Happy Build a Winter Shelter and Sleep in It and Not Die Day

One time in Arizona, I slept outside my house for the entire month of January. For some reason, this made me feel equipped to spend one very winter night outside in Quebec. I stayed alive long enough to make this video, so apparently it didn't go too poorly, but you can watch and see for yourelf =D

For the honor and glory.

No really, what does a fox say?

We certainly had an exciting week here at Miortuk (Inuit for “howling dog” Kennels. The excitement can be broken up concisely into three particular areas:

1)   Dog Excitement

We are currently training with a Ski-doo, this amazing machine that I had never heard of before I came to a place where it snows. Skidoo is kind of like Kleenex, where the brand name for a benign object actually has entered the vernacular as the proper noun for the object. Here, an SAT style question to see if you can guess what a Skidoo is:

 Keenex :: tissue ; Skidoo ::_____?______

            Ding ding, for you entry into college, the answer is: snow mobile.

Dogs pulling a snow mobile is more fun than dogs pulling a VTT (Quebecois for English: ATV and French: quad) because the runners really glide on the snow and make you feel like you are floating and basically falling all the time even when you are perfectly secure. The falling sensation might also come from the fact that I usually stand up on the back while Stan drives so that I can see around his parka, so I actually might be falling. So far so good though, but apparently Skidoos are pretty tippy, so we will see what happens in the future. Exciting factoid with the dogs though: despite the fact that I come from a desert, Stan thought it would be best if I learned how to drive a Skidoo for the first time with 12 dogs running out in front of it…12 dogs added to any “first” naturally make it better…or at least some firsts….ok maybe just this one because the more I think about it, there are plenty of “first” experiences that would be really strange with 12 sled dogs mixed in…

àADENDEM: Apparently due to the fact that I wrote that I HADN’T been in a flip over yet this morning, meant that when I went outside this morning, I would inevitably be in a Skidoo flip. It wasn’t that bad I guess and my foot only got a little squished under the snow mobile, not broken.   

2)   Weather Excitement

By weather excitement, I mean weather cold. ß So cold that I have reverted to caveman speech because the rest of my brain is putting tremendous effort into things like warmth. On the coldest day since I have been here, when the temperature stayed lower than -30C until around noon (That is Fahrenheit for just too freaking cold), Cecile and I decided it would be a good day to start building winter shelters. Stan didn’t make one because he already has one: his cabin. But the two of us unseasoned winter survivalists want to try our hands (which might wind up missing a few fingers as a result of frostbite) at sleeping outside in the snow, so huts had to be built. Mine is built on the bank of our lake and is a cross between a fox den and a Hobbit hole. In fact, it is sort of in the same spot as a fox den, so I don’t know what a fox says, but it sounds a lot like “Get the F out of my house.”

The huts are complete, but we are waiting for a night that is a little warmer than -36C before we sleep in them because we are dumb, but not that dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq2AmxH0eJA

3)   Trying to get a package excitement

On December 11^th this week, we were able to celebrate the one month birthday of the package that my mom sent a month ago for my birthday. I have never had to try so hard to have a package delivered to me. Here are some excerpts of conversations I had with UPS people

Automated Recording: Please say your tracking number.

Me: Oh great.

Automated Recoding: I am sorry. We didn’t get that. Please repeat your tracking number.

Me: 1Z99E8F36830286198

Automated Recording: Did you say” 168fmf0t730f?

Me: No, not even close.

Automated Recording: Sorry about that. Please say your shipping number again.

Me: 1Z99E8F36830286198

Automated Recording: Did you say: 1Z99E8F975—

Me: AGENT! Let me speak to an AGENT!

Automated Recording: Please hold while we connect you with an agent.

Sadly, the situation never really got any better even with a real human:

Agent 1: I am showing here that we don’t deliver to your area.

Me: Correct. I live in a remote area, 36 kilometers up a dirt road from the nearest village, so the truck driver should deliver to the pharmacy in the village.

Agent 1: No, he will deliver to the UPS center in the area.

Me: No, you see, the village doesn’t have one. All UPS packages that are delivered to the pharmacy and picked up from there.

Agent 1: Ma’am, we would not deliver to a pharmacy. We would only deliver to the nearest UPS facility.

