Tuktoyaktuk is not the end of the world...

"Oliver was with Trudeau and one of Trudeau's girlfriends one night when another stunning woman suddenly arrived; the prime minister had inadvertently made two dates for the same evening. When one of the women angrily told the group that an RCMP officer had gossiped about the number of girlfriends traipsing through 24 Sussex, Trudeau replied: "Would you be able to recall that Mountie's name? I would like to arrange for him to spend the rest of his career mushing huskies in Tuktoyaktuk."

Maclean's Magazine, October 31st, 2011. Pg 35

Deon found this story in Maclean's magazine. I find it funny that Trudeau thought sending someone to Tuktoyaktuk would be a cruel punishment. And here we are, having chosen to move here, and enjoying life here! In my opinion, a crueler fate would have been mushing huskies in Grise Fiord!


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Well... so long, Well.ca!

This morning, after placing another order on one of my favourite websites, Well.ca, I received this disappointing message:

"Starting October 12th 2011, we have to implement a shipping charge on orders to remote locations. The charge is going to be $14.99 on orders above $300 and $29.99 on orders below $300.

Let me tell you that I really did not want to do this. I want to offer free shipping on all orders, especially for you in remote locations, but the math did not work. When we ship a $20 order, we were sometimes paying $50 in shipping and we can’t continue to operate our business that way. Our customers in remote locations are very important to us (you are some of our favourites!) but we are getting more and more orders for these areas. Unfortunately this is costing us a lot and as a small business we cannot continue losing money in this way."

The message was followed by a coupon code for one last order with free shipping before we're cut off. I suppose we're not actually "cut off"... but I am not interested in paying $29.99 to order my hygiene products, nail polish remover, shampoo and conditioner. I could buy a whole lot of overpriced items here or in Inuvik without going over that $30 shipping cost that Well has implemented!

I do understand where they're coming from... my order this morning was for six 1-litre bottles of hydrogen peroxide. And a bag of ginger candies. An explanation is probably required here- the peroxide is for soaking our polar bear skull to finish its cleaning regime. As you may know, peroxide is dirt cheap ($2.99/1-litre bottle), so my order came to about $30 including the candies. However, I'm sure the total weight of 6 litres of liquid was pretty heavy, and thus, my cheapskate order would have probably cost them more to send than the value of the products themselves (I know this from shipping hundreds of boxes back and forth since moving up here). So... I can't blame them, and I guess all good things must come to an end.

A similar situation happened with Costco.ca, wherein they used to ship virtually all of their products from their online store to the Arctic for free (there were a few exceptions, such as REALLY BIG TVs). During this period, we ordered a plethora of furniture, including our sectional couch which came in 4 individual pieces. We chose this specific one because no one else would fly a couch to Tuk. However, each piece of the couch retailed at about $299. When each piece arrived, a freight waybill was attached to them with the cost of shipping written on them. To get each piece from Yellowknife to Tuk was approximately $800. That doesn't include getting the pieces from the warehouse to Yellowknife by ground shipping. So our couch that retailed for approximately $1,200 had shipping fees of well over $3,200 associated with it, which Costco absorbed. Needless to say, soon after, Northerners could no longer order anything of significant size or weight from Costco!

Lets hope that we're not "cut off" by anyone else in the near future. All we've got left is Old Navy/GAP/Banana Republic, Amazon/Chapters/Indigo (all of the aforementioned have minimum order amounts to get free shipping), and some Costco products.

Cakes as of late...

When summer ended, I decided it was time to start making some cakes again. So, I put a quick post on facebook saying that I was back in the cake business, and the orders have once again started flowing in. So far I've only been able to complete three, and have had to turn down quite a few more because I've been out of town for work a lot over the last few months.

I have a repeat customer with 5 (soon to be 6) kids, and the youngest two are fond of my cakes. The littlest one asked for a Ben10 Humungousaur cake- I had no clue what that was. However, I looked it up online and made a template and was able to do an okay job of it!



I then had to do an Ariel cake, from the Little Mermaid for 4 year old Maizlyn. It was easy to do because her mom had the pan, but the red was a little hard to make with the Wilton no-taste red paste. It takes about 1/2 a pot of paste to make a good 2 cups of red icing. In retrospect, I should have done the black outlines a bit better, but I was a bit out of practice!



