Welcome to Salluit

Wow!  I thought that the internet in Repulse Bay was bad.  I got my modem on Friday, and only actually got up and running today.  Anyway... the views up here are awesome!  I'm planning on adding one picture each day, just to keep you coming back for more.

This just so happens to be taken from inside the house, from the kitchen window, looking mostly due south.  As you can plainly see, the view is a little better than the flat, bare rock of Repulse Bay.

The couple that we are working with here are pretty good, and the store is awesome.  I have sold four ATVs in our first five days here.  Our sales were up 70% last week over the same time last year!  The executive VP called this morning to see if he could figure out what's going on up here.  Apparently the manager that was here last, was a real jerk and the locals are just starving for someone to be the slightest bit cooperative.  The biggest difference with the customers, is that almost nobody is buying with credit.  Obviously there is lots of money to go around, and lots of the locals are actually employed.  Three out of the four ATVs that I sold were straight cash.  The only down side so far... our house.  This place is a total dive!  Not only just compared to our last place (which was actually pretty nice), but to any place that I've actually been in at all.  The floors are so slanted, that the interior doors have to be tied to a hook if you want to keep them open.  No kidding!  I have a pair of folded pants in front of the folding closet door in our room, because even that will slide shut on it's own.  Anyway, even though there's so much to say, and so much has happened since I last wrote, that instead of rambling on indefinitely, I'll call it quits for today.

Stay tuned.

Vive la Montreal

I don't even know what that means, or if I used the right le, la, les, whatever (who cares).
We got in to Montreal today, where everyone seemed to be helpful, except that they all gave us very bad information.  It took us over an hour to get to our hotel, which was less than ten minutes away.  The hotel was supposed to be renown for it's gourmet food, which was very high priced and average at best.  The sports channel seems very odd.  We don't get any sportsnet channels, but we do get TSN and their sister french station RDS.  As it turns out though, RDS is doing a french rebroadcast of the sportsnet Jay's game.

Yesterday we flew from Repulse Bay to Rankin Inlet, had a three hour layover, and then flew to Winnipeg.  We had a very nice evening at Fran's sister Rose's house.  Most of our families showed up, and we appreciated it a lot.  This morning we flew from Winnipeg to Montreal, where we'll have to get up about 5:00 local time to catch our flight to Salluit.  I'm assuming that we must be on some sort of small, slow, uncomfortable plane tomorrow.  After all, we're not even leaving the province, and we are scheduled for a five hour flight.  That, together with the fact that the Trudeau airport isn't exactly familiar to us, and judging by the amount of good advice that we got today, should make for a very long and interesting day tomorrow.  At least we'll get our first view of our new home, town, place of work, and neighbours.  Should be fun!

P.S. - as I'm typing this, the Yankees just finished hitting three home runs in one inning, taking a six - nothing lead in the game.  You don't have to be able to speak french to be able to tell that it's not going well.

Stay tuned.

The Final Countdown

It's only about 20 hours till we shake the Repulse Bay dust off of our shoes, and head on out for bigger and better things.  Yesterday, the second of our new replacements, together with his family, arrived at the airport.  He seemed a lot more interested in looking after the store properly.  I spent some time with him this morning, and am a little more secure that he won't let the whole thing fall apart after I'm gone.  As soon as I'm done this, I'll be returning my modem, and preparing for the three day journey ahead of us.  We're looking forward to spending a couple of hours with any family members that can make it for our brief lay-over in Winnipeg.  I'm not sure if we'll be able to get internet during our trip, in order to keep everyone updated, but I hope so.  It should be a couple of eventful days.
I'm told that the whole town of Salluit has been set up as a wireless hot-spot, and all you need to do is head on down to the hamlet office, and pick up a modem.  I think that's pretty much what we have here in Repulse Bay.  That's why I need to return my modem as soon as I'm done with this, so that I can get me deposit back.

P.S. - of course with my first Sunday afternoon off in several months, the Jays game is in a rain delay, there is no NASCAR race, they're showing a taped tennis final from several years ago instead of today's match (for a reason that I haven't figured out yet), and I only watch the last day of golf if there is a Canadian in the hunt.  Pre-season football means nothing to me, so pretty much... I guess I'll shave, shower, and maybe have a nap.  At this point I think that I'm just ready for our plane to arrive already.  Once you've done everything that you need to do and are ready to go, you just want to get it done already, instead of waiting around for the inevitable.

Stay tuned.

Saving the World?

