So, I took a break from my obsessive post making yesterday, in part because I was forcefully and suddenly recruited to find all the walnuts in a gallon size bag of trail mix. This was not a problem. I like to be helpful. It was the oddest request that I have had in a while, but I enjoy spontaneity. My efforts yielded, using a stretch of the imagination, 17 “walnuts”. About one-third of a cup, coarsely chopped. These were added to a salad that we (eleven) were served for dinner, by the housemate I described in detail about 48 hours ago. My hands smelled like dried kiwi after I completed my task, but this was mostly my imagination, since dried kiwi hardly has a distinctive scent and no one else smelled my hands or is able to confirm my story.

I don’t mean to be flippant about any of the following topics: old people, talkative people, or people named Bob. I forget that my idea of “all in good fun” is not universal. (Our eighth grade teacher had to direct my closest friend and me to be nice to the new girl because she absolutely would not understand our sense of humor.) In any case, I mean no offense to our weekend companion, who was a gracious makeshift host and a generous volunteer cook.

The most characteristic element of Barrow’s weather, at least for the summer months, is the fog. It is clearly visible, ominous and somewhat malicious, on the horizon as you fly in from Atqasuk. We saw it today, flying in from Atqasuk, at about 12:30 pm. This is lovely, and we had beautiful clear skies for the whole flight, but we were meant to be in Barrow by 9:30, so we had another “hurry up and wait” sort of day with the packing, calling, and driving to and from the airport that are all involved in returning us successfully to Barrow.

Therefore, no one can ever be in too much of a hurry to get anywhere. Some are angry or at least slightly annoyed at having unreliable transportation, but I have heard at least one person hope that the fog rolls in thickly on his day of departure. I guess it depends on what you’re traveling and whether you are prone to anxiety.

I am just prone to tired, as a result of staying up late and getting up early. Before eight is early, I don’t care what you say.

Such is the headache of waterfront living!

(I am feeling peculiarly unsettled today. Perhaps close readers will have noticed this from my shockingly disjointed paragraphs. The syntax is off, too, and I am unhappy with my self-important vocabulary choices. I really didn’t sell it this time, and I’ll be a disdainful sort of bemused at myself in the morning. C’est la vie.)