Triple point, double word score

I’ve not said it enough: We like our apartment and we are happy to be in this building. In spite of occasional dirt in the hallways and stairwells, we really have few complaints. We love the high ceilings and the hardwood flooring (even if it is laminate). We like our many windows and our view of the river and distant mountains from the balcony and from one of the windows (if you look from just the right angle). We like the easy access to the town center and to walks by the river and around the lake. Other residents are usually quite friendly in passing, greeting us cheerfully and even occasionally surprising us with tidbits about their lives, such as the couple down the hallway, who we learned while holding open the door while he and a friend carried their new couch in, that it was purchased in order for “her to have something cushy to laze on while watching Gray’s Anatomy”. Thanks. That was nice to get to know a bit more about you. I’m sure she appreciates you sharing with us her fondness for lounging and medical dramas.

We don’t see or hear much from our neighbours or others in the building and although we’ve never met them, today I’d like to direct the remainder of this post to the neighbours with whom we directly share interior walls or ceilings and floors:

Neighbours to our east:
We wanted you to know that we don’t mind, terribly, the occasional repetitive booming noises from the other side of our home office wall as you fire away at electronic villains since your video games aren’t played at times likely to disturb us and are only an hour or two in length. It sounds like you have fun. We hope you don’t mind our taste in music (if indeed, you hear us playing it on our computer) and we want you to know that we intentionally keep it turned down, so as not to bother you.

Neighbour to our west:
When you blow your nose in your kitchen, it makes the most peculiar sound. Although amused, we are also concerned for you, given the daily frequency of such loud sinus clearing events over the past few months, and think it might be time to see a doctor. We’d also like to compliment you on your musical tastes. Although we rarely hear anything but nose blowing from your apartment, the few times your music has been heard, we thought it a fine thing that you shared Womannorth’s fondness for Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen.
We play Scrabble occasionally and have some skill thinking of adjectives with high point scores. We play with a dictionary handy for challenges and are pleased to learn new words with each game. Although we hope our apartment is quiet from your side of the kitchen wall, we hope that if you hear anything, it is our laughter as we enjoy the game.

Neighbours Below us:
You seem to be neighbours of extreme differences. The usual silence of your apartment is only ever broken by sounds of your arguing, slamming of doors, stomping and shouting of overly colourful words, particularly at late hours. Today we’d very much like to offer a few reminders and pointed words of advice:

1. No matter whether you believe you are in the right, you automatically LOSE an argument (i.e. become a loser) the second that you shout “F*** you” at your partner (or anyone, for that matter). If she happens to shout it back at you (instead of spending the next hour sobbing, as she sometimes does), shouting it again, repeatedly and with emphasis, does not and will never win you the argument, nor does it ever make it right for you to say it to her. What saying this to each other does say is that you are a hateful person who doesn’t care a whit about the person you are arguing with and suggests that you are intentionally trying to hurt them. This is no way to resolve anything. That you do this to someone you live with, and presumably should care about, makes your behaviour all the worse, and is horrible and repugnant.

2. We don’t know why she puts up with you and we think the best thing for you both (and certainly for her) would be to immediately go your separate ways, or at the very least, to seek counseling and learn how to respectfully disagree with each other.

3. Should you never learn the true meaning of respect, you might consider giving each other the silent treatment (although it is as equally unproductive at resolving conflict as your current swearing/shouting strategy) but at minimum, your neighbours would benefit.

To him: We’d become hopeful when your apartment was quiet the last few days and we’d hoped, for her sake, that she had moved out. (That we briefly overheard her shouting back at you this afternoon suggests otherwise, unfortunately.) We were infuriated that you woke us up in the middle of last night, while you shouted obscenities at her for over an hour by phone and we were horrified that she didn’t hang up on you. We could understand less of your hurtful invective when you switched to shouting en francais by about 3AM, but we could still hear you and you were still keeping us awake.

4. As explained above, in these specific ways (as this is all we know of you), you are a hateful and horrible loser. Please add banal to the list of descriptives we’ve judiciously applied to you. If you insist on waking up your neighbours and disrupting their sleep at all hours of the night to show your partner what a sorry excuse of a person you are, you might consider picking up a dictionary or thesaurus. If we had to choose, we’d rather overhear complaints of you not treating her as quixotically as she might like and you responding with complaints of her repetitive cloying remonstrations than hearing you include “F***” as a prefix to every other word you say.

