One Week

It has been a week now since our arrival. We are still pretty much in camping mode. The transfer agent in town called today and told us that the container has arrived. But this being a small town and all, the company doesn't have people just standing around waiting for jobs to come around. So the employees go out crab fishing, moose hunting, etc. He thinks the earliest he can get enough people together is this coming Monday. When told where we were staying, he suggested we might need two apartments to hold all the stuff... I hope not.

It's been a number of years since we had a Sharp microwave oven. Things have certainly evolved on these things. There is a "sensor" setting that measures the water content in the cooking chamber and determines when the cooking is done. We've cooked rice, vegetables, and reheated foods and they've all come out quite well. I think the rice came out better than in a rice cooker, and certainly better than by stove top. And the best part is that there is no burning or sticking that has to be cleaned up. We think we can dismiss a couple of appliances -- a rice cooker and a vegetable steamer -- from atop our counter with very limited space.

The girls are now signed up for one of the homeschool organizations in the state. Basically, in Alaska, the state education system sponsors homeschooling organizations because many of the students are in remote locations. So the homeschoolers are by all accounts in the public school system, just not attending a physical public school. These organization reimburse qualified educational expenses up to a certain amount per year.

The property next to us is currently undergoing development. For the past few days the construction crew has been preparing the lot to lay a foundation. Due to the rather wet and boggy nature of much of the sea-level ground, they have to first dig down and then bring in truckload after truckload of crushed rock, and then compress it down into the ground. There's been a truck loaded with rocks coming in once every 15 to 30 minutes for several hours each day. Our landlady tells us that it's costing the owner/developer (her parents, I believe) $10,000 a day to get this work done. This is another reason why new construction is so expensive in these parts. Just as I'm writing this, it looks like they are done with the part that requires the compactor. It just got loaded onto a trailer to be taken away.

Other than the big roller equipment shaking the entire earth (I'm sure the shaking would register on the Richter scale around possibly a 3) around here when it's compacting the rocks, the apartment is rather quiet this time of year. Jody, our landlady, says that during the summer months things get a bit wilder with all the temporary workers staying here. But due to the particularly bad weather this summer and poor fishing conditions, many tenants have left. I think less than half the units are currently occupied.

I mentioned to Elise this morning that the cable guy is supposed to come out today to install the cable modem. There was no time given -- just sometime today. Elise replied that at least this is something that is the same the world over -- waiting for the cable guy. He came this afternoon and so I'm be on a semi-fast connection today (512K/128K), paying double the Verizon Fios rate for one-tenth the speed. Here, there are even slower packages that are still considered broadband. The local cable installer guy is out of town, so the company brought in someone from Ketchikan to fill in during the absence.

The cable system here is operated by GCI. They provide not just cable services, but long distance telephone and cell phone services. Back in Portland, to get a discount on cable services, one has to subscribe to multiple ones. Here, to get a discount on cable Internet service, I had to sign up for a long distance service. That's just as well because I realized that in order to send faxes outside this city, I need a landline long distance service. And it turns out that for the cost of a second local cell phone number, we could get an equivalent 250 minutes of out-of-state long distance on our land line. Once we get one of our utility bills we will likely be cancelling two of our Portland cell phone numbers and replacing them with one local number.

It's taken a week, but we have most of our utilities and services operational now. It's starting to almost feel like home! It's amazing how just these small things can turn into major inconveniences to annoy and frustrate.