The April 23rd Post Finally Posted on April 29

Finally after a much awaited return to the blogosphere, we have come back for another try at this thing.

I know, we suck at keeping it updated. We readily admit that. Much like Mike is willing to admit that after 7 months of winter, he is extremely tired of it. Much like how we are both willing to admit that we miss BBQ food.
Or like how much we are willing to admit that VACATION CAN’T COME SOON ENOUGH!

Yeah we are starting to get anxious. Mike was lucky enough that he got to go out to Winnipeg in March for a week for the Wintering Partner’s Conference, but still, we both need to get out of the North for a bit.

Now, with that said, we will try to do a quick recap of things that have gone on since we last spoke on this thing.
1) Holy crap, has it really been four months since we updated this blog?

2) When we last talked, we said how things weren’t so busy at the store. Well, that has changed since tax season kicked in. Like we had mentioned in a previous entry, saving money is not exactly done up here (or maybe it isn’t approved of, that much we are not sure of yet), so there was lots of spending done. Grocery is doing well, as it most likely always will due to the fact that people need to eat food. Retail is doing alright, not as good as last year, but last year also saw the IRSSA cheques (something to do with the schooling that they had as kids) so there was more money around.

3) Mike predicted last times that there would still be lots of jobs in town this year. So far, he has been right. The store is always hiring people, and to date there have only been two mining camps not returning this year, and both of those are relatively small (under 10 people), so they really don’t affect the job situation much here.

4) On February 1st, Mike was officially promoted to Grocery Manager (how the position opened up is quite a story, and will be told when we are home) here in Baker Lake! Of course, a promotion like this came with a raise in pay (which is ALWAYS good) but it also comes with better benefits, so WOOHOO!

5) On March 9th, Grace was promoted to General Merchandise Department Manager – Soft Lines and was named Post Mistress of the Post Office! Also, a raise in pay was included. So, WOOHOO!! Basically, she takes care of the fashion side of retail and is in charge of the post office. And believe it or not, that post office is, as Bill MacKay would say, “CRAZY BUSY!”.

6) We are still living in the house that we moved in to in November, and we potentially may be living here for a while longer as the store wants to keep the house if the owner’s are willing to rent it our another year. So, WOOHOO!

7) Since Christmas time, Grace has been on Weight Watchers and has done INCREDIBLY WELL! I (Mike) will not dive into numbers here because it isn’t my place to tell, but she is happy with it so far (which is all that matters)

8) Since Christmas time, Mike has NOT been on Weight Watchers, which at times drives Grace crazy since he will eat some junk food that she likes. Mike has since learned to not eat that junk food around here. :P

Now, there is the Coles Notes version of how the last four months have gone. Some of the faces of our management team have changed, but it all seems to be for the better at this point.

Now, here is the quick rundown of what happens in June as June means VACATION!

On June 18th we fly out of Baker Lake on the evening flight and arrive in Winnipeg at 10 PM. We are staying two nights in Winnipeg because we are going to spend the day with Britt and Chris on the 19th and take in the sights and sounds of Winnipeg. On June 20th we fly out of Winnipeg and arrive in Toronto around noon.

So, with that said…

WE ARE HOME JUNE 20TH!!!! WOOHOO!!

Our schedule is, so far, a little busy, but we will make sure that we are available to see each and every one of you!

Now, with that said, there will be another update tomorrow night (Thursday the 30th) with some more stories of the north.

-Mike and Grace

PS: We will have more pictures posted soon!

Holiday Wishes

Hopefully the Christmas season was as good to everyone else as it was to us this year. We were lucky enough to have Grace’s parents come up and visit us for a week. On top of that, we all got some great gifts and had some good laughs.

Christmas away from home for the first time was somewhat different. For me, it was strange to be away from family and friends at this time of year. For example, on Christmas Eve there wasn’t the Wilson Family Christmas, it was a Baker Lake Perogie Feast.

It was nice in some ways though, as we got to do some things that you wouldn’t be able to experience down south. At midnight, we went down ONTO the lake (as it is VERY frozen at this time of year) and watched the Northern Lights dance around as an Arctic Hare hopped out in front of us. That was quite a sight that you can’t get just anywhere!

Christmas Day was also an adventure! Who would have thunk it that I would be the last person out of bed on Christmas Morning? Not I!

