December 23, 2003. Last night we celebrated the longest night of the year -- Winter Solstice -- with a crackly fire in the fireplace and toasted marshmallows ... and Hanukkah music from a local FM station on the radio. I didn't get to taste the marshmallows, so when Miss Jerrianne left the room for a few minutes, I absconded with the whole bag ... she caught me right by the bedroom door, where I was planning to hide them, for later.
The sun rose at 10:14 a.m. We didn't see it, because it has been snowing every day for a week, with the sun hiding behind thick clouds. Even on sunny days it takes at least another hour before the sun peeks over the Chugach Mountains and casts bright yellow sunbeams into the east sun room. After half an hour or so, the sun ducks behind the neighboring house's roof. The sun shows up on the other side of the house for an hour or two until sunset at 3:41 p.m. on the shortest day of the year.
Yesterday we lost 4 seconds of daylight, compared to the previous day, but today we gained 9 seconds ... so we made up yesterday's loss and gained 5 more seconds, too. The sun is very low in the southern sky this time of year, scooting along just above the horizon. Around St. Valentine's Day it will rise high enough to skim along the top of the neighboring house's roof, instead of ducking behind it. We look forward to that.
Still, we aren't complaining, because we get a lot more winter sunshine than the cats in Barrow, Alaska's northernmost village, do. The sun set there in mid-November and won't rise again until mid-January. They call winter the long dark up there ... and they have polar bears, too! But we'll get more daylight than we know what to do with when summer comes, and we really do love living in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Meanwhile, warm full spectrum fluorescent lights keep our spirits sunny side up.
According to Miss Jerrianne, last winter was very mild with very little snow. I don't remember, of course, because I hadn't been born yet. She said the previous winter was that way, too ... right up until St. Patrick's Day when a tremendous storm dropped about three feet of snow in one huge dump, breaking all records for 24-hour snowfall. This year the snow came late (November 8) but it just kept on coming. Now it's piled up over five feet deep ... a little more than double the seasonal average. It's snow up to our ears now ... and that's with me riding on Miss Jerrianne's shoulder!
The snowplows have been busy, busy, busy on our street ... they're fun to watch, but they are having trouble keeping up. Miss Jerrianne brushes snow off our front steps once or twice a day and then our snowplow man takes it away. Some of the neighbors have been shoveling snow off their rooftops and Miss Jerrianne will probably have to find a roof shoveling service to do ours soon. The spruce trees could use a shake, too.
We are warm and cozy indoors, now that the furnace is working again. Dozing in a double recliner in front of a crackling fire with soft music playing is my idea of an evening well spent. I wouldn't even mind not sharing in the roasted marshmallows if Miss Jerrianne would remember to keep that film canister filled with shrimp and salmon kitty treats handy ... and I know she wouldn't expect me to share them with her.
BTW, if you'd like to see and hear a jolly little preview of some animated music that I think is worth waking up for, click here, choose your viewing method, and wait patiently ... it's a fairly long download for each tune; the DVD would be a lot faster:
http://www.animusic.com/pipe-dream.html
