Blaming the Baker

Averill Baker is my fault.

Well, not all my fault. I imagine that George and Averill, her parents, probably played a fairly large part. And, you know, Averill herself deserves some of the credit.

But in terms of her getting published in newspapers across Newfoundland and Labrador? Yeah, that would be me.

Now, some of you are probably cheering while others are no doubt trying to figure out my address to send me something as a token of your "gratitude" for unleashing her on the province. In my defence, which is the defence of many people in similar situations, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

If memory serves it was shortly after the 2003 provincial election. Averill ran, and was hammered, in the Waterford Valley district. No real surprise there. She was running against Harvey Hodder. And whatever Hodder's faults as a Speaker of the House, no one will deny that the man runs a machine in that district when it comes to elections. There's a story that he can tell you within a few dozen votes of how much he will win by at the start of an election. It's probably true.

But hell, Averill impressed me during the campaign. She was well spoken, argued well and put up a heck of a fight anyway in an election she must have known she was going to lose. I wrote as much in a column with The Express.

Shortly after the election we were brainstorming around the paper for new columnists. It never hurts to have some new blood writing in the pages and we had a few columnists leave. Impressed with how she did in the last election, I threw out Averill's name. As far as I was concerned, she had a couple of solid points going for her.

1. She seemed very well spoken. Being a prominent defence attorney probably helped.
2. Her father was George Baker, so there was a good political lineage. (For those outside Newfoundland, he was at one point the most popular MP in the province and one of the most popular backbenchers in Ottawa. Then they made him a cabinet minister, which he was terrible at).
3. As a lawyer, she had a decent profile in the province, especially since she was defending seal hunters, which made her popular in rural areas.
4. Lastly, and most importantly, she was a woman who could argue politics.

I appreciate that last point might seem condescending or not that big a deal. Sue Kelland-Dyer does it. However, Averill at that time had credibility. I'm trying to recall if Sue had much left at that point three years ago. Sorry Sue. I know that sounds harsh, but I honestly don't know anyone who takes much of what you have to say seriously anymore. harsh, but true.

(Also, while I'm loathed to slag fellow local bloggers, Sue's is nearly unreadable. Seriously Sue, stick to one font size, one colour and stop using exclamation points. You'll be doing the readers a huge favour.)

So anyway, there were few women commentators in the province at that time. It tends to be, rightly or wrongly, something men dominate. I thought Averill would be a good new voice. So even though I had never met her (I've still never met her, although had one brief cordial e-mail exchange) I pitched her as a columnist, convinced the boss who then approached her. She said yes, submitted some writing samples and we were off to the races.

It became apparent a few months in that I might have made a mistake.

It's not that the first few columns were rough. They were, but who cares. It takes awhile to find your voice in a newspaper format. Anytime I get too cocky, I like to read the first few columns I wrote for The Packet. Or if I really want to be humbled, I'll read the first thing I ever wrote for the Muse. Dear God, the horror of it.

No, two things became apparent.
1. She wasn't learning from her mistakes.
2. She kept hammering the same points, using the same phrases, over and over.

I'll be the first to admit that editors can be evil bastards. But they are necessary evil bastards. More than one story, column or editorial I've written over the years has been saved by good editing. The key is, you read the story after the editor is through with it and then compare it to what you wrote. If the editor is good, and if your ego can handle it, you'll quickly see where you went wrong and make the adjustments. After awhile the edits become smaller as your writing improves.

That never really happened with Averill. Now, things might have changed the year I've been in the north. But anyone that edited her (I did on occasion) found themselves making the same corrections.

Part of it is that she's a lawyer. And lawyers have different writing styles. They tend to favour repetition to hammer home a point. And the writing tends to be drier. Something I should have considered before lobbying to make her a columnist. I think that shows up in Averill's writing. There's no spark. No clever turn of phrase that makes me go "ooohhhh, that's nice."

But there is the odd thing. Despite the fact that her work required a lot of editing, that it was still dry and that she kept repeating the same points and phrases week after week (How many nations are illegally fishing off the Grand Banks, Averill?) she became quite popular. I guess playing off Newfoundland Nationalism works.

This is something that can drive editors nuts. They don't like a columnist, the staff doesn't like the columnist, but the readership adores it. It happens all the time. In this case, Averill gets letters. Her columns are quoted on open line shows. It certainly helped to boost her profile in the province. And while the staff might not like a columnist, the readership pays the bills. That is why Averill stays when I believe many of the editors in papers across Newfoundland and Labrador would probably prefer someone else.

Why bring this up now? Because I noticed someone on another blog quoting Averill's last column. So out of curiosity I read it. And then to make sure I tracked down and read another couple of her columns. And nothing has changed. She's still hammering away at the same few points, the writing is still dry and I can practically see the bleeding where an editor made ruthless cuts to either make it fit in the space he or she had or to cut out Averill's habit of repeating herself.

Understand, I'm not saying Averill Baker is a bad person or lawyer. Frankly, I don't know her well enough to say that. She's probably a lovely person. What I am saying is that she's not a great columnist. Worse, she's boring. And the sooner people stop paying attention, stop reading and writing letters, stop quoting her on Open Line or blogs, the sooner they might be able to get someone who can write and argue eloquently on more than three topics.

