The insanity of Humanity

I need to take a moment to spout some vitriole directed at the masses of "trained" scientists who are making contributions to whole of human knowledge: Are you guys stupid?

Evolutionist keep arguing all of life as we know it came from wet, hot rocks.

Case in point. Researchers have just recently submerged a small robotic submarine and roved the deep waters off the coast of India with a high resolution camera. In the process, surprise of all surprises, they managed to photograph species hitherto unknown to mankind. Some of them are creatures of similar nature to other known species but some have been less categorizable in the current trends of thought. These scientists argue that this is of course, mounting evidence for evolution.

A quote: "Were you there when I plumbed the depths of the ocean?" ~ God, challenging Job's notion of knowledge.

My point: Are humans so insanley proud to think that we could somehow espouse the very workings of our planet or even the universe into a neat categorizable unified theory of mathematic coincedence? Modern science consistently argues that given time that any of this could happen. To think hat somehow the cogs of all of this massive biological machinery that operates more profoundly accurate than anything men can come up with is just coincidental is the epitome of stupidity.

Riddle me this: Which evolved first in the human race: the liver or the spleen? or how about the liver and the pancreas? Neither organ can function without the other and they are profoundly absent in many subspecies that live quite well without them, and if we functioned at one point well without them what would the need of growing these function specific organs be anyways?. Now, a scientific mind might argue that their beginnings could have begun sympathetically and grown together. Mathematically for this to happen the human race or our precursors would have had to been on the planet simultaneously with the rest of planetary evolution (for billions of years instead of mere hundreds of millions - darnit, math and the laws of probability keep getting in the way) or we are so consequently lucky that it all happened just like it did that we should be thanking our lucky stars and living life to the fullest just because we should be glad we're alive and sufficiently self-aware that we can be introspective into the workings of life to begin with.

For a real mind trip how about looking at the biology of a blue whale. They shouldn't exist according to evolution. They are breathing mammals that have sophisticated bouyancy and pressurizing systems allowing them to dive for the food they eat, namely, nearly invisible to the naked eye plankton. What? If you're still wondering how the liver and pancreas in the human body could have evolved simultaneously or independently, don't bother wondering how an animal as heavy and large as a whale can manage to pressurize part of its body while leaving the rest unpressurized so its massive heart and organs can still function while diving to a depth that should crush it or how how their lungs could be so efficient that their dive times are so ridiculously long while their enormous organs should be shutting down from a lack of oxygen that they are required to use from air because they're mammals. Or how about the fact that their own mass should in essence, crush them for being that big. Their size alone is enough to question how they would evolve into such a large creature. It's inefficient to be so big and how could they have evolved the required sophisticated organ structures they have to compensate for their size while they got so big? The one precludes the other. If they were small enough at one point to not require them to grow or dive so deep for food, they wouldn't have developed the structures they have for maintaining their very size. But if they started so big for unknown biological reasons they would have simply died out because their size would have killed them before they had millions of years to grow the right organs to perform the basic food practices they now utilize quite well. And for that matter, why haven't they grown a form of gills yet?

"But that's not how it works," they didn't evolve to meet an end, they say. What you're seeing is a species meeting the end of its evolutionary line. Nature took its course to become this and it will end there unless it evolves again to meet the demands of survival. Ughh... there's always an excuse.

Who was the one that decided to let those who choose to observe and report tell us we're an accident? Science is not a game to prove who can disprove that an old guy lives in the clouds. Even the truly ignorant can look up and say, "The old man upstairs ain't there." As time presses on and scientists and sociologists and physicists and astronomers and researchers who contribute to men's knowledge accumulate data and add it to the collective libraries of human thought it is not only obvious, but undebateable that the physical presence of an all knowing God in day to day life is absent from what they are observing and reporting. But you can also quantitatively prove that men's knowledge is INCOMPLETE!

