Back in UNK

Well we made it back safely. The flights were pretty uneventful. It was a beautiful day out in Valdez when we left. Katie snapped a picture of the mountains as we were walking out to the plane. I am hoping she will get a chance to upload that to the gallery for us all to see. Our flight to Anchorage went really quickly, and Era was nice enough to check all of our bags on through to our final destinations. So all we had to do was go and check in for our next flight with our respective airlines. Katie was flying with Continental, and Erin and I were flying the trusty Pen Air. After we got all that squared away, we went to Chili’s for a little lunch. We visited for a while, and then decided find a place to plug in our laptops. Katie wanted a couple things from my machine, and I wanted a couple things from hers, so we firewired up while Erin was working on the heel of the Christmas stalking she is knitting. Its amazing how she makes those knitting projects turn into real things. I could never do that. In the time it took us to do that, Erin managed to lose her wallet in her backpack. 🙂 Its amazing how that tiny backpack she has can make things disappear like it does. I even dug around in there, and couldn’t find it. So she went back to Chili’s and looked around there with out any luck. When she returned she checked her backpack again, and found it down in the bottom of one of the compartments. So that was a little exciting there for a while. It was then about time for Katie to get through screening to her gate, so we walked her down to the gate, and head down stairs to the Pen Air “gate”.

We are now back in Unalakleet. We actually have to wake up early tomorrow. The days of sleeping in have come to a close. 🙁 This week is going to be pretty busy. I have to get the journalism modules up in moodle, schedule some video conferences, work with the student broadcast team (SBT) members to prepare them for their upcoming broadcast this week, and get ready to broadcast the volleyball tournament this weekend. I think its time to head to bed if I want to get a decent nights rest for the coming week of dressing nice and working hard.

The Last Night

Well the Thanksgiving week is coming to an end. It is amazing how fast time flies some times. Today was nice and realaxing. Erin and I hung around the house while everyone esle went out and about around town. Aron, Robin and Mark all went up to the pass to do a little snowboarding. They were only able to get one run in an hour because the wind was howling at a brisk 40 miles an hour. I guess the visabilty was a little questionable. Mom and dad took off for a little snowshoeing and Katie went to the library to work on a 10 page paper she has due next week. I don’t konw if I should be taking breaks like this. I am getting a little too used to sleeping in and not having to do anything. I hope I can get back into the swing of things in a timely fashion when I get back to Unalakleet. I will be a fast and furious week with the wrestling and volleyball tournaments coming up next weekend. I get to fly to Stebbins with a few students and PK to broadcast the volleyball games live to the district. At the same time Randy and John will be broadcasting the regional wrestling tournament to the other districts in Alaska that are sending schools to the regional tournament. The following Monday I am heading back to Anchorage to work on setting up a course BSSD will be conjointly running with Southwest Region School District. I guess we are going to start Elf up here in a little bit, so I should run.

Thanksgiving

Sitting around with friends and family. The Holdens drove down from Fairbanks today. Its nice to hang out with them talking about old times. Mark Standley and his two kids Aaron and Robin will be getting in sometime this evening. It’s going to be a bit of a full house. My friend Josh Steadman also came down from Fairbanks. It’s fun to hang out with him. Living up in Unalakleet makes it a little difficult to hang out with old friends.

I am pretty excited about getting everyone set up with blogs, and the photo gallery. I hope people get a chance to look around at our family pictures, and read a little into our lives. I hope it is something that you find interesting. My future posts will hopefully be a little more exciting to read.

New TV

It was a beautiful chilly day out today. I wasn’t able to get out and really enjoy it since I was at work all day. But it is nice to feel the chill in the air when I am walking to school. Randy and I bolted the plaza TV to the wall today, and the green paint came in. So we will get the painting done in the next couple of days. I am really excited to get the studio finished. I’ll post some pictures and a panoramic when we get all finished up.
We had Josh and his daughter Abby, and Jason, Deb, and their two kids Ben and Katie over for dinner tonight. It was nice to socialize a bit outside of the office. Seems like everyone is looking forward to the three-day weekend coming up. I think everyone needs a long weekend to catch up on sleep and relax.