That's harsh, but I'm sure she's heard worse over the years. And hell, when she takes over the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador in the next 10 years or so, I'm she'll hear even meaner things...

What a day...

I've yet to meet a teacher happy to be dealing with kids again after having all summer off. And while Cathy has been admirable in not going "I don't wanna" every day for the past few weeks, it was not a happy camper that I sent off to school this morning bright and early.

However, without getting into details, the day has been more...stressful...than might have otherwise been anticipated. The first day back was a tad on the rough side. And to add to the fun, I had to be the one to break the news to her about Canjet. Cathy being the good girl that she is had her tickets home for Christmas booked back in July. All that's happened since then is Canadian North/First Air had a seat sale during the period she was flying (thereby meaning she spent a couple of extra hundred dollars) and today she found out that Canjet has cancelled her flight.

Oh, and good luck getting through to Canjet on their 1-800 number today. We tried a couple of times and gave up. We'll try again in a day or so.

She's already booked another ticket home, this time using Westjet, which is going to cost a couple of hundred more than with Canjet.

So yes, not a happy Cathy today.

However, as I type, a voice calls out from the washroom saying, "no matter how crappy the day, it's amazing how a hot bath a glass of wine can make it all feel better."

I'm sure more than one woman reading this blog would agree with those sentiments.

53rd point

John mentioned in the comments section the ignorance of people not knowing about Nunavut because of the driver's licence I flashed as ID in the U.S. I'm afraid it's worse than that. Anticipating that while Americans have many wonderful, redemptive qualities, a strong sense of world geography isn't one of them, we simplified things when trying to explain where we are living.

So when people asked 'Where do you live?" We said "Northern Canada" figuring they might clue in that we were emphasizing things by saying we're not just from Canada, but Northern Canada.

Sadly, we underestimated the geographic obliviousness of the country we were in. The most common response was, no kidding, "Oh around Toronto" (Never mind that at 43 degrees North, it's actually further south than some American cities). Following in a distant second was "Oh, you mean around Vancouver." (Which, at 49 degrees north, pretty well hugs the U.S./Canada border.)

By the way, that sound you might be hearing is that of our lovely American friend Karin, who lives in Nebraska, bashing her head on the keyboard. She knows a fair bit about Canada, having married a Canadian, and tends to take the errors of her countrymen a little too close to heart sometimes.

Anyway, we had to develop a follow-up response when people got confused by what we meant by "Northern Canada" (one person did guess Edmonton, which is northish, I guess). Cathy's follow-up answer was "Imagine Santa's workshop. We're a little south of that." I went for the slightly more pragmatic answer of "No, we're just west of Greenland." Sadly, one or two still had troubles figuring even that outÂ…

Most people managed to then clue in that when we said Northern Canada, we weren't fooling around. Although there was still one or two that were having problems getting their heads around the notion that people willingly lived in places that cold. It's a California thing, I suspect.

We did have a couple of interesting conversations with people while waiting for trains or whatnot about Nunavut. The best was probably with a recently retired teacher who was horrified to discover that after 34 years of teaching and being a vice-principal at her school about an hour outside of San Francisco, she was making only about 25% more than Cathy is right now with about five years experience. And that was taking into account the currency exchange.

There are challenges to living in Nunavut, to be sure. The money isn't one of them.

Oh, and that brings me to Point 54 – Americans will ask questions about your salary, retirement package, mortgage, etc that most Canadians would be horrified by. We consider it terribly rude and nosey. They're just trying to help to make sure you're not being screwed over. Which is nice, but still a bit jarring when you first experience it.

52 Random Things I Learned in California

1. SUVs suck.
2. No, they really do. Some of the worst, most aggressive and insane driving I saw were from SUV owners. They drive fast and they "bully" smaller vehicles. I can't conceive of how much gas they burn when one of them passed me on an interstate like I was standing still and I was doing close to 80 mph.
3. There is a staggering amount of farmland in California. With everything else going on in the state, you can forget about agriculture. But as a guy from Newfoundland, I was just floored by how much farmland there was. It's easily comparable to what I saw in Alberta two years ago.
4. Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible Mustang doesn't suck.
5. When they say winding road ahead on the Pacific Coast Highway, they are not fucking around.
6. Cathy would like to mention that the whole "chick with a funky scarf holding her hair back while riding in a convertible" look that you see on TV doesn't really work. A baseball cap, while unfashionable, is much better.
7. The Pacific Coast Highway is fun, but it's a tricky bastard to follow the closer you get to LA. That we didn't get lost was a mark of Cathy's excellent navigation and a healthy dollop of dumb luck.
8. After one day of lamenting how "old" the Tilley Hat looked on my head, I quickly changed my mind after getting quite a nice burn. Tilley Hats now rule once again.
9. San Francisco is quite hilly, but I think St. John's is worse.
10. On two of the corners of Haight and Ashbury, the very epicenter of 60s counter-culture, there is a Gap along with a Ben and Jerry's. Ooops.
11. Comic Relief in Berkley is one of the best comic book stories I've ever been to. I could have lost a day there instead of two hours.
12. If you have to do a paid bus tour of the San Francisco, I highly recommend having a sarcastic, bitter gay man be your guide. It's the way to go.



