30.5 hours in 3 days...

ALRIIIIIIIIGHT!!

So today was Day #3 of starting work at 7am. We're doing this so the boat can get an early start at taking the chum to Takatz. It takes 2 trips a day. Really it doesn't take THAT long but Scott is also ponding chum at the same time so an early start at getting the fish OUT of the ponding trough (the raceway) means an earlier start at getting a new group back IN!

Now, I've decided that these past three days have been a good indication that I don't mind what I'm doing up here. Day #1 of 7am start ended up being a 10.5 hour work day! Morting some ponds, feeding all the front round ponds BY myself and having to clean the freshly fallen 12+ inches of snow off of the predator nets before I fed! Rediculous, Mother Nature... REDICULOUS! One day it's nice... but snowing a little... then we wake up with 12... 14... KNEE high snow on the ground! I hate you. Anyhow, all of that stuff that I did took me until 5:15, which is already PAST "clock out time"... then I went in to help Scott clean up in incubation until 6:30! These Takatz chum are in "R48 incubators"... I'm not too sure why they are called "R48"s but my guess is because they're round and there are 48 of them. :-D But they are set up alot different than the previous incubators. It's one big round VAT of fish... layered in there with biorings (substrate) and mesh screens. Fairly easy clean up... the screens get alot of bag eggs and goop stuck to them and it's sort of fun to clean them off actually! he he he I wanted to take some pictures in incubation today of the ponding machine and the R48s but the lights were off when I went in there later on. With these R48s, we don't have to work in pitch black so should be able to get some pictures.

Anyhow, Day #1... 10.5 hours. Day #2... 9.5 hours... not too bad. Day #3... 10.5 hours again. LOOONG days but...... they haven't FELT long. (And no... I don't get overtime pay! BOO) I wasn't thinking "GOD I just wanna get out of here." To me, that's a pretty good sign. And today the weather was GREAT! This morning, Angie and I were pushing out the chum and the sun was out and it was soooo clear. The mountain looked gorgeous. It got kind of gray later on but it was real nice for a while.

SOOOO... I have some fun pictures! YAY!


This is the downstairs of the bunkhouse. I'm standing at one of the doorways. Behind me is the doorway to go the laundry room and up a set of stairs or outside. The tv isn't visible but it's in that right corner by the couches... Caf-style tables... kitchen is in the back there thru that little window.


MMMMMM... Sarah and Brandon brought me some crab! They brought me 4 halves... these were just two halves to show you how big a full crab could be... that's a normal sized dinner plate. Give me a nut cracker type thing and I can crack the heck out of some crab! ;-D


This is the spawning shed with the feed shed as the big building in the back. It's the morning that we got all that snow overnight... it all slid off the roof of the spawning shed and completely closed it in! You can see how much snow we actually got... the edges where it was plowed... that's how much.


So behind the feed shed are the green round ponds that I showed you before. But that picture I showed before was taking where the was no snow... see all the snow up the side! This is from all the snow sliding off the roof... it was higher last week actually!


This is Muttley, Dan and Deena's massive dog. You really can't tell how big he is but he comes up to about my thigh. He's got a hilarious face... you can't help but just laugh when he looks at you.


So I talked to other day about how Angie said we would have to dig out some screens that were buried in the "boneyard" under about 12 feet of snow. Thankfully I didn't have to dig but she did... really, it was about 12 feet!


STARING DOWN THE HOLE OF DOOM!!!! That's Deena next to me.


OK let me explain this one... We have this cookbook in the kitchen... The Joy of Cooking. I was trying to find a recipe for the extra crab I had. So I'm flipping pages and the word "woodchuck" catches my attention! "WHAT!?" So I find it... and it's a section for Wild Game. How to cook woodchuck, possum, rabbit, beaver, stuff like that... and then I see this! How to cook squirrel... with directions to SKIN A SQUIRREL! Now tell me if this is NOT the scariest picture you have ever seen in a COOKBOOK!!!!!! That bottom one with the... "naked" squirrel... doesn't is just look like a cartoon!?

ANYHOW... HA HA... Tomorrow is my day off, along with Saturday. I may ride the boat out to Takatz with the chum to check it out. I think it's suppose to be a nice day. And I have to check out the Takatz house before I live in it. For those of you I have talked to about it, I found out there IS a toilet! I won't have to use a bucket unless the toilet freezes! HA HA

SHOUT OUTS OF THE DAY: To Traci and Aunt Sandy! THANKS for the packages!! :-D And to everyone who had to listen to me FREAK out about some "accommodations" at Takatz, THANKS. :-D

By the way, I've partially given up on the weather report. Mom sent me a little thermometer for my window, but I think the temperature FROM the window throws it off... it said it was almost 50 out but I think it was much lower than that. So until I really figure out what the temperature is... you're gonna have to go to that weather page.

The sighting!

I SAW A BEAR!!!!

That's excitement by the way... not fear!

This weekend, Scott said he saw a bear and Josh said he saw tracks. So we have been put on bear alert... making sure the food vans are closed tight and that no garbage is left out. Well today I had just started to "mort" the round ponds out front when Shannon, who was standing over by the duplex, starts to kind of point and call me over. And I knew right then what he was looking at. I would have had the PERFECT view of it from exactly where I had been standing but I probably would have never seen it. It blended in real well and was just kind of sitting there for a few minutes across the lagoon. Then it started to move around a bit. Shannon said it is normally June-ish when they start to see the bears out and that this guy was probably looking for a dead deer to eat because he woke up too early. It wasn't HUGE but it was decent sized... Shannon said probably 3-4 years old. From across the lagoon, it was hard for me to really gauge how large he was. Anyhow it was pretty cool! Then I went back to morting.

A few minutes later I see something out of the corner of my eye moving up the hill and I thought it was the bear so I stopped to watch. It ended up being a deer and I kind of laughed. It was moving in the opposite direction of the bear so I hope it escaped with all of it's limbs! A little later I did see the bear walking down by the water so I watched him for a few. That sure is an interesting sight. It was a good "First bear sighting" experience... that's how I wanted it to be... seeing him from ACROSS the water. This morning as I was walking back to the food shed (pre-bear sighting), I was praying "please don't let this bear come walking over the snowbank!"

Anyhow, that's really the only thing I had to say. Tomorrow work starts at 7 because we are making our first chum transfer to Takatz. Scott and Deena ponded some today and tomorrow they will get pumped into a boat and transported out there. Though Angie told me that we will be DIGGING some screens out of the snow tomorrow, so I don't know why the heck we have to get up an hour early too! :-D he he he Apparently these screens (which are for a raceway she needs ready by Friday) are laying flat on the ground... Under umm...... 12 feet of snow!? Really I have no idea how much snow it is but 12 HONESTLY sounds about right. Maybe I'll take my camera out there tomorrow and take a picture first. It's quite funny...

SNACK EXPLOSION... CLEAN UP... ROOM 3

HEH Alright, I'm just gonna jump right into this before talking about work stuff.

I have received 6 BOXES this week..... 6! That's outrageously funny. I got 4 just today... Angie came into the kitchen and was like "Is it your birthday!?" heh nope... A box from Melissa, Stacey, 2 from Grandma Moser, Mom, and Hannah. Let me just say... I HAVE ALOT OF SNACKS! Allow me to give you a quick list I compiled... really, it's quite funny...

- 6 boxes of Nature Valley granola bars (not including the 2 I have downstairs!) plus a box of a diff. kind of granola bars... (Let me just say, I love them all, but those Sweet & Salty ones are AMAZING! I got 3 boxes of them... I was rejoicing!)

- 3 boxes of cupcakes plus 3 of the 2 pack Hostess cupcakes...

- 2 boxes of Fudge Rounds

- 2 boxes of Nutty Bars

- 2 things of Peeps

- 2 packages of Nutter Butter cookies (1 is a bag and 1 is a smaller pack)

- 7 BAGS OF JOLLY RANCHERS in flavors I didn't even know they had!

- Atleast 10 things of Ramen Noodles... I can't remember...

- Lots of random crazy hilarious stuff from Hannah

- Assorted other stuff like M&Ms, Mini Peanut Butter cups, 3 huge tootsie rolls, jelly beans, twizzlers, life savers, peppermint patties

OUT... OF... CONTROL!! There's no way that stuff will fit downstairs in my one cabinet so I'll be slowly replenishing my downstairs stock... if I don't eat it all upstairs first! heh THANK YOU everyone for sending stuff. If anyone else is planning on sending anything, feel free to hold off for a few... months? ha ha As I was putting my groceries away today, I was thinking, "MAN, I shouldn't have ordered this..." because I shoulda known snacks and stuff were coming. Oh well...

