This morning a friend told me that her breast cancer has returned. In her blood and her bones. She is trying an experimental drug. If it doesn't work, they have given her 6 months. She's 40.  She is so sure it will work it is hard to feel too down about the news, but damn.  Oh yeah, her sister just got diagnosed yesterday with stage 4 breast cancer. I really hope 2008 is a better year. I hope September 2007 is a better month!
The good news is that my mood is improving and I am less likely to belt someone (I still might shove a copier up their a.s.s.). I discovered that my favorite author has published several books I hadn't heard about, so I am gobbling them up like a crack ho eating Skittles. Almost all of her books are set in the Alaskan bush, and depict a life I would love to live. So this allows me to escape my own thoughts and go somewhere better, if only for a few hours.  It is making my GF very nervous. She is afraid that reading these books will lead to me returning to the Arctic for months at a time. It won't. Weeks maybe, but not months. And it won't happen til I am able to support myself with my metal creations cuz I can't get weeks off work to go away and still have vacation time to spend with my sweetie. If she ever dumps me though, I will be living on Baffin island faster than you can say "idiot".





At least then I'd get to use my 2 year old, but never used snowshoes! NY had better get some freakin' snow this winter!!!!

I never really got into Solstice until I spent several summers in the Canadian Arctic. Summer Solstice is a big celebration there. It's the one day that we stop working by 8 pm. The Sun never goes below the horizon and the party goes all night. Or research camp is very remote, but some of the local Natives (Inuit or Cree for the most part) manage to get to our camp(usually on an ATV) from Churchill, the nearest village/town, each year for our party. A good friend of our camp is a local named jack. Each year Jack either arrives with several huge Arctic Char in hand, or if he can't make it, he bribes the heliocopter pilot from the town to bring it to us. No pilot passes up a chance to party at our camp, so it's usually not too hard to get them to do it. Jack is a first class fisherman and boy is that Char good! It's a type of Salmon if you didn't know it already. I miss my Arctic friends. Up there it doesn't matter if you are pretty or have a face like a moose, a good layer of fat on your bones is a good thing (gets cold in winter!), and nobody gives a sh-t if you graduated high school. All that matters up there is; are you a hard worker, do you help your neighbors, and do you keep your word. Ok, it helps if you are a good hunter/fisherman/trapper, but if you are not, you contribute to the community in other ways, and people share their meat with you. One year I took my Dad up as my field assistant. He had to get air lifted out of camp 4 days early because all the heliocopters were being called South to fight huge fires and there was no telling when they might be able to get back for us. I was staying all season but Dad needed to get back South. So the chopper dropped him in the town at the airport. I had radioed in to a pal of mine in town and explained that Dad had 3 days before his flight further south. Well, Dad was met at the airport by one group of our Native friends, other friends put him up at their home. Upon hearing that the Father of one of the researchers at the 'Goose camp'(as they refer to it) was stuck for a few days, people I didn't even know showed him around, took him out to look at Beluga whales, kept the Polar bears from eating him, made sure he was fed, got him drunk, and generally showed him a great time.
God I miss it:(



me, on a rare, hot arctic day

see, i can do the 'tough-chick' thang!