Fids, Sids, and Hutterites.

The last couple of days have been alright. The weather has been miserable and rainy so we’ve been working in the garage. Don’s got a whole bunch of ganglines to sort through and different bits of equipment so we’ve been polishing stuff up and organizing it.

Also I learned something. I learned how to splice rope together to make loops and stuff for the necklines and tuglines and everything. This is pretty exciting because so far I’ve been pretty bored and I know basically everything he’s showed me so far. So I got to make necklines yesterday afternoon and hopefully some more today. You get to work with these nifty little tools called fids, which are hollow and pointed so you can use them to pull the rope through itself. I think in an hour I made fourteen. Its’ kind of one of those tasks you feel like you could just sit and do for hours. Like I was put on the earth to make necklines and I could do it forever. I know eventually I’d get bored but it’s a good feeling while it lasts.

We also visited a Hutterite colony for tea, which was fun. I sat there mostly awkwardly while they talked about various people that they know and stuff. There was this was one guy, Darius, who kept making fun of me for being from Ontario. So one of the first days I was here I told Don this stupid joke that I read on the internet, and he actually thought it was really funny and now at all the social gatherings we go to he get me to tell this joke. And people actually think that its’ funny, and I’m like, it’s the dumbest joke. I also know I’m being a tease by not telling you what it is, but if I did then there goes my one contribution to the conversation. So you’re just going to have to come to Alberta to hear it, or if you just asked nicely, I’d probably tell you.

The Hutterite colony was nice though, we had tea and homemade sausage, and fruit cake, and this sort of really dry bread with jam. It was tasty anyways. I’m not sure about the distinction between Hutterites and Amish and Mennonites but the Hutterites definitely use modern technology, they’ve all got cell phones and everything, but they make their own clothes and pillows and blankets and some furniture. They also speak some sort of German. They’re really proud of their homemade stuff though and I don’t blame them cause its really neat stuff. I certainly couldn’t do it.

Yesterday we also changed the route we run the dogs on so its nine miles now I believe, it takes around forty minutes to run the whole thing. That’s almost three times as long as anything we did on the four-wheelers up north. And it’ll only get longer…

Dog of the day today is Sid. Sid is Jethro’s brother. He’s right on the corner so you have to walk by him all the time. He barks a lot, and he jumps on you, which we’re working on. But Sid also has magnificent posture. He’s got some extra space on the front of his house and he’s usually sitting there very straight and upright. He and Jethro run lead sometimes, they’re pretty good at it, even though Sid seems like a dumbass sometimes since he pees in his bowl.