Quivet Smoke Ring

Well, there was a guy at work the other week selling some of his wife's home made items. One of the things he was selling was quivet smoke rings. I've wanted a quivet smoke ring since we moved here and I first saw them. Quivet is the underhairs of the muskox. This is what keeps them warm in the harsh Alaska/Canada winters. I finally decided to get one. Here's a picture of Eric's muskox with the smokering beside it.
Here's Chubbs modelling the smoke ring. I think he should become a professional kitty model. Look how he is sitting so proud with it. Actually we kinda had to bribe him. Eric was petting him until I was ready with the camera. When I was ready, he pulled his hand away causing Chubbs to look up at him. That's when I snapped the picture.Now here's me modelling the smokering. Quivet is suppose to be much warmer than wool be not even half as thick. I'll let you know here when it gets cold enough to wear it. Might not be too long the way the morning temperatures are going. It's been in the high 20s the past few mornings.

Groceries are Here!

Well, the barge has arrived early and I went down to get the groceries. You would think $1000 in groceries would look like alot more. I'll show you a picture and let me know what you think????Here is the main stock. We have everything from papertowels to canned veggies to cereal to laundry detergant to kitty litter and food. I'm not exactly sure how much this would be down in the lower 48, but I'm sure it would be around the $600 range.Then of course, Eric needed to get some gardening soil for next summer. Here is what 15 bags of soil/fertilizer looks like in the back of the truck. We need the soil pretty bad up here. Our garden didn't do too well this year. This is what our garden yielded.

We had a few more peas and strawberries that were picked earlier this fall/summer maybe another 2 batches like this one. This was all the bigger the carrots got. We planted alot of them and weren't able to get to them to weed them out. Oops!

The Mighty Hunter

The mighty hunter is back with a semi-successful hunt. The main reason for the hunt was to get a bear, grizzly that is. They saw something like 60 bears, but over half of them (40-ish) were sows with cubs. This one was just sitting on its butt eating blueberries! It's the tiny blob in the white circle.Here is the mighty hunter waiting to get himself a caribou.Here's the caribou that the mighty hunter got.Here's the caribou head on the back of the mighty hunter.This is what a covered piano on a raft looks like.

No, I'm just kidding. It's actually the caribou headSo that is the trip of the mighty hunter. No bear, but a pretty nice looking caribou!

After 2 weeks, it's nice to have the husband back. It's hard to believe it's been a year already (actually last Monday was the "official" date) since we've been married. We're still working on the whole annivesary gift thing. I'll keep you posted!

Saturday Night Live

I'm not sure if any of you saw Saturday Night Live last night, but if you didn't I suggest you go to the Saturday Night Live website and watch the video for the Sarah Palin (played by Tina Fey)/Hilary Clinton (played by Amy Poehler) clip. Or you can click on the link and watch it from that. It was hilarious. Just a few of the topics covered were their views on foreign policy, global warming and the Bush Doctrine:

HC: I believe that diplomacy is the cornerstone of any foreign policy
SP: I can see Russia from my house

HC: I believe that Global Warming is caused by man.
SP: I believe that Global Warming is god hugging us closer

HC: I don't believe in the Bush Doctrine
SP: I don't know what you mean
(see Sarah Palins interview with Charles Gibson)

Then they talked a little about the sexism in poltics and SP said don't refer to me as a MILF (if I have to explain what a MILF is, you don't need to know ;)

Life as a Bachelorette

Well, Eric has been gone since Saturday on his float trip with his buddy Bryce. I had to drop the off at PaPa Bear Adventures (Ptarmigan Air). This company is only about 1/2 mile down the road, but because of some land issue problems (I think I talked about that before, if not let me know and I'll give you a rundown), we had to make a trip of about 6.5 miles for our 1/2 mile trip. Anyways, they are trying to do some bear hunting while floating the Kanektok River. (This link is for the company that fly them to the drop-off point.) Hopefully they are doing good. I haven't heard from them yet, but they have a satellite phone with them. It's $2.00/minute and I'm not sure how the battery is. They are suppose to be done and back on September 20. They may come in early if they get their hunt done. So until Eric gets back I probably won't have any pictures to post (Eric has the camera)!

