It's Getting Dark Here

Well, it's almost 11:30 am and no sign of the sun, though it should have risen an hour ago. It's just getting light out, in fact. And I see that the sun sets at a quarter to four. I guess the darkness of winter in the far north is upon us once again. That's okay, we're well prepared: we have our vitamin d, lots of games, musical instruments, books, two new magazine subscriptions, and head lamps. Oh, and guess what? It's snowing again. I just now noticed. That means warmer temperatures: it's only -25 out right now and it feels like a giant reprieve from the -45 weather we had last week. I'm not even putting a jacket or mitts on to take the dogs outside! I got an IM from Moe yesterday asking me what she needs to do to keep her fingers warm (it was -6 there yesterday), that her gloves were just not cutting it. MITTS! I told her. When I lived down there I thought mitts were for little kids-you know, the kind with the string that attached them and runs through your coat sleeves so you don't lose them. Well, I love my mitts with the string! Your hands would turn black and fall off up here if you didn't wear mitts. And if you didn't have the string you might get stuck somewhere with only one mitt and then you still lose a hand. Aaahhh, the joys of winter. I guess I'll have to buy her her first pair of adult sized mitts for Christmas. And if she moves up here I'll have to get her some mukluks, too. They rock. I haven't taken them off for days, except to sleep. Doesn't seem to matter if I'm inside or outside: 85 degrees or -45 degrees, makes no difference to my toes with my mukluks. Jeez-they should be paying me commission, huh?

Well, it would appear that I truly do not have anything of any substance to write here today so I'll just keep babbling on and you can always choose to navigate to another link

Our new dog, Honey, is doing very well. She loves me to death and is starting to figure out that Scott's pretty nice, too. She's so affectionate without being demanding. She'll just come sit next to you and wait to be pet. Everything still scares her though, especially Scott with his big boots and loud, crashing way of doing things. Everytime he puts the dishes away I think she's going to have a heart attack. But there is definate improvement. I don't know if she'll ever be able to socialize with strangers, but she obviously will never bite anyone or anything and she has lots of love for her pack (me, Scott, Milo, Khan, and Max-even our friend CJ's dogs seem to be included in that pack as they visit all the time). I see her tail wagging more and more. What a good choice we've made in her. I had to pull what appeared to be a big thorn out of her back this morning...it was really stuck in there and I had to reef on it...it must have hurt her-she bled a bit- but didn't react to what I was doing at all. In fact, she seemed almost grateful. The next test will be our trip to Whitehorse in December. That might prove overwhelming for her but we don't have much choice in the matter. At least she likes riding in the van-of course, Milo liked the van too until we made him spend a month travelling in it in the summer. Not he's not so thrilled about it.

Christmas is nearly upon us. We're going to try to not be so consumption-driven this year. We're making home made gifts as much as possible. We are trying to save money to buy a house. In fact, Scott got pre-approved for a mortgage yesterday. This is all very exciting indeed and hopefully next Christmas will be spent hibernating in our very own little cabin in the woods. So if you want to visit come soon so we have space to put you up:)

I guess that's enough of my boring life today. I just felt like I needed to post something-I have noticed that my favorite bloggers have not been posting much lately and I wanted to make them feel guilty:) My message to them (and you know who you are) is this: we are all cold and bored and at least need something to fill our time with. If I can share my boredom then you too can share yours.

My Mukluks Have Arrived

Scott also got me a pair of mukluks for my birthday though they arrived somewhat late. I love them! http://mukluks.com It's minus 40 today and my toes are warm!

And the Winner is....

Funny story:

Scott entered Dawson's Grey Cup Pool at the request of a friend, though we are totally disinterested in organized sports (another post for another day). Cost him ten bucks. That was a couple of weeks ago. Today he ran into that same friend at the hardware store and guess what? Scott won the prize for the third quarter! A hundred bucks! How cool is that. I wonder if this means we'll have to rethink our position on this subject. Hmmmm.....

Milo and Khan Sharing the Warmth of the Stove

A Year of Blogging

It's been nearly a year of blogging for us up here in Dawson. I know my posts have gotten less interesting and less exciting but we'll keep plugging away at it for now. We'll try to put more excitement in to our lives so we can share it, I promise.

I want to say thank you to our regular readership. We have regular visitors from both Edmonton and Calgary, Florida, Indiana, Vancouver, and more. I reset my stat counter late summer and since then we've had 300 hits. I'm feeling pretty happy with that given that this site was originally meant for our families and friends to keep track of us (and to try to entice them to visit) but has since made us a couple of new friends. I just switched to the newer blogger version and it allows me to limit the people who can see this blog and I seriously considered that but then I decided it would be selfish. There are others who dream of coming north. They need to know that others have done it and are happy. I think of B, from the Ukraine, who was a regular visitor to our blog last winter during the Yukon Quest, which she so loves (I'll try to post more pics this year).
We're having an exceptional experience up here so I think, for now, we'll continue to share it with the world.

Thanks all for being interested in what we're doing up here. I can tell you, we're having a great time!

Global Orgasm For Peace

I don't usually post sex-related subjects due to the sensitive readership of this blog:) but this was just too good to resist.