Anyhow, so on to the past 2 days. Well yesterday was the 1st day of spring and Mother Nature decided "alright... I'll give you some spring for god sakes!" and instead of a day of snow, it was a day of rain. And Scott, bless his fabulous heart, decided to give us the afternoon off! He called it a "rain day." So I spent the afternoon doing NOTHING... playing on my computer in my room. I even had the window opened in there for a bit! *GASP* Last night I was watching some tv kind of late but there really wasn't anything on so I flipped to the XM radio channels on the tv... they just play music with a blank screen. And I found THE BEST COUNTRY station! It was playing very brand new music... stuff I haven't even heard... I was so happy. So I sat there and read to some great country music! :-D

Today.... *I drop to my knees and fan my arms at Mother Nature*... WHAT A GORGEOUS MORNING! GAH... the sun was out... it had stopped raining... FABULOUS I TELL YA! I just kept grinning to myself thinking "MAN, this is why I came to Alaska!" as see a bald eagle land in a pine tree and I feel the warmth of the sun! I was down to one layer because it felt so warm! I morted some of the round ponds and then we fed them all morning. Meanwhile, the plane came in. I've decided that as much as I love the sound of the plane coming in, there's something about the sound of it taking off that's really cool. It's sort of cool to watch too.

Anyhow, this afternoon, though the sun went away, it stayed sort of nice for a while. At 3:30, Angie said it was 41 degrees. I fed the fish in the back and then helped Angie in the little incubator room do some stuff that was kind of interesting, though it meant I had to dip my fingers in 3 degree water! Not just dip, but hold them there for a little while. There are a few incubators there like the ones that we just ponded, but I think the fish are Coho... They only started to hatch 3 weeks ago and some of the eggs aren't even hatched yet. Anyhow, so in those incubators, they put a screen in that sits over the substrate that I talked about before. They put the eggs on that screen and when the babies hatch, they fall down through that screen and hang out in the substrate. But there were some bad eggs still on the screens and we had to get those out and just take the screen out period. Though it was cold at some points, it was kind of interesting because I didn't realize that was how they did it. Actually, I don't know if they DO do it that way for all those Chum we ponded... because alot of the substrate was clumped up by bad eggs. Whatever... HA

So that was the day. Now it's raining again. But tomorrow we have a day off for a "holiday."

William Henry Seward (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

As Secretary of State, he fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska which he finally negotiated to acquire from Russia for $7,200,000 on March 30, 1867. He had claimed that the United States must move westward. This translated into approximately 2 cents per acre ($4.94 per km²) for 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km²) of territory, more than twice the size of Texas. The purchase of this frontier land ("Sewards Icebox") was mocked as "Sewards Folly" and Andrew Johnsons "polar bear garden".

Currently, Alaska celebrates the purchase on Sewards Day, the last Monday of March.

Yeah, so technically the holiday is Monday but we are going to start ponding the Takatz chum on Monday. THAT means, I'll be heading out to Takatz pretty soon... probably next week. My schedule will be... (not necessarily THIS week but once things get going)

Sun. & Mon. - At Takatz with Adam
Tues. & Wed. - Still at Takatz, but with Dean
Thurs. - Back at Hidden Falls to work (just in time for Grey's Anatomy!)
Fri. & Sat. - OFF

Really, out at Takatz, all we are doing is feeding the fish, so we'll have alot of downtime. Sound be interesting. Anyhow, this was a LONG one... Thanks for stickin with me! :-D

SHOUT OUTS OF THE DAY - Grandma Moser, Mom, and Hannah! For the gifts! THAAAAANNNNKKKKSSSS!!! Oh Hannah, thanks for the things to keep me pretty for the fish! The hair ties and rain bonnet! Always lookin out for me! HA HA

On top of the world!!

Ok I mean the roof... on top of the roof...

Alright.... a few people made my day... but we'll get to that later.

What'd I do yesterday, you ask? Snow... shovel... ROOF! yes... And I have some pictures. Now I've talked about the infamous roof snow alot lately. Well the snow depth up there got too high again... they snowblowed some of it, but the rest was just too hard to get through. So that had to be shoveled by hand... and it was conveniently in the CENTER of the roof.


That's Scott and Angie is in the background. So that ledge of snow that you see is what needed to be shoveled. Doesn't look like much... it was a couple feet. "Oh come on... the roof can't hold that 2 feet of snow!?" you ask. Well... there's a good 3 feet of snow UNDER that... we were trying to get the snow down to that 3 foot mark.


Down the center of the roof, there are a few drains and this big trench was created. It's hard to really get perspective but I was bending down on my knee IN the trench when I took this... it's about 5 feet high on either side.


This is me IN the trench... again, hard to really get perspective since EVERYTHING is white but the snow pile behind me was probably as high as me or pretty close. Angie was standing up a little higher to take this.

So yesterday, Scott created these "sleds" which consisted on a piece of "poly" as he called it... plastic.... with ropes on each corner to pull. The plastic was ehh... 5-1/2 ft x 3 ft. maybe... so alot of snow could be piled up on it. So we'd load that baby up and dump her off the edge of the roof. For the first while, it was actually rather funny. I took a few videos on my camera of Angie and Scott pulling the sled and dumping it but they are too large of a file to put on here unfortunately. Anyhow, as we started to creep more and more inward, it got more annoying and I had had enough. There are hoses up on the roof spraying water to try to melt the snow and there are areas where the snow is down to the actual roof so we just ended up throwing snow there just to even off the depth of the roof. It was a long hard day and my left forearm hurts if I touch it!

Anyhow, today Angie and I morted and fed, but once we were done, it was BACK up on the roof for a little while, then out to the dock to clear that off. While we were out there, the plane came to drop of Adam and Deena, who were in Sitka for a few days. Mail came with! YAY for that...

Some interesting facts... Scott talked to a guy he used to work with yesterday. And this guy said that where ever he is, over by Juneau somewhere, they have had 420 INCHES OF SNOW this winter! 420! That's 35 feet of snow! Our number is somewhere like 187 inches... Last year it was somewhere like 65 inches! Gee, guess I picked a good year to move to Alaska! CRAP! ha ha

OH and we're under many advisories tonight... GAH!

...HEAVY SNOW WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 AM
ADT WEDNESDAY...
...WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 9 AM
ADT WEDNESDAY...
...SMALL STREAM FLOOD ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 4 AM ADT WEDNESDAY
TO 6 AM ADT THURSDAY...

SHOUT OUTS OF THE DAY - To Melissa and Stacey... you guys are amazing! I don't wanna sound like I'm downplaying your package Melissa, but I was truly shocked when I saw a box from you Stacey! I never expected it! I actually carried Melissa's box up to the loader to be taken inside so I knew about that one (and I knew it was coming anyhow.) And then I saw TWO boxes after work and I was grinning from ear to ear! Thanks so much both of you! Hey Melissa, I couldn't open your box right away because I was still working but I was thinking about it while chipping away at the ice on the dock but I was thinking about it for some reason. And I just had this feeling... I was thinking "it would be cool if there was a magazine in there." and there WAS! So when I finally got done with work, I opened them and sat in my room reading that magazine and eating some food for a little while. It was great! And I got your card too Melissa! THANKS! I have a few of your cards hanging up in my room! ;-) And now I have a big stash of snacks under my desk! he he he Except for those Hostess cupcakes... those were gone the minute I sat down!

The Good and The Bad

The Good
The grocery flight came today!! YAY! I was walking down the stairs and I heard what I thought was the plane but.... it didn't sound like it landed... maybe like it just flew over so I wasn't completely sure. But then I saw a few people going out to the dock and I rejoiced! I still didn't get any of your packages yet but I did get a few things I ordered online. I'm sure I'll get them this week though... they're probably sitting in the NSRAA office but the stuff that came today was probably the stuff that has been sitting at the airline place since the original canceled flight on Wednesday.

The Bad
So I'm gonna share a little bit of my gripes about not being able to shop for myself. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy my stuff is here, but certain things about this whole concept makes me crazy... I've kinda gotten over the frustration of not having the grocery store right there when I need it. Now I have to figure out HOW to get exactly what I want.... here are my examples...

- I asked for 1 box of cereal, 1 box of granola bars, & 1 box of popcorn... I got 2 of each. Really, that's alright though because I'll definitely eat them.

- I asked for Finesse shampoo and conditioner... they sent me some coconut smelling Suave shampoo and conditioner for dry and damaged hair. Now you GUYS are probably going, "ohh so what!?" but the ladies understand. I can't get much more specific than what I said... and even if it was out, this is probably the most random 2nd choice they could have picked out! Maybe a guy shopped for me! HA HA

- I asked for Nutter Butter cookies. Those are the peanut butter cookies shaped like little peanuts... they're AMAZING! Except for you Hannah! heh not a good idea. ;-D Well they sent me these Nutter Butter wafers... close but... I've never even HEARD OF THEM!? They were alright but not the same...

- I asked for tuna... 4. The past weeks I have gotten cans... that's the obvious choice right!? This week they sent me the packets of tuna. Which would be alright if they weren't $2.00 EACH PACKET! A can of tuna is what... 89 cents!?

- I wanted Lipton Iced Tea mix but my dumb mistake, I didn't put "MIX" so I got the bottles of Iced Tea. 6 bottles... FOR $9.99! Payin out the ass! Sorry.... heh That was my fault though. And atleast it tastes alright...

- Now this one isn't the grocery store's fault either... it's the weather's fault. I decided to order a gallon of milk instead of the 1/2 gallon since I always run out when I really need it. ($5 a gallon up here by the way!) Well... they shopped for our stuff on Wednesday, but it was sitting there since today... Sunday. My gallon of milk... expires TODAY. NICE... so now I'm looking for ways to use it!