Finally, I had another repeat customer ask for another cake with roses for her mother's birthday. This year she's 75. Not sure I like the colour scheme on this one, but it turned out okay. It was supposed to be a basket with pink and red flowers in it... should have picked a different colour for the basket.



Up next, hopefully a christening cake. Had to turn down a baby shower cake and a wedding cake due to work travel...

The weather in Tuk today will be... a seductive young lady?

I logged onto CBC North to check out what the weather will be tomorrow, and hence my chances of getting back into Tuk. Not good... but on a side note, the current weather is depicted by a young lady's picture. I'm sad that I'm not in Tuk to experience this unique phenomenon!



On another note, we're off to Toronto and Ontario for vacation in a week's time, and next Saturday is operation find a wedding dress! Other than the fact that I'm a little confused as to what type of dress I'd like, the other hard part about planning a wedding from Tuk is the fact that finding a wedding dress is pretty much a one-shot deal. I must find a dress this trip, so that in December I can do the fittings, and in May I can wear it for the wedding. Eep!

I've got an appointment at a place called "The Bride's Project" which is in Toronto. It's a nice concept, wherein they collect donations from recent brides, or bridal boutiques, and sell the new or gently used dresses and all of the profits go to cancer related causes. You can check out their website here!

Summer is here...

Well, it is official, summer has arrived. We had some beautiful weather near the end of May, with temperatures up to 25 degrees and lots of sun. I went to Inuvik at the end of May and found myself sweating when walking outside. The beginning of June however, was a different story. We had some cold weather, and several days of snow. Particularly, around June 8th and 9th we had flurries and snow that stuck to the ground in both Inuvik and Tuk.


Snow in the second week of June- gross!

We've since recovered, with temperatures near 30 degrees again, which we would have thought to be extremely rare before moving here. It seems as though each summer we get two weeks of "hot" days, even if they are not consecutive. The ice left the harbour on June 18th, so we now have open water for boating and swimming and fishing.

The warm and windy weather has provided us with lots of opportunities to be outdoors. In the summertime, we live for the evenings and weekends when we can be outdoors doing whatever... fishing, swimming, picnic-ing, yard work.

In May, Deon managed to find a BBQ at the Northern Store, and a tank of propane which is a very rare find up here. We spent some time collecting wood pallets so that we could make a "deck" out back on which to BBQ. We've enjoyed homemade burgers, ribs, and pork on the grill so far, and look forward to using it until it's too cold to use up here!


The BBQ deck that we built.


The chef!

We have also gotten back into fishing and picnic-ing. Deon had his first swim on the 21st which was Aboriginal Day, and a day off for us. We also went fishing, and Deon caught the first fish of the season, while Barry caught three fish on our first trip out. One was a flounder, or a "flat fish" as people call them here in Tuk. they're quite odd little creatures.


The flat fish- this is a view of the top of it's body, which looks like your average fish's side view.


The bottom view of the flat fish.

This weekend we had a busy weekend, we went to our friends' wedding for which I made a cake, and Deon was the "official photographer." The cake was a five layer carrot cake with buttercream and fondant. The bottom of each tier was wrapped in red ribbon, and then I created some red gumpaste roses for decoration. Most people seemed to enjoy it which is good! We enjoyed the wedding and reception, where the food included trout, whitefish, goose, muktuk, eskimo donuts, and a traditional turkey dinner.


The wedding cake that I made.


The Kitti Hall, all decorated up for the wedding.


Our friends Glenna and John-Blo and their family.


A picture for my mom of myself with the cake- and the dress and shirt that I got in Maui.

Before the wedding yesterday, as well as all day today we have been working on constructing a community garden. The GNWT has sent up the supplies for Tuk to build a cold-frame greenhouse, which will be Canada's north-most community cold-frame apparently. This weekend we put together the steel structure, which was tough work as we had to basically pop up the top of the green house onto a rectangle base. We then found out that the whole roof was missing- it must have been left in Inuvik when all of the supplies arrived on the ice road. In the mean time, we constructed 12 garden boxes out of wood, and started to fill them with peat. We have so far planted some potatoes, and other plants that were started in the Inuvik greenhouse. I'm still getting used to the concept of a community garden (no one gets individual plots), and will be interested to see how it pans out. At any rate, it's great to be outdoors and doing some work for the health and wellness of our community.