Last week I noticed two sets of rockers in the news, trying to save the world.  "Biff Naked" was trying to get a Canada wide boycott on products from other countries that contain the furs of cats and dogs.  She wasn't able to list any products that contained this fur, and said that you have to do DNA tests to see what kind of furs are contained.  Are you kidding me?  That would cost hundreds of dollars to test mostly 5-50 dollar items from China.  Not going to happen!
Then there's "Blurred Vision", who's musical hero is Roger Waters (not that I want to read too much into the fact that their name, combined with Pink Floyd music, doesn't exactly command a lot of respect).  They have done a rendition of Brick in the Wall, where they say "Hey Ayatollah, leave them kids alone".  I'm not sure why people always talk about this stuff.  Has any song ever actually changed the world?  Did John Lennon's "give peace a chance", or Band Aid's "We are the world", or any of this other crap actually change the world?  I don't think so.  Get a grip people!

I spent about two hours with my new recruit at the store this morning.  Then after quite a few annoying questions where the answer always was "just read the support documents that we have prepared", combined with his outright refusing to read any of them, I just had to leave him.  If you don't actually want to follow the prep work that was painstakingly done, then you're on your own.  So, we have the afternoon off together, where we can enjoy many hours of cleaning and last minute preparations necessary to facilitate the fact that will be in the air and never coming back, in less than 48 hours.  There will be no P.S., since the ballgame doesn't start for another five hours.

Stay tuned.

Purely Potatoes

Really?  Has it come to this?  Are we that lazy that in order to make ourselves mashed potatoes, we need to buy pre-pealed, pre-cut potatoes?  Get a life!

We only needed to spend a few minutes with our new guy after the store opened this morning to realize that there actually were some pretty good reasons why he wasn't about to get his own store.  He had almost zero people skills with the customers, and no rapport whatsoever.  He was so uptight about all of the rules that he had learned, that the fact that we were there to sell product and make money was totally lost on him.  Oh well... that was our last Friday, with only two days left.  By the way - that just so happened to be the biggest day that we've had since coming up here last September.  Even with my lack of technical knowledge in regards to running the store, we have been steadily winning over the members of the community, and slowly increasing sales.  I guess we might be ready for our own store after all.

P.S. (I guess that I should state that my P.S. actually stands for Pro Sports) - Today was the first Blue Jays game that wasn't on sportsnet one, and I got to see them totally blow up the Red Sox.  Fantastic game!  If only they could come up with some consistency, they could almost become a contender.  And, on a related note: the whole idea of this new sportsnet one channel is totally annoying me!  Up here on the arctic circle, my cable is not everything that it might be cracked up to be in the south.  The sportsnet channel that I get, is sportsnet west, while the guide that I get only shows me what's on sportsnet east (which rarely lines up with my actual channel).  I've contacted both my own provider, as well as their ultimate provider to get this rectified.  Obviously only falling on deaf ears.  Now all the games are being shown on a brand new channel.  What do think the chances are of this new fangled channel making onto my programming up here?  Absolutely none.  I contacted sportnet about this as well, without a reply.  Although it may not have helped that I wrote them a fairly scathing email and told them that they were definitely not going to continue enjoying my viewership, if all they were going to show me was air racing.

That's it.  Stay tuned.

Scrubbing Bubbles

One thing that they forgot to mention on the scrubbing bubbles commercials, this stuff works great on toilets!  When we got back from vacation, our cleaning lady was gone from the store.  We were thinking that we'd just wait till James got back, but obviously that never happened.  So, in the mean time, I was doing all of the cleaning.  I suppose you can imaging how gross a public bathroom can get in just a short amount of time.  As luck would have it, I had a bottle of scrubbing bubbles that I was writing off with a broken nozzle, and thought hey, why not.  I soaked the toilet down with the spray (which actually smells very nice), and the next morning... the toilet was pretty clean.  Now, I've been spraying down the toilet every other night, and haven't cleaned the toilet since.  That's enough of that Martha Stewart moment!

The first of our replacement dudes showed up today (the end of the arctic circle keeps getting closer).  He seemed pretty intelligent, and I almost felt bad telling him our end of the story.  As it turns out, he has been with the company for three years.  For the first two years he worked at a store in Northern Saskatchewan, and then with some guidance from his manager, he applied for the Manager in Training (MIT) program.  He has now spent the last year in the MIT program in another store.  We only spent a few minutes with him between when his flight came in, and when the store closed, which was lots enough time to know that he knew way more of the ins and outs of the Nothern Store system than we do.  Which begs the question: knowing that several of the top guys that we have talked to put in several years prior to getting their first store, we see a guy like this that looks so much more prepared, why are we getting a store when all we asked for was a change of scenery?  I guess ours is not to ask, but rather to just go where we are being lead.

P.S. - I just finished watching the Bomber game... I can't believe that they are so terrible.  They totally should have been able to take over after Calvillo left the game, and did show a little spark, but then just fizzled out.  It was almost like they didn't even want to win.  Something's going to have to change!

Stay tuned.