In our pride as a species it is glaringly obvious that it is impossible to collect, review, analyze, categorize, sub-categorize and hypothesize and test all of life and what it constitutes. You can't watch people in New York and expect someone on a ranch to behave like someone from a large city. You can't probe the ocean off the coast of India and expect the fauna to be the same as what you might find Antarctica or near Hawaii. But this is what we're letting grant hungry scientists throw at us. There are teams of scientists trying to figure out human biology that have been unsuccessfull at figuring out what the direct cause of artheroschlorotic plaque is. Their are thousands of enzymes in the human body that we're not sure what they're doing, we just know they are there. There are many there I would imagine we don't know about.

A single human cell is more complex in mechanism and metabolism than we are capable of observing with our eyes in nature on a grand scale, and yet, we know the beginnings of all things. We've somehow tracked the creation of the universe and even set a timeline on how it probably happened. We've clustered regions of established science into bite sized peices that we can feed to others and with pride and no shame say, "This is how this happened." Yet, the overall ignorance of the grand scheme of life and how anythings works or is even unified eludes mankind so deftly. A question as simple as, "What's down there?" baffles the brilliant to the point where if they have a brain they must say, "I don't know." And if you at some point must say, "I don't know," I would venture a guess that you are a very very tiny thing that has no control of your life and very little of your place in this world. Your cells certainly are functioning independent of your thoughts because if they were subject to you, you would simply die because of your ignorance.

We are wet, carbon-based dust, subject to the gravitational pull of a large spinning object hurtling through the solar system around an enormous hot ball of gas that is subject to the gravitational pull of other large bodies of dark matter and stars, and blah blah blah. We don't even know that because it is outside of our reach to measure, quantify, and collect data.

We've come to a lot of these conclusions in ignorance. Is it the bliss that so many claim it would be? No, because in the course of the data collection, a handfull of men and women who were given the opportunity to spend enormous amounts of money on research came to their own personal conclusions and became their own high priests of religious thought. In their pride they have set humans as the determinant factor for existence. That's seems like pretty thin ice for a species so delicate. In all of our pride we certainly shouldn't have come to the conclusion that we are our own masters. To be so self-aware and yet so incredibly ignorant at the same time is unique to humans. To have ever uttered the words, "I don't know," one shoud be willing to at least say, "It is possible." And that stretches to all things. No, we do not know.

The guy with the beard digging in the ground in Africa doesn't know where we came from.

The lady with the beaker and petri dish in a lab somewhere does not know where we came from.

Stephen Hawking does not know where we came from.

If he's so smart why hasn't he figured out how to fix his body? All of that brain power and he chose to exert it probing the universe from a wheel chair. It's counter-indicative of the nature of survival. According to evolution a simpler and more ignorant but hardier life form will replace him and thrive in his place. But in his pride he chose take on the idea that there's nothing out there that is smarter or more powerful or more capable than us that could exist outside of our simple dimensional world.

The question is: if there was, and if that being or beings were that much more capable and intelligent than us, why would they show any more compassion or understanding to our less-capable species that would appear as dominant on earth but submissive to them/it? Hawking finally came to that conclusion; but only just in time for a press release to coincide with his book being published, though.

I'm done rambling for the day.

Where have you been, Kotter?

I don't know that anyone I know is checking my blog anymore. I haven't written anything for it in months. I have my reasons. I haven't had much happen. I haven't been on any exciting trecks throught the wastelands of the arctic. Berry Picking season is upon us here in the arctic but I don't care, I don't want to go traipsing through the moss lately. The weather has been rainy and foggy for most of this "summer" and I don't suppose I have been as productive at anything I had wanted to be.

Why? Fate. After my father passed away in June it knocked some of the optimism out of me that I had that month. A combination of that and loss of some of my admiration for the local culture. I'm gaining some of the same jaded view of an opportunist. Which is ironic because I'm still waiting on canadian beauroracy. I'm following the rules so that means I can't lift a finger for employment until I have a work permit. I refuse to join the ranks of those who "get away with" working for cash that hop borders and ignore the sovereignty of the nations they hijack. I have too much to loose, and my integrity is something I'm responsible for. You may not have to live with me, but I do have to live with myself.

So after I traveled thousands of miles in June to be there to watch my father be intered in the dust he came from, I began to feel the dull ache of loss that I hadn't felt in so long. I realized that during so much of my life my father had been so adamant that if I loved something that I should pursue it. I have done that several times in my life already. I have worn my heart on my sleeve and chased love and dreams of love half way around the world. I have gambled successfully that the woman I married loved me as much as she told me so soon after meeting her. My heart told me I was right, it had before and was telling me again so I went. So often I have just "gone" when my heart said go.

