January 13, 2010

Vote, vote, vote...and other such tales...

Ok, I'll admit it...I'm a shameless hussy. The nominations for the Nunie Awards have been compiled and I actually made it into both the Best New Blog and Best Blog Post categories! I have to say, being one of the top five is pretty awesome...and it's because of you guys!  Thank you for reading, thank you for nominating, and - I'll just put it out there - thank you for voting. You can head over here to place your votes.

Now, on to other issues...

Townie Bastard is right, today was a horrible day for thousands. Hundreds of thousands. It's difficult to fathom what such devastation is like - especially when living in northern Canada. Every channel has uncensored pictures of Haitian buildings and bodies, both crushed beyond repair. From here I suppose all I can do is donate money, but it still seems like a mere drop in the bucket. What a way to start the new year...

On a 'lighter' note...the sun seems to be stretching out the kinks in its rays and shows a little bit more of itself every day. Today I headed out at about 7:30 in the morning and you could actually see the outline of the mountains! Aaaand the sky didn't start up with its firey sunset until after 2pm. The spring is on the way.

Unfortunately, it seems as if sunlight and temperature are inversely related (this week, at least). It's so cold that I barely got my snowmobile started after school yesterday, and this morning it wouldn't even turn over. Fact: right now I have blistered palms and a ripped open index finger. After school I tried it out a bit more (yes yes, I know, be careful with the plugs), and got it going after what seemed like a hundred pulls. That lasted about a minute before it sputtered and died. Took out the spark plugs and, sure enough, black and greasy. "No matter," I thought...I had prepared for such an eventuality and had some stored in my porch. Wrong size. Crap. Tomorrow I'll try out that little trick of heating them up on the stove and see what happens.

These days Pang looks like some sort of weird smokey Avalon. The stars are bright sparks in the sky - very cool - but the air around the surface is this strange swirling fog. I think I have part of it figured out; well, I have a theory. The temperature is so low that most people mix more than a splash of Yamalube with their gas everytime they head to the co-op pumps to fill up their machines. Too much oil in the gas equals lots of black smoke. Warming up your sled takes a good 15 to 20 minutes...no joke! This means that you inevitably create billows of the black stuff several times a day. You know what's really funny? The 'rush-hour' smoke here is just as visible as the rush-hour traffic in the south.

Well, that's it for now...again, please head over to Clare's website and vote for the Nunie's; it's so great to know that you read.

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