Where, oh where, is the nicer weather?

Today

• -1°C
• 60%
• Mon

• -2°C
• -4°C
• 30%

Tue

• 2°C
• -3°C
• 30%

Wed

• 2°C
• 0°C

Thu

• 3°C
• -2°C
• 60%

 

So, the reason for my rant is obvious...I am so heartily sick of cold, wet, windy weather. Sigh...

I am officially using a cane these days. The hip injury in January was a torn muscle that has not healed due to continuous use. The cane is helping, although the kids all tell me I look old now. Starting to feel that way too, LOL!

The girls and I are looking forward to our trip, with a scheduled departure set for 2:00 pm on Wednesday. I will post updates and photos. My senior boys are eagerly planning their trip in October. I am proud to say we ahve fundraised to the tune of nearly $7000 so far. Woohoo for us!

It seems strange to find the end of the year so close to us now. I am already planning for the first weeks back. I have my homeward tickets booked, am planning summer outings and so on, so it should feel close. But it has not felt like a full year here. It seems like just a couple of months have passed and yet it's almost time for year end! Strange thing, this fluidity and lack of continuity in the sensation of time passing. I remember how summers (and school years) were endless as a kid. Now they are just a brief flash in the pan and gone...

Anyhow, not much else is new, so I'll keep you posted on the Winnipeg happenings!

TTFN!

Terri

Finally!

The snow is about half melted, and I can now see the ice in the harbour peeking out from under its winter blanket. There are birds chirping and every sign that spring has not forgotten us up here in the tundra. My Honda and I are sporting the latest in designer fashion by wearing matching (mud)beige polka-dots on all our clothing, LOL! With the hills here, everything is melting and running down the roads, leaving puddles and small rivers everywhere. Needless to say, I splash through a lot of them riding back and forth, ergo the fashionable splatter-look. I am driving more this year as I think that is what kept the battery from keeping its charge last year. Ta-dum, I love my Honda!

The preparations for our 5K racing trip are well in hand. We have bought out the canteen, and are now running it daily. I am ordering in supplies and keeping my accounting records straight. Still waiting on the cheque from Sport Nunavut but we fortunately have raised enough to have been able to book our hotel and pay for our airline tickets out of our account. If all else fails, I will use one dedicated credit card for our expenses and simply sign out the cash to pay it off as soon as the cheque arrives (it's in the mail, natch!) We fly out on May 30th, and our itinerary includes a day at the Manitoba Museum, a day at the Assiniboine Zoo, a Goldeyes baseball game, some time exercising and scoping out the race course, and of course some quality shopping and movie time at Portage Place Mall. I am VERY excited, and so are the first four lucky runners! At least four more going to Montreal in October for a 10K, and maybe more if we can afford it. We now have 18 registered runners in the club and growing. I may have to break into Junior and Senior divisions...

Today I finally had my own first really good run in a long time. My hip is still bothering me, and I may have pulled or torn a ligament. I cannot lift my leg very well, and it is impossible to bend it to the side. I have to put my clothing on the floor to step into, and I find it challenging to put on socks or slippers. The left leg is fine, but the right one needs some TLC. Anyhow, after limping through a bare mile for the last few weeks I ran 4 miles today, a full hour, and felt like I could have gone much longer. I decided not to push it and left it feeling smugly content with myself.

Lots of fundraising ahead of us: Movie Nights every Saturday, two Music Nights, one Arctic Records concert night, and two cakewalk/yarn pull nights with another community showing of the film "People of a Feather" starring our own Mary Kavik's family here in Sanikiluaq. It will be coming with me for family showing this summer. Nice to be able to show others my town and community members!

We're also down to our last few weeks in the school calendar! Where has the year flown? I have my tickets home booked and paid, and my plans for several jaunts hither and yon made. I am most looking forward to my trip to Thailand. Now if only the price of the tickets would begin to drop...

Off to eat some lunch after my run...brought the fixings with me to work and I'll go get everything ready in the kitchen. The Jell-o and the monster cookies are made for tonight's movie, my canteen cart has been inventoried, pop is chilling in the fridge and we are set to roll.

TTFN!

Terri

The Science Fair in photos.

So, the Science Fair has come, yay, and gone, double yay! for another year. And what a fair it was!

It filled the senior gym and though our tables looked less full than last year, they were twice as large and we actually had a lot more stuff. The community came and everyone was amazed. We had two graduate students from University of Ottawa up with the group, "Science Travels". They helped out immensely, and they said it was the best Science Fair they had ever seen. I also taught them a few tricks, so I felt kind of impressed with lil' old meself, yes I did!

As usual, I included a few visual aids on the posters...

Ha, ha, yes, I crack myself up!

