Sorry about the tease, Nannan!

Okay, that was pretty mean that I didn't check to see if the "celebrity matches" pictures would work before teasing you (Nannan and Frank) with the thought of who you had... I don't know why it didn't work... Oh well?!

Friday ended in nice fashion. My class has been working pretty hard the past few weeks o I thought it would be nice to end the week with a snowshoeing trip to the trees on the East side of town. Some of the students were a tad reluctant at first and asked, "can I just go home?" But in the end they all showed up and seemed to have a lot of fun. A few hadn't gone snowshoeing before but told me afterwards that they enjoyed myself, despite the falling snow, which started a couple minutes after they left on the bus.

So, the weekend was a nice one. If I had to pick one word to explain my activities it would be -relaxing... I hung out on Friday with April and Trev, but went home before they got tired and just as two others were showing up to hang out. I was just EXHAUSTED, and couldn't even force myself to stay awake. Saturday, I literally stayed in my pyjamas and dozed on the couch all day. I couldn't seem to wake up and since I had no real plans I took advantage of the freedom. I spent a bit of time watching a movie and reading my newest book, the third book of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series. I didn't want to feel like I wasted the WHOLE day, so at around 9:30 pm, I put in my contacts, threw on my snowpants and went for a walk around the block before going home and back to bed.

Sunday was hardly better. However I did managed to do a big overhaul of my house. I finished 3/4's of the dishes,(how embarrassing that I had to admit that I couldn't finish all of them!) folded and put away 4 loads of laundry, went through my closet- trying on all of the pants I own and making a LARGE stack of pants that I don't fit in and realistically will NEVER wear again. I got rid of half of the pants I own, and to be honest, I probably could have gotten rid of even more if I thought about how many pairs I even wear on a regular basis. I now have enough things collected to have a table at the next flea market, and I hope that if I sell everything off for 25 cents a piece, I could afford to buy my class pizza and juice! LOL!

Today was an easy teaching day, and it was a good one. I also FINALLY remembered to post the RSVP card for my brother, Paul's, wedding. It will be Apr. 14th and I am pretty excited about the whole thing! First person from the Warner side of my family, that is out of all of the cousins, to get married!

Well, not much else I can think of sharing... Just to let you know, the pictures in this post were all from the snowshoeing excursion on Friday afternoon. If you click on them, you can see the bigger version! Enjoy!

Time, Time, Time... Where do you go?

The seconds, minutes, hours, days, and weeks are passing too quickly for my comfort, and why have I not really noticed it until now. I don't know how I could quite be pleased, since it is virtually impossible to slow time. The only saving grace in my mind is my upcoming sabbatical year. A year when hopefully time can pass at my own whim, not driven by work deadlines, TV schedules or anything else. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I hope I might regain control of the pace at which my life is passing before my eyes... before I am grey haired, arthritic, and in need of bifocals...

So, in an attempt to waste time, time which should not concern me as much as it seems to be... I saw this link from a friend and thought I would try it out! All you have to do is upload a picture and the website scans it and gives you some superstar lookalikes, who's features somehow match your facial features... It recommends trying a few different pictures and seeing who shows up more than once... I did two pictures and there were two people who showed up twice- Katherine Heigls and Kimberley Williams. Beauty! Try it out and see what you get!

I want to write...

Ok, so this week has been super refreshing. (I say that now, but of course, a few days ago I would have been wondering more if I would have premature baldness because of all the reasons to pull my hair out!) In hindsight though, from the things that really matter this week, it was truly top-notch!

The weather, which for Canadians is such an important, no make that a fundamental factor in our deeming a day good or not, was mild, yet crisp, snowy, yet kind of sunny, and wonderfully wintery! And in the work front, which also seems to be a consumer of the majority of my time, it was just great. My students had super attendence and we had many days of really enjoyable learning and memory making. I love my students, even with their emotional, hormonal, irrational, moody ups and downs, I really love them. Then came Thursday afternoon.

