Farewell to February

Today's been the coldest day of the year so far: -32°C, which comes to -49°C with windchill. I had to take my glove off to open the door of the school this afternoon as the latch was stuck, and my hand almost adhered itself to the door handle; door handles really shouldn't be made of metal up here.

Despite its deficiency in the days department, February felt like it would never end, and I shall not be mourning its passing this weekend. The weather has steadfastly refused to change, and whilst crisp, white tundra and bright blue skies make for great photo opportunities, the lack of variety does tend to make the days merge into each other after a while. We need a good blizzard to shake things up a little, and March is traditionally a month when the winds can pick up as the temperatures start to rise a little.

So, here's to the month of March: may it bring blizzards-a-plenty.

Obama's millions

What would you do with a million dollars?

What would you do if you had a million dollars to spend every day?

What would you do if you had a million dollars to spend each and every day for a whole year?

The mind starts to boggle, doesn't it?

Now imagine being able to spend a million dollars, every day of every year, from the birth of Christ right up to the present day.

If you did that, you'd have racked up a ludicrous amount of air miles, but you still wouldn't have spent as much as the U.S. government is spending on its financial bailout package.

Suddenly my credit card bill doesn't seem so bad.

I can't feel it in my fingers, I can't feel it in my toes

It was our school fishing trip on Friday, and I think I'm only just about regaining the feeling in my extremities. It was a mild day by Northern standards, but after a trip out of town of about an hour that began on the back of a skidoo and ended in a qamutik, it felt mighty, mighty cold once we were out on the land. I say land, but in reality the ice on which we were standing separated us not from terra firma but from the depths of the Hudson Bay, and what a lot of ice there was.

There were about thirty people in our group, but when you took time out to look around, you couldn't help but feel isolated and somehow apart from the rest of humanity, if only for a moment. I guess that is a large part of the attraction for those hardy souls that enjoy ice fishing, that idea of convening with nature and temporarily taking oneself out of the drudgery of everyday life, but before I start setting off pretentiousness alarms everywhere, let me just say that I am most certainly not one of those hardy souls.

I was cold. Bloody cold.

And I didn't think that standing still dangling a line into an icy hole would really do anything to change that fact. I did have a go for a few minutes and yes, I did try using my strips of plastic bag as bait, but to no avail. The only bite I, or anyone else for that matter, got all day was of the frost variety. As they say in Hollywood, not one fish was harmed during the making of this motion picture. Well, they don't actually say that exactly, but maybe they would if they made a film about ice fishing.

But I digest.

We had more success in dredging for mussels though, and even brought a few starfish and urchins to the surface as an added bonus. Needless to say, these were all consumed, raw, on site, and whilst I didn't partake on this occasion, I did supplement my lunch of (semi-frozen) egg sandwiches with a modest lump of caribou meat. Raw of course.

Whilst I was glad to have made the trip, I have to be honest and say that I don't think it's an experience I will be in a rush to repeat. Convening with nature is all well and good, but next time I'd prefer it if nature came to me, maybe for afternoon tea. We could have biscuits, discuss the state of the economy, maybe watch a movie even. And we could do it in the warm.

The demise of Angus

After bemoaning the fact that we needed a change to liven things up, I've been struck down by the Arctic equivalent of Delhi Belly - 'Tundra Tummy' maybe? - and am currently enjoying, or should that be enduring, an unscheduled day at home. To compound matters, I also received some sad news from the UK.

You may remember, a couple of posts ago, that I wrote about the terrible winter that the home country is enduring, and I posted a picture of Angus the snowman in my mum's back garden. Well, it would seem that winter has now released its icy grip, and it is my sad duty to inform you that Angus is no more:

May he rest in peace.

Canadian Idle

No, I haven't been stricken by tuberculosis; the lack of posts over the last few days is simply due to the fact that nothing's been happening here. It was Groundhog Day at the beginning of the month, and we seem to have been stuck in a rut ever since (but without Sonny & Cher on the radio every morning). The weather has been the same every day: clear blue skies, -25°C, no wind. We are in desperate need of a blizzard to shake things up.

