Friday, September 28, 2018

BUSH DIARY FEBRUARY 1991

BUSH DIARY FEBRUARY 1991:

I have found a uniquely Alaska comic strip.  Called "Muskeg Heights".  The main character is a rather exotic flamingo living up North.
First panel:  She is writing home.  Dear Folks at Home:  This a tough season for a single girl.  That old line about Alaska having ten good males for every female doesn't mention that they all migrate south for the winter.


Odd little tidbit: outgoing mail may be delayed a bit.  Uncle Sam raised the price of stamps but forgot to send any of the new 4 cent and 29 cent stamps to Barrow.  Metered postage it is!!

Security has been beefed up at the MarkAir Terminal.  Instead of street parking next to the terminal, now everyone has to park across the street.  

There was a comedy skit at Messenger Feast.  I asked a native lady at work to translate for me.  Apparently the entire thing involved one guy speaking in Inupiaq a welcome speech to "Sadam Hussein" and the other fellow translated and the humorous part was that the second man deliberately mistranslated what the first man was saying. You had to be there.  

Must purchase a humidifier, I can buy a two gallon one at NARL for 80 bucks.  I HAFTA because I have dandruff on my FACE!! 

I paid two bucks for one pear.

Red Letter Day at work:  Got all the backlog of charts caught up.  I celebrated briefly until Judy ran an error list and now I must go back in and make multiple correction.  Interesting. The backlog was 197 charts.  There was only one incomplete chart because the physician was not done with it. I made 3 coding errors and  data entry errors all of which I spent most of the day correcting. It was a good day.

Finally got my W-2 and mailed off all of my stuff to an accountant in Idaho.  I'm not quite brave enough to attempt Turbo Tax.

Wash day:  I washed my clothes but the dryers were all busy, so I strung up my launder all over the apartment. Strange thing is that due to the low humidity the automatic humidifer I purchased shut off because of the drying laundry.   Interesting.

2-13-91: Very low lying ugly black cloud out over the ice.  Discovered later that this means there is an open lead of water in the ice and the vapor creates the cloud.

Ice:  I got to thinking about slabs of cut ice lying about some of the houses and asked a fellow who works at the hospital, Simmik, how they got fresh frozen ice from the salty ocean.  The man told me that when sea water first freezes, it is very slushy and salty.  The longer and harder that it freezes the more salt is squeezed out and they carefully select ice with lots of air bubbles in the ice.  That is such neat thing, Artcic Ice Maker!!

2-15-91:  Wind chill to 80 below and 90 below through Saturday.  Someone said that there is no such thing as bad weather, just lousy clothing.  Tru dat.

There was a nifty article in the local newspaper.  A group of hardy adventurers kayaked from Alaska to Siberia by way of Big and Little Diomede.  Thirteen kayak's went, five sank in a storm.  The paddlers were rescued by an accompanying motorized ship.  One young couple paddled all the way to Siberia and then to Providenya and met and delivered a letter which was written in Alaska by relatives who were separated by the Cold War.

Saw this advertisement on the Eskimo Channel.  Honey buckets are here decorated in red, white and blue.  Call Joe and he will deliver.  Not all of Barrow is on sewage.

Mowed my lawn this morning, the grass was about a foot tall.  I used my scissors, took about five minutes.  Not exactly the same as fresh cut hay but nice and herby.

War Joke;  Why is it so cheap to train Iraqui pilots?  You don't have to train them to land.

Price Shocker: A pint of strawberries $7.95.  

That's it for February 1991.

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