An Exciting Tuesday?

Yesterday was exciting, and by that I mean, even by Southern standards. When you live in a place like Baker Lake, barking dogs can really enliven your day, but yesterday was special for a few reasons.

First, it snowed. Light, feathery snow that picks up at the slightest breeze. Contrary to popular belief, while the hillsides are blanketed with snow, it rarely snows between November through March because it's too cold. We can look at this two ways - snow means the weather is becoming warmer, which means summer is that much closer. Snow also means the next time we have strong winds, we will have a hardcore blizzard on our hands, like the ones where you have two feet of visibility, if the veterans of Baker are to be believed. All of the 'baby' blizzards we've had so far this year have been winds north of 80 km/h, but without falling snow, visibility is only limited to ten feet or so.

We also had a parade through town to celebrate the high school girls basketball team for winning silver in a big tournament. That was preceded by four 'feast' days (think community pot-luck), which we've been meaning to attend but haven't worked up the courage to try raw caribou yet. Like the New Years Eve parade, this one had the fire truck in the lead, siren blaring, followed by RCMP trucks, and the rest of the 'floats' were disguised as a wide variety of trucks, some of which had members of the community sitting in the back. One of them even had the Baker Lake Blizzard mascot - a blue bear that was dancing on the back of one of the lead trucks. Unlike parades in Ontario, where you have to go somewhere to see them, the ones in Baker Lake thoughtfully wind through every side street, so you can watch them from the comfort of your own home, provided you aren't in your truck being part of it. It's funny - I heard the siren and thought, 'that sounds like Toronto', and it made me miss home.

Also, I put up blackout curtains in our bedroom (finally!). We bought them locally because stores in the south don't offer free shipping, so the cost actually worked out to be slightly better here. Shocking, I know. With limited choice, Lily picked out a pair of red silk ones that match the cherry blossoms on our bedspread perfectly. More importantly, they now give our bedroom that boudoir feel. Unfortunately, our living room furniture is red, so we have to use a more neutral colour for the downstairs. We couldn't find four matching panels at the Northern, but the manager said he would check other stores in Nunavut for us. It apparently can take anywhere from "a few days" to "a few weeks...or months." Hopefully not the latter or else we're going to miss the daylight season altogether!

Lastly, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the Iglu Inn, one of the few restaurants in Baker. I had a bacon burger and Lily tried the roast beef sandwich, both of which proved to be delicious, and not as wallet-draining as you would normally expect for up here. It was surprisingly busy, in the sense that there were about a half-dozen tables keeping the kitchen busy. Lily likened it to Baker's hot spot to pick up single men, since that looked like the majority of the patrons. If there are any single ladies looking for love in Baker, dinner out at the Iglu on a Tuesday night might be your hot ticket.

Thus concludes our overly unusual day - check back for more (but possibly less exciting) news in a few days.

-J