Shoot Out In Repulse Bay!

There was an armed standoff in Repulse Bay yesterday.  It took place in the house right across the street from where we used to live.  It was a guy that used to buy a lot of propane from me (for the purpose of sniffing), in the house of the old guy in town that sold me a carving of a narwhal.  The whole town was shut down, and some of our old friends (school teachers) were not let out of school until 9 in the evening.  We were following the story pretty close last night (hence the lack of blog), and I was going to report on that today, to say that I guess a few broken windows that we got here on Sunday wasn't actually so bad.
And then today happened.  Both of our cashiers cashed their cheques on their way to lunch, and then never returned.  Then, our postal clerk had to leave for a while.  When she came back, she wreaked of weed and informed us that she had a new job and wasn't coming back.  So in the course of two weeks:

1. The couple that we were working with went on vacation for a month.
2. The fax machine/printer went on the fritz.
3. The office lady phoned in one morning to say that she wasn't coming back.
4. The ATM died, increasing the amount of traffic in the already empty office.
5. We got word that we were still planning to have my boss come in, so that we could go ahead with a general merchandise inventory this weekend.
6. The postal clerk and both full time cashiers didn't work past lunch, and aren't coming back.

So, we have no office person, no postal clerk, and no cashiers.  Fran is the only person in the building that knows the post office, and is also the person responsible for getting the store ready for an inventory.  The boxes that she was going through this morning (before the wheels fell off), arrived at the store in October of 09.  Not only was this place falling apart when we got here, it has gotten progressively worse in the last two weeks.  It certainly looks like we're in way over our heads here.
Now... just when all of the activity in Repulse Bay was making it look over here like it could certainly be worse, it got worse.  At least my boss will be here within two days, and he can see for himself what kind of challenges we're up against, instead of just seeing it in emails where he has the ability to just tell us to get over it and move on.    This is definitely the first time that even I have felt like there could certainly be a limit to how much more of this kind of crap I can put up with just so that I can say that we had an event filled adventure.

Stay tuned.

How Could I Forget?

Did I manage to get through the whole weekend without mentioning Friday's Bomber game?  Unbelievable!

I was about three days late, and the picture obviously doesn't do it justice... but I threw it in there anyway.  There was supposed to be an obvious splash of red, orange, green, charcoal, and grey.  Instead, all you can see is this.   Blah, blah, blah, I put it up, now STARE AT THE AWESOME BEAUTY!  Yah, whatever.
Now... back to the Bombers.  In the first few minutes I was feeling like; oh boy, here we go again.  Then, momentum changes, and we're back in it.  Next thing you know, we're in the lead.  Wouldn't you know it, we're hanging on, going score for score, and maintaining said lead.  Guess what happened next - the Bombers that we've been watching all season showed back up, and blew it in the end.  I guess that's the only way to explain how a team that was 3-8 could have scored more points than their opponents.  They blow all of the close ones, and can't pull off a win unless they're blowing someone away, and the fourth quarter doesn't matter.
Now, back to something that I've mentioned before.  Only in the screwed up playoff system of the CFL, could a team that has now lost three times more games than they have won, more than half way through the season, still be in the playoff hunt.  They are four wins out of second place, and only two wins away from a crossover to the West.  Down side - there are only six games left.  But, anything can happen in the wacky CFL.

Stay tuned.

It Ought To Be A Crime

Oh... just wait... it is a crime!  I can't believe the amount of crime that goes on in this town.  Today I had my front door, and my back window smashed.  Of course it's always kids, but I don't believe in blaming the kids when it's clearly the doing of the terrible parenting skills.  I mean, let's face it... when the parents take the kids to go outside to take a leak on the front steps and then just stand there and laugh, can you really expect those same kids to care about whether or not they do their own vandalism when the parent isn't watching?

We woke up this morning to the above surprise in our harbour.  I was thinking that with some new surprising activity in town, getting some work done without interruptions on my day off, and then some football on the satellite that works again, it should be a nice relaxing day.  Wrong!  I was only ten minutes away from being done at work when I hear a big crash, followed by the tinkling of broken glass.  I rush out to the front, only to see my front door smashed out, and nobody in sight.  So, an hour and a half later I finally have the window replaced and I'm off for home.  Just before halftime of the early game, I'm kind of dozing off, when the phone rings.  "Alarm at the store, alarm at the store, alarm at the store"!  So, I pull my rubber boots on, run over to the store, turn the alarm off, and then go searching.  In the staff room I see a big rock in the middle of the floor, and of course the window is smashed.  This time I have a witness that saw the kids running away.  A little later I come across someone who saw the first perpetrator, and it turns out that the same kid broke both windows.  When I call the cops and give them the description, of course there is nothing that anyone can do, because the kid can't be more than six.  I know the kid, he comes to the store regularly with a parent, and I bet when I let them know what their son has done, the answer will be something like "so... what do you want me to do about it?".  This town might just have to get a little better, if they expect me to stay here for three whole years.  Anyway, I'm just spouting off.  Chances are, two days from now something awesome will happen, and I'll be saying that they'll have to throw me out of town to get me to leave.

