A glimpse ahead

well, three weeks smoke free. 'bout 4 days with no nicotine gum. still no casualties. I know the pic is not current, but I needed a little something, to get me thru. It's getting warmer out, about -9 outside right now, melt is starting slowly. Despite the post time on the blog, it's about 1:30 p.m. here right now. I have three night shifts left in this run. My new employee is here and is adjusting to life with nothing. By that I mean...nothing. I told her that the first thing she will notice is that TV commercials no longer apply to her. McDonald's-nope, Arby's- uh uh, Domino's- forget it,

Blackberry?...Not here! New cell phone maybe? Sorry, no signal..unless it's smoke signals! When she applied she said she wanted to escape the rat race. I told her up here we have to race beavers( rats can't take the cold, or the lightning quickness of our beavers) Ahh s**t don't know what I did here. better get the technician, MELINDAAAA!!! help, I'm stuck in bold and can't get out!

Night shift again. No pics (saving some old timey ones for later) Tried to put up some video, But no go. Well c, after discussion with the artist formerly known as miranda, I'm afraid Melinda prevails, and I will no longer be making reference to her by the name I prefer as well.(Miranda) I'm reminded of when Tony became Mike. And although Melinda might not use the same language as Mike(as we all know Mike speaks english profanicus) My wife has been able to get her point across with out much swearing...kidding babe! Funny thing tho, she prefers Miranda too, I think...But Melinda she will be. And yes, actually c you CAN have his job, I have an opening right now when can you get here? resumè? Label off a soup can? anyone? come on! If I can hire one more person I can quit night shifts. Stick with me, you'll go places! Frank believe me, it's just as bad on the other end too.. I usually have at least one pilot working in my area that can't parlè lè ènglais.. but itès ok becausè hee eez veree szoree bou' dat!

Archeaological dig

Guess I should thank Frank for floating the spring cleaning thing. The kitchen at the airport was pretty bad. No surprise there, as there has only been fellas working there for the last couple of years. We have a female joining our team at work on monday, so in an attempt to make sure she doesn't quit right off I figured some clean up was in order. I did the office, and Miranda took care of the kitchen...er Melinda. You can see my young protegè was a big help, feet up, enjoying a good book.

Charlene just came in and she calls the airport daddy's castle. There's a funny story behind that. I was having some trouble with this guy working for me at the airport and I end up hollering at the guy " Make no mistake! I'm the king of this GD castle!!" The guy had a real problem with who was in charge. Aaanyhoo, when I got home and told the misses about it Charlene was listening...Next time we drive out to the airport Charlene says " There's my daddy's castle!"

And she still calls it that.

Michelle, Charlie Brown will be 4 on April 23. Here she mugs for the camera. (We were going to get a beagle and name it Snoopy if she had been a boy) .

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It got up to plus seven today...quite warm for this time of the year. When you live north of sixty,

global warming is a good thing. The three of us. Miranda..oops sorry babe! Melinda and Charlene with the confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard rivers in the background. Oh yeah, and there's one of my little Charlie Brown.

Well, I'm kinda sorta getting the dynamic here now. Cathy, I certainly do remember you in the blue pall, at the other end of the kitchen table talking politics with mom. Everyone that ever sat in that kitchen was in that blue haze. I realize that I have to stay away from talking about politics myself, and indeed from having anything to do with politics. As I am genetically predisposed to political overboardism. For Frank, you were close, it's actually a ceiling projector very similar to a ceilometer, it has a greater range than a ceilometer but is less accurate at it's higher range. The other features of...sorry, I love my job and am prone to occasional overboardism on this topic as well. Not really sure how the pics will show up on the post, they are pretty self explanatory. my office. radio console. view from outside. Oh yeah, the big honkin' snowblower.

Went out to the airport today to do some maintenance on a big light we use to measure cloud heights. While I was there, the editor in charge of blogging(wife) suggested I go across the road to the GBO site. The GBO(Ground Based Observatory) is a project I look after for the University Of Calgary and NASA. That's right folks, that NASA. It's a project that is studying the northern lights. I look after one of 20 northern observatories. The money isn't great but having NASA on your resumè looks pretty good. Unfortunately, I didn't get anywhere near the GBO the snow was kinda deep in places. Melinda was amused. I was winded, apparently my quit-smoking-superpowers haven't kicked in yet.

Of course we got the loader in to do the driveway (apparently Gary was busy or I would have asked him) and it's been snowing since about 30 seconds after the loader left, and supposed to snow all night again. Winter...in the territories. A year up here can be described as 8 months of winter followed by 4 months of tough skidooing. Well I'm just getting ready to head out the door, night shift, it's overtime so a little easier to take.

No pic today, but I would like to let everyone know that I have been smoke free for 10 days now. I guess 27 years of anything should be long enough. Smoking just didn't hold any surprises anymore, the relationship soured and I bailed. I'm sure John Player and his ilk can get along fine without my 15 bucks a day. I do have one complaint though, everyone says that when you quit smoking food tastes better. Not so, it tastes different...not necessarily better. Maybe I need to sprinkle tobacco on my fish sticks now to get that familiar highliner flavor. One positive is that the wife says I smell better now too, no word on how I taste...maybe she will need to sprinkle some tobacco on me to get that familiar tim brown flavor!

last week I went to Wrigley, (pop. less than 200 people.) This week it was Fort Liard, (pop. between 6 and 8 hundred people). The views are always nice, and when I'm on duty travel I have the option of bringing the family with me. My boss calls it taking a "busmans holiday".

The old timey pics just keep on comin'! Here's a modern one for comparison. The ultimate "then and now"

Next stop, memory lane. That's me in the blue, my brother mike in the red and my sister margaret standing up. Maybe 1967 or 68?

The longest day of the year is of course, june 21. this pic was one month and two days later between 1:00 and 1:30 am. We get 20 hours of daylight and 4 hours of twilight(no dark at all) at this time of year. Land of the midnight sun baby! Fish all night!