Q&A

A good friend of mine sent these questions because he wanted more details. I sent him back some answers:

do you watch a lot of Internet tv? No. The home Internet connection is too slow and we can't use up that sort of bandwidth at school. We download (through iTunes) the Daily Show and the Simpsons overnight. S gave me the complete Six Feet Under for my birthday so we're working on that. We also rock the Netflix. You can get spotty satellite TV here but we don't do that.
have you had any fish? Not really. I think there was some in one of the akutaqs I had. I caught a fish though.
are you lesson planning all night? No. I only teach one class that I have to lesson plan for. Otherwise I help out in other people's classes or see kids in small groups or one-on-one. S has three classes to lesson prep for but she's been getting that done without having to go in on the weekends lately. Most of the other teachers come up to school on the weekends. We have to turn in our lesson plans every week to the principal which can be pretty time consuming. I spend a lot of time doing paperwork but I know when all that stuff is due literally a year in advance so I just get it done early.
are you and S at each others necks? We were for a little while. There was a two week period in October or so in which we were really driving each other nuts. We spend a huge amount of time with each other and we have known for a long time that this doesn't really work for us. We each need to be doing our own things at times. That doesn't happen much here. I started teaching afterschool in the evenings twice a week in November and S just started coaching basketball. Things had gotten better before that but now we have some time apart so we're doing really well. .
are there B&B igloos you can rent for a romantic retreat? No igloos of any kind any where here. No B&B's, restaurants, movie theaters, cafes, bars, etc. Not in the village. I think there's a B&B in Athol. Athol is not romantic. We'll be in Anchorage for New Year's and staying in a B&B. That should be good.
where will you be for winter break? In MA/NH from this Monday to the 31st. You?
what are you reading? I just finished Guns, Germs and Steel. It took me forever to slog through it but it was worth it. I read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (or Cavalier and Klay - one of those). It was a great, great book. Just started two books: Lost at School (Ross Greene) and Coming into the Country (about Alaska in the '70s). What are you reading?
what's the last fresh thing you ate? Every week we actually get a box of fresh veggie/fruits from a CSA from Washington state that broke into the business of shipping their boxes to rural Alaska by freight. It's expensive but it rules.
did you run out of anything? Besides fun stuff to do and people to talk to? We run out of stuff at times. We order most of our food from Azure Standard or Fred Meyer. Some also from Vegan Essentials who will ship cold stuff (like soy butter).
like tea bags or soy butter? We bought a case of earth balance sticks and a case of earth balance tubs. It's lasted so far. We get loose tea from the Tao of Tea in Portland.
is there anything you have way too much of? Almonds. We have two cases. We were going to make almond milk but our soy milk maker works so well we don't need to. We have almonds with lunch every day and put them in salads, etc but we we're only 1/2 through the first case. Also, chick peas. We used to eat them all the time but the ones we bought were dried. We soak them for a day then boil them for hours and then have to individually peel each one. We did this a few times and then gave up. We have 25 pounds of chickpeas hanging out here.
what's the one thing you brought that was a huge waste of space that you never use? Shorts. I brought them because we went right from the west coast to the east coast in August and then I thought I would wear them some up here. I wore shorts maybe twice. They just sit in the drawer. S was smart and left hers on the east coast. Not much else actually. We tried to bring very little up here.
do you have windows? Two big ones facing the school (with a third boarded up - it was broken last year and never replaced).
do you wish you didn't? No. We can see the sunrise and watch the weather and people go by on Hondas. But it was kind of pain when the weather was nice and the kids would come by every day to look in and see what we were doing.
where does your poop go? Good question. We have flushing toilets. I think there's a big septic tank. Not all of the village has this however. Many of them have honey buckets that they empty into the ocean. Now that it's frozen the contents of the bucket just sit frozen on the ice.
have you seen wildlife? Some. Lots of birds and fish. We saw musk ox from the plane. There are foxes around now but we haven't seen any yet. The ones that come into the village are usually rabid. Moose don't hang out here- they were killed off by hunting.
have you eaten with local families? We haven't been inside anyone's house. No one really gets invited over. We have had community feasts. This is mostly the school feeding everyone. We have one coming up on friday.
have you decided to never return to portland? No. We can't wait to get back there.
do you have a beard? No. Maybe after Christmas.
any music that you've come to listen to more than anything else? S and I were listening to a lot of Mountain Goats, Songs Ohia and Iron & Wine. Also Animal Collective and Panda Bear. Lately we started listening to Bon Iver and the new Bill Callahan. I've really been enjoying Sigur Ross lately and trying to get into the Arcade Fire with limited results. Rudresh Mahanthappa is a saxophonist that I've been liking lately. I'm trying to like Yo la Tengo and that's going pretty well. I need some new noise and free jazz stuff. I've struck out a bit lately finding any thing I'm really excited about.
any music that you've come to hate? Nothing I could name. The kids play this one song all the time that I hate. I can't even remember how it goes or who it's by. It's very bad hip hop/R&B crap.
how's S? Good. About the same as me: ready for a break from this place. I think she's enjoyed doing some special ed stuff but I think she also misses having hear own class all day.
do you love being her boss? do you boss her around? is that working out? I'm not really her boss of course. I'm in a full time special ed position, S is in a 1/2 general ed and 1/2 special ed position. Special ed is new to S so sometimes she asks me about working with certain kids. I do all of the sped paperwork and run the IEP meetings. I'm hardly her boss. I do enjoy saying that I'm the head of the sped department though.