So, to Uncaring Rude Neighbours below us: learn what love and respect truly mean or separate, be silent or add some new adjectives to your vocabulary. If asked, we’d be happy to share some with you.

Celebrations

It was a festive and happy long weekend. Not only was it Thanksgiving, but it was also our first anniversary and TheManNorth’s birthday. On Sunday we went on a celebratory hike in the cold and wind (-16C with windchill) to explore the local cross country ski trails and discovered that we’ll have to work on mastering our control of downhill descent if we are to use the trails and get down some of the high steep slopes safely later this winter. We paused to watch redpolls flit through the trees and to examine lily pads frozen into the ice of a small lake.

After ariving home, we sipped hot tea and busied ourselves with food preparation. TheManNorth cooked up a delicious turkey dinner for our anniversary/Thanksgiving meal, which we ate with great gusto later that night and I assembled a three-layer black forest cake (which I suspect was equivalent in calories to the entire anniversary dinner) for his birthday the following day. We'll be munching on leftover stuffing and turkey for days to come and also enjoying the spicy cranberry sauce TheMan whipped up from scratch (although from dried cranberries and not the deliciously refreshing frozen wild ones I munched on during yesterday's hike).

As “was his want” on his birthday, we had cake and coffee for yesterday's breakfast and then went out exploring again, burning off the calories by following a 10km round trip route along the river bank and across country through the woods that TheManNorth will follow to work by ski or snowshoe as soon as there is enough snow cover.

We were lucky enough to spot a weasel as it ran among the alders and willows, stopping to peer at us from atop an old beaver dam, its white coat standing out against the exposed mud and shrubbery but providing good camouflage in the snow. The snow also provided a great record of some other local fauna. We were surprised to find that a grizzly bear had crossed our path in the forest not long before us, imprinting one paw's print over another. It's been well below freezing for some time now, and we speculated from its route, that it might be heading east, to den in the hills some 20km or so from town. Perhaps it was the same bear that had wandered the riverbank while the mud was still soft and before a recent snowfall.


Fox, raven, and ptarmigan prints were in abundance as were multiple tiny mouse crossings and occasional prints of solitary mice scampering through the snow.

We stopped to watch a rare length of open water at a creek draining from a local lake, the water trickling under ice overhanging tiny waterfalls to disappear under thicker ice covered in snow. We picked our way across the creek, along beaver dams and from tussock to tussock, using walking sticks we'd scavenged from driftwood along the river.

We're keen to try that route again and although snow mobiles and dog teams also frequent the riverbank (and river) in the winter, we hope that most of the route will remain as quiet and solitary as it was yesterday.

You know you are in the far north when...

It’s still summer (technically before the fall equinox) and you wake up to SNOW on the ground outside (and in the air currently blowing by your window).

The local temperature is 27 degrees Celsius colder today than the temperature in the Canadian town you grew up in.

You are counting down the days till the sun won't rise (note the new ticker in the sidebar) and until you can drive your vehicle onto the arctic ocean (!!).

Choices at your local grocery store inclue ground muskox, frozen arctic char or caribou jerky.

All the local buildings are up on pilings to keep the ground under them from melting.

Skidoos are parked in your apartment’s parking lot along with (or instead of) the cars and trucks .

It’s perfectly normal to go shopping for a skidoo at your local grocery store (where else?!).

Polar bears and caribou may wander through or near your town. (A polar bear did so more than a month ago; I'm looking forward to seeing the caribou although they are already in the area according to local hunters who have been stocking their freezers with them.)

Wool clothing has been de rigueur since JULY.

And did I mention that it's still summer and it's SNOWING?

Rorschach test anyone?

Nothing to say...so here are some pictures TM took last week:

The seasonal change is so fast here! Since these photos were taken only a week ago, most of the deciduous trees have completely shed their leaves and as of two days ago, the mountains in the west are covered in snow. TM is just itching to get out his snowshoes!

Some people have all the luck

I'll have to tell The Man to look more closely at debris sticking out from the river banks as he boats upriver today and in the future, as he might just be staring at bones of an ice age animal and not simply old branches or tree roots.

