2010 Yukon Quest

Alec holding Jade, who won't walk on snow.

Quest mushers race 1,000 miles through the Alaskan and Canadian backcountry.

The real athletes are the dogs.

The banner over the start chute.

A baby in a tote.

A baby on her mom's back.

Me and my family.

Lance Mackey, one of the most famous dog drivers in the world.

Jade and I with a friend, Natalie.

Another musher embarks on the two-week journey to the finish line.

The dogs are usually eager to run.

The walking bridge over the Chena River.

A team heads down the chute.

Jade's good buddy, Arthur.

Susie homemaker

My new sewing table

Alec made me this sewing table from a piece of scrap stone at the shop. It holds up the sewing machine nicely. And it’s inspired me to put my sewing machine to use. I’ve made two tote bags. I hope to graduate to curtains and pillow cases soon. I aspire to start making a quilt by the end of the year.

After dinner

Me, elbow deep in a sink full of hot, soapy water. Jade, who had snatched a pocket knife from the kitchen desk where we pile junk.

Jade, put down that knife. Jade, put that knife on the desk. Right there on the desk. Back up, Jade. Now put the knife on the desk.

Take your hand off the knife. Honey, remove your hand from the knife. Stop touching the knife. Jade, that includes your finger. Back away from the knife …

You are who you associate with

I get a lot of press releases on my e-mail at work. Most are from politicians and special interests promoting a product or agenda.

I don’t know why the University of Georgia sent me the one below but I found it interesting and decided to share it.

Self-control is contagious, study finds

Athens, Ga. – Before patting yourself on the back for resisting that cookie or kicking yourself for giving in to temptation, look around. A new University of Georgia study has revealed that self-control—or the lack thereof—is contagious.

In a just-published series of studies involving hundreds of volunteers, researchers have found that watching or even thinking about someone with good self-control makes others more likely exert self-control. The researchers found that the opposite holds, too, so that people with bad self-control influence others negatively. The effect is so powerful, in fact, that seeing the name of someone with good or bad self-control flashing on a screen for just 10 milliseconds changed the behavior of volunteers.

“The take home message of this study is that picking social influences that are positive can improve your self-control,” said lead author Michelle vanDellen, a visiting assistant professor in the UGA department of psychology. “And by exhibiting self-control, you’re helping others around you do the same.”

People tend to mimic the behavior of those around them, and characteristics such as smoking, drug use and obesity tend to spread through social networks. But vanDellen’s study is thought to be the first to show that self-control is contagious across behaviors. That means that thinking about someone who exercises self-control by regularly exercising, for example, can make your more likely to stick with your financial goals, career goals or anything else that takes self-control on your part.

VanDellen’s findings, which are published in the early online edition of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, are the result of five separate studies conducted over two years with study co-author Rick Hoyle at Duke University.

In the first study, the researchers randomly assigned 36 volunteers to think about a friend with either good or bad self-control. Those that thought about a friend with good self-control persisted longer on a handgrip task commonly used to measure self-control, while the opposite held true for those who were asked to think about a friend with bad self-control.

In the second study, 71 volunteers watched others exert self-control by choosing a carrot from a plate in front of them instead of a cookie from a nearby plate, while others watched people eat the cookies instead of the carrots. The volunteers had no interaction with the tasters other than watching them, yet their performance was altered on a later test of self-control depending on who they were randomly assigned to watch.

In the third study, 42 volunteers were randomly assigned to list friends with both good and bad self-control. As they were completing a computerized test designed to measure self-control, the computer screen would flash the names for 10 milliseconds—too fast to be read but enough to subliminally bring the names to mind. Those who were primed with the name of a friend with good self-control did better, while those primed with friends with bad self-control did worse.

In a fourth study, vanDellen randomly assigned 112 volunteers to write about a friend with good self-control, bad self-control or—for a control group—a friend who is moderately extroverted. On a later test of self-control, those who wrote about friends with good self-control did the best, while those who wrote about friends with bad self-control did the worst. The control group, those who wrote about a moderately extroverted friend, scored between the other two groups.

In the fifth study of 117 volunteers, the researchers found that those who were randomly assigned to write about friends with good self-control were faster than the other groups at identifying words related to self-control, such as achieve, discipline and effort. VanDellen said this finding suggests that self-control is contagious because being exposed to people with either good or bad self-control influences how accessible thoughts about self-control are.