Well, I am really appreciating the concept of shopping for myself these days... and really appreciating the prices of Michigan groceries. :-D Now I'm going to go downstairs... Scott got frozen pizzas and beer (not that I'll benefit from that one) for us so we're going to eat... :-D

A Triumphant Return

I only had to work 1 hour today. It wasn't that bad... I probably would have just been sleeping anyhow. Instead I made a few bucks. The rest of the day I watched a few movies... the net wasn't working so I couldn't get on that. And it was snowing like a madman out! GAH...

The plane STILL hasn't come... which officially makes it WORSE than last week. The funny thing is that we have to put our food orders in again on Monday... I can't even remember what I ordered!? I hope it comes tomorrow or Monday atleast... or we are going to be getting TWO food orders in one day.

Alright, I know what I said... and no I haven't received any packages yet but since I KNOW they are coming, it'll make an appearance today.

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To my Uncle Eddie... he told me he was protesting because I took this off and well... I don't want to lose one of my avid readers! Plus... the poor guy needs a bit of "love" because I'm sure he's a little hurt after the Spartans' loss today. So shout out to YOU!

DOH...

So you know what the major downfall of living and working in the SAME remote place is...? Your boss can just say to you "umm I'm gonna need you tomorrow..." when it's your day off... Because you can't just say "ooooh I can't... I have to go somewhere." Cause you got nowhere to go! You HAVE to work... there's no gettin out of it... it's kind of a pain!

So yeah... you just learned how my "weekend" will start out. Working... but what will I be doing, you ask? Well I will tell you! The same thing I had to do on my Saturday off a few weekends ago... *you think back to former posts and list off some weekends*

*YOU THINK*
--> Well last weekend, you worked on your Saturday but you ponded... and you are done with that... can't be it.

*YOU THINK HARDER*
--> The weekend before that you... UH OH.... not again! Snowblowed the snow off the roof!?

OH NO, don't be silly... I don't have to do that again!

No... this time I just have to shovel the roof! HA no joke. The guys spend the day up on the roof again snowblowing, but also shoveling the snow off the edges of the roof. Now, apparently it won't be all day... just a few hours probably, Scott said. And we're probably just going to come in at 10. Deena, Angie and I will. bleh... Dan and Adam always work on Saturdays so atleast Adam'll be up there probably. Not sure who else... Scott I'm sure. The boss wouldn't make us come in and then NOT come in himself...

Hopefully the plane comes tomorrow too so my day can be better. Funny thing is this is just how last week went... except THIS week, we were suppose to have 2 flights! We didn't get any. I'm pretty convinced this snow is never going to end.

Just want to say that the "SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY" is doing fine... I haven't harmed my hostage. In fact, it will return pretty soon... and in full force! I have gotten word from a FEW people that help is on the way... and I thank you! :-D Now if we could just get that plane in to BRING me the "help!"

I ROCK!

No... literally, it feels like things are rocking a little! ha ha I spent all day out on the chum pens or in a boat. Interesting thing we did today, we moved the chum pens. Those 16 pens that we ponded all those chum into... now on the other side of the hatchery. It doesn't sound too bad but I'l explain more about how big these things are.... It was kinda neat...

So the pens are 8 pens long and they connect in the middle to make 2 - 8 pen long pieces. Each pen is 40 ft. x 40 ft. (I'm pretty sure... the nets that cover the pens are that long, and I tried to measure it with my feet today!) And there is a 3 ft. walkway in between each pen and on the outsides... so do the math... 320 ft of pens plus 27 ft. of walkway... that's a good 347-ish feet long chunk of stuff that we had to move across the bay! About 46 ft. wide. TWICE! And the fish are still in the pens!

What they did was just attached boats to it and pushed it. It took a while... maybe like 45 minutes to move one piece to where we needed it. It was a long sort of boring ride across the bay... about a 2 minute ride in a speedy boat. But I had my music on... and I was entertained for a bit by some bald eagles. Right when we pushed off, there were 2 bald eagles flying around at the same time over the water right near us trying to catch fish. It was really pretty cool. They'd circle and then go down with their claws. Just like on a nature show or something. I couldn't really tell if they did actually catch anything. One did it a few times. Then they flew off and landed on the same tree. +1 about Alaska... bald eagles are definately an amazing sight!

-1 for Alaska is this never ending SNOOOOOOW! We're having a repeat of last week... flight plane still hasn't arrived yet. It's all because of this snow. I've decided though that Alaska really isn't all that much different than Michigan around now. The weather is so unpredictable! Yesterday when work started, it was bright and sunny... amazing really! Made me happy to be here. It was like that for maybe an hour and a half but then the snow clouds of doom came in! Though we knew it was coming because they were lingering over the mountain... but if you turned around, you were happy again because it looked like a totally different place with the sun and all! Then it started to snow pretty hard... little while later, it was amazing again! Obviously not enough time for the place to arrive though. BOO... *BANG* Snow... just fell off the roof again right outside the window.

What's that you say? You sent me mail!? AWESOME... I'll be expecting it!

I'm holding the "SHOUT OUTS OF THE DAY" hostage until I get mail... mail is the ransom. Anything... boxes are better!

48 million down....

ALL ABOARD!! Last call for all you baby chum to catch the water slide out to salt water!

Ponding is DOOOOONE! Ok well atleast ponding the chum that are going to stay at Hidden Falls. The Takatz chum still needs to be ponded but there's a different method and Scott might do that on his own... and we still have Chinook that needs to be ponded.

Ponding has been taking alot out of me. Quote of the day yesterday from Sarah when we were out on the chum pens trying to pull apart some frozen chum nets was "My arms are tired... my body is tired... MY SOUL IS TIRED!" I agreed. For the past few days, I've been BEAT after work... collapsing on my bed and sleeping for like an hour.

Anyhow, now that ponding is done, who knows what we're going to do. Actually I'm sure tomorrow will go like so... Sarah and I will go out to the chum pens (like we've been doing for about a week) because the fish we ponded today still need to be pushed out of the raceways and into the tube down to the chum pens, where we will be on the receiving end making sure they look ok when they hit saltwater. We'll also take care of feeding all those fish out there. Getting the feed to the boat is a work out in itself. There will now be 16 pens of chum out there and each pen eats 1 bag of food a day, which is 20 kilos or 44 lbs. (though the fish that are going into the last 2 pens won't get fed yet.) So we'll lug 7-44lb bags of food down to the dock... which will only last for 1/2 the day, in which case 7 MORE bags will have to be lugged back down there. They have to be fed 6 times a day... 3 million chum in each pen... does that all make sense!? HA HA Let's just say it's alot of lugging...

Well that'll probably be my morning, but who knows what I'll do in the afternoon. *shrug* OH today when Sarah and I were out there, we saw a few sea lions swimming in the distance. Pretty cool. :-) Grocery flight tomorrow... Dean should be arriving back at Hidden Falls! YAY! The new flight schedule is starting, meaning 2 flights a week... I think. I know we're suppose to have one Wed. and Fri. this week... then Scott said Mon. and Wed. next week. I guess that's all I know for now. I'm PRAYIN for some mail people... don't let me down! he he he

Man that's a great sound!

So I used to say that my favorite sound ever was the Phantom Regiment hornline or something like that... Well... for the next 8 months or so, I've decided my new favorite is the sound of a Cessina clearing the mountain top! Sarah and I were working out on the chum pens at around 9 this morning when out of the blue, we hear it. The distinctive sound... that lovely sound! The plane to bring us our groceries! AHH... it felt like I was a 5 year old at Christmas time!

Actually, what it felt like was something from a movie... where there are two people (say Sarah and I) who are stuck on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere (say the chum pens... hypothetically. *wink wink*) and you hear that sound... a plane coming to rescue you! When you watch it fly over the top of you and you two just look at each other and cheer and push your fists up in the air! HA cause that's what we did. Thankfully it came when it did too otherwise, the weather wouldn't have been great.

Another day of ponding... we tackled a stack of incubators that we knew weren't going to be pretty because 1) they smelled pretty bad... 2) they've been having problems with the water level and stuff. Lots of dead fish for some reason. And lots of dead fish laying stagnant with no where to go, even if the water is running, equals some pretty FOAL STUFF! A pretty awful smell... water coming out of the incubator as it was being dumped the color of skim milk. Not pretty...

Anyhow, I'm sure ready for my day off tomorrow. Two 6-day work weeks in a row'll getcha!

OK... Alot of you have asked me "do you need anything?"... "what do you want me to send you?" So I tried to think up some stuff I would enjoy receiving. Basically, snacks are FABULOUS... those tend to go fast around here. Think drum corps care package... here are some ideas...

1) Hostess Cupcakes... anyone who's hung out with me at night knows that this is my late night gas station snack choice. Yes I'm talking about those cupcakes that come in the 2-pack.

2) Nutter Butter cookies... my new addiction! Seriously... fabulous! Don't waste your time on the little gas station kiddie 6-pack... go for the BIG PACK! he he

3) Fudge rounds... or all those other Little Debbie snacks!

4) Granola bars... chewy are good. The Nature Valley ones are my new favorites though.