13. There's so much beach in California that they almost don't know what to do with it. We passed stunning beaches on a gorgeous day and there was no one there.
14. Next to Disney, Malibu was the freakiest place we visited. There's that much wealth crammed into a relatively small area that it can take your breath away.
15. The way to console yourself when looking at that much wealth is to realize that they're probably all mortgaged to the hilt.
16. They say L.A. is big. Until you drive through it, you don't realize exactly how goddamn big. The drive from San Diego to Half Moon Bay (just south of San Francisco) was about 10 hours. Close to three of them was spent getting across L.A.
17. I've yet to understand how I can go from 70 MPH on a freeway to 0 in less a minute, then start back up again and see no sign of construction or an accident. The traffic on LA freeways just stops for no apparent reason.
18. Apparently LA is the homeland for all the freakishly enormous RVs I saw in PEI a few years ago. I saw at least three huge RV dealerships just on the side of the freeway when going through the city.
19. San Diego Zoo is the best zoo I've ever been to. I no longer feel the need to go to any other zoo. They will pale in comparison.
20. San Diego was the big surprise of the trip. We knew San Francisco was going to be cool and interesting and L.A. would suck. But San Diego is surprisingly nice. A very laid back, friendly air about the place. We'd actually go back and visit again.
21. The best Italian food I've had in my life came from a restaurant across the street from our hotel in the Little Italy in San Diego. My God it was good.
22. Perhaps the one hotel we picked that didn't have air conditioning shouldn't be the in the furthest south city visited.
23. Our guide said San Francisco doesn't have malls. He lied. They do, but you get the feeling they're very embarrassed about them which is why they make them quite hard to find.
24. The guide books are right - Fisherman's Wharf is a tourist trap. But it's an awfully fun tourist trap.
25. Hearst Castle is a must if going down the Pacific Coast Highway. The amount of money that went into that place is staggering. The only thing that saved my sanity going through Malibu was that the money spent there still paled in comparison to what Hearst must have spent on his place.
26. The tour of the Castle is fascinating, but they do give you the impression that he was a nice, wonderful man as opposed to the total son of a bitch everyone else thinks he was.
27. One more Disney thing - Tinkerbell is now a slut. I did not realize this, but after seeing enough merchandise with Tinkerbell giving "come hither" looks, Disney has apparently made her into a slut. Who knew?
28. It is entirely possible that I'm reading too much into the "Tinkerbell=slut" thing and that it's saying something potentially disturbing about my personality.
29. Riding the cable cars in San Francisco is fun, but really, it's not worth the hour long wait that some people put up with just to do it.
30. Golden Gate Bridge - not golden. Ah well...
31. Superman Returns is a so-so movie. Superman Returns seen in 3-D IMAX is pretty fucking cool.
32. San Francisco Giants vs. Colorado Rockies is a potentially boring baseball game. Barry Bonds hitting his 723 homerun is exciting. Bond getting tossed in the 9th inning in the middle of a rally with the Giants trailing and the usually sedate fans pelting the field with garbage to express their displeasure, thereby stopping the game for 15 minutes, is priceless.
33. Beware the Garlic fries at the stadium. They're good, but I've learned there actually is such a thing as too much garlic.
34. Having said that, there is a place in San Francisco called The Stinking Rose in which everything served is garlic flavoured. I really wanted to try the ice cream.
35. When they say don't try to drive in San Francisco, they mean it. Getting around is slow and parking is as bad as they say. The public transit system is very good and quite cheap.
36. Cathy's great disappointment with the trip is that she didn't get to an IHOP.
37. Craig's great disappointment was that despite hitting a half dozen comic book stores, he still couldn't find Usagi Yojimbo, Volume 18. Well, he found it, but didn't feel like paying $60 for a signed hardcover of the book.
38. As best I can figure, there is no state sales tax in California. Instead, it varies from community to community. Which can be a pain in the ass. The average is around 8%.
39. Half Moon Bay is known for its pumpkins. I think it would be fun a lot of fun there around Halloween.
40. The cost of living in San Francisco is as retarded as advertised. One modest three-storey townhouse in the Twin Peaks section of San Francisco started at $950,000. The closing price will likely be more than $1 million.
41. But the view from there is really nice.
42. There is something to be said about short commutes. Cathy can now walk to work in less than 5 minutes. It'll take me about the same amount of time to drive and I could probably walk it in 15. Jaap and Charlotte spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour each way getting to work.
43. Which is more dangerous for blowing the weight limit on your luggage – a friend who works at a very good mystery book store, or a friend who is senior management with Electronic Arts?
44. You can use nickels in parking meters in SF. It will get you exactly two minutes. A quarter gets you 10.
45. Ever wonder what happened to the pay toilets that used to be at the Avalon Mall and Atlantic Place ? They moved to California.
46. If you try to pay for gas at the pump using a credit card, it asks for your zip code as an anti-theft measure. Which is nice and all, but a pain in the ass if you're from Canada.
47. People actually ask to see photo ID if you use a credit card.
48. More than one person thought my Nunavut driver's licence was not a real ID, which says something about the quality of the licence.
49. Boudin's sourdough bread really is as good as the hype and is worth hunting down.
50. Customer service is not a strength in California.
51. Aerogold Visa cards are apparently freaky and fascination to many retailers.
52. Never try to order a Caesar at a bar or restaurant. Most have never heard of it.

