The Travails of Single-Digit Weather in the Desert, and Other Stories

[missroserose]

Four degrees this morning, and not much warmer during the day. Just about everyone in town has frozen pipes, and several mains have burst. I suppose I can understand the thinking - if you're building in the desert, it doesn't really make sense to spend a lot of time properly burying/insulating your water line. But still, given the places I've lived, I can't help but be amazed at how everything here just falls apart after one particularly cold night. (Not even any snow, fer chrissakes. Also, I feel the need to point out that in Juneau it's been forty degrees and raining the last couple of days. How is that fair?)

Needless to say, our nearly-century-old house was in the "frozen pipes" category. At the recommendation of the landlord, we tried pouring boiling water over the exposed parts of our pipe line, but only managed to burst our meter, which then proceeded to spew water all over the place. The technician was kind enough to come out and fix it at eight o'clock at night in single-digit weather - I'll have to write the company a nice thank-you email.

Meantime, we're getting by with the usual Alaska dry-cabin methods. The landlord lives right up the way from us and managed to get the faucet in his workshop unfrozen, so we've been hauling five-gallon buckets of water down and using them. Washing one's hair in a bucket of water isn't exactly convenient, but it sure beats the alternative, and at least it was warm. And given that parts of the county are having gas outages (apparently the colder-than-average weather is putting strain on the interstate pipeline - gee, who would've guessed?), I'm just grateful that we still have electricity and heat. I comfort myself that, come June and 95-degree weather, this will all seem long ago and far away.

In that same positive spirit, I finally got around to uploading some more pictures for my Why I Love Bisbee album, featuring some entertaining finds from the various antique/consignment shops around town. The Sperry-UNIVAC Zippo in particular struck me as something that would be of interest to certain persons on my friendslist.

And since it seemed like the kind of day that deserved a nice cocktail and a book to relax with, I decided to oblige:

From Drinks Gallery

Italian Apple Martini
1 ounce vanilla vodka
1 ounce 100% apple juice
1 ounce amaretto
3/4 ounce sour apple schnapps
Squeeze of lime

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into martini glass. Garnish with a lime wheel and the paper-ribbon bow that happens to be roughly the right color and sitting on the bedside table. Drink while reading the fascinating stories of weird-but-true mystery cases.


I'm also trying to decide if a blog post I made critiquing a movie a couple years back might be something I could turn in to a story. Not sure yet - at the very least, I have a fair amount of reading up to do on 80s culture - but it's a thought.

Comments

[tygenco-x.livejournal.com]

I think the wind is the worst part of it around here. Feels like the Taku Wind in some spots of town and I can't help but be annoyed. I also got the oddest look from Jer when I asked him if I should leave a trickle of water going in the pipes--I think I might tonight and see if he actually notices >>;

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the last couple of days have had that nasty continuous cold wind coming right down Main Street - just walking from work to the market was enough to give me flashbacks to those ice-cold arctic winds in Barrow. Brrr.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

If you want an advisor on eighties culture, I may be of some assistance.
PS: Nice icon. And nice photo.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

The icon is from _nocredit, so it's free to take. How familiar are you with yuppie culture specifically?

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

hmmmm. I mostly kept myself mocking distance from it--I never even watched ThirtySomething. Maybe I won't be as helpful as I thought.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Yay, moar pics! And that lighter...there's gotta be a hell of a story behind it.

And sorry the cold is taking an unexpected toll on you and your vital infrastructure. Nothing nearly that inconvenient or incapacitating here. And at least we get the snow which, while heavy and slick and inconvenient, is purty. As is the drink.

And keep us posted on the story. I'm intrigued. (The '80s had culture? I must've been asleep for that part.)

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Well, it had culture in the sense of "consumeristic wasteland populated by shallow, upwardly-mobile borderline-psychopathic people", which is what American Psycho and Wall Street are supposed to be about. Which is why both are on my to-read/watch list now.

I can guess almost exactly the story behind the lighter - some dude is given it by the company as a promotional item, and rather than actually use it to light his cigarettes (it was the 60s, everyone smoked), he carefully stores it with the instructions in its original box away from any marked heat or light sources. His wife probably nags him about it now and then, but he keeps putting her off, insisting that [a] it doesn't take up much space and [b] it's going to be worth something someday, just wait and see. Then he eventually karks it (probably due to the aforementioned smoking) and one of his grown children finds it, shrugs, and gives it to the consignment shop where they have it for sale for $12. Which, I guess, qualifies as "something". :)

(Incidentally, I thought about buying it for you, but Brian said that if we were buying it he was going to keep it for his desk at work. :D)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

True story: a friend of mine dragged me to see an advance showing of American Psycho on campus. Terrifying revelations: his Phil Collins/Genesis monologue is exactly (...er, with a few of his 'stage directions' aside) something I could've said at one point in my life. And during the rest of the movie, while most people were cringing or averting their eyes, I laughed my head off. Wall Street I found merely bearable.

And yes, I don't blame Brian at all; that's a spiffy little implement. And I'm probably not allowed to have flame-igniting implements anymore. It would be courting disaster.

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

I can assure you from personal experience that this situation will become laughable far before June.

Hell, it's only been 6 weeks for me, and it's already faded into memory-- something I giggle about when I'm reminded of it, and don't think about otherwise.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

How is that book?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Quite good, actually. It's not my usual genre, but I got it for Brian for Christmas 'cos I thought he'd enjoy it, and he's been reading it to me. Some pretty fascinating real-life mysteries - my favorite so far has been the dude who seemed to have a real-life Jekyll-and-Hyde thing going on between himself and the alter-ego he'd write books about, to the point of confusing the two identities strongly enough to commit murder. (Although after tripping over every single last name in the story, Brian swore to me he was never reading aloud a story about Polish folks again. :D)