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Frank writes up a brief weather forecast each day on a whiteboard in the school entrance-way. Yesterday he wrote “Will it ever quit raining?”. Ironically, the sun is shining at the moment after an hour’s rain this morning, and although it does occasionally break, it has been pretty much rain for 4/5 weeks now. It does mean an abundance of rainbows, even double rainbows:

I hate this kind of weather though as it’s so unpredictable you can walk to the school in bright sunshine and be soaked by the time you get there (bearing in mind it’s maybe 100m!). Our downspout feeding into the water tank became blocked meaning we weren’t catching any of the rain water – got that fixed now as it was no fun filling our water tank in the pouring rain.

Mia just keeps getting bigger, though has a cute + innocent face meaning she pretty much tries to get away with anything:

Usually works too Definately growing into her nickname of ‘moose’ due to her size – we had a cable run from the house to the upright on the main sewer line meaning she had a good 40-50 feet or so to run around. This is aircraft-grade strength cable. She broke it. To give her the benefit of the doubt, we had just re-tightened the cable and it broke on one of the bracket-loops so had probably just cut itself on that. So we reverted back to a short cable tie until I fix the main run, then last night I see her wandering the houses with a piece of cable hanging from her collar:

This hadn’t caught on anything other than maybe the boardwalk, so nothing sharp that could have cut it. Even if it was, it takes a lot of effort and and a good amount of time with cutters to get through it. I guess aircraft-strength grade cable doesn’t necessarily mean Mia-strength grade cable She just sauntered back into the house looking all cute + innocent with this short length of cable from her collar as if nothing was wrong.

Dunno whether I’m more concerned about how we can keep her tied up given the VPSO’s were rounding loose dogs up at the beginning of the week or how strong aircraft actually are!

Recent Snoopy comics (re-runs from the 50′s or 60′s I guess) have had Charlie Brown getting worried about chanting “Rain rain, go away, come again another day” and finding it suddenly stops raining. Could use him here Really is the wet season as it rarely goes a few hours without downpours. Our down-spout that connects into the water tank became blocked meaning we ran out of water Monday night even given all the rain. Dave and I had already spent 4 hours working outside in the rain on Tuesday so I just dragged the hoses out, got on with it, and filled our tank. I got the spouts cleared yesterday and the rain today has topped up the tank again. Just doesn’t look too good for getting much work done the next few days. Still, logged 28 hours the last couple of weeks which just about breaks $300! Mark has nick-named the sewer line “the Great Wall of Tunt”, and also informs me that it’s hurricane proof. The logic is that since there’s never been a hurricane destroy any of the buildings in Tunt, everything built up here is, by default, hurricane proof. I like that kinda of logic.

But, thanks to Shopzilla continuing their support of the blog with another year’s worth of advertising, and Alaska Air running a very bizarre mileage plan program, I’m heading down to Carson City / Lake Tahoe for a few days towards the end of October. Given the miles I have, I could transfer a few thousand from Kat and buy a few extra thousand to end up with Bethel to Reno round-trip for $235. I couldn’t fly Bethel to Anchorage for close to that! Kat and I are pretty much set on moving to Carson City next year along with Cris + Luke, and I need to check something out before we commit to a few things. More on that later Gives me an excuse to get out the village for a few days, and Joel has kindly offered to accompany me for a drink or two whilst down there…

So, flying out Sunday 21st October on the 8.30p.m flight gets me into Reno around 10.15a.m on Monday, then leaving again 10.45 Thursday morning into Bethel by 8p.m, giving me a night in Bethel and a few hours on Friday to get to the DMV in Bethel for a state ID card, then onto the bank to hopefully get an account open. Gives me something to look forward to whilst up to my knees in water + mud for the next few weeks if nothing else!

My social security card arrived yesterday, for what good it does. Definately reckon the trade descriptions act could be enforced recently mind – the social security ‘card’ is just a piece of paper, sitting nicely alongside the ‘green’ card that ain’t green. Anyways, although I’ve been able to work the last couple of days as a result, I still can’t open a bank account without a driving licence or state ID. How many forms of ID am I going to end up carrying around with me? Seems like bank accounts for under 16′s are limited to basic savings accounts, much different to England where I had a checking account at 10 years old. Plus, even with a savings account, you either have a monthly fee of $3-$4 for the privelege of giving the bank your money unless you keep anywhere between $300-$500 in there for them to play the stock markets with. Seems like everything is always ‘one more thing’ before you’re actually in a state where you can earn an income and make the most of it. At $11 an hour, will have to work a whole week just to be able to pay for the flights to get into Bethel to obtain a state ID and open a bank account for the school to be able to pay me in the first place… I know living way out here has made things 10 times harder with the whole immigration stuff, but the amount of hoops I’ve jumped through would get me a place in the Moscow State Circus (course, they wouldn’t be able to pay me without a bank account to make desposits to…)!

Working hasn’t exactly been all that fun, but least I know how Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs feels like – spent two hours cleaning the ash out the trash burner yesterday Today I helped Mark make a start on the sewer lines out the houses. Didn’t have the foggiest what he was doing as it’s very much figure everything out as you can along, so I just carried 2×6′s, whacked a bunch of nails and held the spirit level Nowt wrong with an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, just ain’t getting the honesy day’s pay and Kat nicely decided to share the wealth and passed on her cold a couple of days ago!

Whilst in Bethel on Wednesday picking up some groceries, I found a pack of Golden Curry mix and a tin of coconut milk. The last pack of curry mix we got from Tony the dentist was nice, though a little hot, and at the time it would have been good to have some coconut milk to cool and sweeten it. So, I decided to pick some up and give it a go. Last night we had Marie, Angie, Pam and Georgette over for dinner and it turned out really nice. This curry mix was pretty mild anyways, and adding in the coconut milk made it very tasty, similar to a malayan. I also added in some chopped bananas to add a little extra to it. Everyone really liked it and we only just about had enough left for us tonight! I also made a couple of different naan breads, garlic and raisin, and the raisin bread especially was really good. Least we know we can stuff from Bethel next time we order food and make up a big batch

This afternoon I helped Nick outside as he was wanting to build a deck out the front of his house along with a ramp for his snowmobile to get into the little garage without catching the side of the boardwalk. He’d also had me helping his high-school class out last week building sections of boardwalk as they were doing it as part of their native culture class which was fun. But, it’s nice sized deck, around 8×10 feet, and a nice sloping ramp up to his garage joining on to it. Nick had to jump off to the clinic for a tetanus booster as the wood we used was the old boards from the boardwalk by school that was torn up a couple of weeks ago and still had a bunch of rusty nails in them. He got sorted though and all looks good. With it being Labor Day tomorrow, he’s firing up the barbeque for a bunch of the teachers so it will get a good test as to how sturdy it is!

Hopefully starting Tuesday I’ll be working for the school a few hours a day helping Mark out. Nothing too exciting, just as a laborer on around $11 an hour, but better nothing and Mark’s always fun to be around. He came over checking fire extinguishers on Friday, saw me playing Nascar ’08 on the Xbox 360 and so played for a few minutes to see if it was any good! Frank, the principal, is hoping to get new sewer lines hooked up to the four houses on the other side of school to feed them back into the main school system, so there’s plenty of work to keep us going. There’s also going to be workmen hooking up water and oil lines in the fall, meaning hopefully there’s going to a nice supply of stuff to get done if they need some help.