Too lazy, I take Margie to Abby's; moose licks Caleb's truck and then flees; fire on the snowy mountain side; woman gets pulled over by cop; continents drift but gray whale rescue posts loom over me

I woke up lazy today and I didn't want to do any damn thing. Except eat breakfast. I thought about oatmeal, but I could hear that the TV was on in the living room and Caleb was watching golf. I hate to eat breakfast with the TV on, although sometimes I do, but Caleb deserves to watch golf on Saturday morning, too.

Margie was still asleep but at just the right moment, she opened her eyes and looked groggily about. Having just come home from a week in Anchorage, I figured she would want to stay put and eat oatmeal. She doesn't mind having the TV on during breakfast. In fact, if Caleb is not around, she will often turn the TV on herself.

Still, I asked her, "I don't suppose you would like to go get breakfast?"

She looked around. I could tell she was feeling pretty lazy herself. "Yes," she said. "I think I would."

So off we went to Abby's. Margie had an omelette, with hashbrowns and homemade wheat toast. I had multi-grain sourdough pancakes with two eggs over easy and ham. Margie had not been to Abby's in awhile, and she was thrilled. Abby's just keeps getting better and better. I do not say this to put down either of the Family restaurants, or any others, but there is no place else in Wasilla that you can come even close to getting a breakfast so good as what we had at Abby's today.

Superb! Margie remained in a state of bliss for hours afterward.

Here is Abby and husband Andy visiting another customer who is about to depart. Behind the counter is Meda Warrior, who doesn't work there all the time but was helping out today. Meda is Aurora's sister, whose December wedding I photographed - even though I am not a wedding photographer.

I didn't charge anything to shoot the wedding, because if I did that would make me a wedding photographer, but afterward Aurora and Meda's mother Arlene created an account for me at Abby's and so buys me breakfast there once a week and a couple of times even twice. Abby was ready to put our breakfast on the account, but I had already used it one day this week and it didn't seem right, especially since two of us ate. So I paid for it.

I am getting a little worried, though. I have been expecting a check for about three weeks now. On Monday, I was told it would be mailed Tuesday. It still hasn't come. If it doesn't come this coming week, we are going to be in a hard fix. Margie leaves town Tuesday night and I leave Saturday night. We need that check before we go.

Such is the life of a freelance photographer and his poor wife - or at least this one and mine. There are those photographers who are much smarter, economically speaking than I am, who do not always get in the kind of jams I do.

Margie did not have jam on her toast. She was enjoying her buttered, homemade, wheat bread so much that it didn't even occur to her that she had not put jam on it until she only had two bites left to eat. 

"You should have had jam," I told her. "It's usually homemade and its real good."

After breakfast, I remained lazy. I did not feel like doing anything at all, but I decided I would go pedal my bike for five to ten miles anyway - but the front tire was flat. So I went on walk. Coming back, as I neared the house, I was startled out of a daydream when suddenly I heard something crashing about in the bushes right beside me. I had walked right to within a few feet of a moose. It, and the one it was with, charged off a short distance into the trees. I took a few pictures through the branches, then noticed I was standing right in front of my driveway, so I put my camera on the porch and went into the house to get a plastic bag to put it in so that lens would not fog up.

When I came back to get it, the moose had crossed the street and were in our driveway. The cow took off around the side of the house. The maturing calf licked salt off the back of Caleb's truck.

Once it had satisifactorily salted itself, the young moose took off to run across the yard and see if it could find its mother. 

I went back into the house. I had a great deal of work to do, but I still felt very lazy. I did not want to do it. So I just got on my computer and web-surfed for awhile. Then I went out into the living room and laid down on the couch, by the fire in the woodstove. I semi-napped for a little and might have fully napped, but Chicago had also decided to nap, on my chest. She kept trying to lick my beard. I didn't like that, so each time she would try, I scoot her an inch or two down my chest.

Then she would purr,creep back up and try to lick my beard again.

So it really wasn't much of nap. 

I then decided that I was not going to work at all. I was just going to take the whole damn day off and be lazy. It wouldn't matter in the long run. I heard a story on the radio yesterday about how, in a few hundred million years, all the continents north of Antartica, including Australia, will again be fused into one super continent. When it happens, it will be today, as surely as it is today right now and the fact that I got lazy today won't matter one bit.

Margie was out shopping and didn't come back with the car until close to 5:00. I then took a late coffee break. Metro was closed, so I went the Mocha Moose hut. Here I am, leaving the hut, getting ready to pull back into the traffic of the Parks Highway. There was no car behind me, so I took my time.

Now I am coming down Seldon, nearing home. It is drawing close to 6:00 PM. Look how much light there is! The dark season is coming to its end. Up ahead, I noticed that a cop had pulled someone over and was sauntering toward their car.

I pass the cop and the woman he has pulled over.

Finally, in the evening, I couldn't take it anymore. I was still tired and lazy and felt like doing nothing, but this gray whale series is looming over me. So I came out here. I made a huge amount of progress in a short time. You can't see it yet, but I did.

I don't think you will see it tomorrow, either. Tomorrow is Jobe's second birthday. You should see it on Monday.

It is almost midnight and Margie is baking cakes right now. Tomorrow, we will go to Anchorage and see how wet Jobe and Kalib and their guest, including cousin Gracie, who just arrived from Arizona today, get on Jobe's birthday.

David Alan Harvey Loft Workshop, entry # 15: Times Square, p4: of cops and cameras, terrorists and criminals, in target #1

Officers Iocco and Kerekes, at work, Times Square, New York City.

Officers Iocco and Kerekes pose for pictures with a tourist.

Officers Iocco and Kerekes pose for pictures with another tourist.

Officer Iocco. It is he who we who wander Times Square rely upon to keep us safe.

Young woman poses with Officers Iocco and Kerekes. The two cops willing posed with everyone who asked - and while I was nearby, everyone who asked was female. Not a single male asked. The two young cops did not ask for money from people who wanted to pose with them.

Someone else could come onto Times Square in a New York cop costume, ask for money and then all kinds of people would be willing to pay him for the right to pose with him.

I wonder if most of those would be women, too?

Maybe next time I go to New York, I will buy a cop costume, head to Times Square and test it out.

I looked up the ten most photographed places in the world. Ten cities were named, with a landmark in each one of them. New York City and the Empire State Building was number one. I don't how they figure such a thing, but I don't believe it.

It may be that just about every tourist who goes to New York takes a picture of the Empire State Building, but those same tourists also go to Times Square, where, for every frame they shoot of the Empire State Building, they probably shoot 10, 20, or more in Times Square.

I have no stats to back me up. Logic just tells me it is so.

Cameras everwhere.

Cameras looking here, cameras looking there, cameras looking at me, cameras looking at you - and Angela, too.

People posing with sketches of themselves in front of camera so that they can get their picture taken and prove that they were really here, in Times Square, in New York City, where a world famous artist never spoken of by the critics sketched their likenesses onto paper.

And this is what all these cops are charged to protect. The most crowded area in the most crowded city in the United States, the number one target for terrorists from around the world - not to mention would-be pick-pockets, thugs, shysters, murderers, rapists and hucksters.

Still, I felt as safe in Times Square as safe can be. Certainly safer than in Wasilla. There were no loose dogs to bite me, no ravens to steal from me, no moose to jump up and down and stomp on me, no ice to send my feet flying out from beneath me, no snowmachiners or fourwheelers to roar blindly down the same path I walk upon, no frostbite to steel my ears, toes, fingers or nose away from me.

Even so, and as interesting a place as Time Square and New York is to visit, I prefer Wasilla.

Cop at work in Times Square, New York City.