barge fun

Our appliances are here! It's like Christmas, but with dishwashers. We ordered a new stove and dishwasher, and also a washer and dryer, to come up on the barge. I was over at a friend's house last night, and he mentioned that when he went to get his pellets for his stove off the beach where the barge left them, there was a large crate with our name on it. We got pellets too, but that's nowhere near as exciting.

The old dishwasher was barely pretending to wash dishes, and the stove couldn't hold a temperature in the oven. Which is important, given the amount of baking that gets done by the teenagers around here. The dryer didn't shut off by itself, and the washer had that "I'm going to die soon" burning oil smell. We've been here two years now, in this house, so this is happy anniversary, house. Today was the dragging upstairs phase of things, and Miguel and I lay on the floor in the kitchen for a lot of the evening, trying to hook up the dishwasher but it's done now. Tomorrow will be washer/dryer day, after church. too much fun! And if they ever bring us water again (I begin to wonder) we will be able to try out the dishwasher...

zombie movies to add to the list

recently:

Sunday

things I did today:

got up at eight to finish printing the readings for church.
had coffee with Miguel.
led the service at church. (water from the rock)
went to Patti's for coffee with everyone from church. (and cinnamon buns, yum)
came home and had more coffee with Miguel.
repotted some plants cuttings that I've been rooting.
roasted all the peppers in the fridge - food mail sent too many and we'd never be able to eat them before they rot.
admired Rachel's assorted bruises that she acquired on the cadet camping trip.
watched Ian sleep on the couch as he was exhausted from the above-mentioned camping trip.
made roasted garlic and yam soup.
made black bean hummous.
made caribou shepherd's pie for dinner and lemon cake for dessert.
watched my family phone each other with their new cellular phones
called my mom. she
worked on the blanket I'm crocheting for a friend's baby (due Oct 12)
went to work and finished what I was working on yesterday.
came home and made tea. no more coffee, I've had enough.

so now I've got a fridge full of lunch fixings for this week, I'm all spiritualled up, tomorrow I can start something new at work, and I've got plants to give away to a new lady in town who is missing the greenery of her home.

we're going home

Turtle cheesecake

Two of my favourite things all rolled up into one. with whipped cream. yummmm. It followed a very nice meal downstairs in the restaurant. And now I'm pleasantly full.

The course is good, I'm learning lots of cool and useful things, and we even finished early today, so I was able to come back to my room and get some work done. I actually wish I'd brought more work, because I'm almost done the stuff I brought. I was feeling a bit guilty yesterday because I bought a Peter Robinson book I hadn't read at the Northern in the morning, then went hiking, and came back to the hotel room at about 3pm and spent the rest of the day reading. It's not often I get to sit down with a book and read it from cover to cover with no interruptions. (well, other than to get more Pringles and cheese...)

Tomorrow is the end of the course, and the exam. Then on Friday I head home. Via Yellowknife so I can buy some clothes.

Iqaluit

So on Sunday night we invited people over for dinner - I think the final total came to 20 - (well, most of them were kids - 6 adults besides Miguel and I and a whole bunch of kids).

At 5:30, half an hour before everyone was supposed to arrive, I was just finishing up the Alu Gobi I was making (cauliflower-and-potato curry for the grownups) and the phone rang. It was Canadian North, to say that the direct flight to Iqaluit that I was supposed to be taking at 6:45 Monday morning was cancelled. The guy I was talking to told me that I wouldn't make it to Iqaluit before Wednesday afternoon. Which was of no earthly use, given that the two-day course I was going for would be half over by then.

As I was stirring the Gobi and glumly wondering if walking might have been a better idea, Patti came in, and when I told her what Canadian had said, she suggested I call First Air and see if they could fly me out that night so that I could catch the Canadian flight from Yellowknife in the morning.

So Miguel kindly called for me, First Air kindly obliged, and then I gobbled some Gobi, packed willy-nilly and rushed off to the airport. By 11 PM I was sitting at the Super Eight in YK.

So although I did all the cooking, I effectively missed the dinner party (and the dishes, which Miguel was left with) but I hear it was fun.

And now I'm in Iqaluit. I will be there in the morning tomorrow for the start of the course, which is one I've been hoping to take for a long time.