Your weekly Boo update

So the puppy has become an even bigger peeing and chewing machine than he was in the first week. We're still trying to get him to stop biting quite so much. But, you know, it's a four month old puppy. Good luck with that. And his begging for food during meals is ridiculous.

He's also getting increasingly scruffy. If he's this shaggy at four months, I can only imagine what he's going to be like by the time we take him home at Christmas. That's the first time we can get him trimmed. Although the breeder has asked that we not trim him. She rather likes him and would like to take him to a show and breed him, with our permission, of course. In return, if we agree, we would get a puppy from that litter.

We'll see. Cathy is not wildly enthused by the idea.

Boo is perhaps also not the smartest dog in the world. He's just a puppy at this point and puppy's are not renown for their intelligence. But he is a little vacuum clearer right now. Which means he hasn't learned that everything you put in your mouth is not necessarily good for you. We took him for a walk on the tundra out on the Road to Nowhere last evening and he apparently sucked down a bunch of berries when we weren't looking.

He promptly threw back up later. And to which he then tried to eat again.

As I said, cute, but entirely bright.

Anyway, I finally managed to remember to take my camera on one of these walks, so here are a few pictures. Also, and this is mostly for family and close friends, there are a ton of new photos up on my Flickr page (click the box on the side). There's lots of vacation photos along with ones of Boo. Not all of them have names or descriptions yet, but I'll be working on that over the next week or so.


A small pile of stones serving as a firepit near a river just outside of town.



Most of the flowers are starting to fade from the tundra, but these are doing just fine.



As much fun as it is to take the little monster out for a run, I imagine doing it back in July would have been just horrible with all the bugs. Beautiful, you understand, but they would have found our skeletons bleaching on the land.



Boo in a rare moment of not trying to eat things, running across the land.

Apartment life

The thing to remember about something being too good to be true is that it normally is. For the last few pay periods I noticed I wasn't getting tagged on three things - EI, CPP and rent. The rent was something I was afraid was going to be tangly. Myself and Cathy have been lucky in that we've qualified for a government subsidized apartment in Iqaluit. It's hard for many people to land housing these days because there's big demand and the government is trying to get out of it in Iqaluit. But Cathy had it with her job and when I got my new job, it also came with housing. Although we had put in for a transfer under Cathy's, it was quicker for me to just take the housing they were offering.

Like I said, a touch confusing. Especially when rent comes out of the paychecks. That means the government owed Cathy money as they took rent out for August for a place we no longer live in.

And with me moving into a new place and everything else, well, it seems they forgot to take rent out of mine. There's also been no EI or CPP deductions.

Now, the easy way is to just hope they never notice. But I find that crossing your fingers and hoping governments or businesses never notice they forgot to take money from you is never a good game plan. They will find out sooner or later. And then they want all the money at once. Normally after you've spent it all too...

So I put in the call and it turns out I've paid all my EI and CPP payments for the year. Which is good, although I have no idea how that happened. However, it also turns out they forgot to deduct my rent for August and part of July. Which means they're going to have to take it out of the next bunch of paychecks. Which sucks. Yes, I've been overpaid the last few checks. Still, having it tagged over the next two months to make up for it is annoying.

Ah well. There are worse problems to have to deal with.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what the apartment looks like, below are some photos. Because far be it for me to be the only northern blogger without pictures of boxes all over their apartment. One of the apartment empty, one when I managed to cram all the boxes in and one with the kitchen and living room set up. Oh, and one of our new view out the window.

By the way, the look of the new apartment, unsurprisingly, is Cathy's. I broke the back of getting things unpacked, but she's the one who figured out where everything went to make it look and to make our small apartment look more spacious.



This is what the place looked like when I first saw it. I'm pretty much standing in the closet on the far wall. Granted, my camera doesn't have a good wide angle lens, but you still get the idea. Kind of small.



This is what looked like when I finally got all the boxes in the place. Taken from the same spot as above, there's pretty much zero floor space. A lot of stuff into a wee space. I was feeling a little pessimistic at this point.



But here it is looking all nice and organized. Miracles can happen. Notice the kitchen table had to go. Not eneough room for it.



And the view out one of the windows. It's actually pretty nice around sunset. I'd get some nice pictures, but the cables kind of ruin things a bit.

An Ode to bitter women

So I was puttering around a few blogs today and read Dana's, which then took me to Sarah's (as blogs are wont to do) when I came across the most marvelously bitter exchange. It's a month old, but I don't care, it's brilliant. I think it's Dana's quote, but she can feel free to jump on here and make sure that proper credit is given.

What is the quote? "I hate girlfriends. Girlfriends are sluts. The least they could do is keep their men home and stop cluttering up the bars."

To which I had to work hard to stifle the laughter because it might be hard to explain to people nearby what I was laughing at. It's an elegantly crafted piece of bitterness. I told it to one of my co-workers, who is back in the dating game after her marriage ended and she laughed. "They're right," she said. "And if they can't keep them out of the bars, then at least put some kind of bar code on them so I can run a scanner over them to see if they're single or not."