Stay tuned.

The Faint Glimpse of Normality

We finally got our satellite repaired!  I got my ordering done, help should arrive tomorrow (weather permitting), and at the end of the day we got to watch some TV.  It almost feels like next week might be better than the last two weeks worth of insanity.  The office lady quit, our cashiers hardly ever show up, the hand-held ordering device has never worked, the fax machine/printer has been down all week, we're out of bag tags for mail delivery, and sales this week are up almost 100%.  I don't blame Fran at all for feeling like she's about to lose her mind.  Hopefully next week can be one of sanity and normality, before we head out on the next ten days between when our help leaves, and the other couple comes back.  Flying wild and lose, by the seat of your pants is fun for a while, but it's nice to be able to temporarily return to sanity even if it's only for a little while.  I never would have realized that something as simple as being able to watch uninterrupted TV would be the glue that made the whole thing start to seem normal again.  Deep breath...

Stay tuned.

Municipal Meltdown

I don't know if it will help, but I made the trip down to the municipal office yesterday and today.  In the last ten days, we've only been able to flush the toilets at work for four of them.  Either we've been out of water, or the septic tank has been full.  I had already mentioned one week ago today, that I was having water and sewer problems, and that I was probably going to still be mad enough the next day to write about it then.  Well... now it's a week later, and I'm just as ticked as ever.  The septic tank triggers a safety switch that doesn't allow you to run any water if the tank is full.  Yesterday I went down to meet with the mayor to let him know that I wasn't getting any water.  That way, I can't wash the vegetables, floors, use the washroom, or sell slushies or coffee.  He must have done something, because within an hour we had water.  Problem being, we also had our septic tank full.  So still no ability to use water!  I called them two times, they always say that they're sending someone down, but nobody comes.  Today I went down to the office again.  This time I met with the mayor, the village manager, and the assistant manager.  I didn't pull any punches.  I told them that within the last seven days I have called them over ten times, a mother took her son onto my front steps to take a leak, and someone took a dump in my truck bay.  What do I have to do to have you guys help me out here, so that I don't need to have people crapping on my property?  It wasn't instant, but within an hour, somebody came to pump my tank.  At least tomorrow morning, I'll be able to wash the floors.  This latest trip down to town hall may only be a temporary help, so I guess that we'll all just have to...

Stay tuned.

Exhausted!

Getting all of the grocery manager's ordering done, getting all of the manager's work done, dealing with cranky customer complaints, our top cashier quitting, and the post office clerk not showing up for the last day and a half, are way too much for us to handle.  We're working 11 hour days with 20 minute lunches, and just running the whole time.  Apparently we are getting some help next week Friday, but only for 10 days, which covers two weekends of course.  Today of course, I just finished doing the dishes from supper, when the freight truck drives by honking like crazy, because he's bringing me 500 pieces of cargo to unload.  Awesome way to fill up all of my evening "free time".  Any way, that's why I haven't exactly been daily with the blogs, and may not be totally regular for the next month.  I'm sure that I'll have a little more time for that little respite when the other couple comes.  I will try to get out and take at least one picture of the mountain beside our house.  The fall colours, with red, yellow, and green, mixed in with the mountain's red and grey rock, are spectacular!  I'll try to get that posted up for you.  I'm going to bed!

Night - night.

The Joke's on Me (I guess?)