The end of this week promises a little more interest however. Barack Obama visits Ottawa on Thursday, and on Friday we have a school fishing trip which, whilst not my normal cup of tea (my normal cup of tea would freeze out on the tundra anyway), should provide a change from the norm. Strips of plastic shopping bag make for good bait apparently (don't ask me why), and I shall be testing out that theory; watch this space for the full report.

In the meantime, I shall have to satisfy myself by watching American Idol which, so far, promises to be the poorest season ever. Tonight's show has been like watching a two hour car crash; even Paula has been critical! The commercial for the upcoming Wolverine movie was good though. Dan, if you're reading, it opens on May 1st and I should be back around May 10th - get the tickets in!

TB or not TB

We had a pedagogical day today - which is second only to a snow day in these parts - a pedagogical day (or ped day) providing an opportunity for paperwork, staff meetings and games of solitaire on the computer rather than actually teaching.

The day ended with our staff meeting, the agenda for which was as lengthy and mundane as usual, apart from the very final item. There, at item 16, beneath such important issues as 'first aid course', 'fire drill' and 'new sewing classes' was the word 'tuberculosis'.

Cue alarm bells.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this warrant being just a little higher on the agenda? At least above sewing classes? When we finally got to point 16 we were told that there have been a number of cases of TB in town recently, but that we weren't to worry as you had to be in the same room as a sufferer for lengthy periods to contract the disease, and even then they'd have to cough all over you.

So that's all right then.

Good job we're having the first aid course.

Now is the winter of our discontent

As I mentioned in the last post and in this one back in January, the folks back in the UK are currently enduring their worst winter for many a year. Melanie has just had her third snow day in quick succession and my friend Barry's school was closed for four days last week; to put the severity of the motherland's plight into context, up here in the sub-Arctic we've only had one half day off due to the weather all school year.

Now, for the benefit of those of you living outside of the British Isles, I thought I'd post a couple of pictures, courtesy of Melanie and my mum, to show you the type of conditions that have brought a nation of sixty million to its knees:

Just keep going, Britain. Stay strong, and very soon there will be light at the end of the tunnel. Our thoughts are with you.

Snow, sickness and slush

Sometimes you get days or weeks when everything seems to be upside down (unless you live in Australia, where this is permanently the case), and this week has been one such occasion. For me, it began with my stomach being turned upside down - there's been 'a lot of it about' up here recently - the result of which was Monday and Tuesday passing in a hazy mixture of daytime TV and frequent visits to the bathroom; many would say that there is a provable link between daytime TV and frequent visits to the bathroom without the need of a virulent stomach virus, but in my case I can assure you that Regis and Kelly and The Young and the Restless were not culpable.

Aside from my stomach, the weather has also been somewhat upside down this past week. The UK has ground to a halt as a result of the worst winter storms in many a year, whilst up here we have had a slushy machine installed in the Northern store, and now have the incongruous sight of the local kids sipping on said beverages in temperatures that have been hovering around the -25° mark. Takes all sorts, I suppose. 

As the week comes to an end my stomach, whilst not fully back on an even keel, is getting a little better - rather than being upside down it's now merely at a jaunty angle - so I should be able to enjoy my weekend, and I might even treat myself to a slushy...or perhaps not!

Superblow Sunday

No, that's not a typing error...

It was Superbowl Sunday yesterday, the day on which the moniker 'world champions' is handed out to an American team for triumphing over another American team after a season long struggle to defeat a whole bunch of other American teams.

Now, whilst I must admit that the game itself was actually quite exciting, the two undoubted highlights most certainly did not involve the players or the play. The first came at halftime, when Bruce Springsteen took centre stage for 12 glorious minutes - oh that the game had been the halftime show to three hours of The Boss - and the second came in the fourth and final quarter, just after Larry Fitzgerald had scored for the Arizona Cardinals.

Cable viewers in Tucson, Arizona, were suddenly treated to 30 seconds of unannounced (and presumably unplanned) hardcore porn, showing a woman unzipping a man's trousers followed by a graphic act between the two. Whilst most viewers would have been outraged and some may have been pleasantly surprised, at least one person was simply bemused:

"I just figured it was another commercial until I looked up," viewer Cora King told the Arizona Daily Star.

"Then he did his little dance with everything hanging out."

Told you I didn't need to check my typing.