Larry, one of the Stanton managers cutting wood for the garden plots.


Deon did most of the drilling of metal screws into the frame- this is before we popped it onto the rectangle base, it is a lot taller now.

It was definitely a team effort, with everyone working and contributing resources and supplies to make it a success thus far. We had to haul water from a lake below the garden site to water the freshly planted plots, we had to round up tools capable of digging into the permafrost to anchor the frame... so it has been a great community building exercise. The project is intended to supply the community with fresh produce, and an ancillary benefit of it will be that it will act as a tourist attraction as well for the Tuk tour operators.

That is what we've been up to in June in a nutshell on the social front. Work is going well as usual, and I'm settling into my new "boss" role quite well as it is providing new and interesting challenges every day!

Four Seasons Maui at Wailea...

After the suggestion of Deon's brother and sister-in-law that Four Seasons are some of the best hotels for service, quality and scenery, we decided to give it a shot. We are pretty big fans of Caribbean all inclusive resorts, so we didn't know whether staying at a hotel-style resort would be our "thing," having to pay for meals and drinks separately, and paying a fair bit more than an all inclusive resort. So we decided to give the Four Seasons one chance so that we could determine whether it really was worth the money, the extra travel time and whether it was all it had been chalked up to be.

Let's just say that we're Four Seasons fans at this point(although we've only been to one). We flew from Inuvik via Dawson City, and Whitehorse, overnighting in Vancouver, and continuing on to Kahului, Maui. It was my decision to spend the first night at a regular hotel in Kahului because (a) I didn't want to "waste" half of a Four Seasons day when we only arrived in Maui in the afternoon, and (b) it gave us the chance to stock up on lunch items so that we didn't have to eat out for all meals each day.

We stayed at the Maui Seaside Hotel for the first night, which was straight out of the 1980s, but it was very clean and the pool and beach were nice for our first day of summer temperatures in a year! For $99 USD/night I was pretty happy.


The beach at Maui Seaside.


The somewhat 80s decor. The room had a nice view of a park... Deon was up at 5am and was looking out the window and thought he saw fireflies, so he woke me up to show me. Turned out to be a bum, laying down and having a smoke.


The pool area at Maui Seaside.

Being the true earlybirds that we are, Deon was up at 5am as previously mentioned, so we went to McDonalds for breakfast since we hadn't had fast food since Christmastime. We waited around until about 8:30am until we just couldn't bear to wait any longer, and got a taxi which drove us about 20 minutes to the Four Seasons at Wailea.


Here we are upon arrival, with our leis (mine was made of tons of real orchids, and Deon's was some sort of nut or something).


Needless to say we were pretty happy to be at our much anticipated destination.

Since we got to the Four Seasons so early, the bellboys took our luggage and stored it until we were able to check in to our room. We were greeted with leis, cold, wet towels, and impeccable service. We then went to the check in desk to let them know that we had arrived, and they put a rush on the cleaning of our room, and in the meantime gave us access to their "Aloha Suite" which had beautiful showers, towels, bathrobes, hair dryers, L'Occitane bath products, free internet, and an espresso machine. We took the opportunity to change into our bathing suits, and take the camera with us for some photos around the resort. We then hit the beach where the beach attendants would put chair covers on the chairs for us, put up the umbrella, bring us ice water, and fresh towels. Deon did some snorkeling reconnaissance while I held down the fort in the sun on the beach.

We then moved on to the pool, where there was the same routine with the chairs and servers would come around for food and beverage orders regularly. They also brought around little "treats" every so often, no matter where you were- brownies, rice krispies, pineapple, cucumbers for your eyes, refreshing towels, and sunglasses cleaning services.


Enjoying my first and only mai tai, while Deon had a Corona.


A picture of the pool (taken on our last day when it rained), which had a fountain in the middle, and two hot tubs, and was surrounded by cabanas and beautiful gardens.

Our routine stayed the same throughout our entire five night stay- lounging at the pools, or on the beach, dining at the restaurants, and generally soaking up the sun, service and relaxing with books and magazines.


A view from the infinity pool in the adult serenity area. The pool had a two hot tubs, two bubble areas, a swim up bar, and music underwater.


The serenity pool again, taken on the last (rainy) day.

