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Got a phone call this morning from the school district in Bethel to confirm starting the system analyst job next week Guess I need to find somewhere to stay now… Looking forward to it though, and there’s already a little project lined up for my first day (Tuesday, since Monday is Labor Day public holiday). Plan to fly into Bethel on the Monday evening as even with the best will in the world the bush flights wouldn’t get me in by 8a.m on the Tuesday morning!

I’ve been filling in the paperwork for a new hire - working out your own tax deductions via the W-4 seems inane given all payroll info is going to be handled via computer which could spit out your deductions in an instant. It’s pretty different to back in England though where married filing jointly doesn’t affect things and child tax credits are handled separately too. Guess the idea is to have as much as possible handled within your pay check rather than additional credits here and there and then rebates at the end of each tax year which makes sense. Still think i prefer the UK way where you don’t have to even file a tax return under most circumstances and have it all handled automatically for you

Kat should be at Reno airport about now waiting for her flight out to Phoenix before heading up to Anchorage. Hopefully will get back into Tunt first thing tomorrow morning, though bad weather the last couple of days has been delaying some of the bush flights (even more than usual…), which will be the last thing she’ll want after 5 hours hanging Anchorage airport in the dead of night!

Mia went swimming on Saturday which was the first time she’s gone all the way into the lakes doggy-paddling - usually she would just slowly creep in whilst still standing up and then scrabble back when the water got to her chest, but I had her chasing sticks up by the new airport and she ended up going right in after them and thought it was great once she realised she could swim

Today I got my rebate check through from XFX for the graphics card I bought a couple of months back - not going to complain, as usually they take forever to be processed, and the $30 rebate is about 1/3 off which is better than sales in most department stores! $65 for a 256Mb DDR3 GEForce 8600GT isn’t too shabby and has worked great.

Anyway, suppose I should go back to cleaning the house now the golf has finished…

Got all the travel + hotel vouchers in the mail today for our vacation at the end of July. Pretty cool. Now on the hunt for a new digital camera after mine went belly up back in March. Also got some more food through from Span Alaska (ordered 2 1/2 weeks ago, and maybe half of it has arrived…) - some genius decided that even though I’d ordered the large plastic containers of Prego pasta sauce, they’d ship a dozen smaller glass jars (think glass jars bouncing from Seattle to way the hell out here on dubious bush planes at the best of times…) and then to make sure they caused as much damage as possible, would stick 4 huge 8lb 10oz bottles (plastic this time at least) of salsa sauce on top. Thankfully only one of the glass jars broke, but makes you wonder why they can charge an extra $160 for priority shipping on frozen food that still hasn’t arrived when shipping is meant to be included in the price of their food to begin with, and then 3% extra for shipping insurance when they then balls up packaging food and know fine well it’s not worth the customer (dis)service hell of trying to claim on what does get damaged.

Another of my “if I had a bunch of money I’d start a competing business as they’re clearly realising they have a monopoly so their customers have no alternative but put up with it” moments

The end of last week a couple of barges came in bringing some freight for various projects around the village, along with filling up the main fuel tanks at the gas station. I’d managed to avoid going that way after whispers of it hitting $8/gallon before the barge came in, but Mia + I took a walk along there today and found it had risen from $5/gallon to $6.65/gallon. Not quite $8, but still a big jump Over a 10 gallon tank, that’s an extra $16.50 compared to last winter, or 3 gallons worth of fuel, which isn’t too nice when a snowmobile struggles to get 15mpg anyway. Maybe folk won’t ride round the village 20 times a day to the store or post office when it hits their wallet like they usually do. Still better than back in England anyway!

There doesn’t seem to be as many people going away to fish camp this year compared to the last couple of years, rather they just are going to head out a few days in the main salmon run later this month, then again around the end of July. Not sure whether that’s down to gas prices, or if the locals think it’s just not worth the effort of spending weeks away from the village at camp when they can head out in force for a few days and put all their energy into hauling in fish during the main run.

Cris got a house sorted yesterday in Fallon, an hour or so east of Carson City, so they were unloading their U-Haul and moving in today. Sure she’s pretty happy to finally be there and into her new home! Job hunting will be next, and Kat heads back on Monday, coming straight through Anchorage into the village on Tuesday morning rather than spending however many hundreds of dollars on a hotel and rental car when we’ll back in Anchorage at the end of July anyway. Sure Mia will be happy to have her back a few days earlier too

The last couple of weeks the guys working on the oil lines to the houses have been rounding things off, completing all the wiring and testing the system will actually pump oil into the feeder tanks by the houses. Right now, Mia is doing her best to get their attention by looking cute and wagging her tail as they’re putting up signs on the sides of the two main tanks reading “Danger: Flammable liquids. NO SMOKING”. Sensible idea, except the guys have all been standing up on the top of the tanks whilst wiring up the pumps, valves and whatever else whilst smoking themselves. I did think a few days ago that it was akin to the guy filling up a petrol station from a tanker whilst smoking a cigarette - “Hey guys, lets stand on top of 20,000 gallons of fuel to wire up this pump and smoke a cigarette right over the great big gaping whole leading right to the fuel”

Bet you could roast a good few marshmallows though, and all in seriousness, they have done a really good job with the oil lines and will make it a lot easier next winter to keep the heating systems in the houses up and running!

