Today was another sunny, cold, and beautiful day. It was -24 degrees F when I got up this morning and drove my son to work shortly thereafter. The car wasn’t real happy about starting, either. By early afternoon it had warmed to 3 degrees above zero and with the sun shining, it actually felt pretty good. Currently it is -12. They forecast that by tomorrow afternoon we will have temperatures near 20 degrees on the plus side of zero! Our area had 8 hours and 10 minutes of daylight today and should get another 5 minutes more tomorrow. There was a 95 degree temperature variation in the state today with a low of -54 and a high of 41.

We stopped at our favorite restaurant at the airport this morning for a wonderful breakfast and good conversation. The temperature warmed as we were there, which made running errands afterwards much more pleasant. We had a good view of two of our active volcanoes. The sun was shining on the mountains and they looked very majestic. Mt. Spurr has been quite rumbly for the past several months. There are 15-20 small earthquakes beneath her every day. If she blows again, we’ll probably get dumped on with the volcanic ash again. It stinks like rotten eggs and makes a mess of everything. Volcanic ash does not reflect light. It is dark and everything around it is also dark.

The ground buffalo I bought yesterday became meatloaf for dinner tonight. It was quite tasty. To go along with it we had sliced sweet potatoes baked and sweetened with molasses and steamed fresh asparagus with a drizzling of butter and a little sea salt.

The asparagus was on sale from $3.99 per pound to just $1.99 a pound! The buffalo was $5.98 a pound. And the sweet potatoes were $1.49 per pound.