So This Is What They Mean

When I was really young (less than five), my family lived in Fredonia, New York, right on the coast of Lake Erie. According to a family story, my Uncle John (using his real name because, seriously, Uncle John? It's so common, it's practically a moniker) who has never lived outside of Texas was watching a weather report one winter and hearing about the massive snowfall that had hit upstate New York and said to my aunt that we had adapted to and learned to live in a way that my uncles and aunts could never even imagine.


Now that I'm living in Alaska, I've been feeling a little like that. First, we had to learn to sleep with the sun up, because it never went down. Then, we were scraping the car by mid-September. The first snow came before Halloween. The other night, we had 60 mile an hour winds. Those weren't the gusts. Those were the winds. The gusts were higher than that. The core temperature was 2F. The wind chill took it deep into negative numbers. And it is only December.


Lithus heads to Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse today. Where the core temperature (e.g. not the wind chill) is -20F. Where the winds at the oil platforms are 112 mph. Again, not the gusts. Gusts will be higher, gusty-er. And suddenly, I'll take Anchorage and it's 2 degrees with 60 mph winds. Heat wave...We're having a heat wave...


So, brace yourself for a groaner, but it had to be done. Plus, it's a beautiful, beautiful carol.


Those are Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.