5) Ramen noodles... I'll probably get sick to death of this AGAIN but they're lightweight, cheap, and easy to throw in a care package.

6) Jolly Ranchers... feel free to open the package and take out the grape ones for yourself though. Not gonna lie, won't eat em!

7) That Quickcandy stuff... This is an odd one, but some of my family knows what I'm talking about. I just thought of it... I can get myself some pretzels or something and make my own great snack of chocolate covered pretzels. I know Meijers has it... Meijer brand. Or whatever... tis good!

8) Anything really... I've only gotten TWO pieces of mail since I've been at the hatchery. (not including my sister's cards when I was back in Sitka) It's kinda sad. Come on!

my anniversary

WOW, I just realized that I've been here for a month today! That's CRAZY! :-D

MOOOOOORE ponding. We have 4 more days left on these chum. (I've figured out these 48 incubators we're ponding are the chum that are staying here... soon we will pond the chum that will go out to Takatz. They're in a different type of incubator.) Today I spent alot of the morning working with the raceways. After the fish are dumped in the ponding machine, they are piped out to two raceways, which have nets in them. We leave them in there overnight and the next morning, before starting the ponding process all over again, we send those babies out to saltwater. They are piped out there again.

Well these raceways are about 50 feet long and maybe like 8 feet wide but the fish are contain in this net which covers the whole area. To get the fish to GO down the pipe, we have to run this metal pole along a ledge on the sides of the raceway which goes on the underside of the net, which just pushes the fish to one end as the net goes over the pole. MAKE SENSE?

So Adam and I did that this morning. The unfortunate thing, though, was realizing that there were ALOT of fish UNDER the net in one of the raceways, meaning there must have been a hole somewhere. As we started to push that net, we discovered a 6 inch hole in the net where one of the weights sat. MAJOR bummer because Adam estimated about 100,000 fish loose in the raceway that we'd have to try to gather up somehow. So after we pushed the majority of the fish out, he and Brandon tried to run the net down on the bottom of the raceway as they disturbed the fish to try to get them back on top of the net and it sorta worked but there were still quite a few underneath. It's not a good day for those babies.

We've had trouble with the birds lately too... seagulls and ravens. Those babies are under alot of stress by being dumped to going outside in the daylight and all... and then the birds tend to freak them out too! This is when the fish try to burrow down which causes that dog piling effect I talked about before. Scott put Deena and I on bird patrol for a little bit yesterday... possibly as a joke... he told us to throw snowballs at them. Well today he came in this morning and said one of those darn seagulls must have been pretty full and had an accident because there was a dead seagull on one of the pallets that sit on the side of the raceway. I'm not sure if he just died on his own or someone... "helped" in the process! HA Not a good day for that guy either.

ANYHOW, still no grocery flight... it was suppose to be on Wednesday. My food supply is dwindling! HURRY UP! :-\

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To my dad again for leaving me the funniest comment on my last posting! I laughed for like 5 minutes!

DAD'S COMMENT...
OK! About yesterday. I hope I am around 20 years from now, to hear you say to your 15 year old son who doesn't want to shovel the porch:

"Why sonny! When I was working in Alaska, I had to shovel my way out of the bunkhouse just to get out. Then shovel my way to the office, just to find out I was going to shovel snow ALL DAY LONG! Then I had to shovel my way back to the bunkhouse! And it was UPHILL, BOTH WAYS, too! Kwitcher bitchen!and just shovel the damn stuff!"

Wise words of wisdom. DAD

Is that Spring I feel?

So... I first want to start off by saying thanks to those 3 people I emailed today during my lunch break. Thanks for reading my "mental breakdown" email and thanks for your words of wisdom. After lunch, things got better.

Alright, not much to say today except that.... it felt like Spring was on its way! Though it rained all morning and felt cold, after lunch it actually cleared up for a little while and the sun ALMOST came out. You could see it... just beyond the mountain, but the mountain is TOO high. The wind really picked up though, but it was a warm wind. After feeding the fish out front, which is hard to do in strong wind by the way. It's a good thing I kept my mouth closed or I wouldn't have had to eat dinner... ha ha it wasn't THAT bad but yeah. Anyhow, I did a bit more shoveling and was getting warm. For the past few weeks I've been wearing 3 thick layers (2 fleece things and a sweatshirt, and then my t-shirt and long sleeve shirt) and I was down to one thick layer and actually felt like I could have taken that off! It felt NIIIICE! It was probably in the high 30s, which is nice to say for a change!

Anyhow, unfortunately it didn't stay that way. In a short amount of time, it started to rain again and boy was that wind going! Not exactly the ideal time to go shovel the docks but hey, that was what we did. At one point, I had to go to the railing because I really thought I could have blown off! People were saying the gusts were probably 60 mph or so. It was pretty crazy. With all the rain and melting snow, the roadways are now waterways too. Thank goodness for waterproof boots! :-D

On a good note, word is that Dean didn't really break his leg. It seems like a pretty hard thing to mistake but when I said yesterday that it was pretty bad, that means it broke the skin in a few places so I guess that's why they thought it was broken? I don't really know. But I do know that that is a good thing because he'll be able to come back pretty soon.

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Mom, Dad, & Melissa... thanks for reading my email.

ANTI-SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To my "L" key... remember how my space bar used to not work when it didn't feel like it. Well the L key is doing the same thing today. I had to type it about 5 times to get the L to work once.

Things that go BUMP in the night...

** NOTE **

WOW... in the middle of writing this, I saw everyone heading down towards the dock and though no one came to get me, I decided I probably should go down there. Something wasn't right... it turns out that Dean, the guy who got hired in with me, broke his leg. Not sure how though... There is this barge here with a load of stuff for us and he mighta been doing some stuff on that. So they were going to get the Coast Guard to come in but probably due to the weather, they couldn't. So the Patriot (the barge) has to take him to Sitka, which in that boat is a 12 hour ride. There is no other way there. Just wanted to let you know that. Apparently it's pretty bad... not sure what's going to happen now cause it changes alot of stuff (so don't ask!)

** END OF NOTE **

Ok so it's actually "things that go thump thump thump thump... (30 minutes later) ... thump thump CRASH!!!!

Remember yesterday when I said I thought all of the snow was off the roof? Yeah... well I was mistaken. And it decided to TELL me I was wrong at 3:30 in the morning! I woke up around 3 to this thumping sound... and I was just sitting there thinking "what in the heck is that!?" I think I sat there for 10 minutes thinking that... it sounded like someone was walking around in the hallway too. To be honest, I thought the person in the next room was having some kind of nightmare or fit or something because it sounded like someone was pounding on their bed. But then the walking sound... freaked me out a little and I started to wonder if this place was haunted and someone forgot to mention that! So I decided to go back to sleep... or try... since the sound was still happening. Sometimes it sounded louder... sometimes softer... sometimes faster... Anyhow, I had a hard time going back to sleep. I just felt confused and a little freaked out. I woke up a few other times I think.

THEN CRASH!!!! The snow decided to fall off the roof... and it proceeded, on occasion, for maybe an hour. This was like 3:30 in the morning. A great thing to wake up to. (This is where I left off and I sorta lost my train of thought so I'm gonna finish this up quick.) I said you could feel the place shake yesterday but today, in the dead of night, you could REALLY feel it! Well I didn't really put two and two together that the thumping noise was from the snow until they said it this morning. Everyone woke up to the thumping and of course to the snow falling. Someone said the thumping was from the snow sliding down the roof... probably hitting screws on the way. Then it made sense to me.

Anyhow, now my brain feels like mush cause of what just happened so that's all I got for you today. It snowed... then rained... then snowed some pretty wet stuff.

Sorry, no shout outs today. But I do have a picture I forgot from yesterday... the broken kitchen window.

AVALANCHE!!!

Well it was sure nice to have a break today!

So we had some crazy snow sliding action today! The roof of the bunkhouse is slanted and today was the day all the snow decided to fall off... which was pretty awesome! There was SO much snow up there because 1) we just got ALOT of snow... and 2) the snow we blew off the flat roof went onto to bunkhouse roof, so the snow was pretty packed down! Previously, we've had snow fall off the roof and it's been like once or twice a day and it was done. Well today it decided to fall off in massive chunks that just seemed to keep coming! And when it falls, it sounds like the roof is falling!

So I had heard a few things fall but ehh whatever... didn't think much of it. Then I went downstairs and Josh said that that last one (the last fall) broke the outside panel of the kitchen window. Not exactly sure HOW... it managed to break it but the screen on the outside held the glass in. Then I went up to my room to look out my window and was like "HOLY CRAP!" at this...



I went outside to take a picture from a different view.



This was the first major chunk to fall. Scott was outside with his camera also hoping to get it on video when it went down. He said it was gonna go down any minute because you could even see it sliding... and sure enough it did. About a minute after he said that. A massive puff of snow! There was about 8 feet hanging off! Probably 3-4 feet thick.



A little while later, I took this picture. A bunch of snow had fallen off by now. At one point, Josh said that if snow had fallen, it very well could break the window because that snow pile was already up to window height. Thankfully no other windows were broken. The snow that has been falling lately has been super light but you can tell by those picture how compacted it is. No more chunks have fallen since this afternoon so it must be all gone. I was watching a movie in my room when a big chunk fell and I could feel the place shake even!