Apparently, I really don't pay that much attention.  The show that I watched last night was a rerun, and the final four had already been announced.  And can someone tell me why announcing the winner needs to be a two hour finale?  Anyway, tonight the little girl sounded very average, while the dude from Mississippi was pretty good.  And let's face it... if she wasn't only ten years old, nobody would care.  As a professional, she's not that great.  But as a ten year old, she's awesome.  So the question needs to be, is it fair for her to win simply because of her age?  It really doesn't matter does it?  Who cares, move on, there's no way that I'll watch two hours of crap to hear a 12 second announcement.  Maybe one of you will let me in on who ends up winning.
The joke's kind of on me about the two of us trying to fill four positions too.  Nobody actually told me anything about anything, but Carlson Wagonlit sent me an itinerary for a couple that's supposed to be landing in Salluit next Friday.  The down side, is that help will only arrive half way through the other couple's vacation, but the up side is that they'll be here for the general merchandise inventory that we are supposed to complete in the first week in October.
Before finding out that this couple was coming, the situation was:

1. After being a store manager in a new town and a new store for only two weeks, they were taking away the only stable help that we had.
2. I begged for some assistance, and nobody said a word about sending any help.
3. There was supposed to be this inventory taking place, while the other couple was gone, even though we had never done a GM inventory before.
4. I was fully prepared to tell them all to take a flying leap, when Carlson throws me a life line.

I still have to ask the question; isn't somebody going to tell me about this new couple that's coming, what their areas of expertise are, and what their roles are supposed to be when they get here?  Are they just here to lend a hand, are they here to do the inventory for us, what the heck is going on?  The communication around here is terrible!
Even though it happened today, I'm sure that I'll still be mad enough to complain tomorrow about the sewer and water issues that I've been having with the Hamlet over the last few days, so...

Stay tuned.

America's Got Tallent?!

I was going to blog about our first day without the couple that has been here for a while.  They have gone on vacation, leaving us to do our normal jobs as well as those of the couple that's gone.  But, I've decided to go in a different direction all together.
First, am I the only one that keeps going on and on (to Fran's annoyance) about the fact that not one of the judges on America's Got Talent is American?  We've got two Brits and a Canuck.  Is there nobody in the US that knows anything about talent?  Even the main guy from American Idol isn't American.  Two of the main guest judges during the tryout section of the show were Canadian as well.  And yet, if you're not American, you can't try out for the show.  What's up with that?
Second, have you seen this little girl sing?  I'm not a big fan of opera, but I've seen lots of 300 pound broads with decades of training, that can't hold a candle to this ten year old girl.  The video and the audio just don't match.  I think Howie hit it right on the head when he asked her if she'd ever swallowed an adult, because that's what is sounds like.  I haven't actually been watching the show at all (because I just don't care), but some of the clips on the commercials made me curious enough to tune in tonight.  I was not disappointed.  Fantastic!  If she doesn't make the final four, something's definitely wrong with this show.  The dancers were OK, the guy on the bike is pretty good (somehow making bicycle riding a show), defying gravity is alright (if you don't mind the fact that it's just simple black light theatre that's about 70 years old), and the rest of the singers that are on the show are average at best.  End result - Little Girl Wins.

Stay tuned.

Paul LaPolice!

See what I did there?  The last one was called Call The Police, which rhymes with Paul LaPolice, get it?  Enough of that silly business.  Way to go Bombers!  They really seemed to have it together today in every aspect of their game (except of course on kick return, where they have been terrible all year).  Sort of gives you some hope on this 3-7 poor start.  We all knew that they should have won a few more, but should have and could haves don't mean much in the standings.  Now that Pierce is out for good, Jyles looked a lot more comfortable as the starter.  Hopefully they turn this around, and wrap it up a little less embarrassing.  Now on to other things.  This will be the last picture that I include for a while.  Even if you lived in George Washington's nose on Mount Rushmore, all of the pictures of your neighbourhood would start to look the same after a while.

While I was staring off into the distance in the last picture, trying to figure out where to go next, Fran was looking in this opposite direction getting another view of the opening to the ocean.
Back to the other day's police issue.  We have a totally different police system here in Salluit.  We have some Municipal patrols, but I'm not sure yet exactly what they do.  We don't have the RCMP, or the Quebec  Police either.  We have some almost private police, that I believe are hired by the community, and are given fairly long leashes.  They don't seem to have any problems doing whatever they want in order to keep the peace, and yet they obviously enjoy themselves on their days off as well.  Shortly after coming down to take out the knife wielder on Friday, they came by to buy some air soft guns so that they could shoot each other after their shift.  Then, on Saturday, they came down to the store to ask Fran if they could get a deal if they bought every one of the Halo action figures.  Desperate to get rid of them and clear up some space, Fran said they could have them for four bucks apiece if they bought them all.  And they did!  Over thirty of them.  Just so that some grown men could go home after work and play.  It's a different world up here!

Stay tuned.

Call The Police!