I admire that caliber of bitterness. I was quite the bitter person myself (Yeah, yeah, my friends can spare me the shocked "No!" reactions). But that was BC - Before Cathy. I was a God of Bitterness and was vastly entertaining to my friends as I could go on quite the bitter rant (Remember, God of Bitter, Lord of the Rant and Lord of Sarcasm) on whatever topic was annoying me at the time. My inability to get a woman was normally high on the list. For whatever reason, I wasn't making the correlation between sucky dating prospects and my bitterness. Hell, I was a near perpetual inhabitant of the infamous "Bitter Couch" at The Muse.

Bitterness and a rant can be fun (much like a Guinness and Strongbow mixed together), but you do have to be careful. The occasional dose is amusing, but if you're like it all the time it can get tiring.

But I don't really know that many, if any, bitter single women right now. I know Dana in passing (more friend of a friend sort of thing); most of them are kind of out of it. Hell, I don't have that many single women friends anymore. But about 10 years ago I knew some spectacularly bitter women, who were quite frequently single. Mireille was often entertaining. So was OM. My friends Tiffany and Andrea were queens of it. More than one night was spent at the Duke of Duckworth listening to them be bitter and blindingly funny.

If you're still bitter and snarky in your 40s, well, that's a cause for concern. But by God when you're in your 20s you should be able to be bitter and sarcastic and pissed off at the state of things, even if it normally ends up being mostly your fault.

So to Dana and Sarah and all the other bitter, yet blindingly funny women in the world, I salute you. Have fun and savor the bitterness while you can. Because before you know it you're a girlfriend again. And you know what that meansÂ…

Moral or not

So a quick little link I threw out about ways, if one were feeling inclined, of causing mischief with a right wing religious organization with a less than tolerant view of gay people caused a bit of noise. Helmut put it on her site and then contacted Gay Orbit who also had a small racket. Most say go ahead and screw over Focus on the Family.

I confess, when I first came across this link on Warren Ellis site my initial thought was "Well, let's cause some havoc, shall we?" Then my better angels (ie. Cathy) gave me pause. Just as I was getting ready to go and order the Chronicles of Narnia, she said she didn't want me to do that.

It's not that she likes Focus on the Family. She agrees with me that they're a pretty reprehensible organization. She just doesn't think it's right. Cathy doesn't think they're worthy of her time or being paid attention to. Or, by her way of looking at things, she wouldn't teach that kind of behavior to her kids. Trying to do malicious harm to an organization, just because you dislike or disagree with their morals or politics, is something she wouldn't do. Nor would she want her kids to do it.

I understand that argument. I really do. And part of me would like to aspire to the higher ground where you can just ignore groups that are not beneath you. But too often I see the kind of harm these groups do. And that isn't it better to try and remove their ability to harm others by taking it to them first?

I mean, let's take a group of people minding their own business, just trying to get by in life under difficult circumstances. That's when an outside organization swoops in and tells them that they're amoral, horrible people and to stop what they're doing immediately. Furthermore they preach this loudly to whoever will listen and lobby politicians to do something about you. And then, just to rub salt into the wound, launch a very effective fundraising campaign using you as the villain of the piece.

Now, am I talking about Focus on the Family and the way they treat gay people, or am I talking about the International Fund for Animal Welfare and they way they treat Newfoundlanders and sealers? And really, if this was IFAW giving away free stuff, I wouldn't even be thinking twice.

So I'm trying to go and be the better person and let this group beat their own path to hell by preaching morality while espousing hate. But it's very, very hard to not want to do my part to help speed their way onto hell.

Stars in town

One of the weird little things about Iqaluit is the number of celebrities that pass through here.

No really.

Here's the thing Iqaluit's airport has a runway massively disproportionate to what is needed. It's a U.S. airforce length runway since there used to be a base here a few decades back. There's a story about Iqaluit being an alternate landing site for the space shuttle, but apparently it's bogus. That is really too bad because I always liked believing that.

Anyway, lots of planes fly over Iqaluit. If you're flying to Europe and using a circumpolar route, well, depending on what part of North America you're leaving, odds are you're going to fly over us. And if you're in a private jet, you might just need to pop down to Iqaluit and top up on fuel before heading on your merry way.

Many just stay on their plane, especially in the temperatures are in the -40 range. Some will get out and stretch their legs for a bit and you'll even get the odd one who'll pop into town briefly just to see what the place is like. The rumour goes around town pretty quick, but you normally find out after the event. Some of the ground crews at the airport will say "Hey, guess whose plane I refueled today?" at which point it's too late.

Now, I'm not really a celebrity stalker. I'm not sure if I've ever asked for an autograph as I'm not completely sure what I would do with it. And that Madonna apparently made a stop in Iqaluit does not overwhelm me with regret that I missed her. Although it would have been nice to have seen Robin Williams and Bruce Springsteen, who have also been rumoured to have made quick stops in town.

But I did enjoy this story about Sammy Hagar hitting town. I'm not the biggest Hagar fan in the world, but the confluence of events here is really amusing. I didn't hear him on the air. I sometimes have the radio on, but I normally just have my iPod at work. Still, this would have been funny. I wonder how I would have reacted if I'd been on the air and someone called me up to say they were at the airport and Sammy Hagar would like to talk to me?

