Brrr....

Today the weather is being downright spiteful. It's completely gray outside with high winds and a biting cold. 

The weather station down at our airstrip is reporting: -6, feels like -41

Sunlight... Almost

By the end of January we still aren't getting any direct sunlight here in Scammon thanks to the mountain. We are, however, starting to get an almost sunny sky. We've all been missing the sunlight for months now and it very disorienting to see that it's daylight outside but still not get any sunlight.

Talk about vitamin D deficiency!! I'm missing sunny Colorado a lot this month.

There's a sun behind that mountain!

When the Lights Go Down

In addition to our water shenanigans from the beginning of this month, we've been dealing with some  hissy fits from our generators. 

I don't know if it's because of the cold that suddenly hit or if there's a mechanical error, but it has become pretty common place for our lights to flicker on and off throughout the day. It wouldn't be too big of a deal for this to happen during the day down-states, but since the sun is still refusing to peak out from behind the mountains it presents kind of a pickle. 

Most of the teachers have stopped counting on technology when they write their lesson plans because it's about a 50/50 shot that the outlets will be functioning. So we make the most out of the emergency lighting and midday twilight and push on. 

Emergency Lights

Hopefully February will bring slightly warmer temperatures to keep our generators happy and functioning. 

Preparing to Lose Water

This morning our IL came over the intercom and announced the one thing that can turn my blood cold: the water pressure in the pump system is down to 6 PSI and we should switch into water conservation mode. We should also prepare to lose water at any time.

Many of you who have been reading my blog for a while may remember when this happened last March. If not, you can read about it here. The summary of it is that when I can't shower I turn in to a very grumpy person. I'm fully capable of preforming all other daily tasks without running water. I can wash my dishes with melted snow, flush the toilet with reserve water that we keep in totes, fine.

But the one thing I can't do is shower, it takes up too much water that we need to keep around for all the other stuff.

I'm hoping that since we are getting ready to host a basketball tournament this weekend that a lot of resources will go toward fixing the water (otherwise we may need to cancel the tournament).

Cross your fingers for us and hope we don't lose water!

Update:
Our neighbor, B., came over to house this evening with a glass of what we all assume was water. Apparently the water from her faucet started spewing out a light brown liquid... the sign that our tanks are on their last legs before they run out.

You see, we have to distill our water here to filter out a lot of heavy metals that accumulate in the water as it sits in the tanks. The picture below shows the different water available in teacher housing- B's, ours, and distilled water.

The good new is that some of the city water is being diverted to the school to fill the tanks. We may lose water for a while, but it should be back up by this weekend!!!! (it's the little things that keep you going)

And, in case you're wondering...

... this is a distiller.

... and this is what distilling does.