Here are some pictures of the eating facilities:


The view from Ferraro's restaurant overlooking the beach. This was our "engagement celebration" dinner at sunset.


The dessert they made us to commemorate our engagement celebration- a little off, but who would complain about free truffles!


The view from Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant at sunset.


Duo, where we had the breakfast buffet several times- the BEST pancakes known to man, in our opinion. They would also bring around complimentary fruit smoothie shots each morning.

As you all know, we both love flowers and gardening so the landscaping at the Four Seasons was not lost on us. They had fresh arrangements throughout the hotel facilities each day, and these were a few of our favourites:


The number of bountiful orchids were unprecedented.


Loved these yellow Bromeliads!


The most beautiful orchid arrangement I've ever seen!

That pretty much wraps up the Four Seasons Maui at Wailea experience. Everything was wonderful from the start of our stay to the finish. From the jazz music in the bathroom, to the snacks in our room upon arrival, to the complimentary shuttle service to the Shops at Wailea, the attention to detail was excellent.

In conclusion, we are now very much fans of Hawaii, and of the Four Seasons. We will definitely return to Hawaii, and are anticipating stays at different Four Seasons resorts in the future... Next up, Bora Bora??

Back to life, back to reality...

I haven't blogged in a while (almost two months!) because it has been a busy two months. April was filled with the final push for the King and Queen competition for the Jamboree (which we won!!!), the Beluga Jamboree itself, a trip to Husky Lakes, then our quarterly meeting in Inuvik, then a trip to Maui, then a trip to Toronto for my sister's wedding, and now we're back and I've been transitioning to a new position within the workplace. It's also spring here (in a good way- warmer than Toronto lately!), so there hasn't been much motivation to be indoors and on the computer outside of work hours.

At any rate, I thought I should post some pictures from our last two months to update everyone on what we've been up to.

I don't think I've posted a picture of our new "ride" online yet, so here is a picture of our truck, a 2011 Ford Ranger Sport on its last trip on the ice road this year in April (even though the ice road didn't end up closing until the first week of May).




Us being crowned King and Queen with fur vests (his is seal skin, mine is rabbit fur) and red sashes. We raised over $9,000 for the jamboree to win first place!


Happy royalty!


The dogs waiting to get hooked up for the races at the Beluga Jamboree.


And they're off!


Deon ice fishing (with no luck) at Husky Lakes on Easter Weekend.


Me fishing at Husky Lakes on Easter Weekend... before I cut off my hair the next week in Inuvik.

I will do another post later with pictures from Maui... We are off for a BBQ shortly to enjoy the relatively warm weather that is sure to leave us soon, and to enjoy the outdoors without mosquitoes before they arrive shortly. Deon came home with a small BBQ and a propane tank (which is a rare find because propane is not available in Tuk, generally speaking), so we have been taking advantage of the nice weather with burgers and ribs on the grill!

p.s. I just saw my first mosquito of the season. It's only May... this is not good news!

It's like Santa came to our freezer...

When I was gone to Paulatuk last week (photos to be uploaded as soon as I find where I put the camera), the Meat Man came to Tuk. I had heard in passing that there was a Meat Man, just like the Fruit Man, but I had never seen him in town before. Luckily our friends at the RCMP called to let Deon know that the Meat Man was in town, and then they told the Meat Man to stop by our office before he left Tuk.

Deon ended up getting five cases of goods from the Meat Man, and they are nice and skinny so they can line up neatly in the freezer. Thank goodness we ordered the second little freezer from Costco, so now we have enough capacity to stock up when the ice road is open, and when surprise salesmen come to Tuk!

I had to wait until I got back to Paulatuk to hear what the Meat Man had to offer, since Deon prepared some of his treasures for us for dinner. For an appetizer, Deon had a tray of sushi for each of us, complete with soy sauce, wasabi and ginger! Deon knows that I LOVE sushi, so this was the best surprise of all! He also made pork souvlaki skewers for our main course, which also came from the Meat Man. Another one of my favourite foods!

The other treasures included another case of sushi (they are all frozen, vacuum, packed and you let them thaw in the fridge all day), a case of sirloin tip roasts (since we've been having really bad luck with quality beef up here!), and a case of Beef Wellingtons which Deon loves, and we're going to try tonight.