A few quick links

My internet went down last night right in the middle of blogging. By the time it went back online, I was a bit too tired to focus enough to finish what I was saying at least semi-coherently.

So instead, a couple of quick links for you. A "normal" post this evening.

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you were wandering the desert in, say, a Warner Brother cartoon and began coming across some unusual skeletons, well there's this story about a guy with a bit too much time on his hands if you ask me. If you want to see more of his handy work, then you can go here, although be warned that most of the site is in Korean.

I'm not the biggest fan of the religious right in the world and even though this potentially screws them, costs them money and gets you free stuff, I post this with some reluctance. But, I really, really don't like Focus on the Family. So if you can handle getting free copies of the Chronicles of Narnia and don't feel like you need to take 15 showers afterwards for just going to their site, take a look at this.

Me and you and a dog named Boo...

I swear to God, I forgot that song existed until Cathy began singing it around the apartment. Weirdness...

So how is Boo doing after a week in his new home? Pretty well, it seems. He's not quite as clingy. The first few days we couldn't take a step without looking down first to make sure he wasn't underfoot. He wouldn't sleep all through the night. And he needed lots of attention.

Right now he's feeling a lot more confident. When we take him out for walks he's feeling confident enough to wander further afield and check things out. And the best thing, he's now sleeping through the night. We put him in his kennel when I go to sleep and he's not whining at 4 a.m. to get out and use the paper. We can get him to stay in the kennel until 7 a.m.

He's also starting to get used to the idea of doing his business outside. The first few days he would go for a 40 minute walk, do nothing and then come back to the apartment and go on the newspaper.

Today was a pretty good day because we took Boo out to the Sylvia Grinnell Park along with Ian, Jennifer and their dog Kuniq. That was a good couple of hours. Kuniq is just a touch bigger than Boo, but after getting used to each other they had a lot of fun.

Oh, and everyone who meets him in Iqaluit is falling deeping in love with him. But that's hardly a surprise.

So yeah, we're adapting to him and he's adapting to us. It's all going well so far.

And now, a few more pictures...



Kuniq chasing Boo...



Both taking a pause from chasing each other to look over a small pool.



Looking very cute.



Continuing the whole "Looking very cute" look.

Give us a lift

As several other bloggers up North have noted, this is the time of the year for sea lifts. It's not quite the same level of excitement in Iqaluit as it is in communities like Arctic Bay, where they might only get one or two sea lift boats per year visiting the community. In Iqaluit, it's a fairly steady stream of them as soon as the ice disappears from the bay in late June. The last boat will arrive sometimes in early October.

I have no idea the number of boats that will visit, but I should certainly think easily a dozen or more. If you want to get an idea of what it's like for those communities when the boat arrives, I encourage you to click the links and read the blogs. It might seem silly to people living in the south where even the most isolated of communities can still probably drive somewhere and resupply with only a minimum of fuss.

Now imagine the excitement when a boat arrives bringing everything from food, building supplies, new vehicles and more. And it's the only visit for the year. So yeah, it can get crazy.

In Iqaluit, it's a little more diffused, but still interesting. For one thing, I can already notice new cars around town. Obviously because of the costs, most people are not flying in new vehicles. So when the boats arrives, there's a steady stream of new cars and trucks in town. I've heard, and it could just be pure rumour, that there could be up to 300 new cars in town once the sea lifts are over. Which for a city the size of Iqaluit is quite a lot.

There's lots of construction going on, with the most visible being an apartment complex and a new hotel. And there are sea lift cans and boxes scattered all over town as people get their orders. Ours won't arrive until the middle of September.

And another rite of summer is the Sea Lift Sale at Arctic Ventures. They open up their warehouse and let people buy items in bulk. For us, it was a chance to pick up some stuff to either hold us over until our box gets in, or stuff that we forgot to order. It was just slightly crazy, with the line up to the sole cash register about 30 minutes or more long in the cramped confines of the warehouse.

For example, we picked up a couple of cases of pop (24 cans of Diet Coke go for $20 in case you're wondering), another box of paper towels (having a puppy is kind of eating into our supply) and some chocolate bars.

Between that and a foodmail order that arrived today, it's been a busy resupply day for us. It was kind of needed, what with our supplies running down over the summer (I let things get low rather than having to move them) and the deep freeze breaking. Still, it was a pretty good day, especially since Ian, Jennifer and Kuniq are in town and we hung out with them for a bit today.

It's all nice, but it's kind of the slow wind up to things going back to normal. Summer is very quiet in Iqaluit, with many people out of town on vacation, some residents moving south once the school year is over and many of the Inuit either out on the land or off visiting family in other communities. However, the temperatures are already starting to get a little colder, hovering around 10 C the last few days. People are resupplying. Teachers and other people are returning to the city after being away for the summer. New people are arriving. We're probably about six weeks or so from first snow on the ground.

It's still August, but it's already beginning to feel a lot like Fall...

One year in...

