We are: OK in the AK

Just a quick placeholder to let everyone know that we are safely in Nulato.  In the last second rush to get baggage and air cargo out of the car at Fairbanks, I inadvertently left our vid cam in the car so no video for now.  Fortunately though, we have a friend with the school district that is flying in next week and she can get into where our car is parked at Fairbanks, so I'll get some video up of the trip up and then here in Nulato.

Departure T -5

Well we must be nearing the end of this process because we're shipping the shelves that stuff used to be on.  We've got at most 3 totes of stuff that can ship after us plus the stuff that will be riding in the car with us to Fairbanks.

Other milestones we've achieved are finally getting ahold of utilities to get the phone and water scheduled for disconnect and purchasing The Milepost which is among other things is an in-depth guide to the Alaska highway.  Ellie has also got the dead tree version of her contract mailed back and has taken her pre-employment physical.  also, earlier this afternoon Ellie was able to get ahold of the school custodian and make arrangements to begin transferring totes from the Nulato post office to our duplex.  So far we've shipped out 39 parcels and and 13 of them have arrived with another third arriving in the next two weeks.  With luck a big chunk of the last third will arrive before the 20th so we'll only have approximately 5 totes arriving after us.  

The house is also getting emptier and emptier as junk is trashed and other things moved to long term storage.  Tomorrow morning, there will be another major improvement as the a room and a half of stuff goes to our final garage sale this Fri and Saturday.  Tomorrow will also see our car being dropped off for a day visit to the mechanic so he can mount the block and oil pan heater.  Trying to decide if I will have him mount the battery heater or not.  It will only take him like five minutes but that's $5 on an already tight budget, but on the other hand, we're shaving the deadline so close, it just might be worth the money.

This weeks challenges include: my mother being air'evaced to Faytteville with  Broken heart Syndrome, Ellie catching a nasty virus last evening and me recovering from what appears to be a third degree burn on my chest from where I was foolishly melting holes, for zip ties, in a plastic tote bare chested and managed to get molten plastic on myself.  Silly me, I never thought that the wound might have stopped hurting because I burned it so badly, so I never took care of it until I noticed the two days ago that it was infected.  As for working with molten plastic bare chested, yes it was stupid, but it does illustrate the biggest hindrance we've had on this move.  We do not have electricity, or rather we do not have electricity from the grid.  Instead we make do with a 4 kw gas generator which can not handle our homes central AC unit.  It's not all bad as it can handle two window units which allows us to cool the bedrooms, but the rest of the house is usually in the high 90's, and as I type this at 5:30 pm the living room thermometer is showing a room temp of 102 degrees.    

Today's chores are more packing, booking the tickets for the girls and myself that will get us from Fairbanks to Nulato and  filling out the enrollment paperwork to get Kailani into head start at Nulato.  if we're really lucky, we'll also be able to squeeze in a phone call to district headquarters to beg them to allow us to have some items temporarily delivered to the district warehouse as for some reason Wal-mart will ship directly to a Fairbanks address but will not ship it to the Fairbanks Wal-mart.  go figure.

Random appeals to my readers: We still need good homes for our two dogs, Miss and Chris.  We also invite you to come out to our garage sale from 8:30 to 6:30 tomorrow and Saturday at the Lowery Freewill Baptist Church and last but not least, since I will be hunting Moose and Caribou to provide for my family up there, I really need a decent bolt action .308 or higher calibre rifle.  If anyone has one and is willing to accept a post-dated check for when we first get paid at the end of September, drop me a message on facebook.