Quick Weekend

Well after the crazy last week we had, everyone left and I found my self sitting by myself in an empty house. I can’t wait for Erin to get back.. I miss her when she is gone. The weekend starated an anniversery party for Jim and Teresa Hickerson. It was hosted at the Peace on Earth pizza place here in Unalakleet, and there were many guests. After the party was over a few people came over to the beach in front of our house, and we had a hot chocolate and a little fire.

Before I went to bed, I mixed up the sour dough starter so I could have pancakes in the morning. Well, I slept in until 11:30 Saturday morning. and got a call from Jim Hickerson not too long after that asking if I’d like to go fishing with him. So that kind of put a damper on the pancakes, but the fishing was great. We boated up the north river to a little hole the fish like to rest in on their journy up the river. We were fishing with eggs, which is almost like cheating they work so well. Now for those of you that haven’t done this before you are not using chicken eggs, you are using salmon eggs. The eggs have been sprinkled with borax laundry detergent which helps them to firm up and hold together a little better.

So you cut off a bunch of eggs about the size of a ping pong ball.  On your hook there is a loop that opens up to secure the eggs.  When you toss the eggs into the water you just let them sink to the bottom.  Its usually about 10 – 20 seconds before you have a fish on the line.  Sometimes its as soon as the eggs hit the water.  We did pretty well.

After fishing Vanessa had a few of us over for dinner.  We had home made pizza which was delicious.  The Johnsons, Carrie, and the Curriers were also there.  It was nice to visit with everyone.  We all headed out around 11:00 to get some sleep.

This morning I got some sleep, and then went up river with the Johnsons, the Curriers, Carrie, and the Howards.  We brought up Holts famous tool box grill, and cooked some hotdogs.  We caught a bunch of fish, and headed home.

Josh and I are going to smoke the fish we caught.  We stripped the fillets and are soaking them now in a salt and brown sugar brine.  In about 20 minutes, Josh will be over to help me hang them up in the smoker.  We will let them dry all night an most of tomorrow, and then smoke them for about 4 hours tomorrow evening.  We are hoping they will turn out.  I’ll have some pictures to show you of how things go.

Back to the Grind

Well, a lot has happend since my last post.  I went and had a wonderful time in Talkeetna helping Rick and Tiff build their yurt.  We got a lot accomplished in the few days I was there.  I am looking forward to seeing how it all turns out when they are finished.  I posted some pictures of the process.

I am now back in Unalakleet working in the district office.  We are training the new teachers and working with the principals to get everyone ready for the year.  Next week every teacher in the district will be here for beginning of the year training.  I will be teaching a few classes.  So hopefully they will go well.

Erin flew in yesterday which is nice.  It took me a few days, but I got the house put together before she came home.  Jim (Erin’s dad)  came in today.  So we are planning on some salmon fishing and berry picking while he is here.  It should be a lot of fun.

I am hoping to put up a web cam this year out our window.  I don’t know if it’ll be doable because I need to find another computer that can stay at home to push out the images.  I was thinking about getting a mac mini to use as a media center, which would also work out well for pushing out a web cam image.  I don’t know….  It’s a lot of money to spend on something I don’t really need.

We got up river fishing a couple days ago which was fun.  There are some pictures of that on the gallery of those as well if your interested.