So I did it again and have been unemployed for the better part of a year already. The loss of my father has stirred an effort on my part to pursue dreams again. In the last month I've written the better part of a novel. It has flowed so easily that it has felt natural. For the first time in my life I'm writing about things that I would want to read. I would be so flip as to claim its great literature but I think it's entertaining. I want to finish my rough draft before a work permit comes in the mail and I no longer have the excuse to write all day. I've felt more honor in pursuing my dreams to honor my father. I don't want the day to come that I just make excuses for not having time or enough passion to have done something with the creative fires that at times course through me.

My heart is telling me to pursue. In an effort to honor my father instead of live opposite of him, I think I will push with this.

That's all for now you limited few who read what I post.

Update: I am alive. Just not blogging much lately.

It's been over three weeks since I've last blogged. Mia copa to anyone who may have been reading and has been wondering if the polar bears got me. No, no they haven't.

I've begun another picture. This one is larger and ironically, given my first line, is of a polar bear fur that a local hunter had stretched and drying in front of his house. It was a quick snapshot but the picture is a unique look of the past and present combined.

Onward. Of a personal note, since I last blogged I've dropped another 10 lbs. Leaving me 20 lbs from my goal, and if my calculations have held true I will be at 10% bodyfat. Here's hoping. It will bring me closer to my tag line of living large, not fat large but large and healthy and blah blah blah. I realize that can be really boring. But 240 lbs with low bodyfat is ... cool. To me at least. Goals are good to have and keep.

Later, y'all!

Progress, or production at least.

So here's the latest picture to get finished, at least in principle. It needs fixative and maybe a little more attention when I have the patience to return to it. There's no greater stymie to my ability than feeling the need to create a "masterpiece" every time I touch a pencil, brush or chisel. Not only is it annoying to those around me, it creates what is best known as writer's block. In my case, artist's block. I have thus far mentally acknowledged it and am making efforts to enjoy myself, that way I don't drive myself nuts thinking I can only make something if I think it's going to sell. Which points to the ludicrous nature of that thought process because I almost never manage to keep a picture long enough to ever sell it, it usually gets given away or traded off for favors instead. Thus protecting me from noteriety or fame.

*cough* Right then, here's the picture. By the way, cameras have an amazing ability to wash out and make 2D art look pitiful, especially graphite pieces, this one looks much better in the room.

Sunday! Heeyahh!

Been  a fair day. I feel like I've accomplished some stuff today. Went to church, made goat biscuits from scratch, got the barbecue going and then barbecued chicken, shrank a few snapshots down to blog size and here we go. This week in pictures (click on picture for larger one):

This is our nice, roomy elevated deck/back porch. Complete with freshly unburied barbecue. Beneath that pciture is the other half of the deck on the neighboring townhouse. That really is 6 feet of drifted snow stacked up there. No, it wasn't like that at the door, it was only 4.5 feet deep when I got it open. About as high as the railing. I really wanted to start BBQ season.

This is me barbecuing in -10 C outdoors. Why not? If you let a little cold or snow stop you here you'll never get anything done.

These are a new Adam favourite(<= check out that Canadian spelling!), goat biscuits. They're just biscuits, but made with predominantly quinoa flour, so as not to let the gluten monster eat me, but for fun and variety that also have feta cheese in them. It's a nice dry cheese and it only adds a layer of flavour here, not in anyway overpowering. They were delicious, what you see here is what I managed to get a picture of before they disappeared.

The recipe? sure:

1 1/4 cups quinoa flour

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup of butter

1 tbsp of sugar(I used splenda)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp of baking powder

3/4 cup of milk

3/4 to a cup of crumbled feta cheese

Mix dry ingredients well, cube and cut in butter with forks of knives of something until you have it pretty fine, add milk and feta and mix to make a sticky clumpy mass. Then lightly flour a flat surface and your hands and press everything together into a ball of dough. Flatten it until its about a 1/2 inch thick and use a floured cookie cutter to make biscuit rounds, gather and repress any spare to make more biscuits. I wound up with about 2 dozen. Lightly brush the tops with a little milk and put in a 400 F oven for 18-20 minutes on a lightly greased pan.

