snow and wind in Portage Valley...

 still got a walk in.  i was started on a second walk but Blossom and i were both getting pelted in the eyeballs by snow pellets.  tough to see and my eyes were getting a beating.  Blossom sat down and gave notice that this walk to Byron Glacier was not going to happen if she had anything to do with it.

 since i was there...and needed to use the facilities anyway...may as well stop in and see what the animals at the conservation center were up to  these moose were all staying inside away from the inclement weather

 Blossom and i did do a nice stretch on the Trail of Blue Ice.  so we got the minimum steps in.

 was wet and chilled when i got home so i curled up on the couch with the heated throw and slept.  so i was a fail this week on getting my 3 work outs in..week seven.  i will have to forgive myself and accept that yesterday i had nearly gotten 20,000 steps in.  week 8 will be back to my normal.  Wednesday is our lecture...still no email from our main speaker.  fingers crossed he shows up.  otherwise...i may be talking walrus on the fly.  eek!!

 the musk ox were braving the weather.  actually the wind was super crazy right at Portage Lake and that area.  there were ice bergs by the visitor center and waves crashing over them.  pretty cool to watch...from the car.  attempts at photo ops were quickly ceased as the camera lens would get wet too fast.  even in the car some gusts gave me a good push. always a bit unnerving.

 did get through lots of shredding...that always feels good.  at work nurses write pt stuff down on paper, which we tend to refer to as our "brains".  those have to be shredded and for some reason i tend to bring those home with me...was saving them for a bit as i figured they could come in handy for the book i had started but haven't really worked on for a bit.  there is risk in the book of leaking too much information which would be a violation.  figure i'll just shred it all and let the stories in my head just come to life.

 paper just seems to pile up in a house...drives me nuts.  now i have all this WARIS paper as well.  need to get a better filing system for that.

 my computer is starting to get older so i wanted to work on making sure information from on here is saved to discs.  lots of WARIS stuff that i wouldn't want to lose so i spent some time tonight backing up all that stuff just in case of a major crash.  above are some Wood Bison and below the cute little Sitka Black Tailed Deer.  so cute.

 doubt i got much for great shots as it was pretty wet out.  flakes mixed with rain at this point.

 Portage Valley was covered in a fresh inch of snow.  there is talk of snow in the next day or so...like most of us i will wait and see to believe.

 big elk

 these guys were also just chilling in the weather.

 i didn't see any bears out so they were probably chilling in their dens out of the weather.

 should have stayed in Anchorage i guess...but it is nice to get out of town and actually kind of fun to see places in different weather patterns.

 these were on my walk out there.  got lucky and the weather wasn't too bad in the trees.

 headed over to one of the campgrounds in the area.  closed of course.

 always these odd patterns in the ice that form

 not sure what the cause is.

 ice and snow are pretty fun to watch in all the variations that exist.  so many different patterns...water just is amazing in how many forms it can be found.

 i had debated briefly going through the tunnel to Whittier just for fun...but the weather was just so crappy.  oddly, often you will find totally different weather once you get through the tunnel.  not willing to risk it today.

 my goal was to get back to Anchorage in time to hit the gym...and i did make it back in time.  the spirit was willing but the body was weak.  some times you do just need a day off so i try not to be too hard on myself

 bought a few swimsuits that will work ...gotta love mail order. you can try swimsuits on in the privacy of your own home, better light, not in some tiny room in the middle of the store.

 always love these old stumps...crazy.

 fun to get out there and see them in the winter frozen in

 Portage lake isn't frozen at all.  the ice bergs were from glacier calvings. the wind no doubt had pushed them far from the face.

 no wild animal sightings other than those at the center.  smartly, they were probably holed up somewhere.

 murre carcass....it's not over.  still some deaths.  he probably got weak, caught on land and couldn't take off

 these were taken at Byron Glacier trail....we did not get far at all.

 you can see the snow flakes whizzing past in the one below and probably above if you click on it to enlarge.

 waves crashing on this ice berg.

will try to do some purging of paper this week.  always a good goal.

 i have a few bags of clothes that are ready to take to the center.  i'd always rather just give crap away then try to sell it.  too much bother, strange folks coming to your house/calling.  not for me.  i figure i have gotten use out of whatever it is i bought and i'll just pass it along. if someone else is enterprising and wants to re-sell my old crap..more power to them.

 this was one of the young moose there this summer.  getting so big.  sweet face

 well, i shall head to bed...if there is fresh snow out there in the morning i want to enjoy it!!

thankful for:  A.  safe travels today despite the wind and weather  B.  cute animals to enjoy before i headed back to Anchorage C.  plumbing ...such a lovely invention!!

no gym today...

 so that means i must hit the next three nights to reap my reward of shopping for new work out clothes.  this is week 6...still not an easy habit i guess, but i do feel i'm on the way to being more healthy for what i do get accomplished.

 so plan on at least swimming M and W.  other gym stuff all three days.  do kick myself a bit when i get lazy, but then i try to forgive myself as well.  we all need a day to veg out every so often.  i seem to need them more than others.  i have no idea how some people are as energetic as they seem to be.  of course, i find often times the exciting lives that many lives appear to be are really not as exciting as the image that is put out there.  social media is a great way to fool people into believing that your life is way more exciting and/or productive than it is.

 i was somewhat productive today though.  cat litter/vacuuming and then this evening i purged a few cupboards of out of date/expired stuff.  when you live alone you sadly do end up not using stuff up before it goes bad.  it's good to whip through some cupboards.

 the up side to the added exercise for me is that when i add the 2-3 hours at the gym that is 2-3 hours that i am unable to eat anything.

 these are all taken at the beach off of Kincaid.  i wasn't really able to sleep well last night.  it happens on occasion.  i think i didn't really get into a good rem sleep until nearly 5 am so that meant i didn't get my day started til much later than i should have.  hopefully tomorrow will be better

 got some stuff ready for mailing out.  thank you notes are nearly done finally....i've been terrible.  so not a total waste of a day.  trash day is a good day to encourage myself to purge.  it does feel good..though the house doesn't look any cleaner.

