Sunday Musings

Hello Everyone,
Ever have one of those days when every one's against you? That's been our last two weeks, About a month ago we lost the transmission in the truck. That seems unfortunate enough right? Well, we took it to the town garage to have the transmission taken out as Ford wanted us to return it to them, at which point they would send us a new one. So we scrambled around looking for a rental truck so we continue to work cargo. We found one for a hundred dollars a day. Now t just seemed like a matter of a few days and we'd be back on the road. Long story short, three and a half weeks later the garage finally removed the transmission and we boxed it up and took it to the airport. I was told it would be shipped out on Monday, Yesterday I learned it had been moved but was still sitting at the airport a week after it was supposed to have been shipped and I had been told it had been shipped. Two weeks ago the pipes under our house froze and cut off our use of the washing machine and kitchen sink. I called someone to come in and work on the problem, then I called a friend to call this individual and tell him in Inuktitut what happened so there was no misunderstanding. this person said they'd be right over. That was two weeks ago and he still hasn't shown up, so for the last two weeks we've had to do dishes and laundry in the bathtub. Last night something happened to the hot water tap in the bathroom and now I can't get it to stop flowing (I have tried to reset the seals and checked the valves), so now I have to cut the water flow at the main to stop us from running out of water from the flowing water. Melissa is currently laying on the couch with a migraine and a condition called shingles. We had a district tour this week, or as I am reminded a seagull tour (they fly in, they crap on you, they fly out), that went poorly, No one seems to think that, I am now replacing four experienced full time people alone, standards will fall, I can only do so much. also for the tour I hadn't had freight in ten days so guess what, the shelved will be empty. Frankly I think you could say, I'm sick of the north right now, I' m sick of everything right now. I have a 2 second fuse left, which makes it hard to handle Christopher with Mommy sick on the couch.
Hopefully that is the end of my complaining. But it has brought a strange northern shopping habit to mind that I haven't discussed. This particular Inuit habit of shopping has been frustrating to me since I first came to the north and its been the same everywhere. You see when shopping the local people put their items on the conveyor belt at the cash register, then go and get more items. It doesn't matter if they have a basket or a cart, they will empty it onto the belt and then disappear into the store again. So as a cashier you will have 3 or 4 piles of items sitting on the belt at any given time, and someone will come up and impatiently say they want to pay, so you figure out what pile is there's and start ringing them through. Then they look at the total figure out how much money they have left and disappear into the store again to spend the rest of their money. Then they spend too much and they start disappearing into the store again to change items in order to come up with that magic number, which is the amount of money they have in their pocket. Then finally they will invariably ask you to go to the warehouse and see if you have the last item your looking for. Somehow for the last couple of years this little idiosyncrasy has always been bumped from the blog for other items, but with the level of frustration I am currently experiencing somehow today it seemed important.
Take Care
CG