Pretty exciting day today!  We had an attempted stabbing, a drunken brawl, and a death threat.  So of course, I'll throw in a picture of me on my new toy (totally related).

This was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Fran was off stretching out her legs, while I was surveying which way to head off next.
Anyway, the day started off with a "crazy" lady threatening (and attempting) to stab her husband (who was holding their baby in his arms) right in front of our customer service desk.  There was lots of shouting, with two different people running to my office to get me to call the police.  After doing this and being assured that they were on their way, I went out front to make sure that none of my staff was in harm's way.  The lady was already outside and heading down the street.  The cops came screeching up, I pointed her out to them, they chased her down, disarmed her, and threw her to the ground.  Seeing that disaster was diverted, I went back inside to ensure that none of the staff was too traumatized.  Our post office clerk just said "oh well, she's just moody".  I guess this was nothing new to the locals.
A couple of hours later, two drunken men were really getting into it in front of the customer service counter (again).  This time it was another customer who said "just give me the phone, I'll call the police on these two".  That seemed to be enough to encourage them to take their issue outside.
An hour or two later, our office clerk was not able to help one customer on the phone who was asking her to do something that we don't do at our office, when she was told that he knew exactly who she was, and that he was going to kill her.  Good thing that she's going on vacation in two days.
I still don't have proper TV, and the internet is pretty hit and miss.  Life goes on.

Stay tuned.

Stupid Internet!

Following in the same path as the stupid satellite, periodically north of 60 sometimes has it's drawbacks.  I shortened my video of the awesome little set of rapids just up the river from our house, so that I could email a video less than 25GB, but it took so long to upload that it timed out twice.  This was enough to make me give up.

This is a shot back into the bay.  Yesterday it was a shot from the furthest high peak in the background towards where this picture was shot.  The town is now off to the left.
So, I didn't watch yesterday's Bomber game, yesterday's or today's Blue Jays game, or either of today's labour day CFL games.  Fran is trying to watch Bachelor Pad, but of course that happens to be on several channels, and we are currently not getting any of them.
I shouldn't complain, we went for awesome quad rides yesterday and today, got some awesome shots, and spent some time at the store without anyone around so that we could get something done.  Fran did several loads of laundry, and I got both freight and mail twice today.  So, it's not like we didn't accomplish anything.  It's just that I would have liked to give out some useless opinions on some of the sports that I watched on this long weekend, and email out an awesome short video of our new favourite spot to hang out, and now I'm left complaining bitterly about how we are temporarily a little short of some of the technological advances that you southerners generally take for granted.  Oh well, tomorrow's another day.  It could be worse, and just might get there.  Let's just see how I manage to rebound from this.

Stay tuned.

Stupid Satellite!

There was no way to watch the Bomber game today.  TSN said on their site that the game can be viewed "shortly after" the broadcast ends.  It's now an hour and a half later, and it's still not available.  So, I finally looked at the box score, and I see that they lost.  Oh well, no point in watching it now.  Hopefully I can get everything back to normal for the Banjo Bowl next week.  I did go for a ride with Fran this afternoon, and we got some sweet pictures.  This one is the best.

This is from the top of the highest point that is fairly close to town.  You can see a small strip of water right in the middle of the shot, and you can't see it but just to the right of that strip of water is the town.  This seemed to be the best spot to check out the opening to the ocean.  It's actually Hudson's Straight, which is part of the ocean, so stop being so picky!  Maybe tomorrow I'll take some short videos.  I don't know if I'll be able to attach them to the blog.  I know that I can email 25GB videos, and I tested a few at home so it looks like 12-13 seconds should fit.  That doesn't sound like much, but if you know that's all the time you get, you can actually capture a lot.  I'll try to attach it to this, but if it doesn't work, I'll send at least one out via email.

Stay tuned.

Brand New Toy

If you've just recently been tuning in, you might be wondering about the title of this blog.  I started this thing just two days before getting word that we would be getting our own store in Salluit.  At the time, I thought that if I were to be writing something every day, I would have to resort to rambling on with my opinions on various things (mostly sports and entertainment), and that most of the time nobody would care much about what I was writing.  I wasn't going to let that stop me from doing it anyway, hence the title "I don't care, if you don't care", because I'm going to keep rambling on anyway.  The problem is, so many new and exciting things have happened since then, that I have mostly just been trying to keep up with all the activity.  So, in continuation of what I've been doing, the last picture of the view from within our slanty abode.