On another note, I got to help out with the high school's Hunter's Education course yesterday. We did a portion of the field course where they go out and work on whether a situation would be a good shot or not. Tomorrow we get to do the air rifle course for shooting performance. I'm so glad that I got myself certified to help with the Hunter's Safety course. It's very obvious that it's needed here in Bethel, so that means it's needed even more in the villages. I'm hoping I can work this into camps next summer.

Speaking of camps, I'm not sure if you all remember my little breakdown this summer over the people in Washington DC calling and talking about pulling funding for the program (more importantly my job!). Anyways, we got a letter in the mail from the Department of Education stating that our program was slated for non-continuation of funding, but since we have shown that we are working on improving our numbers they feel that we are showing progress and decided to let us keep our funding. Big load off the shoulders. Another new development that has come into play is that I am being put on a new grant as the program manager. We haven't gotten the funding yet, probably won't know until sometime next summer. I'll tell you more about it as the details play out. I'm not sure who up here reads my blog, but I don't want to be saying too much because certain people may not know yet.

Well, I am going to get back to surfing the web. Talk to you all soon.

Two thousand and sixty-seven

What in the heck does this subject title mean you may be asking yourself. Well, that is the amount of the PFD checks this year. You heard me right Linda and Joe. The Permanent Dividend Fund checks this year are the highest they have ever been. Imagine that with the price of gas and companies making record profits, it only makes since that the PFD would be a record high too! Read all about the PFD in our own Anchorage Daily News. On top of this before Miss VP Palin went to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis she approved a $1,200 "resource rebate" to help cover some of the high cost of heating oil and electricity. And to top it all off, Eric and I are actually now eligible to receive this yearly payment. But there is a catch. You have to "apply" each year to be eligilbe to receive it. It doesn't automatically arrive to you just because you live here. I feel sorry for those that did not apply or forgot to apply. They won't even get the resource rebate. Sucks to be them! I guess it does "pay" to live up here!

For those of you who are interested in how this PFD was figured out, check out this PDF!

(That's alot of acronyms that sound too similar)

Laboring on Labor Day - sort of

So what did all of you do on your Labor Day? I spent the morning out on the tundra picking blueberries while Eric sighted in his rifle for his upcoming float trip. You can pretty much go anywhere on the tundra and find blueberries. For those of you that have no idea what tundra looks like, here is a picture of Alaskan Tundra. This is the view pretty much in all directions from the town.For all of those wonder what a blueberry patch may look like, here is a glimpse at one. If you squint your eyes just right you should be able to see some nice looking blueberries in the picture. For those you you that cannot see any, look at the next picture.Here is a close up of the blueberries. These are actually alot easier to see then most of the blueberries. You have to catch them in the light just right to see them. There was a patch that I though I got most of the berries from. I started walking away and turned around to check on something and saw a bunch of them that I missed.I'm not sure what type of plant this is, but I just love the reds and had to get a picture of it. Notice how the blueberry sticks out in this picture. One thing you might have noticed in the pictures is the coloring of the blueberries. The are actually really this light of a blue color while they are on the plant. Once you picture them though, they change color really fast.Here is our bounty of blueberries for the morning. See how the color is changing on the berries. This is only about 1 hour after picking. I picked about a quart of berries today.And finally, since I did mention that Eric was out at the Bethel Shooting Range, I thought I should include a picture of the range. Isn't it a beautiful thing? You would think with all of the hunters around here that they would have a better range. This "range" isn't even away from where they hunt. The pond on the left actually had geese hunter on it they other night!
Well, I hope you all had a great Labor Day. I will be heading back to work tomorrow. My free days/times is over for now. Catch you all later.