I was up there to work, of course. Because I was, at the time, the only single engineer at my company, I got to do all the traveling. I liked it. I'd already spent half a year in New Orleans, and I'd probably never have made it there otherwise. Double-ditto for Alaska.

My days always began at about 6:00. I'd get all bundled up and I'd go outside to start the car. Then I'd go back inside, take a shower and stuff like that, while the car heated up and the windows de-iced. If I was lucky, I'd be able to do all of this without the old man shuffling down and knocking on my door. He always asked me if I wanted any coffee, but I never wanted any.

During that time of year, the Sun wouldn't make an appearance until 10:00 AM or so, and then it would be gone again by 2:00 PM. Anchorage lies South of the Arctic circle, so it never quite gets down to zero hours of daylight in the Winter, and it never quite gets to twenty-four hours of daylight in the Summer. I know that those four hours of daylight did me a world of good. Just knowing that the Sun was shining outside, even if I couldn't see it from my windowless room.

Anyway, I'd go to work. This particular project was interesting to me, but probably not to anyone else, so I won't dwell on it. Except to say that static electricity and computers don't mix, and that Alaska in the Winter is so cold and dry that static electricity is a huge problem. I felt like some kind of super hero, the way the sparks were constantly shooting out of my fingers.

I totally forgot to mention the snow. There was about three feet of the stuff on the ground. Whatever had fallen since September or so was still there, joined layer-after-layer by new stuff. It was Alaska in January. Of course there was snow. I'd actually been expecting more, but people said it had been a dry Fall.

What got me to thinking about the snow was the seagulls.

You know how, back in the real world, when it snows they plow the parking lots and they usually leave a pile of snow somewhere kind of out of the way? Well, in Anchorage they do the same thing, except the resulting piles of snow are usually two stories tall and fifty feet in diameter.

One day I was standing outside work, smoking a cigarette, and there were some seagulls playing on the wind currents around one such mound. That's the only word to describe it - they were playing. Hovering at the top of the pile, where the wind was strongest, then diving down the other side, sometimes even turning somersaults in the air, and then going back and doing it again and again. It really was a cool thing to watch, and I bet I stayed out there for an hour, wishing I was a bird, because that really looked like fun.

Working all day was, of course, annoying. There I was in fucking Alaska and I couldn't do any sightseeing because it was always dark when I wasn't working. So my excursions to check out the natural beauty of the place would have to wait until the weekend. My weeknights were mostly spent shooting pool at the Billiard Palace. Back then, I would occasionally gamble a few dollars on my pool games. I'd win some and I'd lose some. Mostly I won, I think, except for this one dude who was a lot better than I was but I kept playing him because he was a friendly sort.

Remind me to tell you about all the earthquakes.

Here are three totally unrelated things that piss me off.

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Brown-nosed idiots.

At least know someone well enough to form a knowledgeable opinion before you bury your nose in their ass.

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"Incapable of supporting life."

Life can exist in the most unlikely of places. You people are scientists, you're supposed to know this. Read some books by Robert L. Forward if you need a refresher for your imagination, and then stop saying stupid things.

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Typos.

Like the one I had in the title of this entry for over six hours.

It's funny that I'm calling this part one. That implies that there'll be additional parts. But I seriously doubt it. I'm really taxing my brain as it is, thinking about and writing about something that happened so long ago that it's almost folklore by default.

Anyway, it was 1996. Dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and primitive mammals spent their days scurrying to and fro and counting the days until they'd be in charge of things. I know. I was there. I was one such mammal.

I arrived in Alaska on January 2nd. It was my second trip to Anchorage, but the first one of any consequence or duration. I think the previous visit had been in the Spring of 1994, and it had only lasted a few days.

I wish I'd paid more attention. But, back then, I was too busy scurrying. And avoiding dinosaurs. And watching the sky for comets. And being cold.

I've looked at the weather pages on the internet, and I can't find confirmation, but the high temperature that first day was nineteen degrees below zero, according to the television lady. I remember that she was quite cute, as if that matters.

I spent my first night in a hotel. A Holiday Inn or some such. There was a brewpub in the hotel, and they had a pumpkin ale. Back then, I wasn't into beer at all. I mean, I knew that there was beer that I liked and beer that I didn't like, but I hadn't yet formed any theories as to why any one particular beer might be categorized one way or another. I was pretty sure that I didn't like lagers, and I was starting to suspect that I liked ales, but I'd gone no further that those two preliminary hypotheses.

So I had the pumpkin ale, and it was fucking yummy. Unlike anything I'd had before. I had three or four more.

But I digress.

The next day, my coworker arrived. He took over the hotel room, and I moved to the apartment that my company had secured. Fine with me. Mainly I just needed a place to smoke and watch TV and sleep, and an apartment seemed like a better place than a hotel. I don't know why.

The apartment was in the walk-out basement of a house in the center of town. There was a dude living in the house, and I knocked on his door to get a key to the apartment.

Anybody remember the old Captain Kangaroo TV show? Okay, remember Mr. Green Jeans from that show? Well, the dude who owned the house/apartment looked exactly like Mr. Green Jeans. But he didn't act like Mr. Green Jeans. Nope, this guy was between seventy and three-thousand years old, and, because of senility or brain-freeze or something, had the mental capacity of a turnip.

