Rich man. Poor man. FMMA is the kind of town where the rich rub shoulders with the poor. Actually, they don't. The rich definitely exist. With housing costs for a trailer starting at $400,000 and 3 bedroom homes with 2 car garages going for over $1M the rich certainly do exist. Apparently the average household income in the community is $170,000. My income is no where close to average and my two free-loading roommates don't contribute so I doubt we will ever see average. The poor tend to congregate in the downtown sections of town. Everything is close in the downtown area. There are a couple of shelters near by, restaurants, liquor stores and coffee shops. Social services is downtown and a few other areas and services that the homeless seem to congregate around. There even seems to be a known location for people who wish to drop off things for them--bottles, clothes, food and money. It isn't very far from my place. I can't see the spot but I can see the space over the spot. On almost any given hour of the day you can see people at the spot. Sitting on their tossed out lawn chairs, milk cartons and lazy boys huddled around each other smoking and drinking coffee. Watching each vehicle that goes by with a hopeful look in their eyes that the vehicle will stop and deliver them a morsel or dollar. It makes me sad to see them sit there. While this community is really great at donating to any cause on the go and fundraising evenings have been known to take in hundreds of thousands of dollars there is still a lack of services for the homeless. Most of them have mental demons of one kind of another they are dealing with. Some unfortunately fell into the FMMA "I have too much money so I'm going to spend it on drugs" issue that is prevalent among many here. they eventually either lose their job due to a positive test at work or they become unable to balance work and their new found addiction. What services do they need? More places for homeless to go at night and in the day, more social service workers directed towards the homeless. Will it ever happen? Probably not. I don't know how many there are in this spot but it obviously isn't enough to make anyone overly concerned. At least not to my knowledge.

This picture has nothing to do with the above rant, they are just a new pair of boots/shoes I bought recently. I took the picture so I could show my sister and get some potential ideas for decorating. Hope your week is going well. Let's send some more love south of the border ladies and gents. Jack is having a rough go of it at the moment. He's a trooper and handling it quite well but I know a few extra thoughts wouldn't hurt.

The northern lights are out a bit tonight. I tried to get a picture from my deck but there is too much light in the area for great photo. I would take a little road trip but I am on some medication that makes me sleep at night and I don't trust myself to drive once I've taken it. Maybe on the weekend when I can stay up late. I took a drive around town on Sunday to try and get some pictures of my neighbourhood. Here is a bit of what I found. This truck pulled up beside me at Walmart the other day...the back is typical of a lot of vehicles that have been on the highway up and down to site. Covered in snow or covered in dirt. Speaking of dirt the next picture may look familiar.

These next couple of pictures are from work. This is the kind of equipment our welders work on. Yeah...just tiny stuff.

Back to the neighbourhood. Here is the view from the deck which I think I've shown you before but if you can see the line of white trucks across the top of the parking garage. I may have mentioned before that this is a white truck kind of town. Almost everyone drives a white truck. the parking lots are always full of white trucks. its a fleet thing. companies buy them in bulk and apparently white paint is cheap. i really don't know if that is true but it does seem a bit odd. everyone drives a truck. a couple of nights ago i counted all the white trucks that i could see from my window and there was 10--just white ones. there was probably another 4 or 5 in black on top of that. so my red truck definitely stands out...that and it about 1/2 the size of most of the trucks around. it is so tiny when parked in a row of site trucks. yes, this is red neck country. the shift key on my keyboard is sticking and i can't seem to get it unstuck which is why this post has very few capital letters.

this is a new condo going up right beside the highway and right beside the fire department. i guess if they have a fire like one of the other buildings in town recently did then they will be ok. the luck of condos in this town is not great so i'm not sure i would buy this.

looking down the river towards some other homes in the area

this looks like an ordinary bench in a park...and it is. what i took the picture of is the tree. the tree contains the stash of a homeless person. he was stashing cans and bottles in there when i came upon him a few minutes before taking the photo. he eyed me wearily when i got close almost as if he was afraid i was going to take his precious treasures.

this picture was taken from my bedroom window on saturday. this gentleman was in and out of the garbage bins in the parking lot hunting for cans and bottles to take in for recycling.

another park resident that was keeping a close eye on me and my movements in the park.

self portrait.

these final two pictures are of the condos that were condemned last year about this time. the people living in them were evacuted at almost midnight one night and basically never allowed to go back in. the finally let them in at one point for short periods of time but my understanding is that not everyone was able to remove all their contents before the closed the doors for good. so people were out on the street still needing to pay the mortgage on a unit they couldn't live in AND still needing to pay rent somewhere else. crazy. there are lots of lawsuits on the go and they decided a couple of months ago to rebuild...so it will be a couple more years yet until the money is there for the rebuild and people can more back in. they will need to basically tear them down and start over. i can only imagine how hard it must be for the people who are still living somewhere else and still paying on this home.

so that ends the tour for today.