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of our arrival in Iqaluit. We arrived on a cloudy day with the temperature a brisk 10 C, struggling with 10 pieces of luggage and a cat not really having a large clue about what we were in for. We survived, of course. Max the cat, alas, did not. It was a weird few weeks. We spent the first week in a hotel not knowing how long we were going to be stuck there. We then moved into an apartment that we considered shockingly small, little realizing less than a year later we'd willingly move into an even smaller place just to escape that apartment. There was culture shock for me, but not so much for Cathy who had spent the previous year in Rankin Inlet.

There were lots of little things those first few months. The lack of trees. The temperature getting cold by the end of September. The shocking price of food. Stuff like that.

Some people deal with it and move on. Others can't handle it and snap. I mentioned in the comments section in the past week that there was a local reporter blogging. She moved up at the end of June. She's given her notice and is leaving. It's nothing against her. It happens. If you're from the south you need a certain mindset to handle the isolation, the differences in culture, the weather and dozens of other little things.

And we've done fine as it turns out. I kind of thought we would, but it's nice to see that I was right. Some friends will point out that I groused mightily those first few months, but that's who I am. When I was with the Muse I was the God of Bitterness with special powers in Ranting and Sarcasm. Lesser beings wept when faced by my full fury. It's diminished over the years, mostly due to Cathy's soothing influence. But that doesn't mean it can't flare up when given the right motivation. I rant as a means of keeping myself sane.

We talked about it over supper this evening. Iqaluit is home, but not Home. It's possible that over the next few years it will grow us on and we'll opt to spend the next decade or so here. Or we could be five and out. We shall see. But for right not, we like it fine enough and it will do. Perhaps not the most glowing reference in the world, but we're from Newfoundland. I'm from St. John's. All other places in the world are lesser realms in comparison...

Conversations to disturb your boss with

Me. Hey, I'll be a little late getting back from lunch. I need to drop the car off at the garage to get the brakes looked at. Wouldn't want to be driving along, have them fail and then die or anything.

Boss. Well, you'd probably live, but you would feel bad about all the people you'd have run over.

Me. (Pause)

Me. Yes, I guess I should, shouldn't I?

And then I walked out of the room without saying another word. Haven't seen the boss since then. Can't imagine why….

Oh dear lord...

No, this isn't some bit of fake weirdness I found. It's actually quite real. I found it on the always interesting blog of John Rogers. If you're not going there, then obviously you fear his monkey's kung fu.

Now, while I find this both funny and appalling (and somewhere I'm sure Mireille's head is exploding like an overstuffed pinata),Rogers opts for the more sacrilegious route, declaring that he wants a pair in adult size so he can have gay sex in them.

He's not gay, you understand. It's just the thing to do if you're wearing those pjs.

I'm fond of something in the comments thread - if a kid is wearing these and is quite religious, but wets the bed, has he committed a sin or made Holy Water?

Sad to say, I actaully spent some time dwelling on that.

So, OM, would you like me to get Owen a set for Christmas?

Bastard Reviews - Vanished

There's a couple of dozen new TV shows coming up in the next few months. I always liked reviewing stuff when I was with The Express. And I had the plan to get to Los Angeles at some point for the previews they gave reviewers in July. Most of them are pretty jaded about the entire experience, but I think it would be fun to do at least once.

Now, I'm not going to review every new show coming up this fall. I don't have the time or inclination. Some of the shows are so bad that you'd have to be an idiot to not see how much they're going to suck. I'll make a prediction in a few days on which show I think will be cancelled first in the new season. There's always some sad sack that dies a gruesome death after two shows and gets the mild infamy for being a new season's first casualty.

But right now I'm taking a look at Vanished, which is the first new show of the season. Fox has been jumping the gun on some of their shows because they lose all of October due to the baseball playoffs. The plan is to hook you now and hope you'll come back in November.

Vanished is also noteworthy because the actress who plays Sara Collins, the woman who disappears, is Joanne Kelly from Bay d'Espoir. Which is kind of cool.

Will the show last? Maybe, but I have my doubts. It's not that it's bad. It's just ehhhh. And really, you want more than that before committing to this kind of show.

The show is a season long mystery. What happened to Sara Collins, who disappears early in the pilot episode (thereby leading to the question of just how much we're going to see Kelly in this show). And that's hardly the only mystery in the show. Collins is the wife of a US senator, who has his share of political enemies. Their son is up to something, and so is their daughter. And Sara herself has more than her share of secrets.

Even the FBI agents involved in trying to solve the case have secrets and issues. There's no shortage of them in the show.

However, while there is a ton of possible subplots and the actors are fine in their parts, the show doesn't reach out and grab you. It's a season long mystery show. Which is an awfully big commitment. Normally, that kind of show has to do something very early in the pilot to grab your attention. Blowing up planes seem to work really well with both Lost and 24. So far there is curiosity about what happened, but I'm certainly not enthralled and dying to know what happens next. Good, but not gripping.

And you want gripping if you're going to commit to watching a show every Monday night for several months. I'll give the show another shot next week. But unless it gives me something amazing, I think I'll be giving this a pass.

Silly hats...

If I had been thinking, I would have started taking photos of all the retarded hats that were available at Disney. As it stands, these are the only ones I have. But for good measure, I add Cathy and her ears.



There was just a smidge of pirate stuff available. You'd almost think Disney had a pirate movie coming up or something.



I bought this hat. It might be completely retarded, but there you go. Cathy was so very proud that I did, although it was a bit hot wearing during the day.



