In the news and on the home front

In the news today, the Mount Hood climber story has taken a sad turn toward closure, a court in Libya sentenced a group of foreign health workers to death, and President Bush said the military should be expanded to help fight the War on Terror.

On the home front, I've been busy this week running errands for Mom. On two consecutive days I sent packages of cookies and calendars and things to far-off relatives, standing in long lines at the Pendleton Post Office to ensure arrival by Christmas.I cleared the house of empty beer bottles, making way for the Next Round, which will certainly be larger thanks to visiting brothers who are en route from Portland.

It's cold here, friends. About 24 degrees cold. Driving to town from our homestead on Gopher Flats on the Reservation, going the Up Way through the fields, where the brush is frost-bitten, motionless and white, it looks almost like time has stopped.

But the cold didn't stop me from changing into a turtleneck and shorts and taking the dogs, Betty and Hunter, for a run up the hill and back. When I returned to the house I was hacking. I tried water, I tried a shower, I tried standing by the space heater. Nothing worked.

Then I cracked open a bottle of Alaskan Winter Ale, and that seems to be doing the trick.