Anyhow, it didn't snow for a while today but then it started up. Not much accumulation but there has been some that I can see. They were snowplowing alot today again... Scott had to get all that roof snow out and actually risked getting started while the snow was still falling off the roof some.

I watched the movie, Babel, today... it's one of those Oscar nominated movies... got alot of buzz. It was pretty good. Not at all what I thought it would be like but I'd recommend watching it if you are looking for a movie. It's very culturally diverse... lol Alright back to the grind tomorrow so I'll stop writing now.

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - I'm gonna send two to two awesome people... Heather and Mike. I got an email from both of them recently and was kinda surprised! Thanks guys! I miss the heck out of ya!

ANTI-SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To the workaholic crazy side of Valerie who jammed the awesome side of Valerie into a closet! I want my sister back... she's never online to talk to me. GIVE HER SOME TIME OFF!

Just another day in Paradise!

I feel like I just took a beat down. Yesterday was spent "digging out" We've gotten an outrageous amount of snow... it it were Michigan it would be called "don't send the snow plows out for the next two days because it's snowing so hard we can't keep up" snow. It has been nonstop for the past two days... more than an inch per hour. Yesterday when we met in the morning, Scott sat down and was like "I don't even know what to do today.... I guess just everyone take someone and grab a shovel." A few minutes later he was like "well... come see me when you run out of snow." Obviously... no one did. The snow around the circle ponds out front is chest deep when you walk around in it... which I had to do to clear the snow off of the predator nets on the ponds. Really, it was just kinda funny to me the whole time so it wasn't that bad. Except I had snow going UP my bibs (my overalls... foul weather gear)... mostly snow going DOWN my bibs... my pants were wet... Then after break or something, my bibs would be frozen solid so it was hard to get into them. (Or out of them too!)

There had been talk last week sometime about how in previous years, they've had to shovel the roof because it's flat and it could collapse over the incubation room if it gets too weighed down... which would be REAL bad since most of the babies are still in there. Well... it has come to that point. Yesterday a few of us were on this patio type roof area below the actual roof shoveling. It was about waist high. Then they used the loader Case tractor to lift 3 snowblowers up there and then managed to get them up on the high roof. As I was clearing off ponds yesterday, they were up there snowblowing and I was laughing cause it looked funny. All you could see were 3 jets of snow shooting up off the roof.

WELL... I'm not laughing anymore! Because I spent 5-1/2 hours up there snowblowing today! On the weekends, Scott might work? but Adam and Dan work (they have days off during the week.) Well Scott asked for volunteers to work... I heard him at Dean's room asking and though "ohh here he comes..." and he did... And since I'm the new one... and it was the boss, I didn't say no. Snowblowing the roof... the rediculousness! Actually, the "rediculousness" is the amount of snow that was actually UP there! Scott went up yesterday with this stick to measure it when we were shoveling the lower roof... he came back and said he ran out of measuring marks on his stick so he made this mark with a knife or something. Josh looked at the stick and held it up to himself and it was about 5 foot 10 inches high... Scott said it was over his head.

Anyhow, back to snowblowing. Adam, Dean and I climbed up onto the roof. That lower roof that we shoveled yesterday... the snow was knee high again. That was accumulation from noon yesterday to 8-ish this morning. 20 hours... about 18-20 inches roughly... yeah that's about an inch per hour. (Thankfully today, though it was still snowing all day, it was very light) So yesterday they snowblowed the edges of the roof, so we had to tackle the middle and then do the edges again since 1) it snowed again and 2) we blew the snow back onto that area. It was very hard to do. Though they snowblowed, there's still ALOT of snow up there... they couldn't get it all the way to the actual roof. So it was very bumpy... snowblowers were breaking (Dean's broke a few hours in)... people were getting pissed off.

Anyhow, finally that was "done." I think Adam was just getting pissed off so he called it DONE. We got the snowblowers down... then went to snowblow the dock, which was alot easier! Funny part was on the way to the dock, I had to push my snowblower (and it moves like 2 MPH!) and Scott was plowing with the tractor so he told me to get over to the side. So I did as much as I could... then my dumb thing ran out of gas and so I had to stand there looking dumb when he was waving at me to move. HA... sorry. So we finished the docks then we had to shovel off a few other roofs... those weren't bad. The snow drifts were so high (the drifts plus shoveling the snow down) that Adam and Dean just jumped off the roof. The first time Adam went, he went feet first and sunk down to his shoulders! I refused to go. The second roof we did was really slippery once we got down to the roof and it was slanted so that was interesting.

So now the day is done... Scott's STILL out there plowing at 6pm... I have a headache... and my back aches... and I've had my FILL of snow for my lifetime! *shakes my head* Just another day in Paradise!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To my dad... just because. THANKS for the big long email! Love you!

ANTI-SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Mother Nature... Even though the world is experiencing global warming, thanks for showing us here at Hidden Falls that you are still in control and global warming hasn't gotten bad enough to NOT dump 3 feet or more of snow on us! Watch your back M.N.... there is talk here of spraying the ozone with hairspray and lighting all the diesel fuel on fire in spite of you! heh jk (though that HAS been proposed!)

It's like we're in a snow globe...

Blizzard... ALL DAY... Enough said.



Remember... This was that same view at about the same time a few days ago.

PLEASANT...

The Truman Show... Rebecca style

• LOCATION - Middle of nowhere Alaska... Hidden Falls Hatchery
• CAST - Rebecca, Hidden Falls staff, a few dogs, MILLIONS of salmon... bears in the coming months
• PLOT - She's going to think she's working at a big salmon hatchery, but really it's just going to be a big TEST of strength! Physical and mental strength to see what she can REALLY handle!

TODAY'S EPISODE:

Rebecca wakes up to her Eric Church CD at 7am and, like every morning, looks out the window to check out the weather. "*GASP* Either the dock is on fire or that is an orange SUNRISE!!" It indeed was the sun rising. "It's going to be a good day." she thinks as she lays back down to wait for her watch to go off in 5 minutes. *BEEP BEEP BEEP* Rebecca goes through her usual morning routine... layering on the clothing, breakfast, checked a few emails people had sent her, then back downstairs to meet at 8am so Scott can delegate the jobs. She looks out the window and sees that the sun is no longer and it appears to be windy and snowing a little. "Great..." she thinks. Deena walks in and says "WOW, it's really cold out there this morning." A few minutes later, Scott says "uhh how about Rebecca, Dean and Sarah... shovel the snow off of the walkways on the fish pens. It's suppose to snow more so we don't want it to compact."

The 3 make their way to the dock to head out to the pens. "oww yeah it's FREEZING out... definitely colder than yesterday" they all think. Down at the dock, they don life jackets and jump into a boat. "humm my first time in the boat for work... fun." Rebecca thinks. They arrive at the dock to find about 10 inches of snow so they start shoveling. An hour and a half later, as they are walking to finish up the main dock, THE SUN COMES OUT! They rejoice... but it is still 14 degrees out. They finish up as Scott pulls up in a boat and tells them to go around near the other pens and clear off the other small dock. Though it's close to breaktime (10am) they decide to head over and break later. Upon arrival, they realize that the snow is not the same soft powder like before... it is about 12 inches of compacted snow and ice. They do what they can but go to break at 10. They come back with metal shovels and chop away at it until lunch time. Now, despite the 16 degrees, they are sweating and quite warm! Time for lunch.

After lunch, Rebecca heads to the mezzanine (the partially heated area above the feed shed) with Angie to string some nets up and work on some screens. It's easy work and she's inside so it's alright. She turns on her iPod and works. Rebecca thinks "man, this iPod is a lifesaver... THANKS SISTERS!" She heads to break at 3 where the crew tries to decide if the grocery plane will arrive soon. Rebecca learns that even if the weather is nice (like it is), the plane probably won't fly if it's under 20 degrees. "YIKES..." she thinks because it's cutting it close. She continues to work, and in the midst of stringing up a net, she hears the motor of a plane "DE PLANE!" she exclaims to herself, then realizes that her feet are really cold, despite the fact she is INSIDE. "*shakes her head* It's inevitable... they are going to be cold no matter what!"

Finally it's quittin time and Rebecca heads to the bunkhouse. As she approaches, she sees a familiar guy unloading the grocery boxes. Rebecca smiles to herself and thinks "Always nice to see a new cute boy at the hatchery... even if he is married... still nice to look at." She says hi to Josh (not the one from Michigan), whom she met in Sitka and works for a different NSRAA program but has arrived at Hidden Falls for some reason, and she helps to unload with the rest of the crew. When they are done, she finds her groceries but only find her "dry goods" box. "humm..." she wonders, "maybe my other stuff is in someone else's pile." So she glances around but doesn't see it. *SHRUG* She heads inside to put her stuff away. She'll check back in a bit. Unpacking, she pulls out her receipt and sees that she IS missing 1/2 the stuff she ordered... meaning there IS no other box. She asks her bunkmates, Angie and Dean, if they have extra stuff of hers but no luck... she is OUT OF LUCK.