Me with my hat, Cathy with ears. I think the sunglasses add the extra element of cool to the ensemble...

Three stories

Not precisely time sensitive on this, but these three stories caught my eye the past few days.

1. I haven't seen much on the province's plan to drop the provincial portion of sales tax on books including CD ROMs in either the news or with other bloggers. The thing that confuses me is that I was unaware, or had forgotten, that the province dropped the tax on book altogether. When did that happen? I'm starting to feel so out of touch with home.

I'm sure Ed and Sue would argue that this is just the province sucking up during a polling period. Which I've always felt is a bit of a disingenuous argument. Most people are fairly aware of why governments make these sorts of announcements during specific times of the year. I don't think they're fooling many people, nor will it influence poll numbers that much.

And besides, Grimes and Tobin were just as bad, if not worse, at doing this sort of thing.

2. Speaking of Ed, I was amused by this little post about a story in the Globe and Mail about a pack rat who managed to acquire a comic book collection worth $2.5 million. There is nothing like a wife to dash your dreams of hidden millions amongst your stuff, is there Ed?

And yes, since I collect comic books, I was thrilled with the story, up to a point. I do love reading about these old collections being found. I can never afford to own any of those comics, but they're so rare to find, it's always a joy when you hear about one.

The thing that infuriated me was towards the end, where it was revealed that part of the collection is missing, having been likely stolen by a contractor who was doing renovations on the house back in the 90s.

Understand, nothing infuriates a collector more that hearing about someone's collection being messed with. It's a nightmare scenario. Just as you wouldn't want it to happen to you, you wouldn't wish it on someone else. I was actually furious when I read that. The family who sold the comics can't press charges (too late) and won't pursue litigation and waste their newfound money on legal fees.

Still, I suspect I speak on behalf of many collectors when I say if you give us his name and address and we'll take care of the rest. Messing with someone's collection. That shit is just wrong.

3. Jon Stewart has already mocked the media for their frenzy over JonBenet Ramsey. And yes, the murder of a little girl, no matter what job the parents had already done to her, is tragic. But let's face it, there are a few bigger things happening in the world and the US right now.

Stewart knows that and was right to mock. My friend Karin sent me this cartoon which also nicely illustrates the point. Time to move on to other things, folks....

Gracious hosts

Been kind of caught of with the dog the last few days and got sidetracked off other things, such as the recent vacation. For that matter, talking about stuff other than myself and Cathy. I will get around to that again eventually. I never really meant for this to be a purely personal blog. But I've never known exactly where something will go when I sit down to start writing. And I suspect I'm far from alone in that.

But it occurs to me that in my ramblings in the past week I never gave proper thanks on the blog to our gracious hosts Jaap and Charlotte. Oh, we thanked them enough when we were leaving, but I feel it's only proper to give them their due here as well.

My friends know I'm exceptionally wary of imposing on them while travelling. Without going into detail there was an incident about 10 years ago where I clearly overstayed my welcome. There were extenuating circumstances, but still. Ever since then, I've been worried that I'm imposing, no matter what reassurances I get to the contrary.

That's changed slowly. We stayed with Dups a couple of years ago and that went well. And during the trip to San Francisco we stayed with Jaap and Charlotte. And they were, as the title of the blog says, very gracious hosts. They put us up in their home, which we severely covet. Not that it's a huge mansion. Far from it. It's a nice, comfortable, one-storey house. But they've done it up to suit themselves. It's perhaps not exactly how I would design a house, but I suspect it's not far from it. Oh, and it was about a five minute walk from their house to a very nice, barely used beach.

But that's one of the things about California - they have so many beaches that it requires only minimum effort to find one that no one is using.

Along with putting us up, they gave us rides to the train station that took us into San Francisco (they live in a community called Half Moon Bay, about 30 minutes south of the city), the took us out to supper, gave us information and were excellent company. You could not ask for better hosts. Oh, and Jaap drove me into the city one day where we did a nice geek out, hitting a couple of comic book stores and perhaps one of the best record stories I've ever been to - Amoeba Record.

However, because we're gits sometimes, we actually forgot to get a picture of the two of them. Oooops.

Anyway, thanks one more time to them for everything. They both said to come back anytime. And, you know, we might just take them up on that one day.

Meet Boo

So after much consideration we've decided to go with Boo. However, I'm sure there will be no shortage of nicknames given to him. It was time we picked something, though. And thanks to everyone who made a suggestion.



He's learning quick. His second night was quieter than his first. He's learning to deal with us when we leave the apartment without making an ungodly racket. He's a good puppy so far.

On an unrelated matter, we got another lesson on the dangers of leaving our car doors unlocked. Some motherfucker put a rotting dead fish in the car. Don't know when, at some point between 5 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Oh, and they junmped on the roof. We managed to pop that back into place, though. I cleaned up the mess.

So yeah, we're liking the new place despite it being small. It's feeling homey right now what with most stuff put away and the pictures up on the wall. But I am worried about the car. It's the only one parked along the side of the building. None of the other tenants in the building have cars, so ours is at risk of becoming a lovely target.

Hopefully they're isolated incidents, but twice in a little more than a week is making me a bit concerned.