But boy is it UGLY!  Any snow left along the roadsides is black and dirty, the ground is thawing ever so slowly creating lakes in front yards everywhere, and any dirt roads (like our lane) have become slalom courses of soft, squishy mud.  I love being jacket-free today, but it comes at a price.

On the upside, we are gaining daylight 6+ minutes per day, the sandhill cranes are due back any second, and we are no longer constantly feeding that temperamental, hungry beast of a wood stove!

Winter solstice?  I hardly remember that short, dusky day when the sun barely rose over the distant horizon.  I've got my sights set on that Midnight Sun!! Lady Aurora is forecast to give us a great showing this weekend; could be the last great lightshow of the season before our nights become too bright to see it.  Below is Saturday night's aurora forecast--notice Fairbanks is right in the middle of the action!

And sometimes, the blog writes itself.

Certainly living at Latitude 65 makes for some quirky, oh-so-Alaskan stories.  Today we went to cheer on the dogs and mushers at the Open North American dog races, held every year in Fairbanks.  These are different racers than the distance teams running the Iditarod and Yukon Quest; the "Open" is a 3-day contest of 20-30 mile sprints.

We finally got out there today, the last day of the event.  Other on-site festivities included the Parka Parade (a contest of handmade native parkas), and a fur auction.  Not sure why, but I decided today was the day to purchase a beaver pelt for the house.  So I grabbed a bidder number, watched the auctioneer work his way through the moose antlers, the fox skins, the grizzly hides, and I-kid-you-not one "back half of a Dahl sheep."  Finally, upon hearing the above announcement about the beavers, I got in the bidding frenzy for this thing that is now on my living room floor.  Poor Luna can't decide whether to sleep on it, pee on it, or eat the thing!

Even in Fairbanks, Alaska one senses that spring is right around the corner.  Good thing, because this cheechako needs to sprout some new seeds.

I so loved and appreciated my work with HopeWest, the hospice organization in Colorado, and simply assumed I'd capture that same magic here in the frozen tundra.  After more than a year of volunteering with the local hospice--at the front desk, visiting patients, and facilitating grief groups--I decided to "resign", if that's what you call giving up a non-paid gig.  I've been struggling with the decision for a few weeks now, and now that it's made, it feels bittersweet.  I so love the mission of hospice, and never want to bring any frustration to my work there.  I found that I was failing in that regard.

Luckily, I will continue to see one patient on a personal basis; she's a sweet woman originally from Mexico.  I love hanging out with her, chatting in Spanish, hearing how several decades ago this man swept her off her feet in her hometown in Durango state, married her, then promptly moved her to Fairbanks!  Through her I've met other Latinos in the community--she has friends from El Salvador, Honduras, Columbia, all of them providing music to my ears and the opportunity to practice my espanol.

Today, we are pitching in to throw her a surprise birthday party--her 99th!  I've prepared chicken mole for the occasion.  Here's to a successful recipe, a happy birthday, and to finding new direction in my own life.