There is One More Thing

And as with my way of doing things, after a couple of posts it takes a while for me to post again. No idea why it is, it just is. It's been busy, a good busy and things have changed so much up here. The past week we've been in the 70s and we are having 18 hours of daylight now. We've been setting record temps. It is warm a few weeks too early. It could easily snow again before summer is officially here. In fact, a week ago Friday, it was SNOWING! Three days later it was in the 70s! Change happens fast up here. We were in the 40s for a few weeks, then a week in the 50s, a couple of days in the 60s and now it's the 70s. Talk about fast changing! I love it! We are supposed to cool down some next week. I don't think we have any reason to complain tho.

About two weeks ago I was hanging with Clara at home. It was about 10pm (and still light out). Clara started acting weird. She can see out one of the windows and whenever she sees another dog or an animal, she doesn't bark, she just gets this low, husky breathing going on. Well, I had the curtains closed (I put black out curtains on my windows to make it dark at night) and she was doing her husky breathing. She kept running from the front door to the back door and sniffing under the doors. She's never done this before. I figure there is an animal in the yard.

The weather had warmed up quite a bit and then cooled down again. Many of the hibernating bears had woken up and were starting to get active but the drop in temps was messing them up. I looked out my back door and I saw some fresh tracks leading to my storage shed in the back (there is no door on the shed). In my crazy mind I'm thinking a bear saw it and thought it looked like a great place to go back to sleep.

I put Clara on her leash and let her out back. She immediately ran into the trees, started looking up and barking. I saw some fresh broken branches on the ground. I'm thinking oh crap! There's a bear in a tree!! I look up and I don't see anything. No animals, no tracks. Clara finally gives up on barking at the trees and wanders around a bit. As I'm standing there I hear this noise that sounds like a crash in my shed. I turn and run back to the house, I slip on the ice on the back porch an fall off the porch, scraping up my leg pretty good. In one bound I'm back up, I grab Clara's leash and jerk her inside (poor girl) and slam the door. Keep in mind this whole series of actions took place in less than a fraction of a second! After the door shut I thought "Well that was stupid of me!!"

I really wanted/needed to know if there was something in the shed. I don't have a gun tho. Only kitchen knives. I'm about to get into a wrestling match with a hungry bear and only a kitchen knife. I got back outside (unarmed) and just listen to see if I hear anything else. Nothing. There was some scrap wood on the ground so I picked up a piece and threw it at the shed and hit it. Still nothing. No crazed bear came running out, no strange noises. I figured all was good and gave it up.

The next day after work I went down to the shed and yep, it was empty. I looked at the tracks and they were moose tracks. It had come down through the woods and came out by the shed and then walked off. Just a coincidence the tracks were near the shed. But as you can see it doesn't take much for my wonderful imagination to get the best of me.

I had another wonderful moment that some call senior moments, I call them some-timers moments. Monday I went to lunch at a place near work and used my debit card. Ate lunch, went back to work, went home. The long daylight hours and nice weather were making a bit stir crazy so I decided to go back to town, get gas and go to the store. When I got to the gas station, I opened my wallet and found that my debit card was not there. Crap!! It's been forever since I've lost my debit card. I had an initial moment of starting to freak out but it didn't happen. I looked all through the inside of my wallet in case I put it somewhere other than it's usual place but not, it wasn't there. I realized the last place I had it was at lunch, and I must have left it there. I called them and of course it was a different crew at night but there was nothing. I went home and checked my account online and all was well, no one was going on a shopping spree on my money (although the only place they could have done that would have been the dime store! lol).

The next morning I called my bank to cancel my card. The rep asked me if I needed some extra time to look for it because once I canceled it, it would take a week to get a new one and if I found my old one it could not be activated again. I told him no, I checked, it's gone. So he canceled it. Tuesday night I offered to take my friend's niece out to dinner since she would be working late. I went home after work, took care of Clara, got changed and grabbed my wallet to head out the door. But the wallet felt funny. I felt bumps in the leather. The only card in the outside pocket of my wallet s a coffee card and there is no embossing on it. I knew before I even looked. I had put my debit card in that pocket. I looked. Yup. Sure enough. Duh, there it was!! UGH!! I'm such a dork sometimes!! Oh well, I have a new one on the way.

So my old landlord saga is almost over. If you remember I moved in January. I had prepaid my rent for a year and my old landlord was holding onto my money. He was dragging his feet about paying me back. I finally pinned him down and he said he'd send me a check but the was not returning it all. I told him I needed a detailed of all he is keeping and why. When he sent me the check, the list was included and he was trying to keep almost $1,000 of my money!!! NOT!!!!! I was sooooo upset you wouldn't believe it. He was charging me for advertising, for cleaning (even though he already told me it was fine), he didn't pay me for all the heating oil, he said he had to drop to the rent to rent it out so he was charging me the difference in the rent, and the worst of all he was charging me $50/hr for six hours of "his time". He did not tell me what "his time" was. I'm sorry but I don't know anyone who would pay a bill without a detail of what that time was. I called him back, got his voice mail and left a message that went into four voicemails. I disputed every charge and why it was illegal for him to try to do what he was doing. He didn't call me back. I called him and finally got him on the phone. I was expecting him to be a total jerk but he was very meek, almost defeated. He said he'd been researching the landlord/tenant law up here and wasn't finding anything. He said he wanted to talk to a lawyer first. I told him he a week and that's it. When he finally called, he said the lawyer told him to pay me all of my money back, that he had no right to it. Oh my gosh! What a HUGE relief!! It has been a horrible experience. I hate having to fight and hound someone for what is rightfully mine to begin with. But if I hadn't, I would have been out almost $1,000. We are still disputing the amount of heating oil that was left in the tank but I have receipts from the oil company of amounts and times they delivered. The proof is on my side. It's just a matter of time for me to get the last little bit. I'm ready to have that whole experience behind me so I can forget it.

Ok, so here's the last thing I'm going to write about today. The river ice has been going out the past week and I love watching it. The ice can go out literally over night or it can take a week or more. The Chena River that goes through town emptied out pretty fast. The Chena is fed by the Tanana (not pronounced like banana) River and it's a huge river. It has had several ice jams and has been flooding a town about 40 miles from here. The jam finally broke and a lot of that ice came down the Chena. Yesterday Danielle and I hung out on the deck of a local restaurant on the Chena and watched the ice go. The Chena had ice from shore to shore. The ice kept bumping into the deck and shaking it. And it was pretty noisy as it flowed out. It ws pretty cool. Then all of a sudden, the ice was gone and the river was empty. It was weird that one hour it could be so full of ice and then the next hour, empty. It was a great afternoon, relaxing in the sun, drinking beer (that was brewed here locally), watching the ice and talking.

I lied there is one more thing...the mosquitoes are starting!! The first batch are huge, clumsy ones. Easy to kill but they are mosquitoes nonetheless.