On to other things. They were having a spring festival this week. Much of it was for the kids, but the snowmobile drag races and dog sled races were cool. I was looking forward to the seal skinning competition, but it didn't happen, I was bummed out. This was us waiting for it outside of Nakasuk grade school for it to start. It never did, I don't think they had any seals to skin for the competition. Oh well, I'll probably catch something during the summer festival.

That's all, later folks!

Said the raven, "Nevermore."

We went walking some more with a lady we know who grew up on Baffin island. She took us down around a trail on the beach (right, beach. for a couple months at least). The sea ice was spectacular of course, but the birds were the hardest to ignore. This may have been the biggest raven I have seen in town to date. It's on that rock next to the shed with the standard 6 foot tall door. That raven is almost 2 feet tall, and probably between 15-25 lbs. They carry off puppies and cats when they get the chance. They also sound horrible when they caw, something like a golf ball rattling in a coffee can.

Things are not as they seem...

click any pictues for a larger version...

Distance is a total pain to perceive here. Take the picture below for instance. I've marked some places on it to give you an idea of what I'm talking about and how things kind of, run together, for lack of a better way to put it. The yellow arrows toward the bottom mark a nice little ridge of a hill, about 45 feet from where I'm standing with the camera. The kicker is over that little ridge is a slope that goes straight down a hill that runs about a 60 degree angle. After getting all the way up there I really wished I had a sled with me. Next, the green circle with the X is a nice flat spot between me and the next hill that had some nice compact snowmobile tracks that made the trek into town easier than the trek to the hill I'm on (I went the hard way, I couldn't see the trail until I was where I took the picture from.) That green X is actually almost a mile from where I am, you see, I had to hang a left at that invisible ridge to swing down into that little valley at a less dangerous descending point but even still, it's almost impossible to tell without something next to it for scale. That little valley is also probably 200 feet lower as well. The blue circle is a school on the way out to Apex next the arctic games complex. And just to the left of the red X is where I took the other picture when I was on my way back. The red X is roughly over where our house over the lake(pond) is. The smudges next to it are actually large apartment style homes just up the street from us. And of course, just to screw with the way distance is percieved here even worse is the land on the other side of Frobisher bay just under the horizon.

This here (below) is a rough map route of my hike today. Seeing this terrain map from the summer I'm a little surprised at some of the terrain, it's much different going over snow. The red star is the house, the green X is the same valley marked above (I think) the yellow arrow is roughly where I took the picture from and the yellow X is where I wanted to get to but the snow was too deep on the back side of the hills I was having to go up. Before going out like this again I will be coming up with a way to gauge the depth of the snow around me and taking snow shoes. Feeling and hearing a 4 or 5 meter chunk of snow over snow lurch under you in one large piece is unnerving. I was doing well and then I was quickly up to my knees with what felt like a ways to go still. I backtracked quickly and decided since I had a ways back into town and my pack was starting to feel pretty heavy that following the valley and the snowmobile tracks back in was wise. The blue circle is where the school is I mentioned above. And the green arrow is where I was taking the pictures of the sea ice from last week (just a little reference for anyone who has been reading these).

Shortly after taking this picture an older fella zipped by me on a snowmobile going out the way I came back in from.  He was just grinning at me probably for being idiot enough to be hiking out there.

I already knew this, but you can not walk everywhere a snowmobile can ride. That doesn't mean I haven't given it a shot a few times. I can't wait for summer, there won't be much to stop me from getting to many beautiful places.

More to come... the Toonik Time festival starts next week I think. There should lots of interesting things to go to, lots of Inuit culture to experience.

And now... less hair

Before:

After:

I miss it. So far I'm not missing dealing with it as much, but I do miss it. It was part of me. It represented something to me, and literally and figuratively it grew on me. On a weirder note, it framed my face well and complemented my personality and for whatever it is, my style. But I think it was time(this time). I learned something though. Patience. It doesn't really seem like something you might learn patience from, or at least not as a guy, but I did. I had to have patience physically, and restrain myself from lopping it off. I had to have patience with Mel and all my family who kept asking silly questions like, "Why?" all the time.