As reported by CBC news, a man had an astounding find at a location about 100 km from our home as he was walking along a riverbank and found bones (including a skull), skin and even guts protruding from the permafrost. A paleontologist is going to have a look at the remains and the location the animal was found and suspects that the find is likely a steppe bison–the same animals represented in Paleolithic paintings on the cave walls at Lascaux and more commonly unearthed west of our region in what was once Eastern Beringia. (Follow the link above to Lascaux for wonderful photos of the paintings. Eg. Look in the Main Gallery for paintings such as the Back to Back Bison or in the area of The Shaft of the Deadman for a depiction of a speared bison fatally wounding a man.)

To the right is an image from a museum exhibit of a specimen recovered in Alaska.

Living here just gets better and better!

Um.. Er... Do I HAVE to?

A note to my readers: This post has nothing to do with living in the north.
After creating my last post and its annoying title (to me, at least), I simply needed to get out a wee rant about blogging and advertising the results of one's supposed creativity.

Is it just me, or does anyone else HATE having to think up titles for blog posts, or even subject headings for email? I always feel as though I should be able to think up something witty that sums up the message in one brilliant label. Most of the time I have difficulty and can't think up anything that is remotely witty or properly descriptive but yet the title or subject box likewise can't (or shouldn't) remain empty.

I find this ANNOYING.

And in a similar vein, I always hated trying to come up with titles for artwork that I'd created in high school art classes. I understand why there are so many "untitled" pieces of artwork in galleries if those artists are annoyed at having to summarize their piece in one word or in a short phrase and so leave out a title altogether but as much as a similar frustration may keep artists from titling their pieces, I admittedly do get annoyed when viewing a piece that is untitled.
A title (or subject heading for an email) IS useful to the viewer or reader of the piece. It allows the reader to understand what the artist was getting at and particularly for blogs or emails, to prioritize whether they want to invest their time in viewing or reading the piece, put it off for later or to ignore and delete it altogether.

As much as I can acknowledge this and also appreciate informative, witty titles to email and blog posts, it is a part of blogging that I despise when creating my own posts.

So, in summation, be forewarned ye readers: I make no promises about the originality, wittiness or even existence of properly titled posts, now or forever in the future.

Oh, and the same thing goes for labels that blogger so kindly invites bloggers to add to their posts. Uh, blogging? annoying things about blogging? uncreative titles? Nah. I'm leavin out the labels for this one!

Er, okay. Rant over.

The times, they are a changin'

The sun is now setting and rising at times more typical of southern climes (as of today, the sun is rising at 7:25AM and setting at 10:18PM ) and daylength will continue shortening until we reach the perpetual darkness of December. (Although I love sunlight, this seems an exciting part of this adventure too.)
Autumn is also now in full swing and night temperatures have been dropping to just below freezing. Today’s high may reach 11C but for now (middayish), we’re just at 6C and TM is celebrating the return to wooly sweater weather and relishing the thought of coming winter snows.
Although I miss the fall colours and smells of Ontario’s hardwoods, the north has its own fall magic. The blueberry and bearberry bushes are shades of red, burghundy and purple and the birch, poplar and willow provide wonderful contrasts of yellow against the red shrubs and the green spruce. The familiar spicy smell of decaying leaves is just beginning as the first of the poplar leaves begin to fall and settle among the shrub layer and over the mosses and lichens. The local fireweed plants remind me of the flame-licked colours of Ontario’s sumac: brilliant reds giving way to bright orange and yellows all on the same plant or even on the same leaves.

TM took this photo on his way home from work on Friday.
Scenes like these make me smile!

And this does too:
I love watching the ravens. I suppose most residents here regard them as pests as they’ll soon rip open any garbage bags left out and unattended but I love them for their curiosity, intelligence and wonderfully varied calls. Sometimes as in this picture, a raven will perch on our balcony and peer at our bikes or look in the windows. I’m sure I’ve watched one chattering to its own reflection sounding as though it was gargling water. This was the first time I had a camera handy when one paid a visit but I only managed the single photo before my movement alerted it to my presence and it flew off.

Yesterday from our balcony, we watched an interesting interaction between a red squirrel and a raven in a nearby birch tree. The raven watched the squirrel as it dashed up and down the trunk opposite the raven, once almost landing on the bird as it raced around and leaped among the branches, occasionally stopping to nibble at bunches of leaves or dried catkins. The raven appeared to try pecking at the squirrel once or twice and vocalized occasionally with warbling croaks but though the squirrel could have made a getaway to other trees or across the ground, it always returned to the trunk in the vicinity of the raven. Eventually the bird left and the squirrel immediately explored the area of the branch the raven had been perched on.