Kat got out of the village okay yesterday after some dodgy weather left her feeling nervous about the bush planes arriving (even more nervous than usual about figuring out the odds of the bush planes picking you up when they’re meant to…), and got into Fargo around lunchtime after flying via Denver from Anchorage. She called earlier to complain she was covered in cat hair from Max - guess Mia isn’t too bad after all, who, by the way, moped around her kennel from 6p.m last night until 10a.m this morning as she knew Kat had gone! Seems a little better today after being bribed with a walk and then a treat or two. Kat will be away until the middle of June helping Cris move across to Carson City, before flying back through Anchorage. Just me + Mia for the next 3 weeks

With Kat addicted to Facebook and such like, her half sister, Cheri` had found her again after loosing touch for a number years with Kat moving around. Kat was pretty excited about it as they’d never really got to know in touch much whilst younger, but Cheri` had a baby last year and they’re hoping to meet up whilst Kat’s in the lower. They live in Oregon (would have been canny to know last summer whilst traveling through there!), so are planning on meeting up half way between Tahoe and Salem (I think). That make me quarter uncle in law…?

We got a bunch of stuff booked for our trip with my parents at the end of July now. Yesterday we went ahead through Alaska Travel to book a train ride down to Seward along with two nights hotel by the harbour and full day glacier cruise with a ranger talk and grilled salmon lunch, along with 3 nights in a log cabin in Denali, a full day bus tour of the national park, and then a tour of the Sundog kennels in Talkeetna to check over some of Iditarod huskies and take a ride with them. That’s pretty much our main trips all confirmed now, as the few days around Anchorage will mainly be heading to the heritage museum, taking a tour of the city, going to the zoo and Earthquake Park, etc. We booked our flights a week ago too, so we’re all starting to get excited about it.

Back in the village, it’s weird seeing boats moving around on the river - all the ice has gone and people are starting to get ready to go fishing. I filled the 4-wheeler up with gas after dropping Kat off at the airport and a boat pulled up to get fuel too which caught me off guard! Hoping to start sweet talking people into taking me out fishing once the weather picks up (still miserable + drizzling). But, with the guys moving away trying to offload the last of their gear rather than simply throw it out, I got a dartboard off Nick with two sets of darts for $10. Good fun, as have my darts from England with me too - used to spend hours playing darts down the Travs. Just need to convince Kat to let me open a bar up here

Seriously, we are! Well, our names are anyway

NASA is launching a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter towards the end of the year, and they’re including a microchip in it containing a bunch of names submitted to them by the end of June. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to get our names out there, such as being on the Honda F1 car last season, Kat + I added our names. Simply enter your name on the LRO submission form and you’re set.

Maybe I’ll end up flying over the acre of moon I bought a few years ago…

Not been all that much going on the past week or so. Strong winds had the windchill down to -20F to -30F pretty much all week, though it seems to have dropped today. Not too cold now at around 5F (-15C), but the wind this past week always feels so much colder than an air temp of -20F, especially when you 40mph on a snowmobile!

We’ve got a kid from Juneau due to stay with us this next week. Every year an exchange program is setup to try and get kids from Juneau and Anchorage into rural villages so they can see the other side of life in Alaska. Hopefully they’ll be open to new ideas and want to get involved with things out here rather than looking down on village life and the way the locals live as some in the past have. They’re sat in Bethel waiting to fly out and I’m playing taxi drive for their luggage, then they’ll figure out who’s staying where.

The guys working on the new oil lines are coming along nicely, starting to hook up the tanks to the main lines. Will still be a few weeks before they’re feeding in automatically which will be nice as gets pretty cold standing around filling up the tanks manually. Frank’s aslso figuring out some things he wants doing over the summer such as converting one of the older teacher houses into a classroom, so there should be some stuff for me to do. Kat tried to catch the start of the Iditarod on TV yesterday but we don’t pick up the Anchorage channels until the afternoon for whatever reason which kinda sucked, but as soon as the dates for next year’s race are announced we’re planning on booking plane tickets and hotel and heading in to see it. Should be fun - I read a book a few months ago about Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the Iditarod back in 1985, and it sounded like a cool trip to take.

Yesterday morning I was called in to work around 9a.m as the sewer line running from the old houses was leaking. Mark + I tracked it all the way back to the very last connector before it went into the school where we either had simply forgotten to glue it or the glue didn’t hold given it was probably around 0F when we were doing it. I’m going for the later Was an easy fix and not too messy as the joint had held, just wasn’t airtight, though it was so cold it took most of the afternoon before I could get my ring back on as my fingers were pretty swollen.

Today isn’t looking like much fun as there’s blowing snow coming in pretty constantly and is forecast to hang around for a few days. Isn’t too cold, but the wind is biting cold still. I think Rocky is coming over to play with Mia later on - Kat wanted to make a Valentines card for him from Mia which I wanted nothing to do with, but think realised that was just a little too silly!

We’re definately going to spend another year up here though - Kat told Frank a couple of days ago as he was wanting to get a feel for who’s leaving + staying so he can plan for next school year. Makes sense so we can help Cris move from Minnesota this summer and for us to save up plenty for moving the following year. Kat’s wanting to do summer school as it’s a pretty good deal and we’re only looking at a couple of weeks down in the lower 48 and a few days around Anchorage as hotels and rental cars get too expensive for 7-8, so we’ll be around Tunt anyway. Hopefully there’ll be work for me as Frank is wanting the basketball court to come down and a new pre-fabricated building to be errected, and summer time would be a good opportunity to do it. If not, will just go play on me canoe

We’re thinking of taking the show on the road this summer:

I’m blaming a touch of cabin fever…