Everyone here at the house was spoiled one way or another with the gifts they got, which was good. But most importantly, the people that were here on Christmas morning were people that care about each other. Once we finished opening presents, which was around 2 PM, we finally started to get ready for Christmas dinner.

Now, for me, Christmas dinner was quite small this year as we had a grand total of six people for dinner, as opposed to the usual 20 or so at the Snell house.

However, Christmas was enjoyed by all, and other than Grace having a bout of the flu on Christmas Day, everyone was healthy and happy.

New Years Eve in Baker Lake was something else! It may not have been the biggest party that we have ever had, or ever been too, but it is definitely one for the ages! We had Steve, John, Karen, and their two kids over for a total of seven people in the house. But, with those seven people we had a party for the ages.

We had our fair share of drinks, we saw New Years come in a total of four times thanks to the wonders of TV (Newfoundland, Halifax, Ontario and Nunavut) and therefore, we had four New Years toasts.

To make a long story short, the party ended sometime around 4 AM and resulted in a few head aches the next day. Everyone had a great time, and that is the main thing.

So far the New Year has been not so busy at the store. Apparently there is a bit of a lull at this time of year as most people have done a lot of shopping at Christmas time and are waiting to accumulate some more disposable income. Grocery, for the most part, has been just as busy as before. Where we see the most decline is in retail, as like I said, the money just isn’t there at this time of year.

For us, it is hard to say whether or not the economy has anything to do with the lull as this happens every year. Also, it is hard to tell how the economy will affect things up here because there aren’t a whole lot of jobs tied to southern companies. I mean, there are companies that are owned by southern companies (such as ours), however, there is money to be made here. The gold mine has some ridiculous amount of gold deposits at their site that there is no way they would shut down. Also, the other mines here have minerals that are still in high demand. Therefore, the jobs are still here.

We’ll just have to see how 2009 plays out for us compared to 2008.

In other news, we have done a little bit of wedding planning, however nothing is set in stone as of yet. All we know for sure is that the year will be 2010. Speaking of which, 2010 is turning out to be a big year for weddings for us as Steph and Steve are getting married on July 10 and Britt and Chris are getting married on July 24. Congrats to both couples!!

I know I write this in every blog, but we will definitely try our best to do more blogs in the future!

Thanks again to everyone who sent cards, gifts, and e-mails to us this holiday season. Every little bit helped make our first Christmas away from home a little bit easier to cope with given the fact that we couldn’t see any of you.

Only five months until we are back in Ontario for a visit!

Mike and Grace

FINALLY AN UPDATE!

So since our last blog a lot has happened. Mike and I have moved into a house! Woo hoo. The store was currently leasing a house for our grocery manager and, well, some things happened and our grocery manager left town suddenly. Since my parents are coming up for christmas our store manager asked Mike and I to move into the house till the lease was up because he didn’t want to leave the house unattended  and it has 3 bedrooms so we’ll have a lot more room for christmas. The house is pretty nice. It has 3 bedrooms and 4 TVs, all with satellite! We also have 2 full bathrooms, one being in our master  bedroom. We also have a nice big kitchen and a garage with a fancy car which we can’t use because its owned by the store and its just being stored here for the winter part of the year. Which leads me into my next topic, which is the weather.

 Well we waited for snow and it finally came, at first it was nice and we didn’t find it to be to cold at all now however that is changing. We are definitely thankful that our new digs are located right across the street from the store because WOW is it ever a frosty morning walk. Our front door has a deck infront of it and last week we had a blizzard and all the snow blew right infront of our steps so for a week we were going through the garage to get into the house. Finally today, even though we are having another blustery day, Mike was able to shovel the steps.  The postive side of having all his snow and cold weather is that it makes a great freezer on your door step. Anytime we need a bottle or can cooled we through it on the porch for 10 minutes and it’s nice and frosty. All in all, the weather isn’t so bad, however, we have learned that when going anywhere outside after it hits -25 and its windy that it’s a must to wear snow pants. I just can’t wait till it hits -70 :S lol

So I’ve updated  you on our house and our blustery weather now on to something slightly more interesting and amusing lol. Now that it’s Christmas our store holds different event nights such as Moonlight Madness, Customer Appreciation, Kids Day, Ladies Night, Teen Night , Mens Night and Elders Night. During these nights we open the store from 8-10 and have big sales, depending on the night. For example, on teen night we play games, and on busier nights such as ladies night we just try to get everyone through the till as fast as we can.  So anyway, last Saturday we had Kids Day which means the big red guy comes and visits the store. Traditionally, its always the new guy that plays Santa, however we recently got another member to our management team (the name is Steve) which should mean Mike is off the hook. This year however they decided to also order a Rudolph costume which meant Mike played dear old Santa and Steve played Rudolph lol best day of my life. No worries folks I’ll be posting pictures at the bottom of Mike in his outfit… oh and of Rudolph.