I went hiking down by the river at lunchtime.

things this week

hoo boy. It was court.

1/ according to a very drunk lady, I am going to burn in hell. Miguel says he'll come visit.

2/ watched Untraceable. creepy.

3/ teenagers keep taking my car.

4/ my avocado is sprouting. it has leaves.

5/ dyed my hair. it's browner now. wanna see?

Dedication ceremony for a S/Cst. grave. It was raining. We all got wet.

don't lv msg

Do people really need to have that whole spiel on their answering machine - you've reached Jack and Jill and we're not available to take your call, please leave your name and number after the beep and we'll get back to you as soon as possible?

Aren't we all trained well enough now that we'd just leave a message after the beep? And aren't we adult enough to know that if we don't leave a number no-one will bother to go look it up and call us back? And isn't it understood that if the answering machine picks up, the householders are not interested in or capable of talking at that particular moment? And really, doesn't the phrase "get back to you as soon as possible" suggest, perhaps erroneously, that the owners of the answering machine will call you back while still wearing their coats and shoes, immediately upon returning and entering the house, so that you don't have to wait a moment more than necessary to get their recipe for sex-in-a-pan.

Shouldn't we maybe tell the truth?

"You've reached the number you dialed. Unless you're drunk-dialing or dyscalculic. We might possibly call you back if this isn't the nine hundredth time you've called this week to try and get us to take a survey about our eating habits. If this is my Mom, don't tell me how much you hate my answering machine. It's an inanimate object and it doesn't care. BEEP."

(I should probably add that my answering machine says something about tacos, thanks to the collective sense of humour of the four teenagers regularly playing with the phone. And yet people leave messages.)

things that make you want to call the police

This is a partial list...

1> I've downloaded a program off the internet and I can't find the icon for it.
2> My neighbour slammed his door and a picture fell off the wall in my house.
3> Some kids were throwing rocks at my house at 3AM. (this at 10:30AM)
4> "Everybody's fighting". I envisioned a brawl. When the guys got there, "everybody" turned out to be two very intoxicated females who were the only occupants of the house.

However. The Iqaluit CBC radio station called to ask my boss about 'shots fired' in town. Ok. So for all the above shit you call me, and for the shots fired you call the radio??? (for the record, it wasn't shots... fireworks)

Eclipse

Waking sweaty, ears ringing, in my blanket nest
Jumbled half light in the cabin
It’s 2am.

At the door, you ask our plans
Ultimately, death
I say, I think
Tell myself I’m still asleep

Smoky haze on the horizon
Behind the lake
Candy-pink edges the only proof
Of the sun, spinning before the eclipse

Despite my flippancy
The plan involves treading the spine of Ovayok
(His falling down and dying made a ribbed mountain)
Approaching, half the town
Perches already, or scales the steep sides

I leave you all sprawled
At the top of the first rise
Keep going

Wind, warm animal breath from the head
Damp and alive
Tugs my clothes, whistles in my coat

Passing those I know
(Hey, Kate)
And those I don’t
Smile anyway
It’s their mountain

As I approach, one woman turns from contemplation
Kate. What time does it start?
I look at my watch but I already know the answer. Now.
The answer confuses. The sun hides.

Past scattered inukshuks and teenagers
Eyes slide away
Don’t know where I’m going or why
I need to walk but the
wind keeps blowing against
me and some watchers are
higher still and
then the sun stops.

I turn around.
Suddenly everything is downhill fast
and the light is grey
and then I’m in Ovayok’s belly button
in the middle of the night
with a whole bunch of people
and it’s dark.

summer

The avocado pit that I've been trying to sprout has grown a root! And my second pineapple has green shoots in the middle! I love the 24 hour daylight for growing - all my plants go wild. I have been trying to order a small seed starter, like a tiny plastic greenhouse, but the company called today and told Rachel they can't ship it to me. Not sure why. I was looking forward to getting it. Oh well. I guess I'll have to keep using margarine containers and plastic wrap.

We didn't end up going to Starvation Cove. Miguel went fishing from work (they all went on Friday - company fishing day) and caught a 12 pound char, so he didn't really want to head out again on Saturday. So we invited a bunch of people for dinner on Sunday, made caribou stew and char and had a good meal.