Anyway, so on with life.

This week in picures.

This week I took some pictures. Got a few good ones. Check 'em out.

This was taken from on top of the lake in front of the house. I haven't figured out the best settings for northern lights yet, but these weren't very bright, either. Still awesome. They change so fast sometimes.

This is the sea ice on the edge of Frobisher Bay south of Iqaluit. I hiked down there thinking to myself how hard it was going to be to hike back up. Being wary of deep drifts and unpacked snow that you can fall through always has to be on your mind. It doesn't snow so much as the wind drifts the snow on the ground further south. You can see the packed snowmobile trail I was following, to a point that is...

I looked down at my side as I got closer to the sea ice and saw this rift growing between the very thick drift I was walking on and where I wanted to go. Since I could only see about 4 feet down the rift and I knew I wasn't dressed warm enough to be out for more than a few hours if I wasn't moving I thought it best to not go any further here so as not to get stuck somehow. I probably would have been able to cross easily but the depth of the drift unnerved me a little.

So I headed back up the very steep hill I waddled down on the way to the "beach" and I have decided that I won't make a daily habit of half mile uphill trecks at 45 degree angles. In loose snow. Once I was nearly back to the road back in to town I saw something I didn't see last week when Mel and I were out this way. Some kids erected a little inukshuk on a hill looking over the bay. Only about 20 inches tall but pretty cool.

I finally found something to get a little artsy with, and I finally figured out how to change the aperture so my pictures weren't washing out so badly. 

Tada! Enjoy the views. Click on the pictures for a bigger one!

First northern lights pic...

Not a phenomenal picture, but its the first time I've seen them, and I managed to take a picture even with a poor setting on the camera, you can kinda see it. They weren't super bright, but this was only about 8 o'clock. They're supposed to be much brighter later at night. COOL! This has been worth the cold.

A post for posting sake...

I feel lazy lately. Problem is, I am having to negotiate the tricky terrain of obtaining a legal work permit while in the country. Negotiating this terrain involves me not actively or too openly pursuing employment here. Part of that problem includes certain requirements the beauro-cats have for hiring employers to meet in order to hire foreign workers. And even then, its a waiting game. I've had a freakin standing job offer from the same, very patient I might add, company that made me a phenomenal offer last October. But, because the of the beauro-cats compliance rules for advertising prior to offering to foreign workers are tricky. I wait. So both this company, and I, get to wait. Do we ever wait. I am impressed with their diligent patience with me. They clearly need somebody to do what I do, they just have to see if any crazy cannuckle-head somewhere else wants the job first. burr... till then I wait in the cold.

It's Sunday... but, who cares?

Went to church this morning, and met some nice folks. I will probably visit some other churches(2 out of 3 left to visit). I have no judgement per say, I just have to say I'm not settled with much of anything here. Including church. Nice people, good people where I went today.

My new roommate, Toby...

This is my new roommate Toby. Toby is my name for him, not his owners. I'm weird about naming things. Fortunately he's nothing but a rug these days because this guy, some 20 years ago, was quite the fighter (check out some of his scars), and I've seen his real skull and this dude had broken and cracked teeth from God knows what was big enough to fight back before he ate it. I've had this picture for a few days and wanted to post about him first before I posted about me. I truly dig this bearskin, it's awesome. Now, for my plight. Life isn't so bad, and the system here isn't going to shaft me or anything. Mel just needs a job and we need to fill out a few of the right forms and we're good to go(we've been here less than a week, we're doing well). I'll be looking for specific jobs, that have been unfilled for some time, meaning I'll be doing something at some point no one wants to/or can do(that way it's legal for a foreigner to apply for). Find a niche and fill it type things. Again, sarcasma-yay, but at least if that means as long as I find that specific job I can legally obtain a work permit for, I'm good to go. That's better news than immigration initially gave me at the border. And of course, things are different here. This really is a frontier town, edge of civilization and society. No joke. Its got to be something like Wyoming was 100 years ago. It even has the tension between native society and western culture. They all struggle with western work dichotmies, and we struggle with ancient hunter/gatherer culture. We want to work 9 to 5 for a salary and then do our thing, they work at things seasonally depending on what they need, and their time is always their own. I envy that, a lot. I've always wanted to own my time. Anyway, on to lunch...