Distance Learning Opportunities

The month has flown by.  My new job has been very demanding and exciting for me so far.  Today I was working with Randy and John to finalize our plans for the year. We created a Distance Learning Flyer for principals, teachers, and students so they will know about the opportunities we are providing for them this year.  I think it is going to be an exciting year.  The broadcast room is coming together nicely.  The sheet rocking was finished up on Saturday and we will be applying the green paint to the wall this week.  I am hoping to have a functional studio by the middle of next week.  I have a time-lapse of the sheet rocking I’ll post in a couple of days.  That’s all I have for now.  I’ll be back later with some more.

Heading North

Currently at 37,000 feet somewhere over “Beautiful British Colombia”.  Yesterday I was swimming in Lake Vermillion on a hot sunny day.  The water was the perfect temperature.  I little cool to the skin after being baked by the sun, but warm when swimming around.  The water was filled with tiny pieces of yellow green algae that apparently comes out during the hottest time of the summer which makes visibility underwater even more difficult than it already is.  The swim was very nice.  We took off in the boat out to the middle of the lake where we jumped off.  We swam by the boat for about a half an hour.  If we didn’t have to drive to the cities it would have been the perfect day to spend out on the boat.  hhhhmmmm….. Maybe next summer.  This summer has suddenly come to a close.  I start my new job as the “Distance Learning Facilitator” on Wednesday the 3rd.  Seems like the summer didn’t even exist.  Erin and I drove to the cities yesterday afternoon.  We got in to our hotel in the evening and went for a little walk around the area looking for a movie theater or a restaurant.  We ended up going back to the restaurant in the hotel.  Dinner was tasty.  It was kind of late by then so we crashed for the night.  We had to be up early to get me to the airport on time.  Erin dropped me off at the gates and headed back up North.  She was, believe it or not, going to pick someone else up in Cook and drive her to the Hibbing airport.  So she has a day of driving.  Erin’s summer unfortunately will be coming to a close here soon too.  She has to be in Homer on the 10th to do a joint training with Sharon.  I hope she will have some relaxing days on the lake before she has to head north.
When I land my father should be awaiting my arrival.  Then begins a day of shopping.  I am going to try to get as much of the bulk food that I can for the year.  It’s kind of a toss up at this point not knowing what our apartment will be like, weather we’ll have storage room for the food coming up.  I also need to stop off and pick up a part for the satellite dish that broke last year when we were setting it up.  Possibly stop off at the DMV to get my drivers license updated.  I found out it expires in April, and since I’ll be up north when it does, it could be a little tricky to get it renewed before it expires.  Well, that’s all for now.  I think now that I am back at work my blog entries will be posted more often.  Hope everyone is having a great summer.
Later….Bill

It’s been a while….

I have been waiting to update my blog because so much time has gone by and I wanted to get it all documented. Erin has persuaded me to just post it and get on with what’s happening now so I will continue it. She is right, I don’t know when I would have found time to sit down and write up the last two months. So before I begin I want to say that the wedding was a lot of fun. It was nice having all of our friends and family together to celebrate the day. Our trip to Hawaii was really nice and relaxing. I’ll get some pictures add to my flickr account.
I am sitting in the Duluth airport right now waiting to fly to Minneapolis on my way to Valdez. I went to sleep around 1:00 A.M. this morning, and was up at 3:10 A.M. for the drive to the airport. Laura was kind enough to give me a ride, especially at such an early hour. We left the house around 3:30 A.M. and got to the Duluth airport around 5:20 A.M. I get to spend about four hours in Minneapolis, and about 2 hours in Anchorage. It’s going to be a long day. The last few days have been really really hot in Northern Minnesota. The temperatures were in the 90’s with the humidity trying to keep up. We spent a lot of time swimming in the lake. In the water its really refreshing, but as soon as you get out you feel like you have to jump right back in it so warm. An Alaska climate will be a nice change of pace.
Erin is out in Baltimore for two weeks right now training for SFA. She wasn’t too excited to leave the lake, but seems to doing well out there. As well as you can be while working in the summer. She will be flying back into Duluth about 10 hours after me on the 22nd. Then I’ll have about a week down here before I head back up to Alaska for work. I’ll be able to make it to Mike Svir’s wedding. I’m looking forward to that. I miss hanging out with him. Well, it looks like we are about to start boarding. I’ll be sure to upload this in Minneapolis.