VanDellen said the magnitude of the influence might be significant enough to be the difference between eating an extra cookie at a party or not, or deciding to go to the gym despite a long day at work. The effect isn’t so strong that it absolves people of accountability for their actions, she explained, but it is a nudge toward or away from temptation.

“This isn’t an excuse for blaming other people for our failures,” VanDellen said. “Yes, I’m getting nudged, but it’s not like my friend is taking the cookie and feeding it to me; the decision is ultimately mine.”

The research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Midday break

Jade sporting her mom's new fox hat.

Jade, asleep for about two hours, will starting banging around in her crib any time. I am trying to sneak in a midday break by sipping snobby tea a friend gave me for Christmas. I’ll cut short my break to scrub the bathroom, which is so dirty it should be condemned.

Arctic air has blown into Fairbanks. And I mean blown. Alec spent part of Sunday watching the wind turbine with hopes the wind didn’t carry it away. The wind storm, which began over the weekend, is the strongest storm Alec has seen on Murphy Dome to date, he said. Our battery bank is still full even two days after the generator charged the batteries. The storm is predicted to last until Thursday, which means Alec will cancel Wednesday plans to go ice climbing at Denali Park. I’m going to suggest he go to the climbing wall at the gym.

Jade has been asking to go outside but I can’t oblige with temperatures below zero and steady winds. Finally, on Sunday, Alec bundled her up and took her outside to show her why we were saying no. Afterwards, she stopped asking to go outside. The girls from the next street came over and helped me occupy her. Also, we made bread.

I played hooky from play group today, feeling no desire to drive to town where it’s 40 below. I made French toast, using some of the bread from Sunday. After I finish this Blog post, I hope to make pizza crust from scratch for the first time.

I feel restless at work. I spend too much time at my desk or at meetings. I want to go somewhere with a photographer and interview people.

Hello 2010

Christmas in Seattle

Hi New Year. You snuck up on me. I still had Christmas on my mind and here you are already, 2010. I hope you’re as good as 2009, which was probably one of the best years of my life.

I’ve missed writing in this blog. I apologize for the neglect. I think about Murphy Dome Diaries all the time, things I may write or want to write or must write. Then I do something else, such as make a grocery list, play with Jade or watch tv. I miss sharing the goings on up here on Murphy Dome, such as the weather. Frequent temperature inversions mean it’s commonly 40 degrees warmer up here than 25 miles away in town. Also, I have scads of pictures of Jade to share. Jade having lunch with her friend Arthur. Jade running along the oceanfront in Seattle, where we spent Christmas. Jade at the ice rink, trying out her new skates, a birthday present from her friend Cedar.

But I haven’t wanted to go on the computer much lately. I’ll try to do better, partly because this blog makes me feel closer to my friends and family. I’m enjoying less time on the computer but I miss telling stories about my life.

So this is Christmas

It’s a few minutes before midnight and I am home after an assembly meeting, baking some of the six dozen cookies I need for a Cookie Exchange on Saturday.

I’m making lemon cookies with glaze from a recipe I found in a friend’s cook book while I watched our two children.

I meant to bake at the friend’s house earlier today but I wound up goofing off with the children.

I’d flop onto the floor and one would climb on my back, followed by the other. Or I’d swing each of them by their ankles, sending them away dizzy and giggling.

I had my teeth drilled today. I had a cavity. Two, actually. The dentist found the second cavity while working on the first one.

While in the dentist’s chair, I resolved to stop eating sweets. That lasted until I held a spatula coated in cookie dough and I automatically licked it.

I’m glad the holidays are here. The Christmas season is cheering me up from a November funk.

Ten things I’m thankful for

I know this post is four days late. I read somewhere that people get depressed around the holidays because they have in mind how things are supposed to be. The expectations are rarely met, making some people very sad. I have decided to have low expectations this holiday season. I have decided I won’t kill myself trying to make everything perfect. My goal this holiday season is to ski, enjoy myself and have an open heart. I also intend to count my blessings. Here are ten:

1) Forgiveness.
2) I am warm.
3) With time, tension diminishes.
4) Crazy people keep doing crazy things, keeping me in a job. See story here.
5) Long johns.
6) Online banking.
7) The sun will return.
8)) Books.
9) 100 percent chance of a white Christmas.
10) I finally have medical insurance.