From Iqaluit...

Haven't left the house too much, yet. That will change. We get to scramble tommorow to look for the RIGHT applications, and to attempt to keep my wife and I within a few thousand miles of each other during the next 6-12 months.

We got good and bad info before heading this way. And didn't understand some of the better, now that I'm "getting" it, we'll be doing the 1000 yard dash applicationally speaking.

Yay.

Otherwise it's pretty nice here. Remote, but nice, and loaded with subtlety: both cultural and climate wise. Its a rather intricate society for its size. I think that's very intriguing.

OK. Not done blogging from the airport yet

Irony of ironies. We're sitting outside our boarding gate now, B50 actually. Right next to us is gate B52... going to Dallas of all places. a sweet twist of irony. Not going to make anything of it, but it's pretty funny. Also, I ran into a doctor Phil look-a-like at a newstand and a Morgan Freeman look-a-like hauled our livelihoods in a bag off to the loading area when we checked in. Same hair, same freckles. Been an interesting day.

And for my final trick....

I will blog from my uber-phone from a bathroom stall at Denver International Airport! Too cool, right. I'll spare any details. Just over an hour to go until our flight to Ottowa, I hadn't any butterflies in my stomach until we were dropping off the rental car. No car. No set address as of yet, just hanging out in an airport with the Sword of Damacles nearing with each assing moment. Fate you are a cruel and erudite little thing that weathers the nerves of the steeliest of travelers. I love to wax poetic on the john. Goodbye 3G cellphone service, you have served me well.

The Easy Part of the Trip so far....

These are pictures of taxidermed animals at Cabela's original store in Sydney Nebraska. These were from our second day into driving. That's why it was the easy part of the trip. 14 family members in a 1 family home is tough.

How about a little diner grotesquery? Don't eat at Perkin's on Casper, Wyoming's east side. These were just our coffee mugs that were either cracked, had cooked on ketchup or what we assumed must have been remaining gravy. Other than the abominable state of the restaurant visiting with my best bud Ty was good. It's always good to see him, and it never seems long enough.

wave goodbye, dallas...

We have finally physically passed through dallas for the last time in what may become years. we left emotionally and mentally a few months back I think. we are on 35E trolling through midday traffic in denton at the moment (i'm blogging from my still super duper phone on the highway before we lose 3G network). There's this strange phenomena that happens when you cross the border to ohklahoma via highway from texas. everyone's driving demeanor chnages drastically . the frantic competition for lane position stops. people relax. the headlong rush of north texas life sinks behind you and succumbs to a more comfortable, reasonable and less demanding structure. its almost like ditching uncomfortable dress shoes for your favorite sneakers you'd rather live. it's an almost indescribable event that has to be experienced to really be believe. we'll be crossing that border soon, and be closing in on our wandering hearts and affections that left awhile ago. it should be a joyfull reunion. I started dreaming again after I put my two week notice in a few weeks back. I hadn't remembered a dream i'd had the whole time I was in texas, an unusual thing since i've been a lucid dreamer as far back as 3 or 4 years old, and I still remember some of those dreams even. its like a part of had been clouded in dallas. I cants wait to see what mountains will bring! more later.

A snow storm just for us?

Pictures outside my doorway from this evening before it melts away tommorow.

Northern Lights last night...

This was the scene late last night in Iqaluit. That far north it's not unusual to see the aurora borealis so clearly. It comes and goes, dances and fades. We're headed to a truly wonderful and unique destination with absolutely no idea of what all lies ahead. All we know is God keeps smoothing out all the wrinkles of our journey, while we place one foot tentatively in front of the other on our new journey. With our to do list looking more like a scratch pad than a list now, we have almost finished our business in Dallas. There's no telling what tommorow will bring, or even if the snow that came down all day here will still be there in the morning for me to take a picture!

I already miss my boys!

