Sweltering! 92 degrees right here in Wasilla, Alaska! (I'm going to take a break from this blog for awhile now)

Well, it's almost midnight, I've got my windows wide open and the curtains pulled back and I'm still sweating. I would turn on the AC, but in a place where a hot summer day seldom rises above 75 degrees and that only a few times a year, and then every now and then a summer comes along when it goes into the 80's for a day or two and we all melt, you just don't bother to install air conditioning.

But today it hit 92 (33 C) and it's just sweltering. I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight. Here's Lynx, buckled in. He's home with his mom, dad, grandmother and brothers now. I hope he has a cool spot and can sleep.

Online, via the Weather Channel - Weather Underground - Accuweather, it showed Wasilla's high as being 91. I checked out different places with my very accurate car thermometer while driving around and found readings ranging from 88 to 92.

Tonight about 9:00 PM, I decided I needed an ice cream cone, so I drove to Dairy Queen. The temperature was still in the high 80's, so I decided to drive by Wasilla Malibu (south shore of Wasilla Lake along the Parks Highway) and get a couple of snaps as I did.

Here's the first one I took.

Then this boy about to throw a football. We have lived in Wasilla for over 30 years now and this is the hottest I have ever seen it. One summer, shortly after we moved here from our temporary refugee home in Anchorage, it hit 90. None of us could believe it, because it had been pretty cool just before. Tar was melting in the road. I thought about pulling up a chunk to chew on, the way we sometimes did as kids in Montana, but rejected the idea. As a seventh grader in Montana, I was one of the tallest kids in the class, but I never grew another inch and finished high school on the short side.

Maybe that tar we chewed is why. It wasn't very good, either. In fact, it was terrible. But all us boys who chewed it bragged about how good it was - better than chewing gum.

Anyway, that 90 degree Wasilla day took place right near the 4th of July. Maybe it was the Fourth of July, but I don't think so. It was summertime.

Now, it's still springtime in Alaska and it's 92. Isn't it supposed to be 40 below?

I decided I might as well stop briefly in the parking lot but it was full. Not a parking space to be had. So I drove to the next parking lot, up the hill by Pizza Hut. This was better anyway - higher angle. If you are wondering what all these people are looking at, it is a monster. In fact, it looked just like all those pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, only bigger and uglier.

I didn't take a picture because it was so ugly I thought it might break my camera.

As big monsters go, it was pretty nice, though. That's why nobody's scared. They're just awestruck.

The beach at Wasilla Malibu, photographed from the Pizza Hut parking lot. One hot day sometime in the future, I must actually venture down onto the beach and shoot a little photo story on Wasilla Malibu and talk to people, find out what the big deal is.

But the idea kind of scares me.

As regular readers know, this blog had been costing me too much time and I have too much to do, and so awhile back, I cut back to posting only on Wednesdays. Ever since then, things of import have been happening, things I could not ignore.

But now I truly hope life about me can be routine and dull, because I have a huge amount of work to do and I have fallen behind. To honor Katie John, I would fall behind 1000 times, but still I have a living to make and I must get back at it. One day, hopefully within the next two years, I still hope to figure out how to blog and make a living, but for now I am going to take a break all together. I will go back to a Wednesday only schedule - but not this Wednesday.

As enthralled as I am by this amazing hot weather, I want it to cool down. It's too hard to work when it's hot like this.

I stayed in the Pizza Hut parking lot for maybe five minutes. Then I drove across the street, went through the Dairy Queen drive-through and bought this chocolate-dipped ice cream cone.

I should note that last Saturday, I took some pictures at the wedding of Justin and Stephanie Mahoney, Abby's son and new daughter-in-law.

Fortunately, the bride's family hired a real wedding photographer but Abby asked if I would come and shoot a few frames of whatever the hell I felt like, so I did. Horses, tattoos, children, dogs, moonshine and such; pretty women all over the place. A priest, too. It was a fun wedding. I will still make a post, but not for awhile yet. When I do post it, it will be on a Wednesday.

I've just got to get some work done. Not that I haven't been working. I've been working hard. Night and day. Sleeping little. Working for my heart. Now I've got to work to make a living. Night and day. Sleeping little. Fortunately, I love my living work, too. I work for my heart there, too. Good thing. If I didn't, there would be no way I could ever get it done.

A pirate came to our house on a scorching hot Father's Day (at least one more post still to come in Katie John series)

Kalib came out as a pirate. He scanned a distant ship as Jobe oared their own pirate ship towards one

Click to read more ...

I accept an invitation to dine with gulls; Kalib goes to jail, Jobe claims a moose, Lynx opens a door and other wild tales from the past week

I just got another call from Seagull Dan. He wants me to join them again for lunch. I don't think I

Click to read more ...

Breakfast with ruffians - he wore red cowboy boots

I haven't posted a long picture story for a long time. I will do so now. I begin with the

Click to read more ...

As his brothers eat pizza, Jobe dines on a section of railroad track, speaks of devastating fire

I took quite a few photos of these boys over the weekend and some of them are pretty good, too, so I had planned to run several and to tell the whole story of my weekend with my grandsons. But, I am too lazy. This one was right near the end. When you are too lazy to edit a whole weekend's worth of grandson shooting and then write it up, it is always easy just to grab one picture from right near the end of the take - especially if that one is of two of your grandsons eating pizza in their mother's arms just before she and their dad take them home, while the third chomps on a section of plastic railroad track.

"This is our house!" Jobe told his mother before they left.

"What about The Blue House?" his mother asked. Even though it is white with turquoise trim, "The Blue House" is what they call their own house. I think Kalib gave it that name.

"The Blue House is broken," Jobe responded. "It burned down. We won't see it again!"

Just before they left, I told them to call when they got home and let us know their house was ok. They called. It was.

I was glad. I had been just a little bit worried Jobe might be clairvoyant.