High winds drive Palmer, Alaska man insane

This is my first winter in Alaska, and I can deal with a lot of things, including darkness, gray skies, and cold, but the thing that is really driving me crazy is the constant hurricane force winds.

Personally, I find it really hard to sleep at night when the windows are rattling and the building is shaking. It might not be as bad on the first floor of a house or apartment, but on the second floor of my current building, it's a lot like riding a boat on the ocean. It's also really annoying because I like to go for walks every afternoon, and I don't like getting sand-blasted while I walk.

Hopefully I'll get over this soon, as I don't seem to have any choice in the matter ... constant high winds have been with us most of the winter, and they're going to be with us for the foreseeable future. When I look at the weather report here these days I don't even look at the temperature, I just look at the wind report, and here's what it looks like today:

Oh, and don't let that "decreasing" part fool you. I've been watching the weather reports for several days, and every day the weather service says the winds will be decreasing, only to wake up in the middle of the night with the windows rattling.