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

On the Road Again,

Hello Everyone,
This evening Melissa and I came to a difficult decision. In order to ensure the welfare and well being of our son, recent events have caused us to decide to leave Kangiqsujuaq. We will be leaving ASAP (within a few weeks) for another Northern Quebec community called Puvirnituq on the coast of Hudson Bay. Unfortunately things do not always work out as planned, but we must ensure we do what is best for our family.
Take Care.
CG

Back to the Land

Hello Everyone,
Went back ou today and also Melissa went for her first solo. I went out at low tide which lead to some of the green ice (that looks like water) in the photo's. There's also a cliff I saw yesterday I wanted a better look at so I went back this morning.
Take Care
CG

Another Week has come

Hello Everyone,
We it seemed that not allot had happened this week, so tonight I borrowed a ski-doo and we all went out on the land for a couple of hours, and man was it cold. -30 times 60 miles a hour on a ski-doo times 40 miles a hour winds = lots of winter wear. One amazing thing was if you drove too long the engine would get too cold, you had to stop with the sled out of the wind and let it rev up for a couple of minutes to warm it back up. No matter how close you look at these photo's I don't think you see any exposed skin (Ok, I just checked, you can see Melissa's nose). The item you see Christopher playing with out on the bay, was a bag he found frozen into the ice and tied closed with rope, We inquired no further than that, I'm almost positive that I really, really don't want to know what was in there.
The dog teams headed out of town on Friday after their 5 day layover, I guess their racing times don't include time spent in town as the race is two weeks old and the leaders time is 22 hours when he left town. There is a photo of the teams getting ready to leave Friday morning, I don't actually have any photo's of the race beginning, to be frank, I just got sick of going out there every day waiting for the race to start, then hearing they decided it was too windy or too cold to race.
The other photo is yet another photo of George and someone else having fun out on the bay.
Take Care
CG