Flying to Maui

Sorry it’s been so long since my last posting. The end of the school year was pretty busy with getting moved out of our apartment and tieing up loose ends at school. All of our stuff was sent over to Unalakleet on the district plane. Hopefully it will be waiting for us in our new apartment in the fall. Its nice to have the year behind us. Erin and I are currently flying from Maui to Seattle. We have been in the air about a half an hour now, so we have another 5 hours till we hit the main land. After the school year finished up we left Brevig Mission, and when I say we left when things finished thats no exageration. We were moved out and flew out after school on the last day. We spent the evening in Anchorage and flew to Minneapolis the next morning. We flew with Sun Country which I would highly rcomend. We upgraded our tickets to first class when we checked in. It made the 5 hour flight seem very fast and relaxing. It is amazing how a little room makes such a difference in your travel expierence. When we got into Minneapolis, Erins dad Jim was there to pick us up. We hopped in the car and drove up to Cook that night. I can’t remember what time we finally go into Cook, but it was night time. We spent the next 10 or so days tieing up loose ends for the wedding. Everything came together nicely. The wedding was a lot of fun. I lucked out and Erin didn’t change her mind before the ceremony so now I am a married man. Jeremy, Josh, and Paul came over to be groomsmen in the wedding. We were very fortune and the Congers let us use their cabin wich is on the same lake as Erins home. It’s actually right around the corner from here house. So the guys were able to stay there prior to the wedding. It was pretty fun. Jim just came into part ownership of a stellar pontoon boat. So we went out for a ride on the lake. It was nice to just hang out and relax. Nice to not have to think about work for a while.

MOS Certification for BSSD Students…. Bad idea…

I am once again sitting in the Hageland “terminal” in Nome. This time, I am on my way to Unalakleet. I have been asked to assist with writing some technology curriculum. The district wants to get our students IC3 and MOS certified. I am not sure what IC3 certification is I guess it has something to do with basic computer skills. MOS certification is knowing all about the Microsoft Office Suite (word, excel, and PowerPoint). I guess the plan is to come up with a class that is aligned with our district standards, which will also meet the needs of these two certifications. The students would do a bulk of the learning in their own schools from their own teachers. When they feel they are ready to be certified, they will go into Nome to NACTEC, which is our districts regional technical school, and do a quick refresher of all the skills and take the appropriate tests.

BSSD NYO

I am sitting in the Hageland terminal in Nome. I am on my way home from the Bering Strait School District Native Youth Olympics Championships, which was held in Shaktoolik this year. PK and I were sent there to help facilitate a few local students in broadcasting the events. We just got some new video mixing equipment for the district that we used for the event. It was really nice. We were able to have up to 4 video inputs. Each input has its own tiny TV monitor, so you can see which camera you want to have being broadcasted out. You can then transition between them, have picture in picture, and even do live chroma keying (delete the background like with a green screen). We also had four 20 meter firewire cables and special repeaters that allowed us to hook them end to end. We hooked one into a GL2 and mounted it on the wall of the gym, for a high angle view. We used two others, one into a GL2, and the other into a smaller canon dv camera like a zr85 that were mobile and could be moved around the gym to get the desired camera angle. The person running the switcher was able to switch between any of the feeds at any time to show the audience the different events. We did a few live interviews of the athletes and a coach. If we would have had some more equipment we could have been set up a little better and done more of them. It was a lot of fun though.