Lazy Day

Got up this morning around 8:00 AM. I know that is crazy early for a weekend, but I think I am still on Mazatlan time which is two hours later. So I really didn’t get up till 10:00 AM on my time clock.

Erin and I had blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They were pretty tasty. We followed that up with some TV time on the couch. After relaxing for a while we walked down to the store and the post office. Vin sent me a couple batteries for my laptop which was awesome. The batteries I have now don’t last very long at all, so it will be nice to get some length back into the amount of time my machine runs on a charge cycle.

Erin has done some cleaning today which is really nice. The place seems to get messy on its own. Im sure I have about 99% reponsability for that happening. We need to get laundry done from our week down south, and get ready for the last 9 weeks of school.

The big plan for next year is to build a climbing wall in the apartment. Erin and I are starting to price out options, but I kind of have my mind set on this design. It’s a 9 foot cube shape with an open bottom, and an one open face.

This picture shows the top open, but there will be a “wall” on the top so you can utilize holds that will be screwed into the celing, both side walls, and the back wall. The floor will hopefully be a couple of matresses for cushening the falls. As you can see the back wall has a bit of slant to it which really can build up your strength. Having not climbed in so long, it will take a lot of work to get my strength back to where it was, if I ever can.

Erin has suggested I look for holds like thsee from MooseJaw.com. The picture is from their website. This is a package they sell, it has 60 holds, and the T-nuts to screw them into the wall. It seems like a pretty good deal. I don’t know how many holds I will need, but it would be a good start.

I have to still do some messuring, but I think it will fit in our other bedroom. Im pretty excited about the idea. I have really missed climbing since I have moved up to the arctic.

Well I had better get going. We are heading down to the Johnsons to visit in about 45 minutes, and We are making salsa, guacamoli and homemade tortila chips. Hopefully they will be a hit. It has been a rough transition coming back to a lack of warm weather, having to clean for ourselves, and no chips and salsa. So we are trying to make up for some of those losses.

Back in Alaska…

Well we are currently sitting in the Alaska Airlines Boardroom here at the Anchorage airport. It seems like we have been living in the boardrooms forever. In the last 24 hours we have been in the San Fran, Seattle, and now the Anchorage boardrooms. We his the LAX board room on the way down. I’m ready to be done traveling. It was nice while we were in Mexico, but having spent more time in airplanes in the last 24 hours than doing anything else is getting a little old.
Our flight out of San Fran was delayed last night for a couple hours. The plane that was scheduled to take us from San Fran to Seattle was stuck in Vancouver due to weather. They finally made it in around 10:00, so we didn’t get off the ground till after 10:30. We had a nice tail wind, so we flew really quickly up to Seattle. We didn’t get into our hotel until close to 1:00 AM. We were pretty wiped out. We also had to be back to the airport at 6:30 the next morning, so sleep was way too short. Our flight to Anchorage what leaving at 8:00 AM.
So we drug ourselves out of bed this morning at 5:30 AM, and got to the airport. The line for security was really really long. Once we finally made it through that joyous experience, we went and hung out in the boardroom there (Seattle) for a while. It came time for our plane to board, so we headed down there, got on the plane, and got all settled in. Looking around the plane was only a third full, we were sitting there for a while, and then over the PA we are informed that they are going to delay our flight for two hours, canceling a later fight to Alaska, and combining the two flights. So back to the board room we went, where we killed the next couple hours reading, and surfing the web. The second time we boarded the plane it was full to the brim. The flight went well, and delivered us safely in Anchorage. We are now waiting for our last flight of the trip back up to Unalakleet. We have to head down to that gate in about an hour.
Erin and I were thinking about heading to Valdez for the rest of the weekend, but it turns out the flight to Valdez was already booked up. So that was a bummer. We are going to try to find a weekend to head down there before the year is out.
I talked to Katie on the phone today. She spent her spring break working in soup kitchen down in I think LA, some where in California for sure. So she had a good experience doing that. She just found out she is going to have to drop out of her sailing class this spring because she found out it conflicts with all of her ultimate frisbee practices and competitions. So that’s a bummer. She is planning on taking it in the fall when frisbee isn’t an issue. She also is for sure working for Stan Stavens this summer. That is going to be a lot of fun for her. She is going to get some amazing pictures and video. I’m jealous…..
Well, not a lot else to talk about. I try to keep the blog going this time. See if I can get my list of readers back up to a number above zero. 🙂

A beautiful day

I am sitting in the chair in the living room that my dad made. It’s pretty comfortable. I took a look out the window a minute ago, and saw an abundance of blue sky. One of those days where you see how beautiful Valdez can be. Katie and I might go take a few pictures while we have the chance.
We take off for Anchorage tomorrow morning. Katie is getting her wisdom teeth out tomorrow afternoon. Poor girl, she won’t even be able to go out for dinner while we are in town. I think we might hit a movie and do a little shopping. Hopefully Katie won’t be in too much pain.
Haven’t done a whole lot since I’ve been home. I’m still really tired and have been trying to catch up on sleep.
Katie and I went out and took pictures today. The mountains look pretty cool on a sunny day. We are now going to watch the third episode of Lost. So I had better get going.