Next weekend is the eclipse. I've been told that we're staying up Thursday night to see it, at 3am Friday morning, despite the fact that I have to work on Friday. Miguel doesn't have to, he's off to San Diego...

Chris and Clark are within 100km of their finish point.

Saturday

I'm getting things done. I went to work just after noon, and found there was no-one there, so I spent a couple of hours madly washing the floors and vacuuming before anyone came to muddy it up again. I also took all the blankets from the cellblock over to one of the unoccupied houses to wash (really unoccupied, not just house-where-owners-are-on-vacation). The new guy is moving in there on Tuesday and I wanted to make sure it was ready for him, too. I went to do this in one of the other houses before a new couple arrived, and the place had a dead fly problem. The floor was black and crunchy. After getting to know her, I think if that guy's wife had walked in and found it like that, she would probably have gotten in a cab and headed back to the airport...

I'm also working on a church service for tomorrow. It's my turn. Made banana bread, cleaned the kitchen, invited a bunch of people for supper tomorrow, tidied up the living room, took a stab at the bathroom, paid my taxes... (well, the huge ass penalty I got for filing late because we were waiting for a piece of paper from my RRSP.)

Also at the moment I'm caught up at work, I thought I was getting a bunch more stuff to do, transcribing-wise but the disk I was sent turned out to be blank. So until a new one with actual recordings comes, there's nothing pressing for me to do. It's a nice feeling.

all my links have disappeared... I think it's the cat's fault that is (Delia's right!) messin w my blogz

hopefully they'll reappear from wherever they went

the preceding post is what happens when

computer is left unattended while bagels toast.

The wind is blowing, today. Taking all the bugs away. On Saturday if it's nice we're planning a trip to Starvation Cove, where the fish are rumoured to be bitey. I just like the ride.

Rachel is back from camp. (as you may have noticed) Kirsten will be back next weekend. Ian called on the weekend and said he's going on maneuvers this week, in the bush. It sounds like a good camp, and he's talking about going again next year. Despite Rachel's misgivings, she enjoyed herself too, even the cadet-ish portions of the festivities, and is also thinking she will go again next year. The cadet program is awesome, for the opportunities, the friends made, and the general sense that they can withstand a lot more than they ever imagined. Rachel has a picture of herself mugging madly in front of a canvas shelter that she and her partner made in the bush, and she's come home knowing that even though she's still afraid of bears and bugs she can survive in the wilderness and come out laughing.

Work is a bit quieter this week, and I've been napping a lot in the evenings. We discovered that the non-functioning of the internet was due to an intersection of electronics and water, probably courtesy of the dying washing machine. This has been fixed, and Miguel has dug up an old laptop for me to use until Kirsten returns with my computer.

And it was all like woah! ...

Woah! and i like couldnt stop it! Chicken's run freely in the rain with purple umbrella while yellow smiling ducks eats their young. Cats get shoved in boxes and kids pushed them around. What has the world come to?

And i can't stop it! Why?

Cause it was all like Woah!

-Rachel


more cat pictures

otters of the twin variety

This week I had a couple of long days - I went on training to be a spotter for air search and rescues. It started with ground school, which was kind of boring. Somehow, and I'm not sure how this is possible, the material was interesting after a fashion, but it was being presented in a sort of junior high science movie format. At one point in the movie, a man with some gooey blood on his head is standing in a field, waving his arms excitedly, while an 'injured' man (you can tell he's injured because he's covered with a blanket)lies on his back, at goo-head man's feet. The airplane, apparently filled with poorly trained spotters, passes overhead and disappears. The concerned voice-over says, "Imagine the despair of these injured passengers, when the rescue plane they have been waiting for flies right over without seeing them." The man standing up assumes a posture of great despair, with his gooey head in his hands, and the injured man on the ground gives a feeble and heart-rending wave in the direction of the oblivious aircraft. That made me laugh. I mean, it's not really funny. Really.

The second day, which was much more interesting (but colder and more uncomfortable) was the flight training.