Welcome to Winterplay in FMMA.

End of the day sunset.

Eagle carving...and yes, a man walking on stilts in the background. How he managed on the snow and ice is beyond me. He was cold though. He kept blowing on his hands to warm them up.

My sister mentioned that I haven't really shown her (or you) FMMA. So I will start with my weekend adventure. I spent most of Saturday waiting for the cable guy to show up and when I found out they were not going to show quickly headed down to see a little bit of Winterplay.

Yep, Winterplay. If you've got it--celebrate it. The pictures are not great but it will give you an idea of what we were seeing.

There were a number of gorgeous ice carvings. There had been a lot of snow down during the day so the carvings were not always looking their best. The snow coming down also made for a terrible white on white look.  But we were in a good mood, the temperature was great and the son of my friend had a great time going up and down the ice slide.

Raven

 Gorgeous bear carving. This one was our favorite. It was large in size and very detailed.

Of course this eagle was very impressive as well. It was super thin and at least 6 feet tall.

Side view of the bear.

The ice slide.

Ice maze. We went through and I slid down the small slide at the end.

Ice canoe.

Snow boarding looked like a lot of fun.

Inside the snow maze.

My friends son going down the slide for the upteenth time.

So this doesn't really show you my neighbourhood or the community as a whole but it does give you a small taste of the activities going on here.

They seem to have changed blogger around...it is weird but I think I like it better than the old look.

So...one of my friends needs your thoughts and prayers tomorrow as their other (better?) half goes in for surgery. Jack--we are thinking of you and yours.

Here's the remainder of the photos up to the 25th from my photo of the day challenge.

Day 16. Something new.

 Day 18. Drink

Day 17. Time

 

Day 19. Something you hate to do. I picked picking up broken glass. I did not need to 'fake' this photo.

 Day 20. Handwriting. This is from the diary I kept on my trip to Paris/India this spring.

Day 22. Where you work. This is my office.

 Day 24. Inside the bathroom cabinet. I don't have a cabinet bt this is where I keep all my stuff.

 Day 25. Something green. My tea cozy.

Day 28. Money.

 Day 26. Night.

Day 23. Shoes. Yes, I have more than flip flops...but honestly I wear these evening and weekends...probably the most used shoe in my house.

Day 21. A fave pic of you. I love this picture of me from 2006 when I was in Pangnirtung.

Here's the photo of the day....phone. It is a picture of the blackberry that I wear at/for work. It vibrates when  I get an email or a call is coming in...which is all the time. Even when I'm not wearing it I get phantom vibrations on my hip.

Here's a picture of my living room. I finally got a couple more pictures framed...see water colours on the left side. Top one from Paris, bottom one from Argentina. The prints over the tv are all from Nunavut....and the new glass case on the left for keeping the cats away from my carvings. Awesome.

It's Wednesday night, I'm hanging on the couch watching tv, surfing the net and trying to stay awake until closer to bed time. Hudson is incredibly curled up under the blanket beside me. She has taken to occasionally sleeping under a blanket which is a new thing in the past couple months.

Here's my pics from the photo challenge thus far this month...
These are not in order of day...

Day 1. Your view.

 Day 3. Hands.

 Day 4. A stranger.

Day 6. Dinner

 Day 9. Front door

 Day 7. button

Day 11. Makes you happy

 Day 13. Blue.

 Day 12. Inside your closet

Day 2 Words (I went with a picture of pictures...which needs no words. Ordering gelato in Argentina...pointing to pictures...no words needed)

 Day 8 Sun (This was from Nunavut, 2007.)

Day 5. 10am (This was the closet to 10am I could find any of my recent photos had been taken)

Day 14 Heart.

I'll try and update more often.