Done Driving

That's it. 

I'm serious this time!!!!! I cannot, will not drive at Christmas again. Screw it!! After last weekend's journey home I realize that I am single handedly keeping the world's tire companies in business. 

Yes ladies and gentlemen I got yet ANOTHER flat on my way home last Saturday morning (which Facebook gleefully reminded me I also did exactly one year ago on that date as well!! Ahh, memories). 

Let's start from the beginning. I decided to leave Wemindji on Saturday morning because I would have light and safety on my side. I was prepared with my first aid kit and plenty of candles, a fully charged phone and fully charged portable charger, my SPOT with fresh batteries inside and transmitting all test messages successfully and my pride, a full-sized tire on a rim in the trunk 

incase of emergencies. A donut tire for a car my size is really a joke so I knew that if I needed to change a tire in the future, it had to be legit. I woke early to pack the last few things (hamsters) in the van and I was off. Oh but not before I let my kitchen sink run over for the entirety of my shower by accident, which I took as a bad omen. 

So off we (coworker and friend Samantha and her dog Ellie) left at 7:30am, driving at a safe and productive speed down the access road towards civilization. At about KM90 my tire pressure sensor came on and for a moment I ignored it, as my tire pressure sensor often goes off in cold weather. However a few minutes later the car became hard to handle and I heard some questionable noises coming from the road. I pulled over and my tire was completely flat. Again. This is not an old tire. This is not a repaired tire. This is a tire that I received when I bought my van roughly a year ago. So needless to say I was TICKED. This was the third flat on a winter tire I received from the dealership on the SAME wheel in one year. So I'm beginning to think it's not me. 

Anyways so I pulled over and investigated. I also went to my darkside mentally but still managed to turn on to crisis mode. I pushed the feelings of despair and defeat deep down inside and told them I would feed them cookies later. We had business to attend to. 

I emptied out my van of all things heavy. I got out my spare and my tire changing accoutrements. I looked at the tire and said "oh hell no" and went back inside the car to get warm. Samantha and I decided that we would just wait on the side of the access road until someone came along who could help. So we did! We got the flat around 8:45 and waited about 45 minutes until a WONDERFUL mechanic from Tawich Construction came along. He was on his way to one of the hydro stations further north and pulled over and helped us immediately. I felt so secure knowing a real mechanic was changing my tire and that it wasn't going to fly off 4km down the road like it probably would have had I done the job. I don't have a lot of upper body strength...

So we paid the kind sir in cookies and thanked him profusely, dancing like minstrels when all was said and done. We were off!

The ride from then on was pretty much uneventful. I suppose Santa Claus witnessed my hardship and decided one bad thing per trip is enough for my poor ticker and a flat was all I got. Merci Pere Noel. The roads were fantastic and the skies clear. I had good company, lots of laughs and and early start the next day which brought me home just after lunch on Sunday! What an adventure!!

Well since then I have been a real social butterfly, seeing friends and family and fitting in last minute shopping. Today I am seeing my sister for lunch and possibly a movie later. One thing I really do miss is the movie theatre experience so I am taking full advantage of movies this Christmas and am going to try and squeeze in an many as possible!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you lovely people. 

Love Aidan 

The Countdown is On!

One week until my Christmas vacation begins!! It couldn't come at a better time and I certainly feel like I have earned a couple of weeks off to relax at home in Oakville. I'll be leaving bright and early Saturday morning with my friend Samantha and her dog Ellie. Our last working day is Friday but by the time school is over the sun is setting and given my past experiences with driving in the dark and the winter, I thought it be best I leave the next day. So we leave Saturday so I can have the daylight on my side and better chances of seeing things like: a) giant potholes or b) space metal. Another upside to leaving on Saturday is I get to take my time cleaning up my classroom on Friday and getting things ready for my return, packing up my stuff and "closing" my house. It's always a mad dash to leave right after school and while I'd like the extra day at home, leaving calmly and safely is my main objective. 

This past week at school has been predictably nuts with Christmas concert practice, starting and finishing units and overall holiday craziness! This upcoming week will be even crazier as we have the Christmas concert midweek, classroom holiday parities and general holiday stuff as well as dealing with the palpable frenetic Christmas energy that is sweeping the halls! 

We have been busy this week in our Cycle with our Elves, wrapping up addition and our language arts Gingerbread Unit! We have lots of fun planned for this upcoming week but it will definitely be busy and crazy! 

This week was also our staff Christmas party! It was really well done this year and the staff who planned it went all out! The food was amazing and I had a really nice time with friends and colleagues!

Last night I hosted a ladies-only wine and cheese night! Fridays, in my opinion, are the worst times to have social events. People are tired from the long week and usually just want to relax (well that's me anyways). However I think that we all needed a night to sit down together, relax and just decompress! It was awesome to have most of the ladies from school out and have some good cheese, good wine and good laughs! 