Me: (bang bang bang goes my head on the wall) Ok, fine. That is in Blainsville correct? Two hours away? Where it is a useful to me as if it was still in Arizona.

Agent 1: Yes, that is correct.

Me: Ok, thanks for your help.

Five minutes later:

Agent 1: Oh, actually there is a note here from the sender that was just received a few moments ago to deliver the package to the pharmacy in St. Michel des Saints. Everything should be taken care of then.

Me: Excellent!

            Agent 1: Your package will be there on Monday.

            Me: …oh, actually…the pharmacy is closed on Monday.

            Agent 1: Well, the truck will be there on Monday.

Me: If your driver drives two hours from Blainsville on Monday, he will find that the pharmacy is closed and then he will drive two hours back with my package still in his truck. Can I give you a different address?

            Agent 1: No, only the sender can do that.

Me: The sender is my mother. She just wants the thing to arrive. She wouldn’t have known that the pharmacy is closed on Mondays.

Agent 1: No. She will have to call back.

           

A few days later:

Me: Hi, I see here on the tracking information that my package has already been in Canada for over three weeks, but now there is a government agency hold on it. Do you think you could elaborate on this for me?

Agent 2: Yes, of course ma’am: a “government agency hold” means that a government agency is currently holding your package.

Me: …

Agent 2: Ma’am?

Finally, FINALLY! I got a message saying that the package had been delivered to our friends Laurent and Valerie two villages over (my mom did have to call back with the address provided from Stan’s phone book). So I knock on the front door.

Me: Bonjour Valerie, I got a message saying that my package arrived.

Valerie: ….we didn’t get a package.

Me: …

Turns out, Stan’s old phone book was too old. After more calls to UPS, this time in French, we discovered that the package had indeed been delivered to Lauren and Valerie’s house….their old house.

So we hop in the truck and drive there, where holy freaking crap, the package is actually on the front step. Everything was still in it, even the dehydrated fruit and the unpackaged protein powder in ziplock bags that looked like crack.

Happy Birthday Package.  

For the honor and glory. 

Saturday Night Lights

I am feeling like delving deep into my emotions cavity today, so pardon me if you only tune into the blog to listen to me be a snark face. I have just observed a trend that I find worthy of sharing. The snark will be back next week I am sure, or maybe even by the time I get to the end of this post because we all know I have a hard time with serious emotions and snark suppression.

Anyway.

Most people up here in the bush have stories of their pre-mushing/handling lives that go like this:

I was sick of my job

I was sick of society.

So I sold everything I owned and I came here.

Literally, over and over and over I have heard this story. It seems that everyone and their mother was at “their wit’s end” before they arrived HERE.

Here where I look out one window and see a beautiful frozen lake (water freezes in forms bigger than ice cubes???), out another at a pine forest that smells better than any little car scent tree you will ever buy, and still another window (ok we have a lot of windows here) at 28 dogs, serious athletes, but all ready to give you a big slobbery hug (possibly even accompanied by a garlic breath burp if you are really lucky….).

Here where on a Saturday night, you can find Stan, Cecile (yay, new handler from France) and I all sitting on our couch with no TV, no computers, no lights, watching the Northern Lights flicker over the mountains.

Here where your work is your exercise and your time is rarely wasted with the “keeping up appearances” aspect of city life. No really, here I don’t change my clothes. Sometimes I even take such short showers that I have to get back in because I forgot to rinse off all the soap.

Here where free time is spent studying four languages and BSing in another.

Here where, despite my previous difficulties maintaining an active prayer life despite a true desire to do so, I have no problems praying everyday because I realize that I am blessed to have what I have, here and at home.

Wit’s end has led people here, and from here I am not sure where God will lead me next but one thing is for certain:

 Here is my wit’s beginning.

Where is yours?

And does it have puppies playing in snow, because really this feature would add to anybody's here!

Sometimes here it snows in feet. When this happens I always feel like Pippin in the Inn of the Prancing Pony when he realizes that the beer is served in pints. "It comes in feet???" (If you don't understand this reference, why? What have you been doing with your life if not watching the all three  movies of the Lord of the Rings in their extended edition? It only takes about 11 hours...)

Here we also have to crawl on our roof to knock the snow off our satellite. This rather precarious activity is always a great time to  focus less on maintaining your footing and more on taking a bird's eye view of the kennel. 

For the honor and glory.