I am wondering if I should go see if the Fruit Man is here today, since I saw him in Inuvik earlier this week. It would be his last trip on the ice road for sure, since it is quickly melting!

I'll never understand...

Since moving north I have noticed an odd trend in sales at the stores. Well, an odder trend than the fact that almost every sale at the Northern store involves expired items. One of the first sale items I bought when moving to Tuk was a box of those little 100 calorie bags of chips. They were almost 2 years out of date. But I digress...

Today when I got back from lunch my coworker came in and told me I had to go check out the massive toy sale they were having at the Northern. Of course I'm currently on the lookout for rock bottom bargains for use in our fundraising efforts. So before I went to the bingo station to sell tickets I went to the store to check out the bargains. I left with $411 worth of toys for $46 including tax. Ridiculous, eh?

So yes, they were on sale. Not that exciting. What I don't understand is the deep discounting of items. The sale today was 50% off all red tagged toys. So all of the toys had red tags with a discount of at least 75% off, and hadn't even been marked down for one day before an additional 50% off was given. And there never seems to be any small discounts between the original price and the final discounted price.... Markdowns always seem to start at 75% off. Not that I'm complaining!!

Anyway, some of today's bargains included:
-a v-tech kids e-reader that was $99 down to $12
-some huge tubs with games and activities in them with Dora, Cars, Spiderman, etc for $2.50 down from$25
-Zuzu pets for $1
- lots of other toys and activity sets which I really didn't pay more than $3 for...

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm pleased with my fabulous finds, and can't wait to auction them off!!

Sunday flashback...

I found this picture when going through our photos from this summer and fall. I forgot to post it at the time... I'm going to post this pic as a link, for those who are faint of heart. This was taken during the summer when a beluga washed up on shore (not far from where we like to swim on "warm" summer nights). Do I look somewhat grossed out?

At any rate it looks the way it does because it must have died and washed up on shore, after tumbling along the bottom of the ocean where its skin became all roughed up, as you can see in the picture. The other side of the beluga was pretty smooth, and as you'd expect a beluga's skin to be.

Why did I touch it? It's just one of those things that had to be done... like the time I opened the van's door when my mom was driving at 80km/hr. I just couldn't resist!

Anyway click HERE to see the picture!

I guess I forgot this one too...

This is a Super Mario cake that I did for a 4 year old. It's loosely based on Barry and Patrice's wedding cake, but a lot simpler, considering it is just for a child's birthday.





And here's another one that I had for sale at a bake sale. It is using the Wilton giant cupcake pan. It's actually not that giant though... and it needs more like 1.5 cake mixes to make a big cupcake, so I'm not that impressed with it!

Cakes, cakes, cakes...

These have been a long time coming, but here are the pictures of two cakes I made back in February, the first is a Lightning McQueen cake from the movie Cars, and the second is a skidoo (well... it sort of looks like a skidoo) for a 4 year old. The Cars one is buttercream, and the skidoo was done with fondant, and carved cake.

Here are the pictures (not very good quality as they're taken with my iPod:







Tonight I have to do a Go Diego Go cake. Should be fun!

Have you ever...

Opened the cupboard, had a box of baking soda fall out, and pour straight down your tank top?

I would be annoyed, except it really saved me from having to clean up a huge mess on the stove. Instead, I just went into the bathtub and emptied my shirt.

Still... what are the chances!

The great polar blizz...

This really was the storm that seemed like it would never end. I thought the one in November when Deon was gone to Yellowknife and I was pup sitting was bad... well I was wrong! We have now experienced the worst blizzard I've seen since moving north 2.5 years ago.

On Wednesday morning we were provided with a weather report that indicated that we'd have high winds and perhaps low visibility beginning that night, and perhaps continuing on until Thursday. We were pretty happy with this news at work, because blowing snow usually means that the town shuts down (I know, I know, we have such a long commute, from upstairs to downstairs!).

On Wednesday night we went to the Kitti Hall to do our Loonie Auction and Canteen to try to earn some much needed money for the upcoming Jamboree. At around 9:30 we decided to do a last call for tickets, and then do the draw. Just as we sold the last tickets, the power in Kitti Hall went out. Of course everyone immediately yelled at Richard, the NTPC worker who was there playing checkers to go fix the power so the games could continue on. That is one job in Tuk that I don't envy (along with the "Swamper" for the $#(@ truck).

