first day of fall?

So on the calendar and lunar cycles, it may say that it's officially the first day of fall. Apparently it arrives at 5:18 EDT today.

However, the locals have been saying that September is fall here, to expect snow at any time during September, and that winter starts officially in October.

So, September 22, 2009, first day of fall, is our first day with any kind of accumulated snow.

I went out with Squire this morning, and thought 'wow, that's a pretty heavy frost'. As I'm standing there while she finds the perfect pee spot, I thought to my self 'hmmm, that frost is falling in an awful snowlike fashion....'

It's not a lot of snow, I don't even know whether you can tell in pictures (I'll try to post them at lunch break.) But teeny tiny flakes are still flitting past my window here at work.

First day of fall up here feels an awful lot like the first day of winter.

fall colours, nite skies, and special deliveries

Random photoiness from the last few weeks here. We've been completely negligent in our posts. You'll have to forgive us, as you know internets were infrequent. But we now have a permanent connection, so *fingers crossed* posts should be more frequent.




There are lots of really interesting local plants. This little plant goes up the side of Mount Baker Lake, and the whole sections of the side of the hill are red right now with colour. Although we won't see the leaves changing colour, there are definite changes in the foliage up here too.




Oftentimes, the moon is really pretty up here. OH! And we saw northern lights the other night for the first time. I took a picture of that too, but um, well, it's just a black sky in the photograph. I'll have to play with settings to see if we can't get some good shots.



So it wasn't quite Santa Claus (although there were times we thought about enlisting his help... how busy could he and the team be? It is only September...) but it was still kinda like Christmas morning when we finally got our stuff. About 50 boxes came the first day, and another 40 or so the next. Glad to say that everything made it up ok ('he''s computer fan is slightly damaged but still functional), and we're really enjoying having the ammenities of home. Never thought I'd miss a slow cooker, our books, and my shoes so much.

Mount Baker Lake

Ok... so not really a mountain, but it's a pretty big hill with an awesome view overlooking the town and the lake.

It's always really picturesque up there, no matter the weather. There's a well kept trail that runs up the back side (the local kids climb up the face) that's great for jogging up. You can pretty much see the entire town from up there, including the airport and the hill behind it.

It's become a popular choice for weekend excursions (coffee in tow... not quite Tim Horton's, and it costs about twice as much as Timmies.) Even during the week, Squire and I will often head up there on a walk.

A bit of Baker Lake perspective... the big blue building on the right side of the photo is his office, on the north edge of town. Our house is on the road in the centerish of the photo. Oh, my office is on the exact opposite side of the mountain from our house/his office.....




An example of the difference in culture up here:

#1. Dogs as pets are super cool. So are you if you have one. Kids come running from miles around, and will follow you around town for hours, just to hang out with your dog. Without fail, the first question is "does it bite?" almost always followed by "what's the name?" Kids up here may not be too sure on child vs car etiquette, but they are certain of child vs strange dog etiquette.

#2. Strangers aren't scary. Kids have *no* fear of strangers. They are extremely friendly, and very willing to share their name, where they live, and all that other personal information that kids back south are taught never to share.

Anyway, these two local boys followed us up the hill, and then asked to play fetch with Squire.

photos galore

Stories are all well and good, but we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. So it’s time to share a bunch of photos from our first almost-month up here!




Me and Squire down by the lake on our first weekend here. It’s become a bit of a family tradition to go for a walk on the weekend, pick up coffees, and take Squire swimming. The bravest I’ve been is to dip my toes in, but Squire doesn’t seem to have any problems with the temperature.




Early one morning, this was our local welcoming committee. He kinda just sat there and let me do a whole photo shoot. According to our co-workers, we’ll have to have the camera handy when it’s the caribou’s turn to be the visitors.


The kitchen at our new place. I can’t wait to get all our handy utensils and appliances so I can really cook up a storm… although, even with meagre supplies we’ve managed cookies, and scalloped potatoes, and even a curry!


The living area is nice and big – and we get so much nice sunlight that it really warms up the place during the day. I can’t wait to make it feel so much more homey.



This is Squire’s favourite swimming spot, since it’s almost beachy. It’s pretty shallow and perfect for fetch with the ball. It’s tucked away behind the Northern (the local grocery store) so it’s perfect for picking up coffees.



Another beautiful day in Baker Lake. We try to make it a priority to enjoy the gorgeous weather while we have it. Rumour is that we can expect snow flurries as early as September.

xo
~ she

roadblocks

We’ve been up here for three weeks now, and must apologize as our internet connections are sketchy, borrowed (and sometimes stolen), and therefore blog posts are few and far between. We’ve been loaned a modem for the weekend, and I wanted to take the opportunity to fill everyone in.

We are finally getting settled in our ‘permanent’ home, as the house that was originally supposed to be home may be used for another purpose. We’re happy with the new place, as it is all over homier and suits our lifestyle better. Squire likes that there is carpet in the bedrooms – sleeping on laminate wasn’t her favourite. It also has a super dooper long soaker tub, which I’ll be enjoying on a regular basis.