 Well other than that not much else is new just the odd thing. I had a great birthday! Mike got a Barbie cake made for me and had everyone sing happy birthday to me during coffee it was really nice. Also thanks everyone for the wishes, gifts and cards it made the day special. We still miss everyone lots and can’t believe we’ve been living in the North for 6 months now. Wedding plans really have not progressed. Hopefully once my parents come up we will celebrate and plan a little more. All we really know right now is that we want to get married and not get married in the summer or spring. Well I’m signing off now and promise I’ll write a blog on how the rest of the Christmas season goes.s

Love Grace!
XOXO

Long Needed and Awaited Update

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Sorry that it has been so long since our last blog post, but in the future we will try to update more often.

When we last wrote a blog, we had just bought a new TV and a treadmill. We have made some new purchases since then.

Grace bought an electric fireplace from Costco (which, by the way, is the best way to shop as there is no shipping) to help make the apartment feel a tad more cozy as it isn’t the warmest feeling place. It is a grey/silver colour. Below is a picture.

In the last month, we haven’t really had a whole lot of adventures as the store is busy and the weather is starting to resemble winter more and more every single day.

We "inherited" a really good portion of caribou that one of the locals shot down one day. We ended up with the butt of the caribou, which turned out to be a good chunk of meat. Below are some picture of me being a butcher. :P

We had the first snow fall of the year on September 15^th, and what a snow fall it was.

And yes, for those of you who know me too well, I did make a snow man that night.

Since then we have had a few get togethers with the people we work with. One was for Paul’s (the butcher) 40^th birthday, and we certainly had a great time. We had some drinks, had some cake, and of course, had fun.

We then got together next for the 2008 Northern Hockey Pool Draft. For the sports buffs... no, Gary Bettman did not host it. Both Grace and I have teams in it, and periodically we will update you on our standings in the pool. Grace picked her team based on names she liked and recognized. I picked mine based on stats and theories. Here are the teams for those of you who care to keep track/are interested.

Grace

Evgeni Malkin

Eric Staal

Alexander Kopitar

Cory Stillman

Shane Doan

Jonathan Cheecho

Jason Arnott

Nik Antropov

Viktor Kozlov

Thomas Kaberle

W. Wolski

Mike Fisher

Mike

Vincent LeCavalier

Patrick Kane

Derek Roy

Rick Nash

Johan Franzen

A.  A. Kostitsyn

Dion Phaneuf

Nikoli Zherdev

Ryan Malone

Dustin Penner

Dennis Wideman (dubbed the “who the hell?” pick of the night”)

Joffrey Lupul

Now, I know that last time I promised to post some pictures of our store, however, when I went to take the pictures that morning, the batteries in the camera died and I haven’t had a chance to take pictures again. I do promise that one of these days I will get the pictures taken and posted.

On our way home from work the one night, we happened to see this little fella pictured below sitting under our neighbour's truck. Just to put things into perspective, that is probably a 20" tire on this truck...

Pretty cute little bugger isn't he? The arctic hare turns white in the winter to blend in to the surroundings to protect itself from predators. In the summer months, they are brown.

Like I said before, there should be more updates in the future as we stop being so lazy and actually write these things. LOL. 

Hopefully everyone is well and healthy and safe down south. 

Take care,

Mike and Grace

Update

Hello everyone!

Since it has been a few weeks since the last blog post, I thought I would give everyone a quick update on what is going on here in Baker Lake.

We have made a few major purchases in our home since the last blog, which were as follows:

- a 19" LCD TV

- a printer for the computer

- a treadmill

We got the TV for the bedroom because, as we have discovered, we don't like to watch the same TV shows all the time, or the same movies sometimes, so for us to have the second option is a nice change. 

The printer for the computer was a different story. It was brought back to the store because the person who bought it said that the scanner "didn't scan the whole page". Ken, the GM manager at the store, was going to write it off without testing it. Grace suggested buying it at a discount instead of writing it off because a) the store would get some money for it, and b) if it prints, it isn't totally useless. So Ken sold it to us for $20, and it usually retails at $149. So we got it home, Grace hooked it up and tested it out. Turns out that the thing works just fine. The theory is that the person didn't realize that it only scans the stuff you put in, not the outlines of pages and such. Either way, we got a pretty nice printer for $20. For the tech geeks that are out there, it is a Lexmark X1270. 

Grace bought a treadmill from Paul, the Meat manager, for $200, which we both thought was a hell of a deal considering the freight on an item like that is going to be pretty high. The treadmill itself can be somewhat tempermental, but other than that it is a very good deal for the price we paid.

Other than that, our lives have revolved a lot around work and sleep and work again. The store has been super busy, with August being the biggest month in our store's history for sales. I would state the numbers here, but I am not sure on the policies and appropriateness of all that. 

Grace has spent a bit of time making the house feel a little more like home as pictures have been hung up. It is starting to feel like home to us now, as we have put our own little touches on the place. We have bought covers for the couch and chair in the house to make them feel better. We have got the TV and such now that gives us the added luxuries. If only the store would pay for a touch up of paint on the house, it would look brand new. Haha!

Other than that, not much news from here. I am going to take some pictures of the store on Sunday so that everyone can get an idea of exactly what we have to work with up here.

Take care,

Mike

Canoes and Hondas

Canoes

I know that it has been a while since the last update, but we have been fairly adventurous since our last entry.

A couple of Saturdays ago, there was a group of canoeists in town returning from their trip up one of the rivers that runs into the lake. They were leaving town on Sunday morning, and had some stuff they wanted to sell. They had originally come to the store to see if Allan, our boss, would help them out. We told them that the store would not sell their stuff – canoes, paddles, life jackets – but out of curiousity, JP (our grocery manager) asked how much they were selling the canoes for.

The answer: $100

JP didn’t hesitate to say “I’ll take one!”

Neither did John (who is our Quickstop manager), and the same with Jim (the convenience store manager).

Then Grace and I found out about this great deal (or bargoooooooooooon as Kyle would say).

Here is the series of events that led us to the canoe.

Grace: “Mike, we are buying a canoe.”
Mike: “Ok. How much.”
Grace: “$100!”
Mike: “Where?!”

And after MUCH debate as you can tell from the dialogue above, we had bought a canoe. And two paddles, and two life jackets.

Total cost for the entire lot was $170. A great steal buy any means, considering that John looked up how much the same canoe would be brand new down south. John came back the next day and said that those canoes sell for $1,300 retail. So we definitely got a deal!

Since then, we have been out on the canoe twice on Baker Lake, and they were quite the times. The first time we were out it was kinda windy and wavy, but we managed to get back to shore without any trouble (and after a little unplanned dip by Mike in the water!).

The second time the water was perfectly still, and we had a blast!

Hondas

On Wednesday night, we decided to take a little trip out on the land to a location that we like to call “The Bridge to Nowhere”.

Why is it called the Bridge to Nowhere? It is literally a Bridge to Nowhere. No road on the other side, just land. No path on the other side, just land. Nothing.

A bridge to nowhere. But what a bridge it is!

We borrowed Paul’s (the meat manager) and JP’s Hondas and went out to the Mine Road (which is the road to the mine, and likely one of only two roads with a name in town, the other being Airport Road, which ironically enough goes to the airport.). We drove the half an hour drive down this windy path to get to the bridge to nowhere. Along the way we stopped to take some pictures, and we even stopped in to one of the cabins along the road (there are tonnes of cabins) to take a look.

When we got to the cabin we stopped at, we noticed a great big inuksuk at the top of the hill beside it. We asked the owner of the cabin what it was, and he said, “that is the official geographical centre of Canada.”

But we thought Baker Lake was? Not at all, Baker Lake is just the closest town, and in all reality is probably 15-20 km southeast of the official centre.

Apparently the government decided one day that they should determine the centre of Canada, and in doing so they found that this spot was the geographic centre. To commemorate this occasion, they built a great big inuksuk on top of this hill, and people stop by it all of the time. Of course, being the “tourists” we are, we had to go take a look and touch it.

Once we got the Hondas up the hill, with some excitement of course, we took the pictures and kept on our way. Once we got to the bridge, we were in awe of the sights.

It was a bridge, over a rushing river that led to nowhere. The river, known as The Prince, was the cleanest river that we had ever seen. It is so clean that we were told that you just have to take a drink out of it. So, with that said, we took out our glasses and filled them up with the water from the river. And I must say, it was much better water than any tap water (or any bottled water for that matter) that you could get down south.

So we took in the sights, had a drink, and headed back into town as the sun started to go down.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip out to the land, and it is one that we will have to make again.

As per usual, pictures are included below with captions.

Don’t hesitate to e-mail us, we love hearing from the people back home!

Mike and Grace

Grace walking across the Bridge...
The Prince River
Grace and The Prince
Mike and The Prince
Grace and James drinking water from the Prince
"Bottoms up!"

James and Mike at the Geographical Centre of Canada!
Grace at the Geographical Centre of Canada!
View from the land to the Bridge

An Inksuk on the land.
James and Mike taking in the view at the centre of the country.

James on the Honda in front of the fourplex.

Mike driving down the road on a Honda.
Grace and Mike on the Honda
View back into town.

Sealift

At the Northern in Baker Lake, twice a year we have this thing called “Sealift”. Now, most of you are likely sitting there going, “What in the heck is a sealift?” Well, that is the reason for this blog entry.

Sealift is an “event” where the barge comes in from the south with non-perishable foods and retail goods for the store stock. The barge is brought in to the pier in town by a tug boat, and is then docked. The barge is loaded with storage containers called “Sea Cans”. Each sea can is packed full with goods, and measures out to a size of about 9 feet wide and 20 feet long. Now, just to set the scene, our store is the second biggest store in the company in terms of sales and revenue.

With that being said, we get a whole lot of stuff in sea lift.

22 sea cans to be exact (and that is only the first barge of the year).

Starting last Wednesday morning, we started unloading our sea cans, which were dropped off behind the store for us by the shipping company. For this process, we hire some of the young local guys to help out since it is a long, hard process. We hand bomb EVERYTHING from each sea can into the warehouse at the store, and then pile it in a certain spot depending on the item. For example, if it is an item that can’t be frozen, it stays in the “Old Store”, which is our biggest warehouse and has heat in it. For paper products, pasta noodles, garbage bags, etc., they go in either the “First”, “Second” or “Third” warehouse, which are not heated.

We started unloading the sea cans at 10 am on Wednesday morning. We stopped for an hour for lunch, an hour for dinner, and the odd “smoke” break during the day. We didn’t leave the store until midnight.

Thursday morning at 10 am, we started once again. However, because we are management, we started at 8 am like usual. We repeated the same system as the day before, with one exception. We tried using a “roller” system. Now, rollers are exactly as they sound. It is a table like structure with rollers on it that allow you to slide objects across it. This was set up in order to make the distance between people shorter, hence less throwing of boxes and less injuries. As Grace will attest to, this was good in theory.

During the unloading of cases of Carnation Milk (48 cans to a case), the rollers fell over, and hit Grace in the leg. Thankfully she only walked away with a couple of bruises, but they are quite the bruises, as the picture before shows.

Because of this, Grace went home to rest. I got home at 10 pm that night.

On Friday, the worst of sea lift was over. The last six or seven sea cans were full of furniture, which are big items and are a lot quicker to empty out. We pulled everything out of the sea cans, and then Allan, who is our store manager, organized everything into certain sea cans to be kept as storage until our Arena Sale (which will be a totally different article at the end of the month).
So, by closing on Friday night, WE WERE DONE!!!

Overall, sea lift is quite the thing. Now, I know that we have explained in the past that we get freight by plane probably five times a week, so why do we do sea lift?

It’s very simple: money.

It is much cheaper to bring in product by sea lift, therefore we sell the items at a lower price.
What does that mean? The customer saves money.

For instance, a 12 pack of pop costs $19.99 after sea lift, compared to $27.99 when brought in by plane.

Sea lift also allows us to bring in massive quantities of pop, which also allows us to have better stock on items.

So, there you have it folks. That is what sea lift is all about.

-Mike