40 miles in a blizzard?

"
WESTERN PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...WHITTIER...SEWARD...GIRDWOOD...
MOOSE PASS
1223 PM AKST TUE DEC 23 2008

...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT 3PM AKST THIS AFTERNOON
UNTIL 5 AM AKST WEDNESDAY FOR SEWARD AND WHITTIER...
"

So, the last minute Christmas shopping remains to be
completed, and four individuals (including myself) have
come together to make the drive from Girdwood to Anchorage.

That was the plan, anyway.

The weather forecast changed from 'snow likely' to 'blizzard
warning', the fine grain snow outside is blowing sideways,
and it is impossible to see anything in the distance.

Will we have to postpone our shopping plans (and Christmas?)
or will we venture into the unknown white, throw caution to
the wind, and proclaim that even phrases like:
"THIS WILL LEAD TO WHITE-OUT CONDITIONS...MAKING TRAVEL
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. ALL TRAVEL AND OUTDOOR ACTIVITY IS
STRONGLY DISCOURAGED"
do not hinder our God-given right to consumerism?

The verdict to be decided when the sisters return home
from work.

UPDATE: The decision has been made for us. A head-on
collision on the highway and resulting fatality has closed
the highway for now.

RIP Meghan Murrell  :(

A Bitter Baking Battle

Survey the battlefield depicted to your right. So many men spread out amongst the tools of war. And yet, they are all the victors. What stuff they're made of will help them survive against a horde of hungry party-goers. They refuse to be tasty.

It is a well-kept secret that I am not skilled in the creation of gingerbread cookies.
So well-kept is the secret that I, myself, found out a couple nights ago.

My sister, Niki, and I set out to make a batch of cookies for a holiday party in Girdwood. Based on the limited selection of ingredients available at our mercantile store, we settled on gingerbread cookies from an internet recipe.
I won't bore you with all the details, but I will say that after the first batch, we had to make adjustments. After the second batch, we made more adjustments.
Third batch, add rum.
Fourth batch, add chopped ginger.
Fifth batch, drizzle with honey and raw sugar.
Final batch, maybe more molasses?
Did I mention we didn't have gingerbread man cookie cutters?
We used Halloween cats, pumpkins, and ghosts! Turns out modified ghosts look like gingerbread men.

And maybe eating cookies that are not a flavorful sensation enhances the experience of eating any other cookie that tastes better in the future.
An example:
I once mixed Tabasco sauce into my coffee to give it an extra kick. (yes, ONCE.)
The downside was that it tasted horrible. The upside, which I didn't realize at the time, is that now even the gas station coffee isn't so bad, because I can always think back to that one, absolutely horrible cup of coffee.
Will this hold true for cookies?
Is this the antithesis of striving for the best of the best in the culinary arts?
And does this define me as an optimist or just someone willing to settle for anything that isn't the worst of the worst?
I'm voting for optimism. :)

December Sun

At 3pm, in the middle of December, the sun doesn't rise high enough in the sky to top the mountains around Girdwood's valley. Looking south from the courtyard of The Hotel Alyeska, vitamin-D starved Alaskans wait for the sun to peak around Max's Mountain and burn off the lingering clouds.

Remains of the day?

Reading before work in the coffee shop. Does anyone else have the problem where sitting in front of an open book makes people approach you for conversation?

I also discovered that this particular printing of my book only lists chapter titles on the top of the right-hand page. No title accompanying the chapter number at the beginning of each chapter and no table of contents. A strange by-product of this layout is that there are a few chapters in the book with no chapter name listed. (This happens when a chapter begins and ends, from top to bottom, on a single left-hand page. The right-hand page begins a new chapter, with it's chapter title printed in the header.)

So now I need research and a pen. :)