Sunday Morning
It was a short night.
I got home from work about ten last night only to turn around to open the station this morning at six. We call this a "short turn-around" for obvious reasons.
Of course, being me, I didn't get to bed until midnight so when the alarm went off at four-thirty, I woke as if swimming up from the depths. I lurched to my feet, threw on the clothes I had worn yesterday and fed the cats. The thermometer read about eighteen degrees. I had plugged the car's circulating heater last night, so the engine was warm but I still had to let the car run for a few minutes to defrost--time I used to pack a lunch.
Then out the door.
Now you would think that five miles outside of a small Alaskan town at five-thirty on a Sunday morning in December, you would be the only one on the road. Actually--in one of those Murphy's law sort of things--it always seems that the one other car driving on the Kenai Peninsula is coming down the road when I pull to up to the stop sign at the highway. I laugh about the predictabilty.
So of course, this morning there was a veritable swarm of headlights coming my way, heading into Homer. I managed to get on the road ahead of them, because one thing I have learned in trying to get to work on a Sunday morning is that no one else on the road is in any particular hurry to get anywhere.
Me--I have a schedule. About eleven minutes after leaving the house, I pull into the parking lot at the airport.
Signing in on the one, two, three, four, five seperate computers as well as a paper personnel log is the most work I do for the first few hours. Then it's just monitoring the weather observations and making an hourly recorded broadcast...
"Homer Airport information Alpha, time one-five-zero-zero Zulu. Winds calm, visibility one-zero, sky clear...."
The morning slips quietly away... I make some tea and sit reading Holidailies while rhythmic sweep of the airport beacon, green and white, green and white, pulses against the darkness.
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...
Several airline flights arrive and depart--flights that connect our town to Anchorage and the world beyond--but for the most part the airport is quiet. The sky gradually lightens beyond the jagged peaks of the Kenai Mountains.
click for larger
A cold air mass moving westward out of Canada has kept our skies clear and temperatures cool for the last four or five days. It has been a nice break from all the rain and wind of November but I am ready for some snow. The bare earth looks so stark and barren under the hard frost.
I spent most of my shift reading journals and updating my cat blog with some old livejournal entries from 2005. I already realize I should have signed up for Holidailies with either the cats' blog or my Alaskan one. My daily life is just--well--too quiet. Like the title says...
What I am enjoying about Holidailies is discovering interesting blogs and kindred spirits that I may never have run across on my own. I have already found several that I plan to follow. (Points to side bar..)
I'm humbled as well by the quality of writing and feeling a bit out of my league. I prattle on about my daily trivialities while others have such entertaining entries. I guess that's one reason why I am doing this. I haven't had much cause to challenge myself since I left my writers group. I need the inspiration I can get from reading what others are doing and thinking.
I got home from work about ten last night only to turn around to open the station this morning at six. We call this a "short turn-around" for obvious reasons.
Of course, being me, I didn't get to bed until midnight so when the alarm went off at four-thirty, I woke as if swimming up from the depths. I lurched to my feet, threw on the clothes I had worn yesterday and fed the cats. The thermometer read about eighteen degrees. I had plugged the car's circulating heater last night, so the engine was warm but I still had to let the car run for a few minutes to defrost--time I used to pack a lunch.
Then out the door.
Now you would think that five miles outside of a small Alaskan town at five-thirty on a Sunday morning in December, you would be the only one on the road. Actually--in one of those Murphy's law sort of things--it always seems that the one other car driving on the Kenai Peninsula is coming down the road when I pull to up to the stop sign at the highway. I laugh about the predictabilty.
So of course, this morning there was a veritable swarm of headlights coming my way, heading into Homer. I managed to get on the road ahead of them, because one thing I have learned in trying to get to work on a Sunday morning is that no one else on the road is in any particular hurry to get anywhere.
Me--I have a schedule. About eleven minutes after leaving the house, I pull into the parking lot at the airport.
Signing in on the one, two, three, four, five seperate computers as well as a paper personnel log is the most work I do for the first few hours. Then it's just monitoring the weather observations and making an hourly recorded broadcast...
"Homer Airport information Alpha, time one-five-zero-zero Zulu. Winds calm, visibility one-zero, sky clear...."
The morning slips quietly away... I make some tea and sit reading Holidailies while rhythmic sweep of the airport beacon, green and white, green and white, pulses against the darkness.
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...
Several airline flights arrive and depart--flights that connect our town to Anchorage and the world beyond--but for the most part the airport is quiet. The sky gradually lightens beyond the jagged peaks of the Kenai Mountains.
click for larger
A cold air mass moving westward out of Canada has kept our skies clear and temperatures cool for the last four or five days. It has been a nice break from all the rain and wind of November but I am ready for some snow. The bare earth looks so stark and barren under the hard frost.
I spent most of my shift reading journals and updating my cat blog with some old livejournal entries from 2005. I already realize I should have signed up for Holidailies with either the cats' blog or my Alaskan one. My daily life is just--well--too quiet. Like the title says...
What I am enjoying about Holidailies is discovering interesting blogs and kindred spirits that I may never have run across on my own. I have already found several that I plan to follow. (Points to side bar..)
I'm humbled as well by the quality of writing and feeling a bit out of my league. I prattle on about my daily trivialities while others have such entertaining entries. I guess that's one reason why I am doing this. I haven't had much cause to challenge myself since I left my writers group. I need the inspiration I can get from reading what others are doing and thinking.
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