We carried out the Loonie Auction by the light of our trusty keychain flashlight (note to self- don't poo-poo the junky corporate swag at next year's Petroleum Show, collect as many keychain flashlights as possible!). The draws were done, and we were offered a ride home by some friends. Just as we got home, the power went back on, despite the ever-increasing winds.

We got up the next morning to low visibility due to blowing snow, and some drifting as well. Deon and I went to the office, because we could easily (with the exception of not being able to get out of our side door) get to work, while everyone else called in to say that they wouldn't be able to make it in. We decided to shut down the office, and wait to see if the weather cleared. Luckily for us, it didn't clear until the end of the day, just in time for work to be closed anyway. However, it did provide us the opportunity to go for a walk to check out the damage. It was only -6C after dark on Thursday night, plenty warm to check out the town.

When we walked around town, we surveyed the drifts, and here is what we saw:
*if you want to see a bigger version of the picture, just click on it!


Our building's side porch when the weather cleared on Thursday afternoon. Can't get out the door, but not so bad!


Looking onto the porch- keep these pictures in mind for the upcoming comparisons!


Trying to plow some of Thursday's snow accumulation from the main street.


Drifts along Beaufort Drive.


Gizmo and me by the Bingo station on our evening walk. Pretty tall drift.


The drift in front of Northern is all the way up to the wheelchair ramp. For those who have not seen the Northern, the top of the wheelchair ramp is probably 12 feet from ground level where I'm standing.

On Friday morning we woke up to larger drifts, high winds, and blowing snow again. We closed the office once again, until it seemed to be better around 10:30am. We opened up until lunch, when it got way worse again. In the mean time, we were some of the lucky ones who got a fresh water truck delivery and sewage pump-out. I stress that this was lucky, because by the end of the blizzard on Sunday, some people hadn't had water or sewage since Tuesday because they were too snowed in for the trucks to reach them.

Here is how the porch snowdrifts had grown by lunchtime on Friday:



It should also be mentioned that although the trucks were able to deliver services, they did have some trouble in some areas:


$@#( truck #1 towing out $@#*( truck #2.

After our brief moments of relief, it started to get really bad- 80km/hour winds, and it didn't let up until around noon on Sunday. Deon, and his love of weather and storms just had to go test out the winds and the snow to see exactly what it was like to be in an Arctic storm, so I took the opportunity to get some pictures from the window in our apartment, giving some perspective on just how poor the visibility was:




Can you spot Gizmo, the perfectly blended polar lapdog?



Finally, on Sunday morning we both had cabin fever and needed to get out. The winds were still strong, but we could hear the faint backup beeping of snowplows, graders and loaders, and knew the town was awake and ready to move on from this blizzard. Despite the winds which were biting, and probably still 60km/hr, we decided to go inspect the damages once again.

Here is the porch comparison for Sunday morning:








Here I am on the drift in front of our building- it took about 4 hours to plow out with a loader this afternoon.


The snow was drifted into some interesting shapes... and this is also an example of the perfect blizzard investigation winter gear!


The drift at the end of the rowhouse next to us- it was entirely blocking the road and must have been 15 feet high. (keep in mind southern readers that all houses here are on pilings, or stilts, to begin with so they are higher than your average house down south, for perspective).


Cool drift across the street.


Drift beside the house on the corner behind us.


Animal's old house- probably the most drifted in house in town that we saw.


Yes, that's a house (and maybe a truck?) under there.


Not sure they were going to be using their front door or deck today!


The drift went all the way across the street and still hasn't been plowed out.


Taking a break from shovelling.


The garage entrance at the RCMP detachment.


Stella, Ben and Jen's dog, after their porch has been dug out. Originally they only had about 2 feet of space at the top of their door, and Stella had to be lifted out to go to the bathroom!


The RCMP compound. They haven't had water since Tuesday, and it might be a while longer until they're shovelled out!

At any rate, sorry for the picture-y post, but I hope the pictures give a better idea of what we were up against.

Oh, and I forgot, the best part of it all. We were in the middle of buying a new truck from Edmonton (i.e. filling out paperwork, credit card payments, etc.) when the long distance phone service AND internet dropped out on Friday morning until Monday afternoon. Fun times!!