When the simple life becomes hard

-So, what do you mean by dry cabin?

-Well, you know, we don't have any running water, an outhouse and yeah that's about it

-So, you are allowed to drink alcohol then?

You see, the term dry, can very well mean dry, as in no alcohol. On the North Slope (and elsewhere in Alaska) there are villages that are dry. You can't get alcohol there. The whole dry cabin deal has nothing to do with this at all. The town of Fairbanks happens to be underlained by discontinuous permafrost

What does this mean? Soil, that remains continuously frozen for at least two consecutive years. This in turn makes it very unstable to build on, let alone, have a well or pipes that can transport water to you. This means, that if you don't live on campus, or downtown you probably live in a cabin. Not necessarily a dry cabin, cause a lot of cabins/houses has a large water tank (think a couple of 100 gallons). Anyhow, we have a dry cabin. a 35 Gallon water "tank" if you want to call it that. We have an outhouse, a chicken pen (that is not being used) a greenhouse, a terrace, a balcony, 2 floors, a woodstove, a foot pump for the sink AND a door to the outhouse. The previous cabin I lived in only had a curtain...

So what am I blabbering about? Well you know when life feels rough and you are stressed, living this simple life can very fast become hard. Who did the dishes last night, who emptied the bucket last (you know, with no pipes the water from the sink has to go somewhere). Oh, we are out of water....well then, I guess we can't do the dishes. No clean clothes, oh yeah, when was the last time I had a shower now again. These things that we usually take for granted when we do have running water becomes so much more complicated when you are running out of time, and it is -40 outside.

But we do try to make the best of the situation in the wintertime, keep the light sources to a maximum, even in the outhouse..

Waking up in the middle of the night, - Crap, the fire went out and it's now freezing cold (ok, think 55, maybe not that cold indoors, but you get the feeling..) Or when you hit rock bottom and it's below 50 and the propane freezes...which mean oh, we can't use the stove. Great. Or, oh I forgot to plug in the car last night...well good thing I have a bike. But it also gives you opportunities, such as making your dinner on the wood stove, warming up in front of the wood stove with a glass of wine and so on.

Alaska can grow on you, but they say, either you love it or you hate it. Either you move here, move away but always come back, OR you move to never ever return. I have no clue which one of these I am at this point. I love Alaska, but sometimes life is just hard up here.

But, days like that you go and climb some ice on campus, (cause yeah we do have that opportunity now), you go to the gym, to the climbing wall, hang out with friends knitting, or some other extraordinary thing. You talk about ordinary dry cabin things like, - Jeeze I needed to pee this morning and it was -40 outside, or - We ran out of propane right before dinner. Even siri knows what 30 below mean:

Alaska is so much more than living the simple life; you get the opportunity to experience a really tough lifestyle. Life is not always easy or straightforward up here. But we like it, and that is why we are still here I guess. But I do admit....a couple of years in, it doesn't become easier.

And if you need a winter wonderland, you know where to go! There is always snow here in the wintertime, but it comes with a price...the dark and the cold.

Alaska is so beautiful, calm and Awesome! All in one. And a lot of people would maybe disagree..but it is what it is. You can judge for yourself.

Almost always a blue sky in the wintertime here...

Have a warm Thursday night!

Friday Theme, Cooking Food

About that, I have gotten into this tendency to not cook food. W is doing that most of the time, it's not that I don't know how to, it's more the fact that W always takes the initiative for it. When I go to the store I buy all sorts of different ingredients, with no specific dish in mind, or at least my head knows what I can make with all the ingredients. W on the other hand, always writes down exactly what meal it will be for each day of the week...So I usually pick up around the house, chop fire wood, start the fire in the woodstove, feed the cats, do the dishes (most of the time..), and then when I am done I usually have an awesome meal to eat. Very balanced eh? I do know how to cook though, as I said. I love having nice dinners with friends, and when W was gone Marie came over and I made pizza dough, and then we created our own pizzas, Beautiful Marie who moved to Seattle, I guess Fairbanks winters does that to you...

The end product was beautiful

W was gone most of the summer and I didn't only eat ice-cream ;)

I also had a garden, so I got some vegetables from there, Got some potatoes when we got back from the trip down south We also made some pickled beets...which we still havent tried....I really hope they are good and we bought some meat chickens that we processed this summer. We got some Halibut in Homer So this is what we use for our dinners, as much as we can. And, right now our freezer is pretty full. Halibut fish tacos...mmmm If you only tried fried halibut before, you totally missed out. I had only tried fried halibut before and I can't believe how someone can destroy this nice piece of fish by frying it!!

Speaking about the summer, we actually celebrated midsummer too, at Maries place, and there was some cooking involved in that, even though I probably wasn't the one who did the most. But I had a fabulous time.

Happy Friday!

With snow...

The shoulder season right between late fall and winter is what I consider as the worst time of the year. And by worst time I mean the fact that it gets cold, and dark. But when the snow finally arrives that darkness doesn't feel that dark anymore, the snow reflects the minimum light we get, and even with the moon you can have a bit of light in the dark. The moon also appears a lot earlier with this darkness, you can see it looming over the sky, reminding you that the evening is on its way.

However, the snow is kind of essential to do anything. If its only cold and dark what fun is that? We got some snow a couple of weeks ago, and it snowed for a couple of days, but that event wasn't enough for us to go skiing, and with the temperature reaching down towards -8 F (-22C) we didnt see any snow at all in the near future. Everyone was kind of upset about this, no snow!! Finally the other day the snow started to fall again and yesterday I got time to go out skiing. I have a couple of new office mates, all from the southern part of the US, Texas and Georgia...so really not that used to snow in large amounts. One of the first things everyone, including me, advised them to get was cross country skis. We have a lot of ski swaps up here where people sell their old skis and other winter gear. New skis can be very expensive, and there are so many other things you need your money for. The rent here is for example really expensive, even with a dry cabin (a cabin without any running water). You also have to pay heating oil, which usually ends up being around 900 dollars a year.

Anyway, I showed them all the basics on how to remove the old kick wax from the skis, how to apply the wax, where to put it and so on, and most important how temperature and the different waxes works. It was (for Fairbanks) a pretty warm afternoon, 22F (-6C). It is really hard to teach other people how to ski, or at least the basics. It really forces you to think about your motions and how you really get it to work. It was a really nice evening, but when we got back we realized that no one brought the key to the office...aah we had to wait a little while until the campus police came and opened the door. That made me so cold, the wind had picked up a bit and with a thin layer of clothing (pants, one base layer and a thin fleece) I felt really really COLD! It even took a while for me to feel warm in front of the wood stove, and then I fell a sleep on the sofa after reading two papers. I wasn't the only one who fell asleep

Today is a new month with new themes for "Friday Theme". The first theme for November is "Cooking Food", should be fun. But hey, remember I am 10 hrs behind most of you people in Sweden...so stay tuned.

Ohh and hey, remember that pumpkin i bought, I finally carved it last weekend by myself, not even W wanted to help me, I guess baseball or football is more interesting than pumpkins... Here it is, my very first pumpkin: