Weekend musings

Well, the snow from earlier in the week has all but gone now thanks to a couple of rainy days, but at least I have had a taste of what the landscape will look like here once winter is here to stay. What qualifies as our 'autumn' is still exceedingly cold though; it's a balmy 6° today, but in the week ahead it's forecast to stay around the 1° or 2° mark.

My much talked about expedition into the foothills will have to wait for another day as I woke up with a bad back this morning - better than waking up with a horse's head I guess - and I've spent most of the morning hobbling around the house bent almost double, although this has enabled me to get a close up view of all the spots on the floor that I missed when I went on my cleaning blitz last weekend.

Housebound as I am I've had a go at baking my own version of Tim Hortons' raisin tea biscuits (scones to those of you in the UK), and I must say that they've actually come out pretty well. Combine these with the Timbits that I still have in the freezer and my jar of Tim Hortons ground coffee and I have quite a home away from home going on up here; all I need are the cops sitting at the next table and it'll be just like being there.

Always fresh...

Christmas in September

It felt like Christmas today.

Firstly, the container ship that was carrying our cargo of school supplies finally arrived, and now we have paper and binders for our classes. Earlier today my students actually used up the last piece of writing paper that we had in the classroom, so the ship's appearance couldn't have come at a better time; quite what we would have used to write on next week I hadn't figured out yet.

Then, having returned home at the end of the school day, I received a knock on the door from our centre director, Mark Tertiluk, who was kindly delivering four boxes of food that had just arrived at the airport for me! Melanie flew back to the UK yesterday for a very brief visit - she flies back to Canada on Monday - and on her way to Montreal she dropped off said boxes at Air Inuit HQ. Apparently they were originally going to take a couple of weeks to come up, but Melanie smiled at the right people and, lo and behold, here they are. Talk about service!

I now have just about the fullest larder that I've ever had in my time in the North - Melanie had even managed to slip in a box of Timbits for me, a rare pleasure in these parts - and after a week of illness, I suddenly feel much better!