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.
3)
Trying to get a package excitement
On December 11th 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.
Julia, I have a package from you completely ready to ship, but I am now terrified to. What should I do to avoid an utter post office disaster?
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