A Moment to Reflect (aka I'm Not Dead)

Well, its been a while since I (the "he") had anything to say here. No good excuses, I just haven't had anything new and exciting to talk about lately regarding our northern adventure.

Weddings and honeymoons and what-not will do that sometimes. But things have just been rolling along nicely, and isn't that a good thing?

I've been keeping some notes on items I wanted to discuss though and now's as good a time as ever.

First of all, people often ask us about the long-night thing. I want to put it to rest. In Baker Lake, I hardly notice it at all, and it doesn't impact my happiness one way or another. The example I like to use is this: When we lived in Toronto, in the middle of winter, we left for work in the morning, and it was dark. We left work at night to come home, and it was...dark. Personally I never left the office for lunch, so I didn't even see the sun then. So...how is that any different from here? And honestly, even on the weekends it doesn't seem much different. Yeah the sun takes a couple hours longer to rise but its not like its pitch-black at 9AM in the morning. There's still some light even though the sun hasn't technically "risen".

Honestly, the long-daylight thing is far more annoying. Sunglasses at 10PM is pretty cool, but trying to sleep without uber-blinds on your window is more annoying. Also, the folks around here must operate on 1-hour sleep schedules during the summer, with kids still out playing after midnight and vehicles tearing around all "night".

Next, people always ask about the cold: For me? Non-factor. We brought warm clothes, and we dress accordingly. I never feel more cold than I did living in Ontario. Well, except for one thing: 23 degrees Celsius in the house always seemed pretty cozy down south; for some reason it feels "just warm enough" up here.

For what its worth, Baker is kinda beautiful in winter. Just about every day over the last two weeks, I keep having "wow" moments on my way to and from work. For one thing, its bright, so I'm always wearing sunglasses out these days. But the blue skies, bright sun glaring off snow and ice to the horizon in every direction...very acceptable.

Having seen both, I'd take deep winter over deep summer any day. So those of you considering joining us up here (anyone?) but worried about the winters, don't be!

Slightly off topic: we Honeymooned in Jamaica at the end of February. It was...ok. Maybe I'm just not a great vacationer or maybe I really did just take too much sun to the head, but I spent most of the time wanting to go home to Baker. (Somewhere my sister is jabbing needles into a doll that looks like me. She definitely would have made the most of the trip.)

Important news of the month: Best day ever last Friday! Check this out...Krista got a new (temporary) gig, which was wonderful. Then I won $50 at bingo (barely, it was a tough game requiring a lot of thought and strategy) which was even better. (Yep, better). Best of all? We managed to get a Euchre game going at a party that night! I don't think I accidentally reneged at all but I did give "her" a double-facepalm moment when I ordered up a suit when we had a total of two trump between us. (oh, euchred, and how). Somehow we're still together after that, what a forgiving girl.

Ray of Sunshine

I have a confession to make. I love the new Tropicana commercial where they bring sunshine to Inuvik. It’s a great depiction of the North. It makes me all teary-eyed.

We’re lucky enough that we never had 24 hours without sun. We got down to about 4 hours of true daylight in December, and have been amazed since coming back from the wedding and honeymoon how much daylight we have now. (It’s 7pm and I still don’t have lights on….)

The commercial raised some deep and interesting questions for me though.

Where on earth is Inuvik that it has 24 hour darkness? Ok, well Inuvik is in the Northwest Territories. Technically, it’s in the northwest corner of the Northwest Territories. It is two degrees above the Arctic Circle.

I had to Google ‘Inuvik’ to find all that out, and probably wouldn’t have bothered at all, if it wasn’t for the presence of trees in the commercial. What I *really* wanted to know was: Where on earth is Inuvik that they have 24 hour darkness AND trees?!?!

On our way to Baker Lake we say goodbye to trees at Churchill. And we feel sorry for those trees, because they are lonely, stunted, sparse things. In Baker, we’re south of the Arctic Circle and we don’t have 24 hour darkness, so how come we don’t have trees?