At first, I tried to make myself feel better by imagining that the dude was just a partier who was drunk all the time, but by the third or fourth time that he'd managed to wake me up by shoveling snow at 4:00 AM, I knew better.

I'm digressing again, dammit.

It was fucking cold.

The weather page on the internet is no help, but the hot lady on TV assured me that, for the first three weeks I spent in Anchorage, the high temperature was eighteen below zero. Then, on or about the 20th of January, it shot up to seven below zero.

Woo-hoo!

T-shirts and shorts became the uniform of the day. All over Anchorage, alabaster skin competed with reluctant sunlight in a contest to see which could cause the most blindness. Me, well I continued to dress like a normal person who was freezing to death - a cheechako in Alaskanese - with my coat and glove and boots and the like. I did learn an important lesson that day, though. For me, the dividing-line between cold and fucking cold is at ten degrees below zero.

There is a difference. There really is. At ten below zero, I can function. At eleven below zero, I might as well be a chunk of ice that won't melt until June.

In Anchorage, they say, there are three seasons each year.

Winter lasts from late August until April or so. Next is Breakup, during which the snow and ice decides that it's maybe time to start thinking about melting and forming puddles. The more disgusting the puddles, the better.

The third season is road construction, and that lasts from the end of Breakup until the beginning of Winter, or for about a week and a half during late July and early August.

Wow, I've already written more than I expected, and I haven't even gotten to the good part yet.

Stay tuned for part two if I ever get around to writing it.

Still giving my brain a vacation. It deserves a vacation. These are my fingers talking now. Hi! We're drunk, I think!

Tonight was cool. We built a fireplace thingy in the driveway, and we made a fire therein, and we drank some beer.

These are Dave's fingers, signing off for the night.

Once again, I'm simply letting my fingers twitch against the keyboard, giving my brain a rest. My poor brain, it's been so overworked lately. Trying to fix things or at least figure them out. Nothing to show for all that effort, though. Things are still just as broken and confusing as ever.

---

Anyway, I totally want to go somewhere this weekend. I want to go to Indianapolis, but that would be weird. SassyGirl wants to go to Oregon, but that would be even weirder. Although, I guess if we went to Oregon, we could stop in Omaha and I could see some of my friends there. Like my old friend Mike, who I talked to the other night, for the first time since early 1994. Boy did he have some catching up to do.

---

This week my phone's been ringing off the hook about job opportunities. None have panned-out yet, though. I'm still fairly hopeful. This morning I got a call about a job for which I'm not particularly qualified, but one of my former coworkers is qualified, so I forwarded the contact information around. That was my good deed for the day.

---

Thanks to some informal surveys, I'm now even more convinced that I am not being weird about this. I already knew that I was acting reasonably given the fucked-up circumstances, but it's nice to have confirmation, especially when it's from people who are smarter than I am.

---

I'm starving to death now. I'm always starving, but then I never eat much.

So, just sit and let my fingers type whatever they want, huh?

That seems like it should be easy. One might think that I'd be a little worried about the words that might spring forth, but I'm really not. I've pretty much said everything already. Dropped my pants, so to speak.

There is one more thing, actually. One more thing to say, and then I might be done. Not that I'd quit, mind you, but I'd have to start repeating myself over and over and over even more often than I already do.

Not an accusation, though that's how it would be interpreted. I'm not sure how I'd get around that. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, after all. And this would be denied until the end of time, at least out-loud, when people were listening. There'd probably be umbrage. And outrage, even.

I'm also afraid that it would come off like a called marker. But that's absolutely not what it would be. This is not about something I've earned, and it's not about a favor owed; it's about an opportunity for honesty.

Would I get that honesty?

I seriously doubt it, and that makes me sad. Because if I've earned anything at all, if I'm owed anything at all, it's honesty.

I close my eyes, and I see it. It blinds me. In the stillness between heartbeats, I hear its defeaning roar. In the pause between breaths, I smell its intoxicating aroma. Between swallows, I taste its juices. And, every time I relax, I feel it. Caressing me. Massaging away the aches and the pains of living.

I stopped being overwhelmed a long time ago. Callouses formed. Strength developed. Resistance wilted and died.

Thoughts are stones. Feelings are rapids. Disturbing the tranquility of the stream, but not the flow. Never the flow. Take away the obstacles, and the stream will barely notice. It will flow as it always has. Try to dam the stream, and it will find a way. Nothing can stop it. Nothing.

I wonder what has happened to me. I wonder what is happening to me. I wonder what will happen to me.

(This is a repost from six months ago. I don't feel like saying anything new, because it would be pointless today, but I do feel like saying something.)

There's a place. It's not a physical place, though that's part of it. It's more of a spiritual place.

The place, it's where I belong. It's why I'm here, on this Earth, in this life. To be in the place. It's where I fit, and more than that, it's where the universe fits me.

Problem is, I can't get there. There's no navigable route, and even if there were, the place is already occupied, and even if it wasn't, I'm not allowed in the place.

I've come very close. I've stood next to the place and I've felt its pull so strongly that it's threatened to rip me apart atom by atom.

If I believed in God, I'd surely hate Him, for showing me the place.