The happenings...

Alright, I am not just LAZY or TOO BUSY to write. This dumb blog site pissed me off the other day so I've been avoiding it. I had a whole big blog typed about the funny happenings of our spawning party and the past few days but then it deleted the whole thing! I was angry... but despite the anger, I was going to sit there and type it all again... well, an shortened version, and it did it again. Anyhow, I had part of it saved so here is the beginning of the post... (P.S. I did it again...)

*cue the post*

So things happen in the Real World that can be called a problem... or a crisis. The same goes for the Hidden Falls Bubble. A crisis in the Real World is like... Hurricane Katrina! A crisis in the Hidden Falls is...

NO BEER SHOWING UP ON THE FLIGHT THE DAY BEFORE THE SPAWNING PARTY!

In the Real World, this would only be considered a problem. But when everyone expects to get beer, they drink what beer they have to make room for the NEW beer. The Spawning Party (the biggest HF party of the year, by the way) was planned for Saturday because we didn't have to work Sunday either... People's personal beer should have arrived along with two kegs for the party. When the Friday plane came and no beer came, people went into CRISIS MODE! Someone called the plane company and apparently they had found the beer... so they were going to turn the pilot around with our beer when he got back. He never showed up that night again.


SATURDAY - SPAWNING PARTY

NO... BEER...! More calls were made to the plane company... a different lady was working and had no clue about the whole situation. For some reason, our beer seemed to have come up missing! So people were scrounging for beer, but ended up having SOME. See, everyone though on Friday night "OK the beer will come on Saturday so we'll be fine... let's drink everything else we have." Everyone was pretty crazed about it but a few of the guys ended up finding some beer in their closet (from a while ago)... the crappy liquor was being pulled off the shelves... It's amazing really what NO BEER can do to a party. It was a bit boring but we had some goooooood food! Usually they have a pig to roast over a fire and maybe a lamb too? But this year we just got a lamb... I guess they couldn't get a pig. And we had some pork roasts in Scott's smoker... lots of good stuff! The bugs were nasty... but we stood around around the roaster and played some games. Had a horseshoe tournament... a "Guess how many eggs are in the jar?" game...

(OK MY COMPUTER HATES ME TODAY BECAUSE IT JUST DELETED EVERYTHING I JUST WROTE... and I feel TOO lazy to write it all over... summerizing! Sorry, this is going to be lame.)

SUNDAY - SPAWNING PARTY TAKE 2

THE BEER CAME! Dan and Deena made venison ribs and we had corn too. Ate... drank... we played more games like the "chum toss" and a "distance bucking" competition. Adam ended up winning with like 20 feet something in distance for the bucking. And those chum are slippery to throw! Funniest was when Andy threw his and it went almost straight up in the air and hit the loader tractor 2 feet from him. Then we went back to drinking and standing around the firepit. The idea of settling a past bet came up between Adam and Jess (Jess lost a pool game and was supposed to jump off the dock, but didn't.) So they filled up a round pond and jumped in... along with Tim, his friend and cousin who are here, and Andy. It was funny.

*End of the original post*

So that's the basic jist of what happened. It's amusing how beer will make a party fun or not. Anyhow, Monday for work, most of us were umm... not moving too fast! Especially the few of them that stayed up until 4 in the morning, when work started at 8!

Yeah, so the other happenings at the hatchery... uhhh there's not that much. We're trying to finish up Chinook spawning. It's taking alot longer than normal... usually it lasts like 2 days... but I think we're going on 5? They just don't want to come up the ladder. Plus it's a slower process. We only take eggs from 315 fish I think it is, meaning we only need 630 fish total. They spawn one female and one male into a ziplock bag, then take kidney samples from these fish too. It's to test for some disease and they keep each pair seperate until they get the results. Plus the chinook can weigh up to like 30 lbs. so it's a bit different from chum spawning.

During the spawning, though, I've been working in the Roe Shed. I don't remember if I really explained this but the Roe Shed is where we take eggs (Roe) from all different species of fish that come up the ladder. So the sorters on the spawning table seperate the chinook to be spawned and also send all the female chum, coho, and pink salmon down a shoot to us in the shed (which is just right next to the spawning shed) and we take their eggs. So we fill buckets... then send them on a plane to Juneau to Northern Keta, a caviar processing place.

We spawned chinook a few days last week, then Monday, and also yesterday (Friday). I have been in the Roe Shed all of those days except that it was slow on Friday, and I was just being their "bucket girl," so I walked into the spawning shed to see what was going on really... just to save myself from some boredom. Well Scott said I could help out Adam with the little bags for the kidney samples... then he said Adam could show me how to take kidney samples. So I got to do that for a bit. They were almost done spawning because they didn't have that many fish, but I got to do a bunch still. It's kind of interesting... plus I got to see a bunch of the chinook they were spawning. Man, one of them that came through was so HUGE! I had to lift it up after I took the sample and put it down the grinder shoot and I struggled a tad.

Anyhow, what else... Tim and Jess, two of our seasonals that came in a few months ago, left on Wednesday. They were two of the really short time seasonals, whereas I was hired from Feb. - Nov. I'll miss both of them alot... especially Tim. He was a crazy funny guy! Ok, maybe even Jess, even though we really almost killed each other one day! It sure is quiet around here now though that those two are gone. Both of them on their own are loud, but put them together and they butted heads and argued alot... in a pretty funny way most of the time.

So yeah, speaking of Feb. - Nov. I know that last post, I worried a few of you when I said I had "an announcement." Some of you crazy fools though I was engaged... no. Or you thought I said I was never coming back. I guess time has sorta come for me to think about if I'm staying another season... and just to let you all know, I'm thinking about it. I haven't completely decided but just letting you know... don't freak out. :-) Engaged... GEEZ!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Timmy and Jess, they don't read this... maybe they will...? But I'll miss ya guys. It was a fun time working with you guys! :-D