Sunday, January 11, 2009

Not too much happens in a week up here






Since my last post not too much has happened up here in Yellowknife. The house-trailers across the street almost caught on fire because some one's snowmobile they were fixing caught the garage on fire. My sister-in-law looked out the window and said "that house is on fire" we called the fire department, I put on my coat and headed out into minus forty to see if everyone was out of the two trailers. Thankfully they were and then I helped the arriving quint (ladder truck) hook to the hydrant and stretch the 65mm (4 inch) supply line. The fire crew knocked down the fire pretty quickly and then went about overhaul on the garage and one of the trailers. The flames at one point were about thirty feet in the air. Because it was so cold, once they shut down the lines, the firefighters had to put the hose into the bed of a pickup truck to take back to the station to thaw out and get back into service. I was pretty impressed by the composite response. They sent two quints, a rescue, an engine, an ambulance and two cars (a utility pick-up truck and a chiefs van) The city runs one unit with paid guys and an ambulance and staffs the rest with paid-on-call. 


At work, this past week I started teaching some lessons, I have six sets of private/semi-private lessons and two group lessons. I've been doing a lot of cleaning, guarding, and chemical addition to the pool here. The pool is well used and we are going to extend the hours starting at the end of the month. Right now I am on afternoons from 1pm to 10pm. I am teaching Sunday lessons for at least eight weeks (into March) 

I've been noticing that the days are getting a bit longer (3 minutes in the morning and afternoon) each day. It is still dark most of the day but most of the day I am inside. I still need to get out and do some exploring and picture taking. The weather is supposed to be getting much warmer by the weekend so that might be a good opportunity to get out. 

If you like poetry my friend Jim Slominski has created a website of his poetry. http://niagarapoet.ca
 Jim is an award winning poet and his writing is inspiring. I worked with Jim at JVK  in St.Catharines. Give it a look if you have a minute, you'll be glad you did. 

In other news, a friend from Brock University Allson Forbes (now at uOttawa) made headlines when she took her GEE-GEE's (what's a gee-gee you ask that question will never be answered and who really wants to know it is uOttawa anyways) from trailing 68-67 to Ryerson (is that really a university anyways  thought it was a Poly technical Institute) and ran the ball coast-to-coast scoring the winning bucket with 5.7 seconds left on the clock. I remember her last playoff game as a Badger when Dr. Lowenberger and I went up to MacMaster to watch them play. It is great that she has made her way back onto the court.  

DRIVING FORBES SEALS GEE-GEES WOMEN’S BASKETBALL VICTORY 


A friend of mine had this up on her blog this link shows where jobs line up for Best/Worst according to their critera. (Thanks for posting this Marilynn)
 
Have a look at 198, 196 and 182.
 
From the worst list, I have been a taxi driver and a firefighter. Chauffeur actually comes in at 162 on the same list. I onder where Yellowknife Lifeguard would fit in?



 
The study, released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.

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