I keep having to stop myself from wondering what kind of stuff the boys are getting into, becuase they're not, at least not here. They're now hanging out with Lila at Auntie Amber's place. They seemed very excited last night. I do miss them. They were ma' boyz!

Karl got to have one last nap in my pants yesterday (he has heat-seeking sensors that lead him to clothing on the floor), and I caught Samson nesting in a pullover while I was packing clothes. I keep looking for them while I'm moving around. They're lovin' will be sorely missed.

LET THE RACES BEGIN!!!

Been off with a shot today. I have been confirming rentals of trailers, rental cars, chainging addresses, buying last little dangling items and I'm on to sort and sift tools and remaining items of mine the next few days. Yippee...

Interment: of a time period

Last day. My efforts have revolved solely around transferring as much crap in my head about keeping this place running to the people who still have to work here.

Been a slow day. Prepped a pool for the weekend, cleaned up the e-mail and took my name off the signture, said some goodbyes and am currently waiting for a few to let my manager in on the details of the place.

I can then lay this place to rest. Bury it. I let it get to me a little, I liked this place, it was home for awhile. A weird mirror lined glass box of a home, but I hung my hat here long enough to wish it the best in the hands of corporate greedy gusses. As much as I hated babysitting the place I suppose I managed to weave it in to the shell I wore here.

The picure above is my mark for the gym, a reminder if you will. Those are a pair of my shoes left in a part of the building for the next guy to find.

Downhill from here...

I came to work today knowing it was the final stretch. I've always liked to finish strong, I knew there would be a pile of work to be done this week.... problem being this company barely enables its employees of my cast to excel beyond playing a game of "almost caught up."

So I don't get to do a lot of work this week because our vendors don't want to honor our warranties, our corporate executives aren't willing to spend any money on keeping the clubs running (they seem content to ruin their company with vast marketing campaigns aimed at the olympics and heavy handed weight loss shows).

In other words, they're paying to keep me around but won't give me the stuff to do my job. I really wanted to go out on a high note of productivity, and try and leave this place without problems to be juggled, but I realized once I ran out of stuff to do by 1 o'clock that nothing about this company has changed for the better in 18 months. What made me think my last week here would change?

I still think my week will effortlessly fly by on my final downhill sprint, but it will only be me transcending the vapid ignomnity of serving the doomed.

BACON EXPLOSION!!! OH MY!

I finally cuccolded wife into letting me buy a Bacon Explosion from Burnt Finger Barbecue earlier this week. Knowing that it would be something we wouldn't likely be able to get or possibly make up north we took a crack at it.

I found this delicious gem of bacon latice wrapped-sausage wrapping-bacon on an internet article listing someone's top choices of bacon products. Next to the bacon chocolate (yes, if you add just the right amount of bacon to chocolate it's phenomenol), this was next on my list to try. I was patient and waited a few months before diving in and paying $50 bucks to have it two-day shipped with dry ice to the door. Well worth it. Before ordering I had also found a site with step-by-step instructions to make your own, and I would have except, I have no way to smoke it for a two to three hours.

But after we consumed almost the entire thing (I only feel a little guilty), I will definately try and make this on my own in the future. I'll fake the smoked flavor if I have to, this was good. Great even. I'm a fan of bacon. The best news is that even though the guys we bought this from have a patent on it as their own (for selling commercially obviously), the recipe leaves enough to be desired to change it up and make it even better. I'm already formulating my own version.

Per instructions to choose your favorite sauce, I basted this bacon yule log with Bull's Eye, one of my favorite bbq sauces, during the last five minutes. I opted for the "sweet and tangy" versus the normal mesqite I would have bought, and glad I went with my gut on it.

Be jealous you bacon fans, oh so jealous.

6.5 days of corporate torture left...

The longest two weeks of my life. That's probably not true, but the fact remains, I no longer want to spend my days tooling around a health club I'm paid to babysit. I love working out, and sometimes I even dig the health club scene. It's such a different animal trying to keep a plce running though. The grease, sweat, chains, and rich north texan attitude that if you fix things you're sub-human and therfore deserve disdain for your presence and boorish attitudes as reward for trying to make others lives more fulfilled.