This is one of the Sound Discovery tables.

Our Density table, where the kids can make density columns, float eggs, and check out the sink/float relationship beyween pop and diet pop.

Experimenting with magnets...

This is my "hologram" display, at the Light Discovery table.

 The frog is actually INSIDE the bowl, at the bottom.

This is a clip of our students walking on eggs.

The Bubble Table...where we make square bubbles, giant bubbles, tetrahedrons, and

of course, wrap kids up in bubbles!

Air Discovery table before...

...and during... 

My invaluable helpers from U of Ottawa...this is Dave Mandia...

...and our marksman, Justin "Yes I'm the Beebs" Renaud.

 You have to try this one...

Take a plastic beer cup Poke a hole in the bottom.

Cut a piece of string about 18" long.

Thread string through the hole and tie a knot so the knot is inside

the cup and string is hanging out the bottom.

Wet the string and your fingers. Pull the string.

You will know when you have done it right!

More sound discoveries...

 The ball tower and spark generator at Stephen's display.

Our "Newton's Nightmare"...drop a magnet through a metal tube.

It takes forever for it to drop out...

My infamous "Bed of Nails" poster for my balloons!

Sigh...clean-up time at the end. Thank heavens for helpers!

 Told you it was a BIG gym!

Last few tables going away...

And dinner for the helpers...

...then dishes...

 And done for the year. Oh thank heavens!!!!!

We did a lot of cool stuff:

-pushed pencils through baggies without having them leak

-shook pop cans and then opened them without exploding

-pushed skewers through balloons

-made levitating rice

-made liquids change from clear to black

-made elephant's toothpaste (exploding foam)

-imploded cans

-shot off air rockets and cannons

-made film canister rockets

-made croaking cups

-made jelly marbles disappear

-walked on eggs

-made oddly balancing bottles

-balanced a table full of kids on a few balloons

...and impressed the whole community while we were at it! All in all, a WILD success!

I'm off to try and relax for a few hours before Music Night tonight, running tomorrow,

and Movie Night at 6:30 pm. Busy? Naw...LOL!

TTFN!

Briefly...

Science Fair May 3rd...busy busy BUSY!!!!

Still running...ouch!

Phone maybe soon? Lines are coming.

Cable, no sign of.

Internet only at school. Where I am still. 8:00 pm Sunday. Ugh.

Honda running...yay!

Weather cold.

Me, cranky.

That's all.

Good News!

We got some good news, my poor tired running girls and I...we have been approved by Sports and Recreation Nunavut as an official club, and that comes with an activity grant of $10,000.00 to take the kids to some competitions! Woohoo! So, I have done some shopping around and the 5-ish Fun Run in Winnipeg on June 3rd is calling our names. So four girls and I will be winging our way south to take on our first real run. We plan to leave on May 30th (just in case Kivalliq is delayed, and then we can get out on Friday). We will return home on Monday, June 4th. The girls will get a free lunch and a race T-shirt for their effort. Me, I get a pain in the hip, LOL! Whatever I injured in January has never fully healed. Likely a pulled ligament. I can run, but I have trouble walking, and trying to cross my right leg over my left to put on a sock? Almost impossible! I empathize more and more with my Mom and her hips every day!

I also have a few guys who are interested in joining running, so I may have some competition for the spots in October. On the brighter side, I may have found my marathon group! I hope that next year we can do a 10K, and the two years after are for some 20K half-marathons. The big goal is for July of 2016 and the Arctic Bay Midnight Sun Marathon in Nunavut, at the top of Baffin Island.

So, if I can train and stay healthy, and my leg doesnt get mad at me and fall off or something, will any of my family journey up to see me run my tushie into the ground? That would be worth the cost of the airfare, I'm sure! Any takers to laugh at my misery? Heck, go cheap and just head to Winnipeg, I'll be limping around enough there and  you can laugh for less, LOL!

Still no phone, cable or internet, so I'm living at the school. Of course, this is nothing new. I have my big fundraising auction tomorrow night, so I have been preparing my list of items and baking like crazy. We got an Air Inuit ticket to auction, and I will have a plant in the crowd to bid for me. We should raise close to $2000 for the event, hurray! And a big Music Night on the 27th, and Movie Nights each Saturday along with our practices...I need to be two more of me! Of course, then I'd just irritate the heck out of myself, always giving myself advice that I didn't want to hear, so I'd just wind up shooting the spare me's anyhow...oh well. I can relax when I retire...

TTFN!

Terri

A couple of pics from the scavenger hunt...

Just a few pics, nothing fancy, but the kids having some fun.

Here the kids in one group are getting sorted. They had to line up from tallest to smallest

and take their team photo.

Almost done, just doing a final height check....

