I've been hibernating at the house for the last four days. Fairbanks has been hit with freezing rain (in November, seriously?) that made the icy roads beyond treacherous. Actually, it was slicker than just "icy" – so what's slicker than ice? John says a frictionless surface created in a physics lab. Okay, so every time I say "ice," imagine that I'm actually talking about a frictionless surface slick as snot created in a lab.
On Monday morning, John ventured out bright (more foggy and dark, really) and early, braving roads of ice and abandoned vehicles perched like land mines in his path, only to discover that classes were canceled! But that didn't stop his clueless Differential Equations professor from lecturing that morning. So, after attending a non-class and then stopping at ye olde Fred Meyer for provisions, John eventually made his way back home, taking two and half hours to travel ten miles. Drivers were going 15mph on Sheep Creek. There was a line up of cars on Murphy Dome because no one could make it up the gentle rise past Ivan's Alley. People were ditching their vehicles ... in ditches. John put chains on the Subaru and rescued a woman whose car couldn't make it up to Moose Mountain. She had been on her cell with Allstate, trying to arrange for roadside assistance, but the outsourced customer service agent in India couldn't comprehend the words "ice storm", "Fairbanks, Alaska" or "Moose Mountain Road".
Once my intrepid explorer made it back, we made dinner and hunkered down with some mediocre netflix. Washing our dishes that night (I imply that "we" washed dishes, but to be honest, I'm not the dishwasher in the family), we noticed that our water had mysteriously turned orange. It had nothing to do with the ice storm (or did it?). Ken Brownlow suggested that the water table might have been disturbed by a minor earthquake, or maybe we needed a new filter, or we needed to add more salt to our pump thingy (my words, not his) to soften the water. We investigated the pump under the stairs, but couldn't figure out where the filter or the place to add water softener would be. We've got a steep learning curve as new homeowners.
The power went off intermittently throughout the night. We eventually figured out what was happening because each time the power died, the carbon monoxide detector would emit a terrifyingly loud chirp, waking us up. Lots of things went bump in the night. I thought I heard what sounded like a helicopter land in our back yard around five in the morning. My mind automatically jumps to the most obvious and sane reasons for mysterious house noises: murderous intruders, alien invaders wanting to suck out my brain, apocalyptic nuclear attack. The helicopter sound was probably just the echo of a small plane or the train traveling through the valley.
With the power outages, John's alarm didn't go off, so we overslept and woke up around ten. It didn't matter since we discovered that classes were also canceled for Tuesday. We spent the day puttering around the house and being useful and productive. Our water eventually turned from dirty orange to more of a pale, off-color beige, so that was a relief. I can't wait for future visitors to sample our delicious mineral water. Actually, occasional water table disruption aside, our water is pretty good. And it's a cool feeling to know the actual source of the water we drink (a couple hundred feet below our house) and that unlike the water in other areas outside of town, there's no arsenic in ours. Another plus.
At long last, here are some photos of our new place:
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| We painted the dining room orange. The previous owner had left it a light shade of purple. Because nothing says dinner like lavender and fluorescent light. |
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| The orange color also comes in handy for camouflage. Look carefully and you might be able to find John (he's wearing an ORANGE sweater). |
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| Maybe we painted the dining room to match the view from outside - BAM! |
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| The kitchen. |
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| It's not all sunsets and sweet cheeks from our deck - here's the view of the fog this morning. |
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| Looking at the dining room and beyond into the living room from the kitchen. Note authentic Kathy Hite SCCA Facilities yellow tape measure on the counter. |
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| Until we moved, I had no idea how many books we really owned. This shot includes maybe half of them. If we're hoarders, at least we're literary hoarders. |
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| Future nursery. Replete with built-in bookshelves that will fall on baby. Should probably replace those. |
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This is the guest bathroom. We call it "El Baño Diablo" for reasons you'll just have to see in person to understand.
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| Master bedroom. Too small and weirdly laid out to fit our dressers, except in the closet. |
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| View into the master bath. I include this shot just because it looks like there's a hairy boob in the lower left corner. |
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| Sans hairy boob. (Or is it?) |
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| Our house! |