Thursday afternoon, Isabelle, made a very "belle"(beautiful for all my unilingual readers, haha) gesture of arranging a writing workshop with Monique Polak (google her if you want to know more). She had been working with Isa's class all week and had an afternoon where she could visit mine instead. What a VIBRANT, LIVELY, EXCITING lady she was!!! If for nothing else, (which I say tongue and cheek since I KNOW my students got a lot from her presentation) she gave me a new passion for writing and expressing myself in text, as you all know I LOVE, but had been losing the spark increasingly. She talked with such enthusiasm about reading and writing, about her struggles and successes as she pursued publishing a novel, and gave ideas and tips about how ANYONE can write. The wheels in my mind were going non-stop as I thought through ideas I had had in the past for plays and short stories... As well as the comments from so many of you about how I should write about my experiences up here. I realized that I need to keep on, and not give up on it. I need to push myself to continuously find things around me to share to you, if for nothing else but to keep my skills sharp and possibly refine and improve them.

So, on that note, I will leave you with a short piece... a wonderful rant, which MIGHT be based on a true happening from tonight but MIGHT also NOT be.... hehehe... BUT maybe you've been there before...

My teeth were gripping so hard to one another that I felt as though I might actually crack my molars in two. My knuckles white as my fists were clenched tightly, cutting off circulation to my digits which were cold from being outside without mitts in the -30 arctic Quebec winter, but was this frustration really worth it. I mean, people tend to fall into rather predictable groups all across the world. There are the helpers and the needers, the givers and the takers, the optimists and the pessimists, the complainers and the... I don't know what would be the opposite of that, and last but not least, the drama queens (and kings), who do everything for show, and the introverts, who try to sneak around as undetected as a ptarmigan in the trees down wind from a hungry hunter. I know I am a helper/giver, so why does my blood boil when people are not like that too. Those damn takers, I know that I couldn't exist as a giver without them, but why do they have to be so arrogant at times.

So, instead, I will forget it, let the blood rush back in my fingers, which will surely warm them up, and try to slowly unclench my teeth. Breathe in, breathe out... And more importantly, my spirit will warm as my body regains circulating lifeblood.


Oops, just noticed Mark going outside to get packing. I promised him I would help. Planning on going camping tomorrow, that'll give me some much better material to work with, sorry for the lameness above! Ciao!!

First Camping Trip of the year....

So, on Friday I packed up my qamoutik and then just after dawn (around 7:45 am) I left for Short Lake with Daniel and Annie, Leevan, Traugott and Lane. Leevan and Daniel were travelling by dog team, since they are going in a couple weeks to the annual Ivakkak race, a 400-500 mile dog sled race in the old style of racing... The route to Short Lake is 40 miles so it was a good practice. Traugott (Dan and Annie's son) rode with me on my skidoo and Lane (the other son) rode with his mom. We left the older guys to come on their own time since dogs travel much slower than skidoos. We picked up Mark's dogs halfway, where he had left them the night before since it had become too dark to take them all the way. So, it was a bit of slow goings for us- drive ahead, stop wait for the dogs to catch up, drive further... It was a gorgeous day however so it was nice to take our time.

We got to the campsite in the morning and lucky for me, Daniel and Annie had been there a few weekends before so the tent was already set up. Nancy and Mark's tent was bursting at the seams with people so Annie offered for me to stay in with them, on the condition that I share my mattress with Leevan. It became a bit of the camp joke that night, as Leevan is a single guy and Daniel said, he has been trying to find him a good wife. Hahaha...

I was exhausted for some reason but managed to have enough energy to eat some lunch and go to the fishing spot. I laid down on the ice and almost instantly I saw fish swimming past my hook. Within about 3 minutes I caught a nice bite and pulled her in. First fish in a few years since the license issue has finally been worked out. It was fun, but once the fish became a bit more sparse, the tiredness hit me again and didn't have much energy to anything other than go to the tent and relax.
I spent a few hours playing around with Imaapik (Mark and Nancy's three year old boy who really believes he is spiderman) at the tent. I love that feeling of relaxing and hanging out in the fresh air, with the wood stove burning and crackling away all day.


