TWENTY!

The temps hit 20C today, yahoo! It was a glorious day, not too hot, but warm enough you felt like summer. There are leaves coming out on the trees finally, and I think I got a tan today walking around downtown (to and from another office). Wonderful...harmful or not, I think I look better with a little tan than the winter look up here...fishbelly white with a tinge of green from the awful florescent lights...

There are baby strollers everywhere, kids on skateboards, bicycles, scooter, you name it. My favorite sound is from a Harley...vrrrrrrrrrrooooommmm!!!! Saw three of them today, roaring around the corner in front of me. Now THAT screams SUMMER to me! My sunroof was wide open and so were all the windows as I crossed back and forth across town. I can barely remember the -43C weather...and it's so far off from now, I don't even have to think about it.

Henry and Stormy were accidentally given all day access to the balcony as I left the front door open when I went to work...ooops...thankfully I did not come home to an apartment full of bugs, or one of the cats having fallen off the balcony...again.

twenty degrees...I love it.

Out And About in Yellowknife

I took these photos yesterday while out for a drive with my friend K. We stopped at Pilot mountain (yeah yeah, not a REAL mountain) where there is a monument dedicated to all the bush pilots who flew in and out of Yellowknife as mineral exploration was taking off. Flying in those bush planes is always an experience...I've done it! Quite a view of Yellowknife from up there though, considering there aren't many vantage points anywhere in this neck of the north...

Saturday Drive

K. and I went for a drive today to see how things were shaping up. We scouted out some locations to go for a paddle once the ice is all gone, and took in some wildlife. We saw this fox on the road to Dettah. The ptarmigan was on the road to Vee Lake. The road closed is the ice road to Dettah from Yellowknife. We also visited the small graveyard at Dettah where they built little fences around their graves. There is an otter (or some such small animal) swimming across a little pond near a duck. I had hoped to find the swans, but no luck. They are somewhere on the Great Slave Lake, I just haven't found the right portion of it from this side. It's a big damn lake.

Life in the 'knife

Well, I am too sick to go camping this May long weekend, or May two-four as many call it. I can't tell you the last time I didn't go camping on the long weekend. I had an opportunity to go with some friends, and I was really looking forward to it. But then on Sunday night, after working the trade show all weekend, I came down with a rotten bastard of a cold. And I still have it, and am still miserable with it. But all is not lost...

Many of my friends are not going away for the long weekend so we are gathering on Sunday for a bbq picnic in Prelude. It's a small area about 27kms from here. Not that far, but a reportedly pretty spot to have a picnic and to camp. There's a lake with a swimming beach (not that I shall be in this weekend...there is likely still ice in the lake...) and a big playground. Some of my friends are bringing their kids, old and young.

Henry and Stormy are enjoying the balcony. Henry fell off the balcony earlier this week so is keeping a lower profile out there these days. Most of the time he sprawls on the deck of the balcony, or curls up on one of the chairs. He still gets up in my kayak occasionally, but that is coming to an end as I take it down this weekend to the lake. If there's open water, I'm goin' in, dammit. Hacking cough and all. Just don't tell my mother. Stormy is still brave enough. He struts along the railing and sniffs into the wind. I fear a strong burst might pop him off the rail some day. We had really strong gusts yesterday and today...good thing I'm only on the second floor.

The temperatures have been sensible and the trees are just coming into bloom! Holy shit. It was well into June last year before things got green, so I am happy with that. It's exciting to get up in the morning to see how warm it is today, instead of watching the temps to see how friggin' cold it is. At this rate, the fireweed might be out soon. There is quite a green belt behind me here, and I reckon there will be fireweed in the brown tufts of last year's summer. There are also woods where people go quadding, biking, sledding, walking, drinking...apparently the high school grad party was in the woods behind me. No wonder I heard people all night long...I hear people out there in the woods all the time but they are so thick and rugged that I usually don't see anyone, night or day.