They had to take a photo of a team member inside a locker.

Diane is inside, Mina is checking for the camera.

We hauled the gym mats into the lobby so they could build a six-person human pyramid.

And they had to find Marilyn (near the right in the back, wearing a red sweater) and have

their team photo taken with her.

It was fun, and kept them running for a full hour!

We ended the Carnival with a music night from 8:30 to midnight. We had a loonie admission for juniors and a toonie for seniors. With the canteen, we raised almost $350.00 for my running club. We had six $10.00 gift certificates donated by the Co-op and the Northern for prizes. There was a hip-hop dance off, several spot dances, and a stick dance. The stick dance is like a frenetic version of musical chairs: a hockey stick or other type of stick is tossed into teh circle. You have to hand it off to someone and if you're holding it when the music stops, you're out. After a couple of rounds, another stick is tossed in, and then another, and then another. At this point kids are running everywhere trying to escape the sticks someone is trying to give them while trying to chase someone else down to pass off their stick. It's a riot! But oi, considering I was up at 5:00 am to help cook the pancake breakfast for the last day of the carnival, it was a VERY long day! But the kids had such a good time it was worth every tiring minute of it.

Running club tomorrow, and the Movie Night. We're showing the cartoon, "Hop", just in time for Easter, and then Adam Sandler's "Jack and Jill". Next week we're showing "Despicable Me" and then "The Sixth Sense". Love that movie! Creepy! And the kids are all about the ghost movies here.

So TTFN, I'm off to bed, and Sunday we move into our new unit. Sadly, the phone will be out for a while, and the cable too, but I will be glad of the reprieve from CSI Miami (gag...what a horrid show...)

Terri

Fun and the Games!

Our belated Winter Festival aka Carnival is finally underway! It has been delayed by snow days, report cards, an unexpected sports tournament and then a respiratory virus that is sweeping the community. But we had our first day of fun today, and what a great day it has been!

We started off with four teams. Two teams came into my room and went on a scavenger hunt, in and around the schools. They had to find a pop can that was NOT a Coke or Pepsi can (a hard task indeed, LOL!); they had to find a certain teacher and get a photo with her after asking for her birth onth; they had to get the phone number from teh fuel tank and a photo; they had to build a six-person human pyramid; they had to make a poster that said, "Paatsaali Rocks!" and put it up on our display board, and take a photo of everyone pointing at it; they had to take a photo of one team member in a locker; and all sorts of other fun shenanigans like that. They had a blast!

Meanwhile, in the gym, the other two teams faced off for Keep-away, a sort of dodge-ball form of soccer. Tomorrow the two teams switch places. After recess, we had mini fun games. Some students had to take toilet paper and wrap team members up like mummies. Others had to blow a ping-pong ball across the floor with a straw. (Deb, do you remember 'Survivor' and the frozen peas? Guess where this idea came from, LOL!) Then we had a ball relay where you had to run with the ball between your knees. There was a variation of beer pong with only the pong part as a tournament. There was a frisbee target toss. And so on. A lot of laughter, a lot of cheering, a lot of fun.

In teh afternoon the elementary school came over and we had nine teams build cardboard qamutiik (sleds) which we then took out and raced as a relay. 3 pullers took 2 riders from Nuiyak to Paatsaali, and then 3 other pullers took 2 different riders back to Nuiyak. We only lost one qamutiik, so it went well! Into the gym for a quick frisbee dodgeball game, hot dogs and hot chocolate, and home. The kids were exhausted but all smiling when they left. Everyone had such a good time.

Tomorrow we have the same first activity, as mentioned, and then Inuit games with a stick pull, a one-foot kick, knee jumps, and so on. Then in the afternoon we join schools again to skate, toboggan, or play hockey. The night caps off with a fundraiser with my running girls. We're having a music night, a time of spot dances, a hip-hop contest, a broom dance, and acouple of other games with some gift certificates generously donated by the Northern Store and the Mitiq Co-op. Our canteen will be open and we are charging admission, so it should be a good night for the club. We raised over $800.00 in March alone, excellent for this area! So there may be a trip in June for a race. Our application with Sport Nunavut is currently under consideration for funding and I am keeping my fingers crossed. Oh, and if anyone ares to donate some thing to our auction, if you mail them fast they could arrive in time, LOL! Hint, hint! Box 202...hint, hint! And there are four lovely miniature paintings that I just KNOW someone will want to bid on, say maybe $200.00? Hint! Hint!

And somewhere in all this, we have to move to our new unit, which is lovely and has a HUGE storage area. Huzzah! Well, I can sleep all summer, I guess...catch up on my downtime then. Oh, and four weeks until the Science Fair! Oi vey...

TTFN!

Terri