 Blossom was happy to head to the beach.  she always loves it down there.  seemed pretty warm out..by AK standards.

 dogs teams are running.  it's the Yukon Quest.  seems actually like this less advertised dog sled race is probably the more true Alaskan style race.  the Iditarod is fun...don't get me wrong, but it's gotten more tame, less wild. they carry gps and have an emergency button.

 as i often find, the more organized something becomes the more it gets ruined.  things become top heavy.  everyone wants to be involved.

 the superbowl happened today.  i missed it.  never been a fan of football.  do remember my brothers getting LA Rams helmets one Christmas.  then the Rams left LA.  heard they may be heading back again after all these years.

 don't think any of my brothers actually played football.  well anything more than flag football or pick up games in the park.  a few played little league baseball, though i really don't remember the two right above me playing that.  several played basketball.  it seemed to be the family game.  wrestling for E and volleyball for J i think.

 no sports for me.  i recall  being in 5th or 6th grade when girls were given the option of playing softball.  some court case i think had been won or bill passed....girls sports were to be given equal opportunities.  it took several more years to really balance that out more.  girls now play sports all the time.

 if i remember the days that were offered up for girls softball conflicted with church events.

 another selfie on the beach...

 life was changing when i was a kid.  more moms were working outside of homes. people were starting to get divorced rather than muddle through in miserable marriages with less social consequences for divorcing.

 i became a latch key kid.  that was the term used for a kid that carried a house key, often around their necks on a string and came home from school to an empty house.  there weren't the after school programs set up like they have now.  people weren't as anxious to leave kids home alone.  of course, one big difference was that most families had more than 1-2 kids so you weren't really alone alone.

 there was also still many moms who stayed at home so if there was an issue you could generally locate an adult somewhere.  now you could probably only find a few houses on each block, depending on neighborhoods, where there was an adult around during the days.

 we were all basically "free range children" though we never thought anything of it.  we came and went as we pleased during day light hours for the most part.  we were just kids being kids.  we played with other kids that lived in the area.  parents were mostly in the homes, so we organized our own games.  most kids, even if there was some sports team involvement, were still home most of the time or free to wander.  the sports teams were rarely on a weekend, never on a sunday if i recall.

 at 5 i remember jaywalking to get to the local 7-11.  in my teens i would catch the bus to the mall with friends.  one friend who grew up in NY was saying they only had bus service until they were a certain age then the kids were all expected to use the public transportation.

 i saw a kid walking down the street by himself the other day...it occurred to me how truly unusual that is anymore.

 it's actually pretty sad and i suspect it does have a big impact on our society.  probably hinders independence in these kids as they never do anything without adult supervision anymore.  also probably some life lessons lost from having to manage themselves along with the neighborhood kids of varying ages and abilities...now they have adults to try and do this.

 you rarely heard of any kids who had any sort of food allergies or even seasonal allergies.  a few kids maybe had asthma, some wore glasses. there was no mainstreaming in the schools yet.

 living in South Pasadena in the LA area.  we would have earthquake drills and bomb drills..which truth be told were basically the same drill.  the cold war was still on.  we also had smog days.  those were days when the air quality was so poor we were not allowed to play freely.  at times just having to sit on the playground or in the classrooms.

 in my childhood, the Vietnam War ended, the cold war ended.  we really were pretty carefree.  we worried a bit about the Russians, but not all that much.

 there wasn't much terrorism and the stuff that happened, did so pretty far away.  guerrilla..  that was the only word i remember being used for what we'd call terrorists..that was during the Olympics when the Israeli team was taken hostage.  i was pretty young...all i remember is wondering why the apes would want to hurt the Israeli's and how did they get out of the zoo. nobody else seemed to wonder this so i remember not saying anything to anyone for fear of looking foolish...then they showed footage of the guerrilla's climbing around the buildings on the outside...they were not apes at all but humans.  i was relieved i hadn't made a fool of myself.

 we worried about Russian.  China was apparently just full of starving folks and the middle east...that was just where the oil came from i guess.  we only had nightly news on tv and daily newspapers.  there was the weekly magazines like Life, Newsweek and Time and then we had the encyclopedia.  oh and nat geo..probably the first place any of us saw nearly naked people.

 just a wee stroll down memory lane for you all. shouldn't be offending anyone.  see how i've avoided those sensitive subjects.

 liked that they name on the side of this plane was POLAR

 alpenglow on the big mountains in the distance.

 Denali

Thankful for: A.  sleep...when it did come  B.  purging....great to clean out stuff. very rewarding  C.  mindlessness.  we all need a bit of it from time to time.