Straight Up Smoke Kind of Day

Here in Baker Lake, it was a straight up smoke kind of day and the truth is that -31 C isn't so bad when it is dead calm, but add even a 5 km/hr wind and you are starting to really feel it. That said, the return to real, hard cold is having its impacts. I feel desicated. No amount of water, lip gloss and hand cream seem to have any impact on chapped lips or dry hands. The % humidity in my apartment is in the 20s and I feel like I've been drinking liters of water too. If it wasn't for everyone else complaining of the same thing, I might be tempted to go to the health center to see if there is something wrong with me... and in the mean time... I'm going to drink more water.

Its been a real like time since I've last posted a blog. The kind of time that you can't even bother to apologize. Some of it is simply not taking many photos and some of it is that the novelty has worn off as this place has become home, I've reached a limit on how many photos of the same view from the front of my building I can be bothered to take.

Things are going well, if not being crazily interesting. The biggest excitment in my life is having a pedometer, the best accidental purchase I've ever made, since I didn't know that the little ipod touch came with a built in one. At the time, it was an expensive fall out from my very rapid departure from Baker Lake and based on my fear from this summer that I'd have trouble sleeping with all the noise on the boat without music... so I picked up the smallest ipod I could, so I'd be able to go to sleep with music and drown out the sound of the engine coming on and off. Lucky for me, I wasn't anyone where the engine room and I slept like a baby on the boat - best sleep in years... but the pedometer feature I have used every day since and I've tracked and graphed my results and kicked my butt to get off of it and do at least some kind of movement. Maybe I'll post up some graphs soon... maybe I'll dig out ye olde camera and find some motivation to take some lovely winter pictures... perhaps of the ravens pillaging the garbage or the look of smoke rising lazily from smoke stacks.

Actually, today, the wind was nearly calm, a very slight breeze blew the smoke from the dump right into town with a disturbing smell of burnt plastic... so a bit more wind in the other direction would have been helpful. I don't know how the ravens and seagulls stand the smell of burning plastic.

I've also been sort of getting a few folks started on knitting... I have a project on the go that I'm aiming to finish by easter... which at its rate of production.. might not work out... but who knows... knitting happens in fits and starts