It hasn’t been without its difficulties though, the way things are done up here are a bit foreign to us. For example, there has been an ongoing parade of repairmen through the house – first because we had no heat, and then no hot water, and (as I sit and write this) now we have no water at all. Water and sewage are held in tanks at ones’ house (water delivery and sewage pump out is via truck based on a schedule). Apparently an account wasn’t set up and we were cut off… it’s difficult to comprehend how much you depend on running water until you live without it for half a day. In any event, I have been assured that we are on the list for delivery today. Because we had our phone line connected prior to coming up here, it was set up at the home we thought we’d be going to. Streets aren’t officially named here, and there is no municipal number system like what exists in the south. I was on the phone for almost an hour with Northwestel to get the phone line moved two doors down. I kinda hope that we don’t ever have to move across the territory.

Prescriptions work vastly different up here as well. As the patient, you really don’t ever handle your prescription. It floats from health clinic to doctor, back to health clinic, to the pharmacy in Rankin Inlet… who’ll call you to get payment information prior to processing your meds. Then they’ll put it on a shipment (via plane) back to Baker Lake, where you pick it up from the kind people at the Health Centre. The whole process can take as long as a week, as the pharmacy in Rankin is closed over the weekend. As a side note, we’ve found the people at the clinic to be very helpful – from the first day when he was medi-vac’d, to his follow up appointments, to late-night “please make the pain stop” visits.

The last, and maybe most saddening, stumbling block is that our personal effects are still sitting at Canadian North’s terminal in Ottawa. In the three weeks our stuff has been in Ottawa, it hasn’t moved except to be bundled together for delivery. I’m on a first name basis with the people at Canadian North, since I call almost daily – we just keep getting bumped for more ‘important’ cargo. It’s extremely frustrating because we’re looking forward to different items of clothing, and being able to set up house. Oh, and of course, we sent a bunch of food items for us and the pets, and paying $25 for 4kg of cat litter (a small bag) gets pretty old pretty fast.

All that said, we are enjoying our time up here, and we are starting to get into a routine. There are a lot of positives (which we’ll go into shortly), but we needed to give some rant-time to the obstacles that needed overcoming!

~ she

Really quick...

Cuz I have about 10 minutes before I have to return our loaner internet connection...

The days since our last post have been nuts. Don't even know where to start.

Last night we got our first Food Mail delivery. Huzzah! Real food finally. We had steak and corn and potatoes and it felt like thanksgiving. To commemerate the event, we ate at a table rather than on a couch as per our lazy norm.

Our current debates are covering whether its cheaper to get our food via Food Mail our in bulk on our Sea Lift. Both are pricey but still cheaper than buying groceries at the local Northern grocery store. So we're polling our newfound friends who have done all this before.

Our cargo from Bowmanville still hasn't arrived. Its not "late" yet, but when we try to contact the shipping company they're not particularly helpful because we don't have a bill of lading. My company is trying to help straighten it out. Hopefully we'll know more soon, but being the paranoid person that I am I'm starting to come up with all kinds of ideas of what could possibly go wrong.

As some of you may already know, I've done some pretty detailed research on the medical facilities here. Specifically, on my first day of work I ended up getting med-evac'd to Winnipeg with chest pains. Diagnosis: pericarditis. Turns out my sister has had the same thing, so if you're not in the know, she can endorse my summary of pericarditis: it sucks. 'Nuff said.

Funny local story of the week: couple of days ago I was walking the dog up near a bluff where you get an amazing view of the lake and town. There were a bunch of kids nearby, and they came running up to check us out (the local kids ALWAYS run up to check you out here). But they said they didn't want to get to close because they had "blood" on them. I asked why they had blood on them.

As it turns out, they had found a ptarmagan (took me forever to find that in wikipedia, phonetically), killed it with a rock (ptarmagan's are notoriously placid...kids 1, Darwin 0), de-feathered it, dismantled it, and ate the thing's heart and liver raw. The one kid actually still had blood on his mouth.

Which just goes to show that the debate of FoodMail vs Sea List is really a silly discussion when the locals already know the cheapest sources of food.

Time to get back to the office, and I have no clue when we're going to get our permanent internet connection so it might be a while before next post.

he\

final ontario post

'he' actually found this comic and presented it to me to as evidence as to why it's a good thing he wasn't helping with more of the preparations.

He didn't need to do that. He was extremely helpful and reassuring and understanding and fun. A great shoulder to cry on. A fantastic rant listener-to-person. A wonderful resource of ideas and solutions.

While we couldn't do this move without the support of our family and friends (and our deepest heartfelt thanks again to each and every one of you), we couldn't even contemplate it without being stronger together than we are apart. We know each other's quirks and keep each other sane.

At the end of the day, as long as we (he, she, squire, knight and page) all get to Nunavut in one piece, together, with our health and wits about us, we'll be ok.

I'm not too sure when the next post will come, as we weren't able to arrange for internet service yet, but we'll post an update right away.

xo

~ she