Got to get up early, so I'm going to bed early – wonder if I'll sleep?

I'm going to bed right after I make this post. For me, it is still early - at this moment 9:40 PM. But my plane leaves Anchorage at 6:10 AM, which means I need to leave here by 4 AM. And I need to take a shower before I go. So I'm going to bed. I probably will spend a lot of time lying awake, wondering why I bothered to even go to bed early. But I'm going to try anyway. I'm very tired, so maybe. I just hope Jim behaves himself and doesn't raise a ruckus tonight. He's usually pretty good at night and even helps me sleep, but every now and then, he raises a ruckus.

It was a rainy day today, and tonight is a rainy night. I could encounter my first subfreezing temperatures tomorrow. When last I checked, the temperature in Barrow was 32° F, or 0°C. The humidity was 89%. It snowed in Deadhorse today. When people try to belittle the cold of Alaska, they always like to say, "well your cold is a dry cold." Yes, our cold is a dry cold --- when it's bitter cold, because bitter cold air cannot hold moisture - but bitter cold is... bitter cold. But when it is just modestly cold, then it can be pretty darn humid, too.

We get it both ways.

As I read about light, Jim transports me down to the river to pray

Jimmy is a natural born hacker. He does some really strange things with my computer. Earlier today, he stepped across my keyboard and suddenly my computer began to speak out loud – really loud. It read everything that was on my screen to me. If I changed webpages, then it read everything on the new webpage. If I went to my email, it read the emails aloud. If I switched to Photoshop, then it read "Photoshop"and the title names of any pictures I pulled up. If I pulled up a word document, it read the words. I could not figure out how he did it, nor how I could stop it. It was driving me crazy!

Finally, I opened my activity monitor, found something called "voiceover", figured that must be it, and put a stop to it.

Then, a little bit ago, I was reading the transcript of a conversation on Burn Magazine between master photographer David Alan Harvey and David Hobby, a master of artificial lighting. To enhance my reading experience, Jim positioned himself in his usual place between my keyboard and monitor. This time, he was very careful not to step on the keyboard at all. Yet, suddenly, Alison Krauss began to sing at me out of my computer, "as I went down to the river to pray…" Jim does this every now and then. Somehow, and I have no idea how, he opens up iTunes and plays that song. Never any other song. Just that song. When the song reached it's end, my computer fell silent.

It is almost like Jim is sending me a message - that I need to go down to the river to pray. Early tomorrow morning, I catch a plane to Barrow. Over two days, I will attend two funerals. I pray for my friends who have died; I pray for their families who have been so good to me. I am not a religious man, but I pray for them. Prayer is not the sole domain of the religious.

Just before the big tour…

I have been back home for a while now, but before I left the blue house I shot this picture of Kalib before he left – to go to daycare and then on to a tour of his new kindergarten classroom. I remember how excited I was to start kindergarten.

Kalib! Kindergarten!

I don't know what day he goes to real school for the first time, but pretty soon. The next thing you know, he will be an old man like me and I won't know anything about it. 

Lynxton controls the light

I am at the blue house in Anchorage, having just brought Margie in to babysit. I found Lynxton playing with the light switch. I shot four or five frames. In about half, his face is dark, in the other half, light. He looks not at the switch but at the light he has learned how to control. Now I will drive back to Wasilla.

Out of the rain and into the corn

I just got home from my walk. Margie had already come home, which I already knew because she had texted me. "Corn's ready," she said as I walked through he door.

"I better change out of these wet clothes first," I said.

She looked at me, "You just better get in the shower and rinse off,"she said.

"I won't go that far," I said, "Corn's ready." I quickly changed, now I'm going to eat my corn. I wonder if Jim already had a taste?