So. It's been awhile. That is why this is a post to fill in on the several occurrences that I had meant to recap shortly after but promptly went to bed.
The first was the day of fish. Horribly traumatic experience. It began as usual: oatmeal for breakfast, hanging out in the mess house all morning prepping for the day, finally getting customers for lunch when the site opens. In short, Spider (the winter watchman) walking into the Mess House kitchen asking if he should put the fish in the sink. I promptly turn around and almost puke as he is holding a VERY fresh (as in not fully dead yet and still twitching) sockeye salmon, meant as a gift for us tour guides. Now, I am not generally that squeamish of a person, in that we often have fish heads in the fridge here and such, but I don't do well with something like that sprung on me. Needless to say, I told him that this was not the best time/place for it, and he took it elsewhere. Luckily Sam was there to finish organizing the serving of most of the food as I was not exactly in a great state of mind for the next while. Also in that day, fish was taken out of the fridge to defrost and leaked fish juice on some of the vegetables (I evacuated the others and Anne helped me clean the fridge), eulachan (pronounced ooligan) was had with dinner (little fish with eyes that stare at you from the plate). All in all, not one of my best days. I had a salad for dinner.
Ok, now that you have finished rolling your eyes and saying "What a drama queen!"... (completely valid, I'm aware). We had our first dinner guests on Sunday! To be fair, we often had Steve join us for dinner when he was at the site working late to save him from the fine gourmet of granola bars, but these were actual guests! Someone that Paul had connected with via some online gaming forum but whom he had never met in person stopped by the site with his family that day and Susan, being Susan, invited them for dinner. It was actually really fun, although to be fair we are isolated and possibly anyone new would be excitement, but they were really nice and we made a ton of food, and they brought some veggies and a pie. Coincidentally they were from West Vancouver, and had gone to Sentinel for high school, so that was a bit of small world syndrome. Also, just as we were finishing dessert, there was a couple wandering down the boardwalk but we figured that instead of just asking them to leave the site, as we usually do, we invited them in to consume 2 of the 3 pieces of pie that were left! They were from Prince Rupert and just investigating our dock for possible kayak launching/access, and I did my usual quizzing them about Haida Gwaii (I do this to everyone who mentions they've been there...gathering knowledge for my plan to head over in August). Eventually everyone headed off, but all in all a nice endeavor!
Finally (now that your eyes have glazed over), I just wanted to say what a nice day off I had today. I woke up at 8 to call Mark from Cassiar Cannery (down the road), to see if he was headed into town (he said he'd call later), and drank my tea on the boardwalk in the morning sun as no one else was up yet. I lazed around until 9:02 at which point Paul ran downstairs to begin registering for courses via dial-up. I'm guessing you haven't noticed the problem here? Lucky. Phone line=internet access. Meaning that if Mark were to call I would not know...hmmm. I debated just hanging around until the bus at one, but I wanted to swim so I hopped on the bike and made it to Port Ed in 16 minutes...if that would not have outrun the grizzly I don't know what would. Plus, I sing (read:bellow) off-key show tunes when biking by myself, so that scares it away. Anywho, I went to the pool, bought some bulk chickpeas, cookies from the bargain store, deposited my cheque, and bought veggies from Safeway. Then, coming back on the bus at 2, I promptly took my books down to the dock and read in the sun (and fell asleep between 4 and 5). With curry soup, salad, and salmon berry sugar mush (Susan made "crisp") to finish the day, it was a good one.
That is all to report of note, on a work-related note I actually gave a tour for the first time in awhile this week, so that gave me a chance to enjoy the rain instead of hiding out in the kitchen. Hopefully the sun will stick around for a bit as I have Friday off as well!
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