Spring has sprung

As I've been noticing from many of my friends and family, spring is springing in their neck of the woods. Well, the Arctic is no different. Spring is in full sprung here. We have had a few days above -17C (0F) and on 2 occasions in the last 2 weeks, I have ridden to work with NO snow/wind pants. I know, I know, it truly is spring. Who knows when I get to switch to a regular ski jacket instead of my light parka!? I can even see the wooden porch and metal steps leading up to my door! The snow has been sublimated from them in the now-long hours of sunlight.

Speaking of sun....does anyone realize that the sun reflecting off all white everywhere is, um, extremely freaking bright?! Makes my eyes tear and I don't have sensitive eyes! The city's loader has been hard at work starting the unenviable task of moving all the accumulated (well, as much as possible) snow away from buildings and homes so that when the melt starts to happen, things don't flood or cause damage. One doesn't realize how much snow has accumulated over the winter until the front-end loader scoops to the ground several feet below.

Currently, the daylength is already very long. Technically, Igloolik no longer has official 'night' or 'astronomical twilight' (don't ask me the official definitions of those terms...I wouldn't want to take that excitement of researching that yourself away from you. lol). We still have 'nautical twilight' and 'civil twilight' (I know civil twilight is commonly referred to as dawn and dusk). Official sunrise and sunset is occurring at about 4:50am and 10:00pm, respectively. However, it remains dusky until about 11:30pm. And it's only end of April! I remember being in Anchorage right around the summer solstice in June and being so weirded out by sun setting at around midnight to 12:30am. All us visitors there for a conference thought it was about 9pm and were still chatting and visiting...until someone noted it was past midnight and we had to be back up for the conference in a few hours! Don't ask me about dawn....those of you that know me know I have no idea cause I'm never up that early!

The blackout curtains and tin foil work wonders. I am going to affix a bit of velcro to the edges of the curtains so I can make them stick together and not 'wave beautifully'. Beautifully hanging and waving curtains are pros at letting annoying light in.

Hopefully the weather will continue to warm because I'm anxious to get out and about on the bike again (I say 'again' like I actually have a history of riding it other than the exactly 1 time I tried to explode my lungs on it...lolol)Read more