(Please note: This is where the cynical thinking of my new husband must’ve rubbed off on me and I set out to prove that they doctored the commercial to make the town of Inuvik more picturesque to sell more OJ.)

So I Googled ‘arctic circle tree line’. Who knew that the tree line isn’t a straight line drawn at approximately 55 degrees? Not even close. The tree line is all topsy-turvy. Several areas in the NWT, Yukon, and Alaska enjoy the presence of trees, even though they are north of the Arctic Circle, probably due to some meteorological phenomenon that’d take a degree to understand.

So Inuvik is north of the Arctic Circle. They have trees. They also have 24 hour darkness. AND they have the kind people from Tropicana bringing them OJ, which, if you’ve lived in the north, is worth its weight in gold –en sunshine.

End of Craziness

And back to routine.

Our trip down south was very busy and ultimately successful. We had the wedding we dreamt of. It was beyond perfection and we wouldn’t have changed a thing. Even the weather cooperated; we had unseasonably warm temperatures for our outdoor wedding.

We spent a week relaxing poolside and oceanside in Jamaica. It was exactly what the doctor ordered considering the changes in our lives over the last six months. The doctor didn’t order the nasty cold that ‘he’ picked up though!

We planned our trip home to include an overnight in Winnipeg, since catching a flight to make the connection onto First Air is a bit difficult. It’s even harder when travelling with the dog.

‘He’s’ been back to work for a week now, while I’ve been laid off by the company I was working for. I’m planning on hitting some of the other offices around town to see if I can pick up something else. It gets a bit boring and lonely being a housewife in Baker Lake.

It’s definitely been nice to be back home and get back into a normal routine. We’ve been marvelling at the changes up here in Baker.

First, we’re up to a crazy amount of daylight! We now wake up to sunshine and ‘he’ comes home from work in sunshine. And we’ve had so much sun! The weather’s been unbelievable, fairly warm (around the -10 degree mark). There was one day where it was pretty windy, making the temperature around -30, but we haven’t seen much new snow at all.

We managed to get together with a group last weekend to play poker. We hosted it at our place (a first) and it was success. We have a busy weekend planned – ‘he’s’ boss has said it’s a requirement that he attends his party on Friday, and we have another game of poker on Saturday.

I found it harder to leave this time, since there is no real timeline for our next visit, but we are happy to be back in our own place.

Blizzard Day

Today is our first official blizzard day. (The blizzard that kept us in Winnipeg after Christmas doesn't count, because we didn't experience it!)

Both of us are home for the day, listening to the wind roar and blow the snow around, while the sun shines happily.

I'm not spending much time outdoors... the snow is drifting up on the porch, and by the time I get shovelled out, Squire is done peeing!

Yesterday there was a lull in the storm, so they started clearing the snow away. With a loader and dump truck....

And the wind roars

I should've know while enjoying the abnormally warm temperatures this week, that there would be a price to pay.

Yesterday we had a lovely snow fall. Actual snowflakes - not just dried out snow granules.

Last night the wind kicked up from the North, and started blowing that snow all around. It's windy enough that here in town, there's no hiding from it. When taking Squire out to pee, there was no way to keep the wind from blowing cold snow in my face. We can hear it roaring out there over the tv!

I snapped a quick picture when the sun came out. It actually looks picturesque... oh, did I mention the -40 windchill?

A month and counting!

A month to what you may ask?

Our wedding is officially a month from today. I've been pretty preoccupied lately with all things wedding, bridal, and honeymoon related. It doesn't seem to matter how well I prepared over the last few months, there's still going to be a major push at the end.

We leave to go back home in 20 days.

I'm hoping that the four day delay in Winnipeg on the way back up after Christmas satisfies the weather gods and we get to all the places we're going without delay or incident!

Foodmail

I mentioned in the last post that we had to do a foodmail order once we got back to Baker. The fridge and freezer were pretty bare; we had no fresh produce, were pretty low on meat options, and were down to making homemade bread in the bread maker.

