Whew!

Ice Festival Creature 2009

So I'm finally feeling totally recovered (and I still have no clue what it was). The Disreputable Dog had his first knee surgery and is doing very well although he manages to be very pathetic at the same time, howling when I leave until the Disreputable Cat comes up to comfort him (I peeked in the window). And my step-father has been buried (but I'm reserving a future post for him.) Thank you for all of your kind thoughts.

My favorite at the festival this year

Before I got sick I was going to post all these fabulous pictures of ice sculptures from the Ice Sculpture Festival in the City of the Midnight Sun where I was just before I got ill. I'm still posting them but it feels a little out of sync with the season as the we now have almost 14hours of daylight now and it has gotten above freezing every single day and the pussy willows are bursting from the very top-most branches of the willow trees. However, the ice festival is one of my absolute favorite events in this grand state and I was delighted that I had the excuse to go up there and the time to visit them with friends.

Ice DNA (to scale!!!)

This last photo is not as clear as the others as the camera batteries were getting cold and the lens was fogging up (it was -35F ~ -38C) but it is of an ice slide. A fabulous set of long ice slides that run the length of the hill. Now many respectable adults feel that they shouldn't be using such things but how else, I ask you, does one stay warm when standing around a gallery of ice other then by running up the hill and sliding down on your butt, going so fast that you laugh wildly into the cold air even though you forgot how much catching air on an ice slide would hurt when you came down.

ice slides!