Feeling defeated, she sits down at the computer for a few minutes before she wants to watch Real World (because Mtv is on EST time so she has to watch it at 6pm). No new emails... no one is online... "UGHHH... not a good day!" she thinks and goes back downstairs and flips on Mtv. The recent annoyingly familiar black screen pops up with the yellow "Searching for satellite signal" box... "NO! I still have time... it's not 6 yet." She flips channels and of course that one comes in but not the one she wants... FINALLY, right in time, the channels works. She can watch her show... 6:15pm... *black screen* "NO! Right in the middle of the SHOOOOOW!... Idol is on at 7... hopefully THAT channel works." She flips on FOX but *black screen* "GAH this is going to be a repeat of last night... I have 45 minutes still." Defeated again... she goes to make dinner. Her favorite... beef stroganoff. No problems there, but 7pm, no tv. 7:15... still no tv... DEFEATED AGAIN, she puts on a channel that WORKS and eats. Finishing up, she does the dishes and heads upstairs to take a shower and write this blog.

The camera pans out and the producers of "THE REBECCA SHOW" have a good laugh at the fun TESTS they have put Rebecca against today. Producer #1 laughs and says "HA And we told her it would be 40 and raining... boy is it funny to dump snow on her and make it 16 degrees, and then make her go outside and shovel it!" Producer #2 agrees and says "Good idea to tell the grocery store to forget to shop for her stuff! That's a great one! And the satellite not working... CLASSIC!" Producer #3 says "That was my idea... thanks! She seemed to handle the snow shoveling ok though... that sun was making her happy. We'll have to get rid of that next time and add some more wind!" They all sit back and laugh... "Maybe tomorrow." they all think with devious grins on their faces.

WEATHER - COOOLD, ~ 14-18 degrees... BUT SUUNNNNYYYY!!! :-)

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - Today goes to Hannah, because I got a piece of mail from her today (even though it got sent a while ago!) Thanks!! My first piece of mail I received at the Hatchery! Hey, yesterday I had to do something with some ice chipper thing and one of the chicks was trying to explain what it looked like and she said it sorta looked like a hoe, but bent flat, and then she said "If you know what a hoe looks like..." (she was being serious!) and I kinda grinned! "Do I know what a hoe looks like!? I'm a professional KBS hoer!"

ANTI-SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - Lakeside grocery... THANKS! Way to forget to shop for my stuff! *ANGRY STARE!*

What happened to 40s and rain!?

*SHIVER*

MAN was it cold today! Josh (he's formerly from Battle Creek by the way!) said it was probably the coldest it has been all year today... Angie said it was like 22 degrees and that was around 12pm. And it was snowing all day.

But yesterday looked GREAT outside... I say it looked great cause I didn't go anywhere but it was nice LOOKING! Apparently it was cold and windy. Sun was out though.



Behind those circle ponds,there is a "lagoon" which is where the fish come in during spawning season. Right now it's half frozen over but there are still ducks. And around those trees is always where I can see bald eagles flying around. That was from my window so you can see some crazy icicles hanging too.

Anyhow, that is NOT how the weather was today. Today was darker and snowy. I spent the morning helping Angie out. We "morted" the ponds. This is just taking the dead fish (aka the "morts" or mortalities) out of the ponds. They keep track of the number so we had to count them. It was pretty easy... they ranged from 0- the 30s. I started out in the circle ponds in the back... These are the covered ponds. There's a picture for you. I found this on the computer so as you can see by the GREEN ground instead of snow covered, it wasn't recently taken.



There are 14 ponds I think. Only 10 of the ponds are taken up right now. 2 ponds have really little Chinook in them. These are fish in the "zero check" program which will be released this summer but will be quite small. All the rest of the fish stay about a year and a half but these will be released a year early. It's just a test program sorta to see how they turn out... by cutting that extra year off. I'm not sure if I explained that quite right but atleast that's how I understand it. And 8 have fish that are about 3-5 inches long. They're from last year's season and will be released in July I think. Chinook I think? The ponds out front that are in the upper picture, Angie and I "morted" next. The fish are about the same size as the others...3-5 inches and will be released this year also.

After lunch, I worked with Deena (she's another hatchery tech and is 23 like me) to find some nets to cover the chum pens when the fish get out there, which we will use to keep the bird from eating the fish. Thankfully that was an indoor job because... I just didn't want to be outside today. After walking around in the snow drifts this morning around those front circle ponds, my feet wanted to be warm! It was one of those days where right when you take the net out of the water, it freezes! I had some water on my gloves so when I went to write down the number on the piece of paper, the paper and pencil would become frozen. Thankfully we had special "write in the rain" paper but you'd have to scrape the ice off the pencil lead... and then off the paper! That's how cold it was.

ANYHOW... I'm really starting to like some of the people I work with. I've worked alot with Angie and some with Deena and they are both really cool. Everyone is cool but I've worked with them the most.

SHOUT-OUT OF THE DAY - I've decided I'm going to do this little section everyday or somedays or whenever I feel like it.

Today I have a FEW...
1) To my Grandma! I got a message from her today and she says she reads this everyday! So I wanted to say HI and I REALLLLLLY miss and love you!

2) To my crazy 'ol friend, Ben... he inspired me to do this! Thanks for being online to talk to me today... and reminding me that you were going thru the same thing over in the Indian Ocean! :-D Have fun in the FL heat for me! *cornbread*

Drum corps more than you know!

WARNING - This will be long and rambly probably... bear with me! There's alot of info to say.

I've come to the realization over the past few days how similar this whole thing is to drum corps... though you wouldn't really think that since well... it doesn't sound anything alike!

Today was one of those days... comparable to one of those physically and mentally testing days of drum corps when you question why they chose you to be in the group. I wasn't really going to talk about this... about how I really felt today but here goes.

We have been "ponding" chum salmon for the past two days. The day before we started, we went over the process and I sorta got it but I knew it'd be like one of those "have to see it to understand" deals because I wasn't even sure of some of the pieces of equipment he was talking about. Come yesterday, the start of ponding, he put me and Sarah in charge of cleaning the pieces of the incubators after they were done with them. So yesterday was a good day... we worked hard cleaning at a super fast speed while Scott, Dean, and Deena were working on dumping the fish.

Today, while I started out cleaning again, I knew we would end up switching to get experience on the other jobs. OK bear with me for a minute while I give you a brief idea of how we "ponded." The incubators look like this... (BTW, these pics aren't from our facility... I spent forever looking for a picture online since I can't go in with a camera and take a picture! Same with the picture at the end.)



Look at the stack on the very right of the picture. There are 5 individual incubator in each stack. (Just a bit of info, there are about 200,000 fish in EACH incubator = about 1 million per stack.) The one next to it on the left has 2 incubators stacked up. What looks like icicles hanging, is water draining thru some screens (which hold the fish in). The PVC pipes hang down from one incubator to the next because the water just drains from the top down. (If you have more questions or don't get it, ask.)

So we would move that stack to the ponding equipment, pick up the top incubator with a type of crane, move it onto this metal platform which then needed to be tilted up so you dump the fish out the side into a trough of water. With me so far? That was one job... on the other side, there is a person with a hose. Inside the incubator, there are the fish but also these pieces of plastic shaped like saddles (substrate) to simulate gravel like in a river. On the side of the trough is a type of ramp with bars where the saddles can run down into a bag, but the fish will slip thru these little bars. The water will then carry the fish down a tube that will dump them outside in a raceway. MAKE SENSE!? I know, it's alot... hard to imagine. Well the person with the hose has to make sure the saddles wash down that ramp or else the fish won't go down either because they'll be piled up in that trough.

Alright, back to the day... this hose person was my first job. And I just felt like I was sucking at it! Stuff was getting backed up... which meant the fish weren't going anywhere. Eventually I got in the groove after a few incubators but everything was so fast paced and it felt like it took a while. By the time I actually got it, we were done with that group. We would pond 7 incubators into one raceway, then switch the pipe to the OTHER raceway and pond 8 incubators. Then after lunch, we would pond 8 in that first raceway and then switch to 7 again. The point of this is that it's a shock to the fish and they want to burrow down. Basically, if there are TOO many fish in the raceway, they will dogpile and suffocate the fish underneath! So we had to kinda ease them into it I guess.

So I finally get into doing that job and I get put in the job of dumping the incubator. It didn't look that hard when everyone else was doing it so ok. Sarah showed me how to do the first one. Then I was on my own. Got the incubator attached to the crane, move the water source down to the next incubator (the water just runs down to the next one.), get up on the platform, unhook the incubator from the crane, blah blah. Time to hoist this thing. There is a bar you push down and it lifts the platform a bit but then you need to do it with your body. I push the bar and it doesn't move... Put ALL my body weight on it and it finally goes. (this incubator is like a 4 foot x 4 foot box... filled with 200,000 tiny fish and lots of water.) Some of the water drains by pushing the bar but then going to hoist the platform + incubator, you have to get under it and use your shoulder.

