Question this week:  How reasonable is it to be sad about the death of someone you have never actually met? 

I was getting dressed, thinking about nothing in particular, when Rachel came up the stairs and said, "Gordon Downie died".  So, half-dressed, I found I was crying and it took a while to put myself back together and go to work. 

Playing my music, as I do at work in my little bubble, Gord's voice is the same as always.  I look for news articles, and they tell me something I didn't know.  He separated from his wife in 2015.  He had four children, a fact I did know.  How did they feel, sharing him with all of us rabid fans, people who feel they have a claim?

The documentary aired early, I was expecting to wait until November.  Rachel and I watched it, some tears but it was largely a happy event.  It was good to see that he had support.  That he was cheerful backstage at the concerts, not hating every minute of it, not feeling compelled but wanting to see his fans and sing the songs one last time.

What happens next?  I guess this is what happens as you get older, the people you admire either die, get old and rest on their laurels, or turn out to have feet of clay.  Choose at your peril.  I thought all along that if he could do it, stay married and raise children while doing what he did that I could do it too.  And yet, that was my perception, not at all grounded in any sort of reality.  Although I feel I have had access to something over the years, it's only the same as watching a movie, someone playing a part, words gathered together and spun into a whole cloth for entertainment. 

anyway.  more thought, as always, is necessary.  if I had to go tomorrow, could I go with good grace?  probably not, at this point.  there are, in the swamp years, as Murray Sinclair called them recently, still things that I don't want to leave unfinished...

This afternoon I went to the Coop to buy goat cheese.  They have tiny packages of it for five bucks but it's worth it to have on homemade pizza.

I didn't wear a sweater, as it is 21 degrees today, in an uncharacteristic hot spell.  Accompanied by the smoke from the NWT forest fires and no wind.  The Sir Wilfrid Laurier - a giant coast guard icebreaker - has dropped anchor in the bay, and it hums all night so last night I slept at the cabin.  The night before I watched tv in the middle of the night and cursed Sir Wilfrid for his humming.

These things are related.  Really.

The reason for my insomnia seems to be the sudden change in my hormonal balance - long story short I am no longer subject to the whims of nature in that way and it seems that the last couple of years of let's-have-a-period-every-twenty-days was incredibly draining.  So now after three months without my visitor, I'm feeling very strong and apparently I don't need a lot of sleep.

So I went to the Coop in a t-shirt and my hiking pants.  Something I don't normally do, as when I was 13 I started the habit of covering up my femaleness when out in public.  But something about this phase of things feels very much like the opposite of 13, back to 10 or 11, where my body is my own and doesn't do things I don't want it to.

There is a girl in town here who reminds me of me.  At about 15, she is shy, I think, but she's out there working all over town, as I did - but when you look at her, her gaze slides away.

As I was walking out of the Coop with my tiny package of goat (and some chocolate, naturally), she was walking in.  She didn't look at me.  She doesn't actually know me, but seeing that she was wearing a sweater and her usual sideways look, I know her.  And I wanted to stop her and say, "It will get better.  You will get out of here, if you keep working.  And later on it'll all be worth it".   I'm not going to tell her not to wear a sweater, though.  I wouldn't have listened if anyone told me that at fifteen...

Walked out to the cabin this afternoon.  The weather cooperated, and people driving by are getting used to me walking that road so now they just wave rather than stopping to ask if I want a ride.  I was thinking about how much more understanding about a place you get from walking rather than driving...  Psychogeography.

Well so it turns out that doing this research for the PhD is hugely addicting and time consuming.  Or maybe it's just that I'm obsessive.  Or both.

I have a huge database put together now, and I'm starting to run it through its paces which is fascinating and I can lose hours playing with the statistics program.  And trying to get my head around what the statistics mean exactly.  Not sure I'm there yet.  Sent the whole thing off to my supervisor for review, and in a couple of weeks I'm having a holiday, going to go stay at my cabin for a few weeks and pretend the world has ended.

Went to Taloyoak again this week, it's a beautiful place in the summer, and enjoyed wandering around in the hills behind in the evenings.  The course I was teaching was a bit longer than the time allotted so it tired me out but I'm home now.

Also in news, haven't smoked for almost five months and have stopped wanting to off myself.  Good news really.  So on we go...

As it turned out, I had used up all my luck...  Flew off to Taloyoak, spent the week there teaching and working on the last task task for the 1st year of my PhD!

Friday at lunchtime went to the airport with the detachment commander, we walked in and there was no-one at the Canadian North desk.  Taloyoak airport is two tiny check in desks, about ten chairs and perhaps 20feet by 20feet of floor.  Inquiring at the First Air desk produced the information that Canadian North's plane to Cambridge Bay was cancelled, they had transferred all the passengers to First Air and then gone home.  The friendly First Air lady checked me in.  I asked her, "Where am I going?"  "Yellowknife" she replied, handing me a boarding pass and taking my suitcase.

Ok then.  That was not the plan.  However, it worked out ok as one of my Cambridge Bay friends was also stranded in Yellowknife and she was at the house of another friend who used to live in CB.  There was wine and it was just like old times.  In the morning, (Saturday) back to the airport, with my friend and her new kitten-in-a-bag, at which point we flew round and over CB because the runway, when the plane approached, was unfit for landing.  Back to YK.  Cat was unhappy, and meowed her displeasure.