That's the view from the dining room window.  It looks from our house like the highest mountain around, except for the fact that today I went to the top of that hill, only to find that the next hill is higher, and so on, and so on, and so on.  Which brings me to today's topic.

I bought a brand new toy up here.  A Can-Am Outlander 500cc 4X4.  Automatic, push button shifting, independent suspension, liquid cooled, a total Cadillac.  I used that to climb to the top of the hill and beyond.  All I was really doing, was scouting out routes that Fran would be comfortable riding with me on tomorrow, so that we could collect a whole new set of awesome pictures.  I used my staff discount as the down payment, and took advantage of the fact that our cleaning contract was free, and we don't open on Sundays.  So, I go in on Sunday to spend a few hours making sure that the store is in tip-top shape for Monday mornings.  I use the money from the cleaning contract to make more than the payments.  As a result, for a few hours of cleaning on Sundays, I'm not actually investing a single dime of my own money to have a total blast on my other day off.  I win!

On a sad note, I still haven't been able to straighten out my satellite mess, and it looks entirely possible that I won''t be able to watch the Bomber game tomorrow after our quad ride.  Oh well, I guess that's the joys of living north of 60.  Maybe my TV luck will change tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Wild Dogs

I'll get to the wild dogs in a moment, but until then, as promised, another picture.

This is may be a little bit deceiving.  If I would pan down and a little to the right, you would see the bay off of the ocean.  That actually makes for a better picture at high tide, but the bay is very shallow and doesn't look that great at low tide.  And yes, there is a totally different mountain view no matter which window you look out of.  The next picture will be the last one from inside the house, but I thought that I'd start off by giving you the views that I see without even leaving home.  Then I'll start showing you around town, and the neighbouring countryside (I'll have to take some more of those soon).

We went for supper at the couple that we work with's house yesterday.  They are pretty nice people, the supper was awesome, and their house is tiny!  Made  me not feel so bad about our slanty house (out of which we can see daylight in multiple places).  Anyway... to the wild dogs.

In Repulse Bay, there was a pretty strict rule about dogs that were not tied up.  If your dog got more than two or three houses away from your place, it probably wouldn't be coming back.  They claim to have the same rules here in Salluit, but clearly there in no enforcement.  There are wild dogs roaming all over town.  It actually makes it pretty tough to take our dogs out to do their business.  Buddy likes to bark to announce his arrival outside, which of course is the perfect shout out to all of the wild dogs to come and check out what's going on.  Once surrounded by these other dogs, our dogs are way too distracted to get to the business at hand.  So, we're always on the lookout to see when there aren't any dogs close by, so that we can quickly run out with our guys, and cross our fingers for success.

Plenty more to cover, but for the tie being my major concern is that the latest big storm on Wednesday, there are a bunch of satellite channels that we're not getting right now.  One of those just so happens to be TSN, on which I am relying upon to show me the Labour Day Classic on Sunday afternoon.  I'm not sure what I'll have to do to straighten this out, but I'll definitely be spending all of tomorrow (if necessary) to make sure that I can watch the Bombers on Sunday (or I'll have to hurry up and make some new friends that don't have the same TV issues that I do).  Let's see what happens -

Stay tuned.

Big news from the big boss

Before I get to the big news, as promised, another picture.

This picture is also taken from the kitchen window.  The river runs straight towards the house, and then veers off about 40 feet from the house.  It moves pretty quick, and you can hear the rushing water, even from inside the house.

Apparently, I wasn't just impressing myself with the early numbers from the new store.  I had a conference call today with the VP of operations, and the HR manager today.  I told them that I was enjoying everything so far, but if there would be one reason for me not to stick out the three year commitment in Salluit, it would be the deplorable conditions of the house.  They told me that they would "see what they can do".  I've not only heard that many times before, but I've also said that many times before.  Usually that means that nobody's going to do anything.  Not even two hours later, my regional manager gave me a call.  He said that he just got off of his own conference call with the same two guys, and that if I can find some local contractors that have some spare material, I can just go ahead and make whatever improvements that I want, and just charge the expenses to the dwelling ledger.  Always take full advantage of you 15 minutes of fame!  That being said, I suppose that it's possible that there might not be anyone here that can do anything for me, but I've already greased a few of the more influential palms here, and I'm willing to bet that I'll get something done, sooner rather than later.  Yesterday I already lined up three or four more days worth of stuff to write about, but then this came up.  Now that I've prattled on about this, I guess that I'll just sign off for now, and keep you guessing as to what might come up next.

Stay tuned.