I felt like a power lifter! A very weak power lifter! I consider myself quite strong for a girl my size... thanks to drum corps. My legs are pretty strong too, but this was seriously, the most physically demanding thing I have ever done! Like trying to lift a car up with your body weight! I just felt embarrassed. Like everyone was going "ohhh... the weakling...poor thing" cause everyone else did it. I had 7 incubators to do! How was I going to do this!? Finally after lifting it up (Dean actually lifted the second one. Sarah did the first remember.) So the fish are out... now you have to lift this 4 x 4 foot box of metal up onto the corner to rinse it out more. That was tough too... Anyhow, to make a super long story short, I managed but I walked out of there very discouraged in myself. Finally I got it but it was still really hard. Dean said I did it perfect on the LAST one... dumped the fish at a good speed and stuff *shakes my head*

SO, today was comparable to one of those "breaking" days in drum corps. Just from those few hours of hosing and lifting, I walked out of that dark cold incubator room feeling like I had just spent 12 hours doing the hardest, most physical part of a corps show in the hot summer sun... and not feeling like you did very good work at all. Cause really I WAS sweating!! Despite the fact I was covered in water and it was probably 30 degrees in that room. I felt like Scott was going to walk up to me and go "umm yeah Rebecca, I don't think this is going to work out so we packed your bags for you and there's a floatplane waiting for you at the dock." Obviously, he didn't say that. And really he didn't say anything at all... I was doing alright at the end but personally I didn't feel very good about it. I know, it just takes practice and now that I know what I'm doing, it probably will get easier.

It was just a mentally AND physically tough day... I'm alright. Sorry about this extremely LOOONG blog. Hope you stuck with it!

P.S. OH, a plane got in on Thursday to deliver food and MY LUGGAGE!! But we keep getting more snow. We got like 5 inches last night.

P.P.S. The fish are about 1 to 1-1/2 inches long... So far, we've ponded 12 million-ish.


WEATHER - Obviously, I'm not too sure since I was in the dark incubator room most of the day but I'm pretty sure it snowed all day. Not sure about the temp... Sitka say it's 30 right now. I need one of those window thermometers for my bedroom.

Oh, the things I could give up for Lent...

How about working in the cold!? Working in the snow maybe... working with cold feet... or working in the mornings!? How about food in general!?

I've decided the cold feet only happen in the morning!? It kicks in around 10-10:30. They manage to stay warm in the afternoon though. Maybe they aren't awake enough to keep themselves warm... folks here have proposed battery operated socks! Well I may need them... if we are scheduled to get this supposed 9 inches of snow TONIGHT that I've been hearing people talk about, tomorrow might be a cold one! It snowed ALL day today. As pretty as it is on the pine trees, it's not very much fun. Actually as long as I can stay warm, I'm alright.

So, food would be pretty easy to give up for Lent if the weather keeps up like it is. The scheduled grocery flight today didn't happen... let's pray for tomorrow! When I arrived last week (A day late also... I'm seeing a trend!) I realized "hum... I don't think I have enough food!" Well, that was a week ago... I'm cuttin it close here so this flight better come soon! I've also realized some things that I SHOULD have put on my grocery list which I will have to do without for another week. Sacrifice... *shrug*

I spent a while today getting a taste of what I will be doing for weeks on end in the upcoming months... feeding fish! ha ha And I'm not just talking sprinkling nearly weightless flakes of fish food into my fish tank... we're talking LOTS OF FOOD! Sad thing is that the fish really aren't eating alot right now... come summer... WHEW My arm hurts just thinking about it! Remember that picture from yesterday of those circle ponds right out my window... the Coho salmon reside there and I fed alot of them today. There are about 60,000 fish in each pond plus or minus a few thousand. One really only has about 30,000 because of lots of deaths in that pond. Anyhow, so today each pond was fed between 6 and 6.5 kilograms of food. For those of you not familiar with the metric system, that is about 13.2-14.3 pounds of food. We would feed 4 ponds at a time so we had to carry 2 buckets of food out there at a time... do the math... that's about 57 pounds of food at most, split between 2 buckets. *SIGH* There are... oh I don't know... 37 or 38 ponds. That's alot of food!

Really I'm not complaining... just trying to explain how it is now. Before these fish are released, I'll probably be feeding them for 8 hours a day straight because they'll be eating so much. It's not so bad... but I can tell ya that my left arm WILL be really quite sore tomorrow cause I can feel it now even. I fed 8 ponds of the covered ponds too. Only 4.5 kilos of food each though.

Anyhow, tomorrow we are going to start "ponding" the chum. That's where the tiny chum, who are in the incubators now, will be going out into a big raceway with millions of other fish. I know we are going to be doing this Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday but I'm not sure if that's ALL it's going to take or if it'll take longer. We'll see. It's hard to explain but there are 16 incubators in a row... with 3 rows. Each incubator has 5 trays of fish. That is 240 trays. (Lots of math in this blog today!) Tomorrow we are only doing... 30? Yeah, looks like we'll take longer than 4 days. This is the group of fish that Tommy said there were 90 million! WHEW... we're gonna be busy!

OH, I failed to mention that the incubator room must be kept completely DARK so we'll be doing this under headlamps. HA good times. Angie said when we are working in "the dungeon" as it's nicknamed, time goes real fast though.

WEATHER-Snow all day. 25 or lower I'm guessing.

P.S. Who has see the Harry Potter movies? I've come to the realization today (after I saw a bald eagle fly by) that with the snow falling on the pine trees and the birds flying around, it's right out of a wintery scene of Harry Potter with the owls flying around! HP fans would know what I mean.

P.P.S. The amount of commercials during an episode of American Idol is getting to be rediculous! I'm about to not watch because it's making me angry. And it's probably a "girl" year for Idol.

This morning I got cold feet...

No, I'm not talking about the "nervous... I don't wanna go thru with it" kinda of cold feet. I mean literally, my feet were COOOLD! It was quite cold here today... More proof that the weather here is different from Sitka. Earlier when I looked, it said 32 but Shannon said it was probably like 25. This map shows it was CHILLY today. (I'm closer to the "19" section of Alaska.)


Anyhow, day #2... worked more on that fence I talked about. Finally finished THAT crazy project. Cleaned up one of the raceways... Shannon explained to me how to use all of the boats... THAT should be... interesting. HA And then Angie and I started to clean some of the trays (I'm not really sure what you call them) of tiny fish in one of the incubation rooms. Darn... either Coho or Chinook... I can't remember. They have hatched and are about the size of a silver dollar. Since they are trying to simulate real conditions, all of the lights are off in this room so we are walking around with headlamps with a red covering over the light to make it less bright. In nature, the baby fish or eggs would be buried in the gravel. 1/2 of the room has incubators full of unhatched eggs... THOUSANDS of little eggs in each tray. It's kinda neat. All in all, a good day despite the fact my hands and toes about froze off this morning. Then I changed socks and my feet stayed warm in the afternoon. Not sure if it was the socks or something else. We'll see.

Anyhow... MORE. :-)


The floatplane we took to Hidden Falls. We had the most experienced pilot in Sitka so I wasn't worried. That is Tommy in the brown... that's who I've been in contact with up here. "Hey guys... make sure you get all MY stuff in that little plane!" It was a tight squeeze!


WELCOME TO HIDDEN FALLS!


I took this from the boat dock. Those are some of the net pens that are right out from of the hatchery. There are alot more on the side. It's hard to tell how many pens there are and really I don't even know. I'd guess 12? HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of fish.

The little house with the stairs going up is the Takatz Bay floathouse that I'll be living in! Funny right!? Actually, the bottom is just fish food storage so upstairs is a 3 bedroom apartment.


This is the view looking into the bay from the boat ramp. The hatchery is behind me. Chatham Strait is just on the other side of those little tree covered islands so we are pretty far back in the bay.


And this is the bunkhouse. That first section on the left is an apartment... then the 5 windows on the right are where the bunkhouse rooms are. SEE, lots of snow!


This is the view when I look out my window. Those are the outdoor round ponds (there are some under an overhang too.) They are pretty big... they're about chest high or a little lower on me. You can see the snow piled up around them too! That building on the left is the duplex where two of the guys live. If you look carefully, up on the hill in the top right of the picture are 3 houses. They're hard to see so look at the enlarged picture. They're pretty big though... permanent employee housing (along with the duplex & apartment).

Hopefully, seeing some of these pictures, helps you guys understand what I was talking about. Again, click on the pictures to enlarge them or go to the picture link! Hope you enjoy them. :-)

P.S. Idol anyone!?
I heart
Blake Lewis

and
Jared Cotter!


CUTE! ;-D
he he he

Anyone else think it's the most culturally diverse group (atleast of guys) that they've ever had?

The moment you've all been waiting for!

TA DAHHHH!! Pictures... to see larger versions, click on the picture. Or you can click the link on the side for the Photo Album. I'm only going to be adding a few pictures at a time because we have a limited bandwidth space here as I said before. I'm just being safe. I'll put them on my blog always though so you can see when I add them! (Be sure to read the post after this one... I wrote it earlier today.)


I let my pet bald eagle fly around for the day. HA HA Just kidding... We were taking a walk and there he was... just hanging out. I've learned to recognize the "bald eagle" sound also so you can tell when they're flying around.


This is the same view that the webcam gives you, minus the building. I was behind the building. It was a great day for pictures.


This is one of my FAVORITE pictures I've taken so far. Such a pretty view over the town of Sitka. Right in the center is the Russian Orthodox church that the town is built around.