We had a huge feast for supper- sushi (with fresh charr, only minutes old), melt in your mouth fried garlic caribou, fresh bannock (made by Andrea, Mark and Nancy's youngest girl) and some giant Nova Scotia scallops (compliments of moi from my Christmas cooler), and some chilled red wine. Everything tastes a million times better when you are in a tent so it was a fantastic meal in a full tent (11 adults and a few kids). I went to bed early, maybe around 9 pm, and had one of the best sleeps I have ever had in a tent. The night was silent and the sky FULL of stars as I went for my last pee before bed. Beautiful!



In the morning, the sky and the land seemed as one, as they were both completely white. Makes for a challenging drive home as bumps and ruts on the trail are harder to see. We woke up around 7:30, and the dog sled guys got on the road early. Annie and I stayed in the tent for a while just chatting and relaxing before packing everything up and putting back in the sled. We took off before lunch, and took an hour down on the lake fishing before we started the trek home. Some of the dogs were running with us again so it was kind of slow going for a while. Then Mark caught up and sent us on ahead, and he waited for the dogs instead.

We got home around 4:30 pm or so. Felt much later, and I was so starved that I ate an icy, frozen egg sandwich while I unpacked my things and brought them in the house. I chatted with a few people on the phone, took a bath and headed to bed by 9:30 TOTALLY drained. I love that feeling, makes you feel like you have REALLY done something on the weekend.

8 hour therapy session...

Session started at about 9:30, when I left my house on skidoo following Anne and Yayi, and April and Trev. The overnight camping excursion had been cancelled with threat of a big blizzard, so instead we decided to go to the trees for a little drive then a bonfire for lunch. We started driving through the trees, everything dusted with snow (and when I say dusted I mean like the kind of layer of dust you find in the antiquities section of a university library, haha). It was very beautiful, calm, relaxing, and detached from the hectic topsy-turvy week.

We didn't see many ptarmigan at first but it was fun going through the trails of soft snow, weaving through the forest, and climbing the mountains just south of Tasialuk. We set up our fire on the east side of the lake. With axe in hand, April and I trudged our way through the trees to find some deadwood for the fire. I love snowshoeing especially in the deep snow, it is so exhilarating, physically challenging and exciting when you realize yours are the only tracks on that stretch of land, and you are the first to admire the snow sculptures made when the snow caked itself onto the short trees and bushes.

We got a nice fire started, roasted hotdogs, vienna sausages (that was just April though) and marshmellows. Nothing tastes better than that! After relaxing around the fire for a while, we decided to go trudging around again with the snowshoes, exploring a bit and finding some more firewood. Then Anne and Yayi returned (they had to go back to town to get their groceries from the plane) so we all went together through a mountain pass to Old Woman's lake, where Nancy, Mark, Chris and Marie had gone to do some fishing and were hanging out in a school tent that was set up by a lake for the day trips with classes that will begin in a week or two (weather permitting)



It was so nice getting a line in the water. There is a new system now that allows teachers (any non-Inuit) to get licenses for fishing and small game hunting up here. I got my licenses so I am now allowed to try fishing again. (It was frowned on the last couple years so I didn't fish, however I did catch some my first year since things were much more relaxed) It was also so nice hanging out in the tent. The smell of the boughs, the warmth of the fire, and the subtle chill of the wind coming in from the opened door occasionally, make for a seriously comfortable and relaxing experience. We spent the entire afternoon- Mark, Nancy, Samuel (Marie's teenaged son) Imaapik (Nancy and Mark's 3 year old), and the girls (Andrea and Heather- Mark and Nancy's daughters, and Sybilla their "adopted" daughter)- chatting and nibbling and enjoying being outdoors.

Once it got dark we decided to pack it up and go home. I checked the clock when I came inside and it was 5:30 pm... I felt like things were good in the world again and that I had just had an absolutely wonderful and therapeutic day!