Arctic Funerals

Like everything else in life, there are pros and cons to the whole funeral aspect up here.  When there is a funeral, all business in town is supposed to shut down, in respect of the dead.  That part is totally cool to me.  The problem comes out of the fact that virtually everyone in avoids the funeral, goes fishing, hangs out, and does whatever they want with some free time.  Today, the body of someone that died while in the hospital in Winnipeg, flew in on the same plane as the mail.  Our phone was ringing off the hook with people concerned about whether or not we were going to sort the mail (while we weren't allowed to be open).  Then when finding out that of course we would not, the new set of questions revolved around whether or not we were going to reopen after the funeral.  Of course they all knew that the funeral wasn't going to be over until after our regular closing time, but they wanted us to come in the evening to open up so that they could get their mail (like there would be anything that important in the mail that couldn't possibly wait till morning).  I actually have another funeral story, but since I rambled on much more than I had planned on about my beefs,  I'll move on to something else.

Our last Wednesday, only four days left on the arctic circle.  Not that I haven't enjoyed it, and that the time hasn't flown by, but I'm certainly looking forward to new opportunities, challenges, and experiences.  Tomorrow, the first of our replacements shows up.  Getting everything ready for the replacements, and making sure that all loose ends are wrapped up (to make their lives easier), has not been easy.  There's always stuff that you put off, to do whenever it suits.  When you have to get them all completed in one week, with people that don't understand the meaning of urgency, is enough to make you want to pull your hair out.  Good thing I keep a shaved head up here!

Anyway, that's it for today.  More to come... Later.

Big News

Wow!  Seven days without the internet.  I didn't think that I was that hooked already.  You can probably imagine how quick tech support is on the arctic circle.
Anyway, I had already been writing down ideas for something to talk about, since you could run out of ideas if you write everyday.  But, seeing as how we went seven days without internet, and quite a bit of stuff happened in the last week... I'll just talk about myself (big shock).
Last week Tuesday, we found out that we are moving to Salluit, Quebec - and sooner rather than later.  We are actually flying out next week Monday (August 23).  Fran has already packed up and mailed most of our stuff!  Our flight schedule has us going from Repulse Bay to Rankin Inlet, and then on to Winnipeg on Monday.  Tuesday, we fly from Winnipeg to Montreal, and Wednesday has us flying from Montreal to Salluit (home).  Totally new place, experiences, and new people.  The adventure continues!  The plan for Monday night, is to have a coffee at Fran's sister Rose's house.  There would never be enough time in one evening to try to run around and see everyone, so this seemed like the next best idea.

Hope to see you all there (except for Perry, I don't imagine that you're coming)!

Date Night

I was obviously going to make another post yesterday (being only my second day and all), but internet service on the arctic circle is sketchy at best, and I couldn't sign on last night.  So... seing as how this is my lunch hour, I'll make last night's a brief one, and then probably come back (weather permitting) tonight.

We watched date night last night.  Not too bad.  I mean other than the fact that the whole situation could never happen, Steve Carell and Tian Fey played off of each other very well.  If you're planning on watching it, keep this quote in mind "I'm going to go home now and fart in a shoe box", and tell me that you didn't laugh out loud.

That's it.  Short and sweet.  See you later.

Third time's the charm

OK  this is definitely going to be the last time today.  I just finished watching "big brother".  Are we really that starved for something semi-entertaining that this show has to be on three times a week?

I did manage to take off less than an hour during store hours to watch a little bit of the Jay's game.  I did actually have some pretty good timing.  I saw the last batter of the 7th, and all of the last two innings for the Rays.  Morrow was awesome!  That attempt to save the no-hitter by Hill was fantastic!  Too bad he couldn't close the deal.  Anyway, one hit and 17 strikeouts was definitely one of those all time performances.  Putting that together with Arencibia's first pitch, first homerun from yesterday, the crowd was electric for two straight days.  It really looked good to see the skydome alive.

I realize that I mentioned this in the last little blog, but I thought that I didn't have any time.  As it turns out, I have a few more minutes, so I thought that I'd expand a little on that last one.

That being said... the Bombers.  I guess that there's only so much that you can expect from your backup, but let's not forget that he was signed to be our number one.  That, and the fact that he's now been the top pivot for more than 50% of the games played so far.  I guess the upside is the fact that only in the CFL can you lose twice as many games as you win, and still be poised to win the Grey Cup.  Let's go Big Blue!

How bout them Blue Jays

Have you been watching this?

Yesterday it was the debut of Arencibia, today it was Morrow.  There is hope for the future after all!

Which is more than I can say for my poor Bombers.  They looked like they were doing all that they could do, but that all they can do is stay close (even to a terrible team like Hamilton).

I'd love to ramble on... but who has time for this?

My first blog

This blog is obviously going to be nothing more than my own personal ramblings.  They are going to cover the gammet, from my own views on certain sporting events, movies, music, and when I'm out of things to cover for that day... I'll bore you with my personal life.  That's it for now, time to check out how this thing looks.