I had ankle surgery last week to reconstruct my left ankle. To help me get around the snow and ice, my crutches came equipped with deployable snow spikes!
Swing the spikes down into place, and I'm suddenly still mobile outdoors in the Alaska winter landscape.
I can't pinpoint the injury, but it started about 8 years ago, and then degenerated from there. The surgeon couldn't repair my torn peroneus brevis tendon, and had to graft another tendon in its place. He also performed a brostrom repair of several nearby damaged ligaments, and installed something called an internal brace to tighten up the ankle joint. Nearly 3 hours of surgery, and it will be 6 weeks on crutches before I can put weight on it again. Lots of rehab in my future, but glad that I had the opportunity to get this troubled ankle fixed. Already eager to get this annoying cast off, though!
Before November's earthquake, I took a few pics of the fresh snow and frost around the house and on the Hay Flats.
Mamma moose and calf on the flats.
Sunrise, taken just a handful of days before the earthquake would knock this retaining wall down.
Landon's apple tree. The moose have already munched on it quite a bit since I took this picture.
Dino and Heide, enjoying the snow.
For his Spanish class, Landon had to make a pinata, he chose a Llama. Here he just finished applying the paper mache.
All finished, and turning it in.
Grayson's robotics team won their regional last weekend, and will head to the state competition next weekend to see who gets to go to nationals. Their project is 'Spacefit', a set of workout equipment designed for astronauts in a zero-g environment.
We didn't have the tree up yet when the earthquake hit, thankfully, and it took us a while to get it put up. But we eventually did.
Christmas morning, ready to open gifts.
Dino always spends Christmas with us inside, but he's mostly an outside dog since we moved back to Alaska.
Bull moose grazes in the flats.
More fresh snow on the deck.
We had our typical cold spell last week. It hit -17F as the low.
During these cold snaps, we get to see several unique weather phenomena. I don't know the name of this one, but it happens over the Hay Flats every year at around -15F. Moisture from the distant Palmer Sough and Matanuska/Knik Rivers form these eerie clouds near the ground. Looks like something out of an H.G. Wells story to me.
After a day or two at these temps, hoarfrost forms on the tree branches, giving them the look of being full of white leaves.
No matter how well you think you've cleared the spider webs off the house each Fall, the hoarfrost let's you know there's always room for improvement.
This door in our garage always forms this frost on the inside during these cold spells. It's a good indicator that we've fallen below -10F. But his year, due to the earthquake cracking some of our window casings and separating seals, we have this type of frost on nearly every window.
Dino gets pushed out of his doghouse at these temps, and Heidi moves in.
But with each aftershock, he retreats back inside with the cat.
At night, they sleep in the garage, and stay huddled up together there as well.
Speaking of aftershocks, here's our favorite meme over the last month or so. We're closing in on 7,000 aftershocks since the Nov 30th earthquake. Most are below a 3, and not easily felt. But we've had several hundred above that, and we've felt each one of those. Some are big enough to still knock things back down. "Luckily", the main shock broke all our breakable stuff already, so the aftershocks are just weighing on frayed nerves. We had a magnitude 5.0 aftershock just a few days ago, and the USGS predicts a 20% chance of a magnitude 6 aftershock over the next year. So we won't be replacing anything breakable for a while. Meanwhile, we're working hard to get repairs done to the structure as fast as can be, and have been working closely with our insurance company to get all the damage into the claim.
Netflix, are you mocking me?
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