It's a bird, it's a plane, no wait........it's THE BARGE

The are many things that happen everyday here that are truly Northern.  Some of them I have become so accustom to over the past 7 years that I don't associate any longer with being Northern, they've just become part of life.  Some things I notice, but just laugh because they strike me as funny.

 Now with this little blog going on, I make a mental note to myself that I'll have to remember that, for the next post.  Things such as how our satellite dish points toward the ground instead of the sky, the fact that there is not a single car in town, how I do a double take when I look out the kitchen window when I see a different truck than normal coming down this far on the road, how the dental team was just in town for 4 days and we won't see them again for 6 months.  All of these "odd" things - I don't think they are bad at all.  I rather enjoy all of the oddities actually.  I get a kick out of knowing who is driving every truck in town, and heck, as long as we don't have any dental emergencies in the next 6 months, who really wants to see the dentist anyway?

Then there are the spectacular things that I get to see everyday.  Things like this,

This view never gets old.  I look out the window all the time and just take an extra second to take note of how smooth the water is, or how big the waves are.  I know my days of doing this are numbered.  In October people will be snowmobiling on this water, and I saw pictures of ice in the bay in June.  Tomorrow I might take a few extra seconds to soak in this view while I can.

This past week was a BIG week here in Paulatuk.  THE barge came.  This is seriously big news, and a big deal.  This was the second barge, the first one was the boring barge.  It didn't have anything fun on it.  It brought the fuel and an airport.  Now I admit the airport was a little fun.  It was fun watching it go down the street and be placed up at the airport where it still stands on wood because the proper stands are missing.  They were hoping it was on this barge, but it hasn't moved yet so I'm not sure how that worked out.  I'll investigate that this week ; ) 

This barge was loaded to the gills with "fun" stuff.  It had food, building supplies, supplies for the school (2 containers full), an SUV (Paulatuk's first), a few new pick up trucks and a 2 new fuel trucks. 

Months before we moved here we placed a barge order.  In essence it was a huge grocery order.  Well this week it was delivered.

This was the first time a forklift has delivered my groceries

We ended up having 6 pallets delivered.  5 for us and 1 for the dogs.  I am very confident we have enough food for the entire 2 years we will be here.  What do you think?

Believe it or not this is not all of it.  These pictures do not do it justice.  It is literally stacked in there floor to ceiling.  We have 20 cases of bottled water stashed in the back porch, 60 bags of  dog food stored in the crawl space and there is an another wall of the mini mart (barge room) that is full of flour, skim milk powder (another special Northern treat I've grown to enjoy in my tea) and 4 cases of mini crispies.

Our little mini mart didn't always look so put together.  Check out this craziness.

Seems as though I've now got myself going backwards in the whole barge process, I guess I'll just continue that way.  N and I were out for a walk when someone told me that the barge had been spotted.  I have to admit I got that little giddy feeling of excitement.  N and I hiked it back to the house so I could grab the camera.  It was a quicker walk than normal, I had a little extra pep in my step.  I grabbed the camera, a blanket, and of course hats and mitts and off we went to the dock to watch it dock.  Turns out we were a little early at our viewing station.  The barge hadn't rounded the last corner so we ended up there for about an hour and half.....during nap time.  Ah well.  I figure the once a year barge was more significant than the once a day nap.  The ocean, sand, stones and odd pieces of styrofoam proved to all the entertainment we needed while we waited for the big show.  Then around the corner it came.

We sat cuddled up in our cozy blanket on the shore and watched as the barge came closer and crew prepared to get this massive old barge docked up.  The anticipation was just like the Christmas morning excitement of being a little kid all over again.  I was trying to remember everything we had ordered all those months ago, and trying to calculate where we were going to put it all.  I knew I had the mini mart all labeled of where I wanted everything, but I had no idea if it would actually fit.  Then I decided that that was not the moment to stress about it.  I decided to just take in the moment, and cherish sights like this.

I'm happy to report that my labeling paid off.  It worked out better than I had planned actually.  I love it when that happens.  Mini mart is now open and well organized I might add.

One other special part of living up North - our internet usage is limited and appears that my blog uses alot.  After we use a certain amount it reverts to dial-up.  Oh noooooo.   I'm only going to post on Saturday's and see if we can avert the dreaded dial-up.