Winter Camping
Busy
A lot has been going on lately. I’ve just begun a Master in Educational Technology from the University of Alaska Southeast. The program is all online except for one summer class held in Juneau. I’m currently taking 3 classes totaling 9 credits. This all on top of teaching and continuing my efforts with BWCACAST.
On the BWCACAST front, I’m still kicking out episodes from the summer trips. I’m currently releasing episodes from the trip we took in July with my parents. I have one ready to release this coming Tuesday, so be sure to drop by the site and check it out. I’ve also got a couple of really fun episodes in the works. First I did an interview with a man named Joe Priatle from Ely. He’s 91 years old and has been making snowshoes for 70 of them. He was kind enough to allow me to film him re-rawhiding a pair of snowshoes my Uncle Zac gave me. It was a lot of fun watching him start out with the rawhide straps in what seemed to be a haphazard criss-cross and evolve into an amazing web. I’ve also had the good fortune to team up with www.blackriversleds.com. They make a very nice toboggan sled for winter camping. They sell the sleds completed or you can buy a kit from them. I’ve partnered up with them to do an episode on putting one of their kits together. I’ve got all the parts and hope to shoot putting it together this coming weekend. With the sled finished up we are planning a winter camping trip in the middle of February. I don’t think we’ll go very far back into the BWCA, because we’ll be leaving after school on Friday and have to be back by Monday. It should be a good time though.
School has been going well. Our student broadcasts seem to fluctuate from week to week with more and less professional shows. For whatever reason some of my students feel that everything needs to be funny and joking around takes precedence over just about anything else in their lives. I continue to work with them to provide a quality news program once a week. My web design students are great to work with. We keep plugging away at a variety of php mysql open source cms’s, blogs, galleries, and soon wiki’s. On a side not I’m really hoping for a snow day tomorrow. Its been snowing since last evening and doesn’t plan to stop until tomorrow at 4:00 PM. The National Weather Service says we shouldn’t drive unless we really need to and yet our school district hasn’t made the decision to close school for tomorrow.
Erin and I spent yesterday making venison snack sticks. We kind of got a late start on things. But we took 10 lbs of venison, 8 lbs of lean burger, and 2 lbs of pork. Ground them all up together. Split into two 10 lbs batches we added in the seasonings for a pepper batch, and a hot batch. It then took us about an hour to stuff the first batch into collagen casings. Once stuffed we hung the snack sticks in a smoker and smoked them for 3 hours. During that time we stuffed the second batch. When the first batch was done smoking we put them in the oven at 200 degrees to finish them off. The second batch went into the smoker. This all went down around 9:00 PM. It took over 3 hours for the first batch to reach the recommended 160 degree internal temperature. Sot it was 12:15 AM before I was able to take them out of the oven and put the second batch in for their cooking time. I ended up having to get up at 2 Am, 3 AM, 4 AM, and finally 4:30 AM before the second batch was done and I could turn off the stove and get some good sleep. Needless to say I took a nap today.
Up in the air
Well… I spent the morning up a ladder. Kerry Bidle is our schools athletic director and really is working hard to increase student involvement in extra curricular activities. One of the ways he’s working at this is by keeping all students, staff, and visitors informed of whats going on in our school. To do this he’s worked with local businesses to fund an electronic information system. We’ve installed three tv’s as of last year, and have been working on adding a couple more that will allow us to push content into the Roosevelt school as well. The system pushes powerpoint slides and video over ethernet to the tv’s. So Kerry spent about 7 hours yesterday getting all the wires pulled through the ceiling. Today I helped him finish up putting the ends on and getting everything hooked up correctly. Unfortunatly it didn’t work right off the bat. I’ve got to do some more testing tomorrow to see what the issue is. I really hope I can figure this out. Its pretty frustrating to work on something for so long and to spend most of the time up a ladder to have it not work out.
Well I’ve got to get on the treadmill. Its already almost a quarter to 8.
Fast Fall
It seems as the fall has just flown by. I can’t believe its already Christmas break this coming week. Erin and really enjoyed our time a week ago when we went up to Canada. It was great to get away just the two of us and spend some time together. Thunder Bay was nice, and our time on the shore of Lake Superior was nice and relaxing.
This past week seemed to go pretty quick. I think when your down in the trenches it can seem like its moving awfully slow, but when you look back you seem to forget those times. Anyway it was a good week. I went to a wrestling meet on Tuesday night and watched a few of my students who are on the Virginia high school wrestling team. It was fun to see them compete. They did a very nice job winning both of their dual meets. I went to the meet after our weekly curling match. Tony our high school art teacher, Chuck our superintendent, Tom one of our P.E. teachers and myself all curl in the early league. We’ve competed three times so far and are sitting at 2 for 3. I played pretty well our last game getting most of my rocks in the general area they were supposed to be, so that was good.
