The end is near..

I first started this blog when I headed up north to Alert. This let everyone see what life was like during my tours. I had a lot to talk about when I was up there, with a lot of photos as well. Since coming back, this site has languished in the doldrums of my mind. Not much has happened, and besides… who really cares about something around here that anyone can see anyway. Besides, isn’t that what Instagram (savannah_grasses) is for these days? 

It was fun, especially when I was up north, but I’ll leave this as is. Perhaps I’ll add a photo gallery of all my photo’s, at least the ones that I haven’t lost!

It would be nice though if I could flip the entries around. As it is, the latest is at the top. So go down to the end and work your way back to the end.

The sun, the sun!

The sun apparently rose at 1035am on the 27th of February. No one could tell as there were too many clouds in the sky (hmm, just like last October with the sunset!) Not only that, but the Winchester Hills get in the way also! But it was definitely brightening up earlier each day.

Here we are, enjoying our Sunrise Dinner BBQ in the Maintenance garage.

Replacement truck down…

The replacement for the  Met Truck (which broke down the day before I arrived,) needed work done on it. The alternator wasn’t charging the battery, so after lunch I took it to Maintenance to see what they could do with it. Warren set to work right away and in no time had installed a new alternator. Way to go Warren – thanks eh!

Here is a camera-shy Warren & his apprentice working on my truck.

Sun’s up!

The sun rose today, although no one here saw a glimpse of it. Was a bit too cloudy. We had a few centimetre’s of snow overnight. It ended early this morning and partially cleared. Hopefully, the forecasted winds for tomorrow won’t be as bad as they say, or else it’ll be a white-out. We should be able to see the sun on Tuesday.

Than I leave on Wednesday – yay!

Uh-oh…

The REAL Nippy stopped by for a visit a few minutes ago. They have always been quite nice to me, but she is alone today. As I walked by her, she lunged at me and nipped me in my left calf. She broke the skin and drew blood. I called Starlight and he said clean it, so I did. I also applied Bee Propolis too.

I go up now to begin the shots 😦

EDIT: Nippy is a wolf. He is from the local wolf pack. I thought this one was different from the wolf that had been visiting me at the Met Shack during the past week, but after looking at her blood stained feet, she is the same one.

I stepped out to check on the weather, and she came running from the backyard. She’s never been aggressive with me before. I just talked to her a bit, and then carried on walking by her to look at the sky. That was when she ducked in & nipped at my leg. She broke the skin and drew blood.
After 10am, I headed up to the MIR (Medical Inspection Room) to start taking the shots. First came tetanus. Then I suppose a rather large needle was next (I didn’t want to look at it!). This is the one that is inserted INTO the wound, and then played with, injecting the goop while being withdrawn. That was done 4 or 5 times. Then came another shot of something or other in the other arm. That was today.
I get the wound shots again on Thursday, Monday next week, in two weeks, and then a 4th in 4 weeks.

*sigh*

It doesn’t hurt now, but I am still walking funny, favouring the knee blow-up & now this! Since I work in Trenton, they’ll let me leave next week – maybe. Or else I will be here for a further 28 days! I’ll find out tomorrow – more than likely I’ll be home next week.

My iPhone has been re-charged!

I was afraid that my phone had lost everything since it had no power, and I was unable to charge it for 5 days. I plugged it in last night, and an hour later I was able to see that all was OK.

I just took this photo a few minutes ago.

The iPhone 3GS camera isn’t all that great, as you can see. The land is visible to me, but not to my camera. This is an HDR image of the sun, which is still below the horizon. It should rise around 1030am on the 27th of February.

Apparently, the wolves are around. All eight of them. I tried calling them yesterday, but I think they were otherwise preoccupied. I’ll try again later.

Anyone an “Ice Pilots” TV show fan? Starting today, Buffalo Air will be flying their Electra L188 in from Resolute Bay until Monday next week. We are low on Ultra-Low-Sulphur Diesel, so they won the contract to ferry it in. I’ll have to get some photo’s of them – maybe with my cam-corder.

Wouldn’t you know it…

Not 5 minutes after I arrive, I blow out my knee! It swelled up pretty big, but wasn’t too, too sore. After a while, I had no problem moving it, or walking on it. Good thing, as Mike left on the plane I arrived on a few minutes later!

Also, after running around finishing packing on Wednesday, I wasn’t finished. I had a sneaking suspicion while waiting for the plane to take off in Trenton that I didn’t have my iPhone USB wire & wall-plug-in chummy. Those suspicions proved true, and last night, after only 12 or so hours, my iPhone was as dead as a door-nail! *sigh*

But there is a good point – lotsa people have iPhones, and I can borrow a wire to charge up my phone! *phew*

Off to lunch now – more to come later.

Happy New Year!

I suppose I should put in the other photo’s I took, but wait for those in the slide show I am making.

Oh no! Another travelogue slide show? I promise – I won’t bore you too much!

I arrived back home on December 3rd – no delays returning home, only delays on the way up. No sooner than I get back home, I get a call from the boss asking me if I’d go back to replace Mike when he takes his mid-tour break. So I’ll be back in Alert in next month for 3 or 4 weeks. Three weeks if they allow a runway handover. So I will have seen the sun set (through all the cloud we had) and will view the same sun rise. This will be the 7th trip back up there. Good thing I like it up there!

So, stand by for more news & photo’s from the north.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

 

In 2010, there were 46 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 92 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 23mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was July 5th with 25 views. The most popular post that day was About.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc, android-vs-ipad.co.cc, ehmac.ca, mail.live.com, and imobilereview.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for “most northern wedding”, cape belknap cemetery arctic, and dan mikkonen and roxanne get married.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

About June 2009

2

Heading back to the high Arctic March 2010
1 comment

3

Boxtop I is in the history books August 2010
1 comment

4

“1st Contact” September 2010
4 comments

5

Pink Moon & the rare Arctic Pink Geese! October 2010
4 comments

Pink Moon & the rare Arctic Pink Geese!

Yesterday afternoon, the moon was in the north-eastern sky, with the sun below the horizon to the south-west. The moon had taken on quite a pink glow. But by the time I was able to stand still, and get a semi-half-decent shot, the moon was changing colours again.  It now looks a bit orangier in this photo.

I failed to bring up my tripod or monopod. As you can see from the following photo, I have a difficult time standing still. The runway lights look more like geese flapping across the threshold! Well, maybe in my case they aren’t so rare!