My house is nearly clean, the dishes are done, and my bed has fresh linens. There's beer in the fridge and a wide variety of my favorite snacks. What more could a girl want on a Friday night (when she is sick and cannot go out). Sunset is later these days, at 10:34pm. Sunrise is at 4:35am...I sleep with a sleep mask on. It never really gets dark anymore and won't until the fall. Henry seems to have finally caught on to the idea that we do actually still need to sleep at night, even if it isn't dark. He is an early riser, I'll give him that, but he has slacked off on annoying the hell out of me until I get up after him.

I was at least somewhat productive this week at work. I was only in on Wednesday afternoon. I did work Monday night, out of the office at home visits. I went in for noon but left a half hour later. I wasn't going to go at all but couldn't access my online calendar to see what appointments I had, so went in to check and to see how I felt once I got to work. Wednesday night I just worked at home. I took Tuesday as a sick day, and worked at home the last two days. I finished two adoption homestudies and nearly finished a third, so am glad to have that nearly done. They are a lot of work, and it is sometimes difficult to get a chunk of time that isn't broken up by meetings or home visits, or taking phonecalls, and writing notes. When writing the homestudies I prefer to have chunks of time so I can think about what I want to write. They are not merely a recollection of facts like my case notes are. They are a report of findings you might say, and average about 22 pages or more.

Lots of drinkers hanging about downtown...the rest all went camping..ah...life in the 'knife...

Amber and the Pig

So my daughter was driving out to the horse ranch to go riding this past weekend with a friend from work. She has been going for months now, and just loves the time spent with the horses - a dream come true for her. She helps her friend with the chores in exchange for riding one of her horses on the weekends. The ranch is a fair piece out of town, and daughter was driving out and noticed far down the road some kind of animal. The roads in the north are often miles and miles of straight roads just like on the prairies, only with scruffy trees all around. So she saw it coming in the distance for a few minutes.

When she realized it was a great big pig, she got excited and jumped out of the car with her camera and went for some photos, just like her mother. Then she did something stupid. She walked towards the pig, and snapped photos the entire time, and when she finally looked up from her camera, she was about 25 feet away from the pig, and he let out a HELL of a squeal and started running towards her. This is where it gets interesting...daughter takes off running towards her car, screaming OUT LOUD because she thought the pig was coming to kill her and eat her. As she ran, the pig crossed the ditch and started gaining on her...she was hauling ass for sure at that point. She managed to jump into her car and speed off, but didn't know if the pig actually caught up to her because she said she never looked behind her because she was afraid he would be RIGHT THERE. I'm waiting for the photos and will be sure to post them when them come...pity she didn't have the video running when she started running...

She said her heart was pounding out of her chest by the time she got to the horse ranch. Turns out the neighbors to the horse ranch raise pot bellied pigs, and that they are aggressive. They apparently go after the horses from time to time and bite them. So if they didn't think twice about attacking a 1000 pound horse, they would have no qualms about taking a chunk out of daughter....stay tuned for photos...

Amber finally sent me some photos of the pig...she didn't have any really close up as it started chasing her and she didn't stop to take pictures!

Get Down

GET DOWN. GET DOWN. GET DOWN. The neighbors probably think I'm absolutely nuts by now as that's all they likely hear from me. I am not getting down as in grooving to the music. Of course, I'm yelling at Henry, who has a new obsession of climbing up my shelving unit and knocking shit off. He rarely gets up there when I'm gone, because I rarely ever see anything on the floor. However, when I am in the room and obviously occupied doing something else, he makes a beeline for it, and looks at me to see if he can get a reaction, while he's doing it. I yell at him, he goes even further and meows back at me. I eventually have to stop what I'm doing and get up to take him down. By this time he meows at me again and jumps down. All for naught. Then, as soon as I sit down again and resume my activity...he jumps up there again. What a little shit.

GET DOWN. GET OUT OF THERE. STOP TOUCHING THAT. LEAVE IT ALONE. JUMP OFF THE BALCONY...