Catching up...

See? I told you I’d be back…

So what’s been going on here? Well, a whole bunch and nothing at all, if that makes any sense. A couple of weekends ago I was lucky enough to be able to chaperone a Cross Country trip to the village of Toksook Bay out on Nelson Island. I’d never been there, and had heard that it was a pretty cool place, so I really wanted to go. It was the first X-C meet of the season, and Nunap only had three runners that had gotten enough practices in to be eligible to travel, so Coach Carey didn’t necessarily need a male chaperone, but since the school had gotten a charter airplane instead of paying seat fare, my tagging along to help didn’t add to the cost of the trip :)

The races there are a part of a community-wide Berry Festival, so there were all kinds of things going on, and people visiting from all over. We went to see the traditional dancing for a little while, but for the most part the kids wanted to do what the kids always want to do when we travel…go to the store, hang out with friends from other villages, and stay up as late as possible. As it turned out, I had brought along Guitar Hero for the DS (always prepared…and I was never even a Boy Scout!), which proved quite the popular little activity with the students. At least until the battery ran out. So the rest of the nights were spent playing, reading, talking, and trying to sleep while the fiddle dance raged…if a fiddle dance can be said to rage…until 2am.

The races themselves were fun to watch. Toksook is right on the ocean, but there are some pretty substantial hills, cliffs, and rock formations, all of which the running courses took advantage of. The weather was not the best for a race, it was windy, cold, and spitting rain, but all three races went off without a hitch and the Nunap runners pushed hard and did well. As I said, it was a small group, but there wasn’t a whiner among them…which, to be honest, was a nice change of pace from most chaperoning trips I’ve done.

After staying another night, we flew back early Sunday afternoon. Our flight out on Friday had been interesting, flying low and on an indirect route around the hills because of low cloud cover, but on the way back it was clearer and we were able to fly as high as I’ve ever been in a bush plane – over 3000 feet. It made for some good views, and I was able to get my camera out and take a couple of pics as we were about to land back in Nunap.

So, while it was nice to take a little trip for a couple days, it was even nicer to get home. After all, I’m used to having a lot of baby-time these days, so I missed the little guy. I have to say, staying home during the school day has been working out pretty well. Yeah, I’m going a little crazy, and yeah, there have been some frustrating days (did I mention he has a couple of teeth already?), but on the whole it’s been a lot of fun. I try to get as much stuff done as I can during the day, both around the house and with my side projects. I’m starting a Radio Club at the school, as some of my students last year really took an interest in writing/recording/producing music, and I’m hoping to help them point some of those skills in the direction of their writing phases, expose them to some music that isn’t Tupac and 50 Cent (though, yeah, that stuff has it’s place…it’s just really all that some of them listen to), and I’m hoping to eventually get them to produce a few podcasts, in radio show format, to get them out there for everyone to hear. I’ll let you know once there’s a link…

But back to Isaac. It’s amazing how much he’s changing, getting new skills, discovering new things. I was a little worried the other day that he was getting sick, because he was sort of grabbing at the side of his head, until I realized that nope, he has just discovered his ear and was playing with it. He’s really taken quite a liking to Loki, trying to follow him around, and keeping a close eye on him whenever he’s romping around playing, or even just sleeping in the living room. I can’t wait until he’s old enough for them to play around together. I think they’re going to have a lot of fun.

Otherwise, not too much else going on. Missed the Packer game Monday night because our satellite had only been partially working for a few weeks (no ESPN, or half of our other channels), and I tried messing with the cables in a fit of desperation. The result? No TV at all, and of course the store didn’t have the hardware I need to fix pieces that had rotted from just laying on the tundra for who knows how many years. I managed to hook up a different cable Tuesday evening (the one from Carey’s house, because she doesn’t’ get TV and was nice enough to allow me to steal hers), which required a bit of monkeying around and belly crawling under her house in the muck, but at least for the moment, we have a 90% functioning TV connection. At least enough that I’ll be able to watch football this weekend…and really, isn’t that the main function of television, anyway?