I rant about work. Sometimes I feel its all I have with this company.

the Road to Nowhere...

I will soon literally be living... on a road to nowhere. In roughly one month's time I will be there, where this photo was taken. I'll be hanging out over Dead Dog lake, and have a view over to Frobisher Bay. And depending on how the work permit thing works out, I may get the chance to blog and photograph my way across Iqaluit for a little while.

Important things for the Arctic...

I'm from Wyoming. I know cold, even bitter freezing -40F with wind cold. I've done it, lived through it, but never dealt with it being sustained for very long periods of time like I'm going to face in Iqaluit.

Being familiar with brutal cold I've always layered in the cold. The norm while plumbing in Laramie, Wyoming was a tank top under long underwear under t-shirt under hoodie under heavy insulated coat (a combination of all, or stripped down moving back and forth indoors). I usually wore long underwear under jeans and thick socks, and if I was going to be in sustained wind I wore insulated bib-overalls for my legs. I always wore waterproof work boots, NO steel toes (its like having ice on your toes all day).

But that's Wyoming. And in Wyoming a -10F cold snap may last a few weeks but usually hovers in the 20's a lot. In Iqaluit I here it hovers in the -10F range and snaps down to -40F for weeks or months at a time. So the wife and I have been buying more cold appropriate gear. You might note the pictures above. Those are Cabela's TransAlaskan II pac boots, which are ridiculously well insulated and "rated" to -100F. I'm 2 inches taller in them, rounding me up to 6'5". I doubt I'll be wearing them all the time, but these should be a great addition. Apparently a multiple Ididatrod champion helped them design them.

And the coat is my new favorite coat of all time. North Face Steep Tech work jacket. I had to wait for over a month to get it in the 3X size so the sleeves and chest were the right lentgh and size (37" sleeves and a 50" chest) but it was worth the wait. It's a technical shell designed for people who work in Alpine slopes and mountaineering. With kevlar shoulders and seems, heavy duty nylon as tough and thick as 10 oz Carharrt duck cloth, fully seem sealed and wind/water proof and highly mobile with well articulated shoulders this is the jewel of my survival in Iqaluit.

Other than that it's all balaclavas, well insulated gloves, wool socks, Under Armor base layers, ski goggles, heavily insulated Wolverine hunting boots for "warmer" weather, and lots of good fatty food to keep the mitochondria at full speed.

Let's go!

The Final Nail

This is it, the final nail in the coffin of my corporate career. I will submit my notice as to my exit today, and do it gladly. So far our circumstances have been reversible, expensive but reversible. We could retract some of what we've done but once I give the day I'm quitting my job away to the company officially I have nowhere to go but Iqaluit.

It will be a glorious day. I've wanted to quit this place so many times but was trapped by the humdrum existence of paycheck to paycheck slavery. I finally get my respite. My chance to serve some other purpose with my life.

Goodbye you corporate adultress! Goodbye you lifeless shell of greed! Goodbye you soul sucking character leach! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!

****Update**** Nobody to tell anything to, its a paid holiday. I wasn't even supposed to go to work. Woops!

ARCTIC BOUND!!!

The real reason for this particular blog starting is to try and chronicle going to the far northern arctic and living there, what its like there, what the people there are like, and how me and my wife will live and survive and hopefully thrive there.

Our journey begins in a few weeks as we sever ties, pay bills, muster resources, and figure out what all we'll be able to pack and manage to take with us on our flight and what we will have to ship. Suffice it to say, current airline regulations make this difficult. Canadian border services makes it more difficult and our destination raises the bar to make this a fairly massive undertaking even with just the warm clothes we'll be taking.

Wife has been as detail oriented as ever, checking everything repeatedly. We should be booking tickets tonight and I will likely be trying to convince her to join me in our last cheap abundant buffet style chinese food smorgasborg in The Colony we may get for what could be years to come. Knowing her prediliction for chinese food this shouldn't be a chore to convince her. It will only be a chore in the sense of finding time in the midst of selling our last few big items (read: car) before we make our trek.

Look out Iqaluit, here we come.

Hello Blog!

First entry, making pork roast, have to go now.