On Friday I was signed up to take tickets at the hockey game. Since I was tied up with this Erin spent the evening making lefsa. It turned out really well and I think she ended up getting about 70 pieces. The hockey game was fun to watch. Virginia beat International Falls after a bit of a shaky start.
Saturday night Erin and I went to her schools Christmas party at the wooden table. It was fun spending time with the people she works with on a daily basis. After dinner we headed to Hibbing to pick up Katie who was just finishing up about 28 hours of travel getting down here from St. Michael for her Christmas break.
Today we did a little bit of ice skating. I don’t know how the rink will be tomorrow. We got a little bit of snow this evening. It seems the moment you get the ice cleared enough for skating mother nature decides to spoil the fun by dropping more of that white stuff. There us rumored to be a pretty big storm that is supposed to hit us on Christmas eve. If that’s the case we need to make sure we take advantage of the skating while its available.
Erin has two days of work this week and I have three, so our Christmas break is just around the corner. I am really looking forward to relaxing and getting outside some over break.
I hope you all have a nice holiday season
Thunder Bay and the North Shore
Erin and I had dueling dentist appointments on Friday. We both took the day off of school so we could make the appointments and when finished cavity free we headed East. We rented a room at the Cliff Dweller on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The view out our room was spectacular. There’s something about looking over a body of water with no distant shorline.
We basically just checked in and then headed back down the shore to Duluth to catch a St. Scholastica Hockey game. Erin’s cousin Brennan is one of the goalies for the team. He unfortunately for us was not playing in the game we attended, but the saints put on a good show winning 6 to 3. Brennan ended up starting the next night which turned out to be a televised game. He came ready to play stopping all 29 shots thrown his way. The saints won the second game 3 – 0.
We got back t the Cliff Dweller at about 11:30 and crashed right out. The next morning we were leaving the country and we needed our sleep. After our continental breakfast we were on the road by 10:00 heading up the highway to the Canadian Border. After a couple hour drive we found our way through the border and at Kakabeka Falls just 25 Kilometers outside of Thunder Bay.
We found out that the falls were in a park of some sort and we needed a parking pass to displayed in our car window to park there. We unfortunetly didn’t have any Canadian currency so we went back into the little town of Kakabeka to find an ATM machine. After a quick withdrawal we broke our newly acquired 20 at a local gas station for the Loonies we need to plug into the machine what would render us a valid parking permit.
The falls were amazing with a huge drop to a canyon floor below. The frosty trees that lined the picturesque falls looked like they’d been dusted with powdered sugar.
After checking out the falls from both sides of the river we headed into Thunder Bay. The town of around 110,000 people is just as you guessed it like any other city. We contemplated going to a movie, because that’s what we do in foreign countries but the show times didn’t quite match up with our “schedule”. After driving around town a little and checking out the Bay part of Thunder Bay we headed back to America stopping off at a cheese farm and picking up some smoked Gouda from the only cheese place in Canada that makes Gouda. The smokey flavor is very strong and tasty.
For dinner that night we drove up to the top of Lutsen mountain to a resturant we’d been to last year with Jesse and April. Dinner was very good and with full tummies we went back to the lake where we ended our weekend by watching Iron Man back in the hotel.
It sure was a nice weekend get-a-way. Now we have a week and a half sprint to Christmas break.
Every 5 min
Last spring I set up a laptop looking out our window at the lake while the ice was going out. In a week span I got a little video of the ice melting. Its fun to see this slow change happen in just a minute or so. I just set up another one this morning to film the ice forming this fall. Its set to take a picture once every 5 min at 10 frames per second. I don’t know if this is the best set up, but I’m kinda shooting from the hip. The smart person would do the math to figure out what they want there outcome to look like. I figure I can tweak it a bit in Final Cut after its done shooting. We’ll see how it comes out. I’ll basically get about on second of video every hour its running. I turn if off in the evening because its usually too dark to see anything anyway. Tonight would have been pretty with the full moon arching across the lake. I’ll be posting the finished product so you all and take a peak and maybe leave a little feedback on what you think of it.
Working out….
I have begun the tedious, laborious, painful task of working out. Granted I’ve only gone twice so far, but its sure not easy. I get up around 5:00 am and head to the school. I am able to use the schools equipment when its not in use by the sports teams. The morning is the best time to achieve this. So it makes for a wicked early morning, but I get it out of the way for the day which is nice. I’m just starting out with trying to get my cardio back up to par. So I’ve been running on the treadmill for about 20 min with a 5 min warm up and a 5 min cool down. Yesterday I lifted some weights after running and I end each day with sit-ups regardless what I do. So I’m hoping I’ll be getting in some better shape here over the next few months. Its sure not fun being out of shape.
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