The Party

I don’t know how we crammed all of the people—our best estimate is 50—into our house but we managed.

They all drove up here despite a temperature of 30 below zero.

It was loud, especially downstairs where the children blasted the boom box and held a ping pong tournament.

Only one dog fight erupted, and it took place in the bedroom so no one saw, thankfully. (On Sunday, I told Alec that I wasn’t sure we could continue to live with two dogs bent on killing each other.)

I kept losing my beer, or maybe I kept drinking it down without realizing it. Later, after the party, I lay in bed awake thinking of all of the alcohol consumed—enough to fill a few trash bags. I hoped everyone made it home OK.

My friend, Judy, took the pictures below.

Nanne and Gimbel.

Tuesday, Kenny and his daughter Zowie.

Thorston, Chris, Mountain Heather, who lives down the road, and me.

Dave sandwiched between two Jamies.

Danny and his Baby Grandma.

Tom and Tuesday.

Gene and one of his girls.

Tom and Chris, who hosted us at their cabin on the Salcha River on July 4.

John and Alec.

Todd, Tom, Gene and co.

Marmian, a friend and former co-worker, Lisa, my friend and former room-mate, and Jennifer, my friend.

Paul in the middle. I’m afraid I don’t know the other men’s names.

Jade and Cameron, whose family is our neighbor at Summit Lake.

Jade, my neighbor Erin, Andrea, my former landlord, and baby Kiera.

Kleenex, chicken soup, warm blanket, screaming baby

Lucky had pilfered a Riesen candy off of my nightstand—can you describe something made of plastic as a night stand?—and was walking around sucking on it, still in the wrapper and all.

When I saw, I took it away from her, opened it, cut a little piece off and gave the tiny piece to her as an appeasement for taking away the whole candy.

What came was the tantrum of all tantrums, crying, mouth open wide, boogers pouring out of her nose, chocolate from the little bit of candy, which she paused to nibble in between breaths, all over her face and hair and hands and legs, which were bare because I had changed her diaper and she was too wild to put back on her overalls.

She followed me to the bathroom where I dispose of poopie diapers—we have a Diaper Genie—and when I shut off the light and closed the door, I heard a little crunch. Her fingers got crushed in the door jam.

That’s when she stopped crying, just when she had a real reason to cry. No, stopped isn’t the right word. She calmed to a whimper and I held her, walking circles the length of the house like I used to the nights when she was a few months old and inconsolable.

She paused sometimes to rub my hair and kiss me back, my little mimic. (She also picks her nose almost obsessively, which brings me great shame. My little mimic.)

I should be the one getting consoled because my nose is raw and I feel something pooling in my ears.

I mustered the energy to meet the boiler guy this morning at the rental property but I canceled the rest of my day.

The boiler cleaning went well. My tenant played a Miles Davis album and told me about his trip to Maui. The boiler man, Mark, said the boiler is old but chugging along nicely. The bill was $280, which is good. In past years, I’ve been handed a bill of $500 or more.

Adult relations on Murphy Dome have been tense, owing I think to the darkness and cold, and the result has been less blogging on my part because it’s made me sad and because I couldn’t bear to admit it because I want my relationship to be known as a good one because I gave up a lot to come up here and make this family and if it’s not going well than maybe that means I made a huge mistake, proving I am incapable of good judgment.

But now I just feel like relationships have their ups and downs and the thing to do is to ride it out or take steps to make things better.

The good thing is that most of the tension is over stupid stuff, such as what kind of chicken food to buy or unfounded accusations of sabotaged coffee.

With me and Alec, it’s usually silly things that get between us. Or at least the things seem sort of silly when the dust settles.

He took me out for Mexican food last night and I almost said, “Let’s call a truce,” but the dinner went so well that I felt like a truce had happened by itself.

Today, I brought him lunch after the boiler appointment and he’s just been in the shower, cleaning the chocolate out of Jade’s hair, a favor to me because the responsibility for cleaning the baby is usually mine. (Although it got on my nerves earlier when he asked me if I had anything going for dinner because judging from the kitchen, I thought the answer was pretty obvious: No.)

I’ll end this post by reporting that we are having a party on Saturday and it should be interesting because I am not feeling the best and a lot of people are invited and won’t they expect food and a clean house and a cheerful hostess? Not to mention the temperature is supposed to be a frigid 30 below. Who will want to stand out by a bonfire when it’s that cold? Not me.