Canada

by

Almost Gone With the Wind

Two nights ago, I awoke shivering the middle of the night and had to grab another blanket. Last night, I slept with a window and two roof hatches open and stepped outside this morning to weather that had already passed twenty degrees. Calgary apparently got snow yesterday. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

It wasn’t unbearably hot, though, since it’s still windy out. That wind is a mixed blessing since it covers everything in a fine layer of grit. I won’t miss that grit, but I will miss that breeze as the sun starts to beat down mercilessly.

Today’s big to-do was a staff barbecue. There was a bit of schedule coordinating necessary for both the manager and I to attend, but we made it work.

Between the heat, the manic pace of a busy day, and the mountain of grilled shrimp, I’m feeling rather spent. Guess I’ll call it another good day in the Klondike. 😀

by

A Very Full Day

I don’t know what it is about the long sultry summer days of the Klondike, but I seem to wedge twice as much into a day as would seem feasible. So, today:

A Ferry of My Own!

I was out at Gertie’s a little bit later than I should have been last night, so this morning’s awakening at 9:20AM by my iPod Touch alarm clock was a tad brutal. I’d promised friends across the river that I’d help them move back to Bonanza, so I was up and at ’em in minutes. In fact, I was at the hostel with the car nearly packed within a half hour, including a short wait on the ferry. Not bad!

We had to wait for the ferry to cross back, less than ten minutes. I had the ferry to myself, which was kind of cool. I would have thought that they would wait to load up, but nope. They take the passengers who are there, or at least as many as they can fit, and then they cross. Back and forth, all day, every day. What a service!

Once back at the motel, I checked them in, dumped their luggage, grabbed some toast, gulped down coffee at the office and started my day.

Beds and Bundles!

Housekeeping was shorthanded this morning, so I spent an hour stripping beds and then running linens and towels up to the rooms. I needed to be back at the office for noon, which enabled me to discover that I can make two beds in fifteen minutes. I’ll have to look up my record for last summer and see if that’s good or bad. 😀

Back in the office, it was the usual zaniness. During quiet moments, I continued to make little bundles out of our check in cards in preparation for inputting into our computer system. I designed and implemented a new database this week, so I have a huge backlog to go through. I don’t mind since I love data entry AND I’m doing it on a Mac! Yes! We’ve got a Mac in the office this year and I can do 90% of my work on it! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

I was relieved at quarter past two and headed home to play with my iPod some more.

iPod Breakthrough!

After getting in a little work at my contract (subject of a future post), I decided to focus on the iPod and try to get more ebooks on it. I put together a few semi-related pages and came up with a way to connect the iPod to my cellular connection! This finally gave me full iPod use, limited only by my bandwidth restrictions. I was given a huge cd filled with tons and tons and tons of wonderful ebooks and I transferred a few of them to the iPod. Then, I discovered that you can actually bookmark and annotate books in the Stanza app. Amazon Kindle? Pfft.

Oz!

I went back to work at quarter past five and it was the usual zaniness until a customer checked in with a bunch of dogs and the manager decided to adopt one. Well, she’s trying him out tonight on a trial basis, but they’ve bonded, so I know he’s staying. 🙂 Somehow in the middle of this, she and I agreed to coparent him this summer, so I sort of have a dog now! He’s a Jack Russell, the only breed I have any experience with since that’s what I had growing up, and we named him Oz! I will be taking pictures soon. 🙂

The Night Is Young!

It’s presently 8:40, dinner’s in the oven (chicken and lasagna), laundry’s in the washer, I have work to do, I want to play some more with my iPod settings, and I want to finish the short story ebook I’ve started.

Just another day in paradise and I’m lovin’ it! 😀

by

Gift of a Salesman

We’ve had a fishmonger staying in one of our rooms for a few nights. He travels around in a refrigerated truck hocking frozen fish to individuals (restaurants have their own suppliers). I inquired about his wares and when he realised that I was shopping, not just being polite, he was quick to offer me a good price on a 5lb box of haddock.

Much as I love haddock, I knew there would be no way I could get through that much fish in a reasonable amount of time, so I asked a friend to split the box with me. By the time she had examined the fish and agreed, the fishmonger had dropped his price again, to $80, or $16/lb which is a good price for up here.

I’m just waitin’ on dinner…

In the meantime, here are some random pics that don’t warrant their own post:

no need to close the rear blind this winter!

c is for cat AND contentment

Dinner’s ready! And YUM! Best haddock EVER!!!

by

Lunch at the Riverwest

I went into town today to take out some money and check my mail, so I decided to pop into the Riverwest Bistro for a quick bite to eat.

The Riverwest is what passes for a fast food joint in Dawson. You order at a counter and are given a number to display prominently at your table. There are magazines and newspapers available to pass the time until someone brings you your order. You can also take your order to go, and there are always cold sandwiches and other items you can grab on the go. They serve breakfast and are also a popular place to grab a coffee. The only negative is that they close at 7, so forget grabbing a quick dinner on the way home if you finish work late!

The food is good, fresh, and quite cheap, as compared to an equivalent meal at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. Today, I tried their ‘peppercorn ranch chicken wrap’ which ended up being cold diced chicken with fresh tomatoes and lettuce drizzled with peppercorn ranch dressing wrapped up in a tomato tortilla, for $7. I like their ‘curly fries’ and added them to my order, for a total cost of just under $10. It was all very YUM.

My $10 wouldn’t have gone far at the general store, and the tomatoes and lettuce I would have gotten there would have been respectively mealy and limp while the bread would have been stale.

Proper sit down restaurants aren’t that much more expensive than the Riverwest, but they are quite a bit slower, so the Riverwest is the place I go to when I just want to do a quick in and out. Or catch up on my Macleans magazines. 😀

by

Gabfest at the Sluicebox Lounge

I was invited out last night, but had too much on my plate. So, tonight, I called the person to see if the offer still stood. Yes!

We started off the night at Gerties, then we drove to the home of one of her new friends so she could introduce us. By the time we were passing Bonanza, it was only 9:30, so we decided to go back into town for another drink.

Since we were in chat mode, going back to Gerties didn’t make sense. Bombay Peggy’s, the cozy pub, would have been nice, but it was jam packed. The next nearest bar was the Sluicebox Lounge at the El Dorado hotel, a block away.

It was a charmless place, unless you consider 70s decor and formica tables ‘charming’, but it was clean, open, and reasonably quiet. A pint was a full seventy-five cents less than at Gerties!

The gal I was with is a French national who has been in Canada for several years. We met briefly last fall as she was moving in. Imagine what sort of courage it must take, even after spending a year in Whitehorse, to pack up for a remote location like Dawson in the winter!

She had both positive and negative things to say about winter in Dawson and seemed to have generally found the experience to be pleasant and worthwhile. A part of me wants to try it, just once, but another part of me knows that she doesn’t do well in a world of constant twilight and inclement weather.

Her winter gave her a chance to get to know the Dawson establishments that stay open late into the fall and even through the winter. I ribbed her about how casually she led me to the Sluicebox Lounge when I know that the gal I met last fall wouldn’t have imagined herself in such an establishment. It just goes to show how a place can slowly mould you into the kind of person it needs you to be to survive there. She hasn’t changed, she still doesn’t drink, but she’s comfortable in locales she never was comfortable in before. I experienced a similar transformation during my month in Scotland.

It turned out to be a fun night and I’m glad I found a more quiet place than Gerties to go to when I’m in a chatty mood!