San Francisco-area couple calls for global orgasm for peace Dec. 22
Published: Sunday, November 19, 2006 10:17 PM ET
Canadian Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Two peace activists have planned a massive anti-war demonstration for the first day of winter.
But they don't want marching in the streets. They'd much rather protesters just stay home.
The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace.
"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday.
"Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state."
"And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."
The couple are no strangers to sex and social activism. Sheehan brought together nearly 50 women in 2002 who stripped naked and spelled out the word "Peace."
The stunt spawned a mini-movement called Baring Witness that led to similar unclothed demonstrations worldwide.
The couple have studied evolutionary psychology and believe war is mainly an outgrowth of men trying to impress potential mates, a case of "my missile is bigger than your missile," as Reffell put it.
By promoting what they hope to be a synchronized global orgasm, they hope to have people channel their sexual energy into something more positive.
The couple said interest appears strong, with 26,000 hits a day to their website, www.globalorgasm.org.
"The dream is to have everyone in the world (take part)," Reffell said.
"And if that means laying down your gun for a few minutes, then hey, all the better."
© The Canadian Press, 2006

TV

Not the best pic I've posted-sorry about the glare. But I had to take it from inside since it was like -35C out. Too cold for the camera I'm pretty sure. So we babysat last night for some teachers whose kids I've watched a couple times. The kids are angels and go to bed perfectly after the daughter sings me a Christmas song she's been practicing in her perfectly angelical voice and I read them an entire book (I was only supposed to read a chapter or two). After they were in bed we watched tv. Our plan was to play games but we never got there. Just watched tv.

Tv. What a horrible waste of time...yet, when it's on you can't drag yourself away. I've recently come to the conclusion, after taking a little psychology, and having spent long periods of my adulthood with no cable television (by choice), that we are being totally brainwashed. Not only by the constant reinforcement that we must be rich and beautiful to be happy but by keeping us so absorbed in our search for the right product to make our lives easier or the perfect life of -insert famous soap actress here-, that we fail to stand up for all things right. I just deleted like 4 or 5 long rambling, preaching paragraphs from here. Instead I'll get reinstate my point: just cancel your cable subscription or at least ask yourself if what you are watching is enriching your life and those of others, will ya? I think if most people did that here in North America we would live in a much more reality based world.

Early Christmas

So last night we did a smaller version of games night. In this pic you see Scott, Steve, Justine, and that's Blair with his back to us. It was like Christmas when our games arrived yesterday: you can see the Settlers of Catan with expansion and T2R:E on the table. What we're playing is Carcassonne with the following expansions: the tower, traders and builders, inns and cathedrals and the Count of Carcassonne. The only one left to add is the Princess and the Dragon. We didn't get to the other games as this one took us nearly 4 hours, surprisingly. And we got a late start do to a visit by CJ to pick up her dog (Deuce was playing here all day) and to Justine and Steve's late arrival. So Scott is a tired boy today. Oh well, good times.

Hope all is well for you people living in the rest of the world (we feel so very cut off here...but in a good way). I hear southern BC is getting hit pretty hard by the weather...can't say you weren't warned. It's only gonna get worse due to global warming. You wouldn't know it here right now though: it's minus 35 (that's Celcius) as we speak and I get to walk to town shortly. Lucky me. That's okay. I've got my parka and my yak trax and my long underwear and my two pairs of mittens and my neck gaiter and my scarf and my toque and my Carhartt -30 socks. I think I'm set. It's like an art...avoiding frostbite, that is. You have to make your gaiter and scarf cover nearly every inch of your face and even then you can't go fast for risk of the bite. You have to be sure that there's no exposed skin anywhere and you have to do that before you go out because you do not want to have to take your mittens off to adjust your clothes once you're outside. Another thing I learned this year. It's true what they say about touching metal in this cold. I took a piece of skin off my hand last week on a store's doorhandle and several times I've been slightly stuck to the clasp on the dog chain. Like I said before, good times. Later.

Here is my honey with the birthday present he made me. Isn't it gorgeous? He'll finish it tomorrow he says:) Oh, and that's Max strolling by.

Games! Games! Games!

Tonight we decided to spend my birthday money (yes, I know, I'm turning 31 and I still get birthday money from my Grandpa whom I haven't seen in years)on...you guessed it! Games! We ordered nearly every Carcassonne expansion we could find: 4 in fact, Settlers of Catan with the Knights and Castles expansion, and Ticket to Ride: Europe. I hope my fellow game-geek bloggers will approve. Thanks Phollower for your recommendations. You've turned us Magic Geeks into Euro-boardgame addicts too.

So things here are obviously mostly fun and games. Life is sweet. It's freakin' cold outside though. It got to -39 earlier today. Scott is currently finishing the plasticing of the windows: not just for trailer trash up here...no sir. I walked to school this afternoon; my cheeks were burning cold by the time I got there. It's too easy to get frostbite at these temps, you have to cover every inch of skin. Unless you've lived here for years, I guess. The longer you live here, the more impervious to the cold you become, it seems. People walking around with no scarf or no neck gaitor. Crazy. I was bundled until i could barely move, I assure you. Even the dogs want in after a few minutes.

Hope everyone else is good. I'm surprised nobody commented on our video. I thought it was an open invitation to make fun of us. Oh well. Bye!

Ever wonder what the world looks like when it's minus 34 out? Well, now you know. I guess winter's here.

Games Night

Last night rocked. We actually also have video with everyone who was there but it was less appropriate for public consumption. We played Curse of the Wolfen...fairly successfully. We had 13 people crammed around the awesome removable table top that Scott made for such occasions. Then we played some Cranium for a while but then Steve's dog puked and we moved on to other things. We spent the rest of the evening pounding away on all of the percussion instruments (except Rich, on the guitar). Can't wait to do it again.

Hope everybody had a wicked Halloween. We sure did. We only got two trick or treaters but I dressed up anyway, and made roasted pumpkin seeds, and ate shitloads of candy. Kim and Blair came over and played Carcassonne with the Tower expansion with us (our games arrived yesterday) but the other so called "expansion" according to the Titan Games guy turns out to be a stand-alone. So we'll be playing Carcassonne: The city tonight.