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

Shishmaref Carnival = No Kids in Brevig

I just wanted to drop a little note about this week. We have had an amazingly low attendance lately. Shishmaref is holding it’s annual “carnival”, which draws a lot of our community up for the festivities. So our school has been pretty empty. Yesterday we had the annual Brevig Teller Olympics. Each year the two schools get together and compete in four categories, volleyball, dodge ball, cross country skiing, and Eskimo baseball. The schools take turns hosting the competition. Last year Brevig hosted it, so this year, we piled all of our kids piled into sleds, and snowmachined the seven miles over to Teller. The ride over there went smoothly. The kids seemed to have a good time while we were there, and Teller ended up with the victory. Around 4:00 we headed back to Brevig. You can see some pictures of the kids in the sled on the left side of the screen. If they aren’t there, you can check out my flicker.

New Position with BSSD

Has it been a long time or what? I am back in Alaska after a quick spring break down in Minnesota. It was a lot of fun, nice to get out to some restaurants and not think about school for a while. Since my last post, I have accepted another job with BSSD. Next year I will be the Distance Learning Facilitator for the District. It sounds like I will be in charge of over 900 videoconferences, as well as helping students broadcast events like the district wrestling tournament, the Native Youth Olympics, and the Iditarod. I’m pretty excited. I’ll be working with John, Randy, and Leona, which will be a blast. Two days before Katie was supposed to leave, we went out for a snowmachine ride with C.O. and AnnMaire. We hadn’t gone very far when we came across a Fox. We wanted a closer look, so we started chasing it up the side of a hill. About half way up, the engine made a clunking sound, and then died. We were hoping that it was possibly the key that held the timing in place had sheared off. We weren’t so lucky. We drug the machine into C.O.’s shop, and tore it apart. After further inspection we found that the skirt on the piston was broken off and the cylinder had a crack in it. We looked around town and found out that Walter Seetot had a similar engine in a “shed”. I bought it from him for 150 dollars. We pulled the pistons off of there and picked the best of the two. He only had one of the cylinders ready for me the other was frozen in a cooler of snow and ice. So we were getting ready to put it all back together and found out that we needed the other cylinder. Apparently on a Ski-doo the cylinders are not interchangeable from left to right, I hear they are on Polaris machines. So I had to go back over to Walters house and chop at the one in the ice for about an hour. It finally came loose after Walter knocked off a few off the aluminum fins. Let me take you back to yesterday… We are doing standardized testing right now in our school. The 3-9 “grade” kids are taking the SBA, and the 10-12 “grade” kids are taking the HSGQE (High School Graduation and Qualifying Exam). I am proctoring the HSGQE. Well, we started around 10:30 A.M. yesterday, and that last student finally finished at 5:45 P.M. We did take a 20 minute lunch break, and a break every hour. So when I finally got out of there last night, I had to run over to Walters house and get the cylinder free, then over to C.O.’s shop. We got it all cleaned up and fought with little things along the way, but eventually got it back together. The motor started up just fine. The only problem now is the throttle is sticking. So I have to get a new one sent in from Nome.Today now, is the second day for the HSGQE. The students will be tested on their writing skills. We are scheduled to begin at 10:30 A.M. Well, we had a few students who didn’t show up on time. By 11:00 we had all but two. One said he was too tired, and couldn’t get out of bed, the other was “sick” and wouldn’t be making it in. So we wait, and wait, and wait. The federal government requires that 95% of the students need to take the HSGQE for the school to make AYP (adequate yearly progress). Since we only have 7 students testing for the writing portion of the exam, that means we need to have all 7 here. If one doesn’t show up, then that automatically drops us down below the required 95%. Well we waited until 1:00 and started the test. We were able to get the one student out of bed. The “sick” one still hasn’t come in. So our school will be dropping down to level 4 for next year. Its pretty frustrating that our school gets punished for lazy apathetic students, who could care less if they don’t get an education. So who knows how long I’ll be here this evening. We were testing for 7 hours yesterday. My birthday is coming up this month, and Erin was nice enough to get me a digital camera for the occasion. I’m pretty excited. Its a 5 mega pixel, which will be nice. If you get a picture you like with that, you can get 20″ X 30″ prints made. Its the same camera my mom has the Canon Powershot S500. I was trying to decide between that and getting a web page (buy a domain name, and pay for hosting service), but I still haven’t made that plunge yet. It costs about 15-20 dollars a year for the domain name, and then about 8 dollars a month for the hosting service. I would like to buy the domain name for 10 years, that’s the longest your can purchase it for, and then the hosting would be all I would have to worry about paying for after that. Well, that’s all for now. I’ll try to post more frequently again.