Yellowknife again.  Sigh.  Night in a hotel, nice dinner out, shopping at Wal-Mart, then Sunday we flew again and did land.  However, arriving at 2pm meant that I had 3 hours until I needed to be back on a plane to  Kugluktuk.  Just enough time to stuff all the dirty clothes in the washer and dryer, buy more food and repack everything, much to Mulder's disgust, then barrel out to the airport so the First Air lady could laugh at me (didn't you just come in???). Off to Kugluktuk.

Friday comes again.  I have finished teaching.  I am ready to go, packed and prepared.  Flight gets cancelled again.  For weather.  What weather?  I can see the islands out in the bay.  The consensus at the Kugluktuk office was that I was probably the only person wanting to fly from Kugluktuk to CB on a Friday (hey if you're going somewhere on a Friday it should be Yellowknife).  But this time after numerous phone calls it was determined that I was rebooked for CB for Saturday....  And I did get home.  But I was tired.

I have the preparation aspect of Northern travel down to a science.  All necessary food plus some extra just in case, comes with me, with the stipulation that it's microwaveable as kitchens may not be available, but all the detachments have a microwave.  Also my pillow and a blanket in case of inadequate bedding/heat (the water did run out in Taloyoak, and as the heating boilers need... Water... It was chilly one night.  I was glad of my extra blanket).  I take instant coffee and tea bags, sugar and candy, and books to read in case there's no tv/Internet as there sometimes isn't...

Working on ethics resubmission.  Procrastinating.

Things I did today:

Got up at six.  Slept on the couch for half an hour.  I was dreaming I had triplets.
Had a meeting with my PhD supervisor at 7:30 AM.  (2:30 in England, one of the drawbacks of distance education).
Forgot to put the chicken in the crockpot for dinner.

Went to work.  Signed numerous documents for folks.  This notary gig is almost a full time job now.
Court files.  Court is done.
Didn't get to the fingerprints again.
Printed out materials for the course I'm teaching next week in Taloyoak.  This is an exceedingly painstaking process.  Trying to get files off the internet up here is like sucking elephants through juice box straws.
Texted Rachel.  We discussed Ian's theory that Donald Trump is actually Bill the Cat.

We got a new photocopier at work today.  It's been sitting around in three boxes since Tuesday, when the police plane dropped it off.  The stupid one we had was running all the sheets through crooked so they came out like badly ironed shirts.

So the three boxes moved into the other side of the office, today, where the guys sit, with promises that they would put it together.  I have a nice little glass box to sit in, remnants I think of an old radio room but it means I can play my music endlessly without disturbing them.  Although they do sometimes come through to put things in the filing cabinet and say "are you listening to...  Eminem?  Justin Timberlake?  NWA?"  Yes to all the above.  At 3 o'clock I decided that if I didn't do something about it, the boxes would still be sitting there on Saturday when the boss comes back from his holiday.  So I got out my penknife and started opening the boxes.  Pulled out some bits and put them together.  In the end though the largest part was too heavy.  At that point the guys came back and ripped the box apart and heaved the machine onto the base I had constructed.  Then we spent about twenty minutes trying, all of us, to figure out how to get it to take legal size paper.  I mean, it has to.  You can't print legal forms on 8andahalfby11 paper.

Eventually Brandon figured it out.  He said, what if we pull the drawer out from the front.  And we had to tell him he was right.  Which he insists we need to tell his girlfriend, that he was right once.  Although it's the ugliest thing, with the legal drawer sticking out, it works.

Came home and found Miguel was making something else with the chicken.  Yay!
Watched more Vikings.  I like it that they haven't killed off Bjorn yet.
Continued the Marxism / Wages for Facebook discussion from yesterday.
Worked on the ethics.  Sigh.  I suspect they're preparing to squash part of my research.  I plan to fight.
When I could no longer think, watched the season finale of Hunting Hitler.  A guilty pleasure.

I come and go, I know.  Been to Hawaii, and Winnipeg.  A bipolar holiday.  Winnipeg is not my favourite place on the planet, but there was a conference on Arctic research that I've been to before, and so Winnipeg it was.  Hawaii was much nicer.

I'm going back to England at the end of February, but for now I'm here.  Back in the cold and dark, with my dog.  Week after next will be Taloyoak, week after that Kugluktuk, to run some courses.  I enjoy the teaching, which surprised me.  The travelling is a bit hairy, in the north, woke up in the morning I was supposed to leave Gjoa Haven to pea soup fog, which stops the planes here, as does the brewing blizzard on the day I was supposed to leave Kugaaruk.  But both times the planes came in and I left, a good thing in Gjoa Haven as the hotel was booked up for the weekend and I'm not sure what I would have done.  I worry I've used up my luck and will get stuck this time round...

Mum and Dad are in Australia with Graeme.  Roy's thinking about moving to Vancouver Island.  Ian's got a job, he starts tomorrow at the psychiatric hospital in Edmonton, and is packing to move closer to work.  Rachel is coming home, end of April, to live with us again.  Eric mutters about going back to school in the South, Kirsten and Jorden are contemplating a move to BC.  Everyone shuffling around.  The house in Edmonton will get sold.  Time moves on.  I'm finished a year of my PhD.  Amazingly I've managed to meet all the goals set for this year, academically, and should be able to start the process of data collection and analysis this year.  Historical child sexual abuse interviews by the police.  And that's a conversation stopper, let me tell you.  People ask, "what are you studying" and I tell them, and they don't know what to say.  I think (as another sexual assault researcher said) that they'd rather I said "freshwater trout" or "boreal ecology".

The sun will be back soon.  I miss it.  There was a tiny sliver of reflected light from below the horizon, today right at noon, but it will be showing above the horizon on Thursday.  Probably be cloudy.