We try our best to do a foodmail to last a good 4-6 weeks, and are starting to get it down to a fine art. We scan the local flyer (available online) for weekly specials, and there is an online form to fill out of all the options available. We generally keep a note on the fridge to mark stuff down when we run out.

This week, the order came to $461. Which, when we figure we spent about $100/week on groceries down south, doesn't seem like too much. (Keep in mind that our barge order to fill our pantry was about $2000.) Included in the $461 is a $5 delivery fee to take our food to the airport for transport on the plane, a $20 or 10% fee for having the store "shop" the order for us, and air freight of about $100. Interestingly enough, foodmail has priority over just about anything else that goes on a plane; passengers' luggage can and has been bumped for foodmail, and foodmail was part of the delay in getting our personal items up here from Ottawa.

Included in our order this week was (from memory) two roasts, four packages of stewing beef, four packages of ground beef, two whole chickens, two packages of pork chops, hot dogs and buns, two packages of bacon, three packages of breakfast sausages, hashbrowns and hasbrown patties, four 4L jugs of milk, four dozen eggs, four loaves of bread, four frozen pizzas, a lasagna, a 10lb bag of potatos, cheddar and mozzarella cheese, romaine lettuce and ceasar salad dressing, apples, pears, two bunches of bananas, green peppers, celery, cereal, cans of soup, cans of beans, brown sugar, ground mustard, steak spice, and rye and whole wheat flour.

So many items to go in the freezer, I have to cook a roast tonight that wouldn't fit, and I'm hoping the hot dog buns won't go stale too fast!

Foodmail is our preferred option of grocery shopping - prices for fresh produce can be outrageous at the Northern - but it's not without it's problems. For one, only 'nutritious' food is deemed foodmailable (stuff like cleaning products, baby items, pharmaceutical stuff is also allowed to be sent as foodmail.) Pop, chips, breaded chicken, cookies, and cakes are all not foodmailable and instead of paying a discounted freight of about $1/lb, you'd pay the basic freight at about $4/lb. And there seems to be some loopholes.... for example, CoolWhip= not foodmail, DreamWhip = foodmail... frozen pie crusts = not foodmail, Pilsbury refrigerated pie crusts = foodmail. It's kinda silly that all the items to make chocolate chip cookies are permitted as foodmail, but actual chocolate chip cookies are not. Oh well, fresh baked is always better anyway!

Also, if the plane gets delayed because of weather conditions... they store your food at the temperature per the labels on the boxes when possible. So you do have a chance of all your meat thawing and having to cook it or risk it spoiling. Also, fresh produce can freeze on the way up, making it into a sloppy mess. Neither has happened to us *yet*, but someone at Safeway mislabeled a box on our last order and our frozen pizzas and hashbrowns were sent as 'Dry Goods' instead of 'Frozen Goods'. However, it's winter up here, and although they were quasi thawed, it wasn't a disaster.

And, I think we've all probably gone to the grocery store and forgot to get something, even if it was on the list, but I'm paying for the privilege of having someone shop for me, so things shouldn't be missed. This week, garbage bags, salami, provolone cheese, and chicken thighs were missed. I *really* needed those garbage bags! Also, sometimes you get some bizarre choices of brands. A colleague has sworn off a particular store because they sent her 'Weight Control' Oatmeal for no apparent reason.

We still go down to the Northern for 'party' items like chips when needed, and occasionally pick up the makings for a meal when a craving hits, but by and large we wait for the next foodmail order.

I've read some criticisms online that the government should not be subsidizing the freight on foodmail orders to Northern and other isolated communities. One person even went so far as saying 'they chose to live there, they can deal with the consequences". To them I say, fine, invest the money in building and maintaining an all season road to each community, so that we can get regular transport rates on our food (any EVERY other sell-able good that we do pay regular freight on) and we'll see how the dollar signs add up then.

Foodmail really is a lifeline for us to the south. It allows us to feel like we're still 'home' and to get some of the food and brands we're used to and at decent prices. Without it, we really would be at the mercy of the stores up here who would be able to charge whatever they wanted.