I'm really looking forward to having a couple of friends over next week, getting through the Christmas concert (which I think it going to be super cute) and then taking off!! 

I survived the power out of 2014

What a wild 24 hours! Last night around 9:45pm as I was doing my bed time reading (buzzfeed) and chatting with some friends online, the lights and my fan cut out. The sudden silence startled me and I thought "uh oh". We have had a couple of power outs in the past few days so this blackout didn't come as a huge surprise immediately. The lights flickered a few minutes later but remained off. 

Having no cell reception or Internet connection, I couldn't communicate with the rest of my Wemindji friends to see how they were but one quick look out the window told me that the rest of the town was without power too. 

I had enough cell battery to last me through the night and still have an alarm so I wasn't too stressed about waking up in the morning. I talked on the landline to my mom for a while and then went to sleep. 

When I woke up at 6 this morning, the power was still out and it was COLD in my house. COLD. Almost nine hours of -20 temperature and winds had brought the temperature down drastically inside the house. The floors were cold. The rooms were cold. My feet were cold. The toilet seat was....cold. 

I got ready as usual, prepared for a sudden "power on". When the power goes off during school hours, we teachers are given an hour once the power returns to get ready to return to school. Since it was still early enough for the power to return before school hours, I figured I would just be ready for a regular day just incase. I took an extra long hot shower and got ready by candlelight! 

Around 7am I finally got some 3G reception and was able to talk to my friends and they were all also without power, cold and running out of battery life. So I picked them up and we drove around town for a while, attempting to charge our phones, make predictions for the day's possible events and get warm. 

We then returned to my house where we lit a fire in my handy wood burning stove, ate some candy and then real breakfast and chatted. We sat in my living room in coats for about 2 hours when the power turned back on around 9:30!!! We were both relieved and also a little disappointed. It was nice to have power but I'm not gonna lie, a day off work would also have been pretty fantastic. That being said, due to timing and what would undoubtedly been a freezing school, the morning was cancelled and I got to take a nap!! My favorite thing!! 

The afternoon was a scheduled PED day so we came back after lunch, excitedly ran down the morning's events in the hallways, did some teachery things and now I am home, toasty as a bagel in bed. Such adventures!

Notes for next power out:

- have portable emergency gadget charger actually charged...

- have food in the house that does not require cooking (aka bread or delicious chips)

- get a flashlight that is not on your phone (lots of candles but you know my luck with fire...)

- get more firewood

- get a metal camping pot to use on BBQ/wood burning stove

Before 

After 

Decembrrrrrr

Guess what! It still hasn't stopped snowing! We have gone from snowfall to constant blizzard status however and it hasn't stopped (except for some short relief on Saturday) for a week! The winds are gusting at over 80km/hr making visibility near to zero and everything is being blown away, including my sanity.

Shoveling has really taken over my life so this month I bit the bullet and paid $150 to have my driveway plowed by an industrial snowplow/snowblower service every time it snows. It is a steal seeing as though the average plow costs $60. This way my driveway will always be plowed when it snows (as it has been daily and with fervor) and I don't even have to call. Today the plow man even widened and shortened my driveway which was amazing. All of the recent snowfall has added approximately 4 feet to the end of my driveway as the snow slowly takes over the streets. It's a sight.  

On the bright side, Christmas is in full swing at MES and us Grade 1 teachers sat down tonight after school and planned out our Christmas concert song. We had soooo many laughs re-writing the old classic 12 Days of Christmas to reflect Wemindji. I can't wait to help the kids learn it starting tomorrow, so cute! 

We also started "Elf on the Shelf" today in Grade 1. Each child in my class got to submit a name to a random draw. One submission, Janet Jackson, had me laughing and wondering where this kid even heard of Ms. Jackson (if you're nasty) so I let it in. Who knew it would win?! So sadly I had to discretely scrap that one and pull again, this time landing with Sylvain for the win. So welcome Sylvain the Elf to 1B. This elf acts as a spy for Santa, watching the kids by day and reporting back to the big guy at night    Each morning the elf is posed differently, perhaps caught doing something funny or cute so the kids know he was up and about during the night. If he gets touched though he could lose his magic. Of course the first thing my kids do when they saw him nestled in our mini Christmas tree was grab him and fling him around but luckily we had not named him yet (the key to unlocking the magic) and he was still okay. 

Otherwise things have been as busy as usual. Planning time and social events are slowly filling up my weekend calendar (as if there is anything else to do) and I am looking forward to some fun nights with friends this month. 

Anyways the countdown is on! Oakville watch out I am coming home soon to sleep for 2 whole weeks!! 

Meet Sylvain 

Our names...

Saturday at 10am. We haven't recorded "sunny" on our class weather graph in weeks...

Breakfast for dinner at Sam's house!

Mr. Plow!

Elementary Mafia