Nine of us went on a Twin Otter, and it was a bit chilly and cramped. Very nice little aircraft, though. You can really see a lot out the windows, which is good if you're meant to be looking for small things on the tundra.

Spotting is funny. We were told we had targets - an abandoned snowmobile, a tent frame, a couple of old cabins, and a disintegrating boat. So we performed our procedures, as directed, but it's hard. You are meant to be scanning in the same direction that you would read, I guess because that's a natural movement for your eyes. At first I was concentrating really hard and it was making my eyes hurt a lot. Eventually it began to feel more natural, but then I started getting distracted. As previously mentioned here, there are a lot of muskox around and they run away when planes go over. And, as a human being, my eyes are drawn to moving objects. So the mental soundtrack was: "scanning, scanning, don't look at the muskox, damn, I'm looking at the muskox. what did I miss?"

The man sitting in front of me spotted the cabins, I spotted the boat, but we never did see the snowmobile, despite frequent passes. At the end the pilot said, somewhat sheepishly, that there was a possibility that he had plotted the snowmobile wrong, and it never was where we were looking...

The flight training has to be two 1hr flights, so after an hour of looking for the damn snowmobile, we landed at Jayko Lake, on a short gravel runway, and got out to look around. And I wished I had my camera because it was very pretty. We ate our snacks and laughed at each other, and then we all got back in the plane to do the second half of the training.

So now, if there's an air search called, I might have to go and be a spotter. I'm told that the hard part of that is that they keep going until either they find what is being looked for or the search is called off, and the last one they did was 36 hours of spotting, napping, and peeing in plastic bags. But my bag is now packed, I'm certified, and ready to go.

Aha! the internet has relaxed its vigilance. I can access pages.

All the kids are now away. Kirsten is in Quebec (with my laptop, as previously mentioned), Ian's in Vernon BC doing a rifle coach course until the middle of August, and Rachel's at cadet camp in Whitehorse.

Kirsten has called lots, she's having a good time now that she's stopped being homesick. Rachel called last night and she doesn't sound homesick at all, she has a posse already, and they're all going horseback riding on the weekend. She was really quite apprehensive about going - she's a worrier and she felt that all the wasps in the Yukon would be having a convention to decide how to torment her while she was there, and that all the army guys would yell at her. She told me gleefully that the leaders had taught her and her cohorts how to make their beds, but that it was so complicated and so hot there that they figured they were just going to sleep on top of their covers rather than mess it up and have to remake. (To be fair, she did step in a wasp nest, during a camping trip when she was about four, and got stung very badly. And at home she never makes her bed.)

Ian hasn't called at all, but he's a boy.

Miguel and I went and stayed at the cabin for the whole weekend, and the sun shone (no romantic sunsets in the land of 24hr daylight). We went overland on Saturday to Long Lake, about an hour away from the cabin. The muskoxen have fuzzy little calves and I tried to take pictures but they don't like to be disturbed and I didn't want to get too close. One old shaggy muskox was standing on top of Mount Pelly, like a sentinel.

I know, I don't usually do this, but I want to see it so here are the lyrics to City and Colour's "Sleeping Sickness". Gordon Downie sings in the middle...

I awoke
Only to find my lungs empty
And through the night
So it seems I'm not breathing
And now my dreams are nothing like they were meant to be
And I'm breaking down, I think I'm breaking down

And I'm afraid
To sleep because of what haunts me
Such as living with the uncertainty
That I'll never find the words to say
Which would completely explain
Just how I'm breaking down

[Chorus]
Someone come and, someone come and save my life
Maybe I'll sleep when I am dead
But now it's like the night is taking sides
With all the worries that occupy the back of my mind
Could it be this misery will suffice?

[Gordon Downie]
I've become
A simple souvenir of someone's kill
Like the sea
I'm constantly changing from calm to ill
Madness fills my heart and soul as if the great divide could swallow me whole
oh, how I'm breaking down

[Chorus]

Things that are conspiring to make it hard for me to post here:

Kirsten has gone off to Quebec with my laptop.
Our internet has major issues, and some days I can't get any connection.
On the days I can get a connection it is sporadic and if I compose a post it gets lost when I try to put it up.
The sun is shining and we've been spending lots of time at the cabin.