The thing I was looking forward to seeing the MOST when I got to Sitka! MOUNT EDGECUMBE!! It is an inactive volcano. It was dark when we got into Sitka, and I was hoping this would be the view when I looked out my window in the morning but it wasn't.


This is from a further distance. Really there are two volcanos there... Mount Edgecumbe and a smaller one to the right. That is a bridge that connects two parts of Sitka together.

Darn frozen precipitation!

Well, today is proof that that webcam can be deceiving. The picture is showing some sun coming through the cloud but I woke up to snow falling! B to the double O! :-) BOO...! It's been snowing ever since I woke up... admittedly, that was around 10:30am. Anyhow, that'll probably make for a cold day of work tomorrow.

Well, today I spent a little while figuring out my weekly food order. As you know, we are remote which means we can't just run over to the grocery store. That's a bit tough... especially when you are used to living 30 seconds from the grocery store (like I was in Galesburg) and walking down shopping aisles looking at stuff. I'm used to doing that, seeing things and going "OH I do need that!" Well I had to figure out what I would want/need for the week and I'm hoping I won't forget anything. Before we came to the hatchery, we went shopping so I got some stuff and I also had some other food from the few days before at the NSRAA apartment in Sitka. Well the day after I GOT to the hatchery, I realized I had forgotten the mayonnaise that I bought at the apartment that I was going to bring with so I couldn't eat any of the tuna I bought. And I didn't find any in the fridge I could use. So that cut my meals down some. I was sure to put that on the list this time!

And if the weather is bad on Wednesday, when the flight comes in, like it was LAST week when we couldn't fly in, the food delivery gets put off. Or if the flight gets too full, things get left behind. Did I mention that last week I had to leave more than 1/2 of the stuff I brought to Alaska behind so we could fit everything in the plane!? Yeah, hopefully I get that stuff this week too...

Well, last night I had dinner at Deana and Dan's house up on the hill. Deana went all out and made (HUGE) crab that was just collected that day, venison, and grilled salmon. We had some good homemade bread too made by Angie. It was very good, but alot of work to crack all that crab just by my hands! It was good to hang out with some other people too. I had been feeling that everyone just seemed to stay in their own houses and never come out. There were 6 of us (out of a total of 12 at the hatchery). It was a nice night.

Alright, guess that's it. Sorry for the long lengths of these blogs. They don't look long when I'm typing them! I hope none of you get bored or fall asleep reading them! HA HA I'm going to see if I can post a few pictures today. I think I can do it if I do it in moderation. Can't go over the bandwidth limit! :-) MISS YA!

WEATHER- Snow... falling on top of more snow. It sure does look pretty on the pine trees though! I'm sure you can guess the temperature.

It ain't that bad.....

So as alot of you know, when I was home preparing for this crazy thing, I was worried about the weather and worried I would freeze! Well it isn't that bad. My hands got a bit cold before lunch but I think that's because I left my gloves outside on our break. DUMB ME.

Anyhow, so today was my first day of work! YAY! I spent the day working with Angie, who's a fish culturist, and who I met last Friday when she flew into Sitka and stayed at the apartment with us the whole time we were there. There's not much "fish" stuff to do now but I think they are thinking in about a week or so, the babies can come out of the incubators and get "ponded" (aka put into the big round ponds.) So we did a few odd jobs, though she did have to feed 2 ponds of some little Chinook Salmon all day. I fed one of the ponds twice (she fed each pond 6 times) which was kinda fun. Guess that's a good thing though because I'll be doing my share of feeding fish in the coming months.

So odd jobs... Odd job #1, shovel snow. What!? Am I back in Michigan!? HA Ok it wasn't that bad. So I donned my brand spankin new orange fisherman's suit (it WAS raining BTW) and went out. We had to get some metal panel things out to go into one of the fish raceways, and they just so happened to be buried in 6 feet of snow. YEAH, 6! Maybe more. Really that didn't take long. Then we went out to the outdoor circle ponds (the other ones I was talking about have a roof over them.) to pick up these alarm things that each pond had. Not sure what they were for. We finished that fast and Angie was like "Man, we're 3/4 done with our jobs for the day... we're fast! Very efficient." I laughed and thought of how many times we were told that at the station this past year. It wasn't even 10am yet. Then we went to tackle the next job that ended up taking the rest of the day.

We had this fence which ran along one of the raceways, and Scott, the manager, wanted us to take it down so we could figure out how to reassemble it into a few smaller, more manageable pieces? Make sense? Sounds easy I guess but it wasn't. The top and the bottom pieces didn't match up... 1/2 the fence was crooked and bent from snow. We managed to get it out though, in 2 smaller pieces and 1 really long piece cause we couldn't get it apart. The rest of the day working on this fence consisted of hack-sawing, Shannon, the maintenance guy, welding pieces together, bending pieces, hammering pieces together... AND APART! It was interesting... and I'm not too bad with a hack saw! :-)

Anyhow, now I am off until Tuesday. What on EARTH am I going to do!? Watch my many channels on the tv. Definately laundry!

I forgot that I was going to include a weather report on each post... mostly for my uncle! I forgot yesterday though I think I said in the blog... but it rained ALLLL day. HA I'm not too good with the temperatures... I've gotta get a thermometer to put on my window. HINT HINT Care package!? OK, I don't want 8 of them though. Whatever the temperature says on the side, it's probably really close. I think they said it was a bit cooler in the winter here, but drier in the summer here than in Sitka. I THINK?

WEATHER - Rain in the morning. I swear I saw a hint of sun when we first walked out!? Cleared up in the afternoon until around 4, when it started again. Really it's not THAT cold. Somewhere in the lower 40s I'm guessing.

At the Hatchery

I'm at the hatchery now. We managed to fly out of Sitka around 9am even though it was still rainy and such. We flew in on a Cessina... talk about a puddle jumper! It was kinda cool though. The conditions here at the hatchery are about the same. It's rainy. Since they don't get much direct sunlight these days, there is still quite a bit of snow on the ground.

The bunkhouse is nice, though I feel like I'm back at college. Right now, just Dean (the other new guy) and I are the only ones living here but there are offices connected also. Everyone else lives in seperate houses or a duplex across the way.

We got a tour and we'll start working tomorrow. I talked to the manager and he told me what I'd be doing. For a while (until March) I'll be doing stuff on-site but in March I'll start working out in Takatz Bay with Dean and the guy who runs that program, Adam. What they do is boat half the chum salmon that (I think) were hatched and raised from last season's eggtakes out to Takatz Bay where they get acclimated to saltwater out there and in May they will be released. So 4 days a week I'll be living on a floathouse out there and then I'll work 1 day at the hatchery. (But that also means I don't have to pay for food those days I'm out there! They pay for it.) My days off will be here at the hatchery I believe. It's about a 20 minute boat ride out there I guess. So that should be interesting.

Anyhow, guess that's all for now... OH so I don't have phone reception out here and I'm not sure when I'll get into town. So don't leave me important messages cause I won't get them for a while. Email is key now.

<-- P.S. I have no idea why my blog archive says 2005 and 2006... assume they say 2006 and 2007. It should say February 2007 also... not January. Dumb thing.

IT'S MEEEEE!

HEY NOW, where are all these posts asking how Alaska is and how I am and all that!? ha just kidding.

Well, I'm here. I've been in Sitka since Thursday the 8th. We were suppose to fly out to the hatchery today but the weather wasn't good so we're gonna try again tomorrow morning. Despite the weather being rainy today and yesterday, the rest of the days it has been GREAT! It's kinda funny to sit here and look at that webcam shot now because I was just at that building yesterday. It's the Centennial Hall if you were wondering. And the scenery behind it.... that picture does no justice! It's so much prettier.

Anyhow, I have this nice long blog typed up on my computer but I want to get pictures with it otherwise I'll have to edit it. I'll have to do that when I get to the hatchery. (I'm on someone's laptop in the company apartment right now on some pretty low signal wireless internet.)

Just wanted to let you know though that things are good. I saw seals yesterday on our tour of one of the hatcheries in Sitka, Medvejie Hatchery (pronounced Med-vee-gee). That was a good tour and kinda helped me to confirm that what I came up here for doesn't make me crazy! I think I'll like it. On a hike on a local path on Sunday, we saw signs of whales in Sitka Sound... but we only saw the water shooting up from their blowholes. And there are bald eagles galore up here! It's pretty cool! Oh and the other day I ate mountain goat! ha ha Really, it was great! lol Alright, that's a good thing to end on. Talk to you all later!

Who ever thought an AK winter would be better than a MI winter!?

Wow... if you are looking at this blog today (as in 2/2/07) and it's before 5pm AK time, look at that amazing day!! I'm looking at that webcam shot and it is 1:20 AKST and it's 43, sunny, and GORGEOUS! Sure beats this Michigan "It's 15 degrees with a wind chill of 2 degrees, we have 16 inches of snow and there's a Winter Storm Warning and Blowing Snow Warning" day.

See... I'm not so crazy after all!

Alaska Motto

"The things that are the most scary are the most worthwhile."

Yes..... well said. That will be my Alaska motto!

6 days to go!