily lose the 5-10 pounds of winter weight that seems to collect. of course, i've noticed that this weight doesn't drop off in the summer as readily as it did a few years ago. hmm..so not fair.

i need to head to the gym tomorrow and sign up for a few months. the shower will be out of commission here so it will give me and excuse to work out and shower.

thought i would post a few pictures of mt redoubt eruptions. these volcano pictures below were not taken by me. all the other pictures on this blog so far have been. i can't see the volcano from my place. i guess we are getting some actual ash fall today. the volcano erupted a few times today quite powerfully. the airport keeps getting shut down because of it so travel and goods may be a tough thing for a bit. i didn't notice any ash today when i was out, this evening when i looked at the chugach range it did appear to be grey instead of white. the sky was darkening though so hard to tell if the dark clouds were ash or just snow clouds to me. i'm sure there is plenty of ash floating around anyway. it's blown so much and so high this week. we'll see what daylight brings tomorrow when i get up. so these pictures were all found at the avo website (alaska volcanic observatory) if anyone wants to see and read more. it's a very interesting web site. i was chatting with my sister and i think she was qutie fascinated checking it out as we chatted.

okay so the above shot was taken from the kenai peninsula, i think within the last 24 hours. looks a bit like an atomic event to me. very pretty though.

the picture below i found very cool. never occured to me that the power of the explosive eruption could cause it's own lightning storm..so what you are seeing is a combo of lightening and ash.

the above picture shows all the ash fall on the cliff glacier...i think that's the name. it also shows that a river has formed down the middle of the glacial melt i suppose. i think the blue colour of the glacier just looks cool with all that ash on top. below picture shows the pattern of glacial melt working it's way down the valley. there are some large oil storage bins much further down that everyone is watching very closely. so far they are holding the some 6 million gallons from the flow that surrounds them,but if those break from the pressure we will have a major environmental catastrophe in addition to the ash issues.

i'm suspecting work will get crazy now with all this ash in the air. anyone with respiratory issues is at risk. one co-worker said that she hasn't had an asthma attack for 10-15 years and has had 2 this week. i explained to her that it was probably from the ash in the atmosphere. i think people think that since we hadn't had ash landing we were clear. i figure when ash blows some 60,000 feet into the atmostphere it's everywhere. so far for me, i've just had some issues with dry eyes. i've been putting drops in today and had to on monday as well.

this picture i loved because it shows the ash coverage. these mountain tops were all covered with clean white snow before these eruptions and now they are covered with ash.

now this one shows perspective. this is taken from a satelite. these eruptions just seem huge to me and as you can see it does seem fairly large from space, but really i thought it seemed amazingly small when seen in this perspective. we really are just dots out in space. i'm always fascinated how an event such as this in alaska can impact area's around the globe. these ash clouds will travel on the wind so all ends of the earth. see we are really a small place....we're all in this together.

work was very slow for me. sunday i was called off, my overtime wednesday shift i got overstaffed...i was actually happy as i wanted to watch american idol. i know..people seem to think that is no not a show i'd watch. anytime anyone at work hears i watch that they seem to go into shock. i think they don't know that i'm a sometime songwriter/singer. that is probably why i enjoy watching it. i "worked" the last two nights, but had one relatively minor patient to follow each night. i mostly chilled on the computer at work playing "bookworm" a new game that a co-worker introduced me to. it's quite addicting. it's like a more active boggle. i love that game. i did watch the netflix movie wednesday as well. it was "perdition". it had reese witherspoon in it. it wasn't a movie i tend to expect to see her in,but i liked it well enough. dealt with a somewhat illegal holding of her husband, a egyptian born american green card holder. so interesting storyline and such. not one i'd rush out and buy, but i enjoyed it.

i'll probably just turn in early today.