Yellowknife is far. Far from what? - you ask. Far from everything. The nearest town is over an hour away, and it is really small, and far. After that, everything else is really really far. It's just far.

We had fun there, though. Even though it was April, the lakes were all frozen and there was lots of snow. We went walking on a lake. OK, actually, it was a tailings pond.

I drove on Great Slave Lake. It was really cool.

Heather and Lee and Chris tried to figure out how deep the ice was, but they just couldn't figure out where to put the ruler.

I ate lots of wild meat.

My hair stood on end because it was so dry and cold.

We saw the coolest Northern Lights EVER!!!

It was all pretty darn awesome.

Well, my balloon is not doing so well. Its little string is not as taut as it used to be, and when the furnace comes on, it dives for the floor. I think we're seeing the last weeks of my balloon.

In preparation for its journey to balloon heaven (I'm guessing before the end of April? We'll see...), I gave it a sticker from the War Amps reminding it to drive safe. Since I live in the National Capital Region, I made sure the sticker was in French.

Almost 11 weeks old now. That's pretty impressive.

I love my ballon, even if it has started to bore me.

My balloon is more than 10 weeks old. It's starting to lose its resiliance a little when people walk by it and disturb the air. It used to just drift a little then pop back up, tightening the ribbon; straining against the weight holding it down. Now it takes a few minutes before the ribbon is taut(-ish).

And, it's definitely lost its plumpness. It's kind of tired and sad looking, but still very pretty. I gave it a nice sticker for Easter.

Chris says the weight of all the stickers probably adds to its recovery time when it's disturbed. But I don't care. It likes the stickers.

And I love my balloon.

My balloon is now almost 9 weeks old. It's not as plump as it used to be, but it's still as shiny as ever, and it still floats just as high. It is a very spunky balloon.

I know I said below that I couldn't find a sticker for St. Patrick's Day for my balloon, but then I went to the doctor's office. The lady that took my blood pressure had rolls of stickers in her blood pressure-taking room, so when I screamed, "YOU HAVE ST. PADDY'S STICKERS!!!! OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET ME HAVE ONE??!!!!" she kindly let me take one from the roll.

Whew. Just in the nick of time.

I love my balloon

I sat in the snow for about 30 minutes getting these pictures (except the first one - Chris took it). It was fun. My bum is cold.

A special shout-out to my friend Rick who did some crazy voodoo to ensure a clear night.

I think my balloon might be starting to lose some of its pleasant plumpness.  However, it is still beautiful. I gave it a little heart for Valentine's Day.

I love my balloon.

Well, we did it. Unlike what they claim in that annoying commercial, chicken pot pie is not the most comforting pie. It really is macaroni and cheese pie (for the beginnings of this concept, click here).

So here is how you make macaroni and cheese pie:

1. Boil some salted water

2. Cook a random amount of macaroni (I picked a random amount because I really didn't know how much would fit in the pie shell - turns out, a random amount was too much)

3. If you're OCD about pre-preparation like I am, grate some (a.k.a. a random amount) cheese for the top of the pie while the macaroni is boiling - better yet, get Chris to do it

4. Make some cheese sauce

5. Put the right amount of macaroni into the cheese sauce (determined by taking the cooked macaroni and filling up the pie shell with it then putting the rest of the macaroni in the fridge for later) - then put the macaroni and cheese into the pie shell

6. Put the cheese that Chris grated for you on top of the pie - better yet, get Chris to do it

7. Bake the pie for a while, at the temperature they tell you to on the pie shell box (in other words, I don't really remember what I did)

8. Lesson learned - let the pie cool for a bit before cutting into it

9. Watch Chris nervously take his first bite

10. Watch the delight quickly spread over Chris' face

Now that, my friend, is Comfort Pie.

My balloon is now three weeks old. I was going to take another picture of it, but that would be silly, because it still looks exactly the same. For an idea of what my balloon looks like now, please see last week's post.

An update, however, is that Chris has stopped trying to steal it, although it often scares him first thing in the morning when he starts going down the stairs.

I went to a party two weeks and two days ago. (That was Thursday, January 17.) At the end of the party, I helped clean up, and ended up with a balloon. I took it home, because I like balloons, and this one was a shiny star. I like shiny stars.

I thought it would only last a couple of days - like the cherry blossoms in Japan, all the more beautiful because they are fleeting.

But my balloon turned out to be both beautiful and hardy. It still floats to this day. Chris was a little jealous and tried to steal it.

But the balloon thwarted his evil plan, and floated away from his grasp. It is a slippery balloon.

I love my balloon.

Friday was Robbie Burns Day for those of us who are Scottish and the rest of you who wish you were. So Saturday my non-Scottish friend (although I dare say his love of scotch makes him an honourary Scotsman) invited Chris and I for a night of festivities at the Air Force Officer's mess.

The thing about Scottish formal gatherings is that you have to eat haggis. Basically haggis is all the parts of a sheep that most sane people throw out. So to prepare us for this disgustingness, they prepped us mentally with an insane amount of scotch. That's the nice thing about being Scottish - you don't have to do anything disgusting unless you're drunk.

The haggis, as you hopefully can't really tell from this picture, is a sheep's stomach filled with ground up sheep's heart, liver and lungs, with a healthy dose of oatmeal to try to mask the disgustingness. It doesn't work.

Having been voted the "person with the most Scottish name" at our table (incidentally, I'm 25% Scottish and Chris is 50% so I call shenanigans on that one), I was selected to pierce open the stomach so that all could enjoy the mess of offal (pun intended) that awaited us.

Fortunately, there was more scotch to wash down the flavour. Here I am explaining to Chris that the particular scotch I'm drinking is 43% alcohol, according to the guy who was reading the tasting notes. All I know is that the fumes went right up my nose when I tried to drink it.

Fortunately, the Scottish know how to make one thing extremely well... shortbread! Drenched in ice cream and caramel sauce, the cookies (and scotch) soon made the haggis just a really bad memory. Much preferable to the really bad aftertaste it had been until that moment.

Robbie Burns must be so proud.