Happy New Year!

Strangely, I'll be saving hockey talk for another blog later in the day.
Instead, I'll mention a little about New Year's in the arctic.  Last year (in Repulse Bay), they staked out the design of 2010 on the ice, and used about 300 snowmobiles to drive around the course creating the numbers of the year in headlights.  It actually looked pretty cool.  I was thinking that maybe they were just using Inuk time, because the whole thing only got started around 12:30.  I realize through this year's celebration, that they actually bring in the new year at the community centre, and then do some of the other stuff afterwards.
The ocean is actually starting to freeze right now, but clearly way too late (with way too much open water) to do anything out on the ocean last night.  The only thing that actually took place at midnight... gunshots!  There must have been at least a thousands gunshots going off at midnight.  Some of them were very close, and some of them were obviously high calibre.  You could feel the sound shock, even in the house.  Needless to say, the dogs didn't enjoy that very much at all.  Shortly after the gunshots started to die down, the fireworks got started.  They took place at the dock, which is straight away from our living room window, so we had a front row seat.  They were actually quite nice, but a little short (I'm assuming that we didn't have an extremely large budget for that).  We were under the impression that the fireworks were the end, so we went to bed.  Ten minutes later, the parade began.  Two laps of the town, led by the fire truck (all sirens going off, all horns honking on the vehicles following it, and obviously everyone hammered).
At least you can always count on the mornings being peaceful (no matter which hamlet you're in), because nobody gets up at a reasonable hour.  It's by far the best time to go for a walk, go to the ocean shore, or just check out things around town.  At 8 in the morning, it would be easy enough to imagine that nobody lives here.
Anyway, hockey later (maybe twice).

Stay tuned.