Q&A: Answers to Comments

You've asked the questions, both here in comments, and via e-mail.

1. Yes, we have pets. My two daughters each have a cat. Alaskans are into pets, shall we say, and many, many folks have dogs, cats, and critters of all stripes. The dogs bark at moose, howl with the wolves, and hide (mostly) from bears.

2. My pistol is a Taurus PT1911 in .45 ACP. My carry ammo is Federal Premium Tactical 200-gr. +P with expanding full-metal jacket (EFMJ) rounds.

3. Yes, I took the photos of my desktop arrangements ("Tools of the Trade"; see earlier posts). Sometimes I get lucky; I'm not a great photographer. My younger daughter has steadier hands than I, and takes better scenery shots.

4. There are some 800 moose living in Anchorage in the summer, and about 1200 or so during the winters. They tend to come down from the mountainsides into town, where foraging for shrubbery makes easier pickings.)

5. I paid $3.18 for gas this morning, which is as cheap as we've seen it in over a year.

6. We've received about 8 inches of snow at my place since Friday morning. As I said yesterday, I don't expect anyone to be greatly impressed by that; it's not impressive by Alaskan standards, either. The weather gnomes are predicting another 2 or 3 inches for this afternoon and tonight.

Having said that, I'm going to spend the afternoon with wife & daughters watching the Super Bowl. We have no favorites in the contest this year, so I hope it's a fairly close game.

It starts at 2:25 AK time, which is kind of nice. There should be some advantage to being behind the four Lower 48 time zones. Of course, Alaska has two times zones of its own; Hawaii-Aleutian time is the other. It has something to do with being well over 2,000 miles from east to west (the same distance as Los Angeles to Miami) but I don't like to brag.

Well, okay, I do, but only about Alaska. Thanks for stopping by.