Slideshow Help

I have been trying to get the slideshow to function....and as far as you all can probably can see, it is not working very well. I have a bunch of pics tagged scattered_alaska, and the only one that shows up is Justin in Prince William Sound. While a lovely picture, there are plenty of other ones I would like to show up... And it now seems to be working in the preview window but not actually on the blog...but now it is only showing like the five pics Rianne has posted...so confusing.

And don't stop reading at my boring post, Andrea has a lovely picture and poetry down below.

Photos on a Rainy Day

I wake, the sky is
dark, full of clouds, pregnant with
moisture, class beckons

Physics class, too warm
California heat on a
Chilly winter day

Outside the chill soaks
Into my clothes, the sky glows
With light from nowhere

Grab my camara,
The lighting is perfect for
photos, soft and clean

Drip, drip, the trees drop
Moisture onto the bright red
Of my umbrella

Soft light makes flowers
Glow from within, flash! destroyed
By forgetfulness

Settings reset, once
More I attempt to compose
Colors in a shot

A lilly in the
Fountain glows, gold fish swim below
Disturb reflection

Leaves float in a small
Puddle between paving stones
Forever captured

Deep blue iris glistens
With beads of water, each one
Attracts the eye more

A lamp-post stands, alone
The curve of a bench accents
The unyeilding form

The battery quits
Protests the hours my camara
Has spent on this day

Return in the rain
I glance behind, so many
Potential pictures

Fire Goddess Confession

On the evening of January 4th our dear friend Emily came up to me at Aimie's birthday party. Putting her arm around my shoulders, she said, "You know I hate to say this but it's a bit too cold for skiing. Do you think you could warm things up a bit?"

Now everyone knows I am the Fire Goddess, Bane to Skiiers and their precious snow. Thankfully in past years we have come to an agreement. They give me cheesecake and they can keep their cold snow. I had never had a Skiier ask me to make things warmers but I assumed it would require the same payment.

"You have cheesecake?"

Emily shook her head. "No, but we are eating pretty good ice cream cake. That should be enough."

"Ok, I'll see what I can do."

What Emily and I failed to take note of was that we were eating sacred ice cream cake of the mint chip variety. Two days after I got back from Nome the temperature started to rise and as most of you know the rest of the story is history. Ski races, school, and a lot of other things were canceled because of too much warmth. 

The moral of this story: Don't ask the Fire Goddess to make it warm until spring and don't underestimate the power of the sacred ice cream.

  

Psycho Weather

All this fall, people in Tempe asked me how I stood Alaska in the winter, why I didn't simply freeze into one big popsicle...and so on. I tended to reply with my various tour guide-y facts about Anchorage being more temperate than one might think, and actually in most cases having a milder winter than the Midwest. I would also mention that you can always put on more clothing but can only take so much clothing off... Had this been a more normal winter that is the case, and granted it is the case, but 10 below is absolutely freezing no matter what excuses one offers up.

I was home during a cold snap...yuck...and it was long too! I personally blame it on Justin, cause the day after he left the temp went within the average range again. I recognize there isn't NECESSARILY a causal relationship, but I still maintain that the cold snap was his fault...

I was looking at the weather page, which has a graph of the past week or so of high and low temperatures, along with lines that delineate the average highs and lows for this time of the year. Anchorage went from days of having the high be near or below the average low temperature, to Monday when the temp range was within the averages to Tuesday and Wednesday highs being WAY above normal highs.

The last two days ASD has canceled school because the warm temps put a lovely layer of water on top of the existing ice, I think Alaska may be the only place where school gets canceled because it is too warm :) It has also been gusting wind, hard enough that the house sounds like it is about to lift up like something from the Wizard of Oz and my mom is afraid the wind will take out one of the trees around our property which would probably NOT be a good thing because many of them are tall enough that they would most likely hit the house. Also, in the typical classy Novak style, when my dad and brother replaced our old fridge with another (not a new one, but more functional) they decided for some reason to leave the old fridge on the back deck. I'm not sure if it was dangerous to get it down the stairs, if they were defrosting it, or they just got lazy. Anyway, the fridge has been a lovely deck ornament since sometime this fall, and got frozen to the deck with all of the snow and ice, however in the warmup that all melted, and the fridge was freestanding. This morning, we woke up to all of our trashcans blown away, and the slightly scary fact that the winds had been strong enough to move the refrigerator about five to ten feet across the deck. I guess it is good to keep things interesting :)

I guess this all just fits the Alaska maxim of: Don't like the weather? Wait ten minutes, it'll change.

My Melancholy Mood at wanting to be back at college yet at the same time not...

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz

Dinking around on html with little success

I am trying to get a slideshow to work properly...I would get it to display the first picture but nothing after that. Also I tried to make the blog have three columns so that we can have slideshows for different people etc...and so I was looking up tutorials online...trying to edit the html and having little success.

If anyone wants to try to make it work, I can make you guys have admin powers if you need them to edit the format, just save a backup copy of the format before you do too much. I throw out a challenge to you all, I don't know what the reward is quite yet, but you can suggest appropriate prizes...

Is anyone else amused by this?