Tequila and Zombies

Last year I took part in the zombie walk, down town Toronto. I'm not a zombie fan, actually the thought of zombie's is terrifying to me but I was also never a true believer. I just wanted to take part in the fun and spend some quality time with my girlfriends, even if it was spent blacking out each others teeth and making ourselves look as un-dead as possible.

My friend Rachel and I, happily undead


Yesterday my painfully over active imagination allowed visions of guests who had returned from the dead to cripple me with fear. Iqaluit experienced its first City wide power outage since we've been here. I was working the opening shift with Emily, who picked the most inopportune time to take a washroom break. Just after seven am, I was dipping a raspberry filled donut in vanilla fondant when the lights started to flicker and the alarms started to ring. The lights flicker and threaten to go out all the time but this time they actually did and I learned the hard way that the bakery's emergency lights are out of order. There are no windows in the production area, and even if there were, there is no sun at seven in the morning. I backed against a wall, donut in a one hand and pallet knife in the other. Generally when the power goes out there is some form of light somewhere near by but in the Tim's bakery in Iqaluit, you experience the kind of darkness that keeps you from seeing a millimetre in front of your face. Instantly I envisioned the commercial for the movie 'Devil.' It had been on television in recent months and there is a clip in an elevator where one character says to another, "don't let the light go out." The light goes out, and who should show up but the Devil. From that second I had decided to stay pressed against the wall until someone came to save me. A couple minutes later I heard Emily's quiet voice from out in the main store. She called my name. I said "Come save me!" and she wandered into the cubby hole with nothing but the light from her blackberry. I threw my donut, dropped my pallet knife and we huddled together and shuffled our way to the front doors where we met the few people who were already in the store.

It was incredible to look outside. Like civilization had barely touched Iqaluit. I imagined a simpler time. Then I imagined zombies.

Inside, the managers gathered flashlights. We thought we had a couple of hours worth of light from the emergency lights in the main store. Half of them surprised us and went out after twenty minutes, the other half followed soon after.

We were blind for almost an hour and a half. As exciting as it is to take a break from donuts. I never want to experience that again. Today I unpacked the little pink LED flashlight that I got for Christmas and I tied it to my apron, where it stayed all day. I will never again leave home without it. I held it at the ready as I walked to work this morning so that if the power went out and I was lost in the dark, I would be ready. Apparently this is a common occurrence during the winter here. I will be prepared.

I learned a word in Inuktitut that turned out to be two words depending on how you pronounce it. Its probably my favorite word because its so easy to remember. I have no idea how you spell it but it sounds like "Tequila." If you pronounce the 'k' sound on the end of Te, it means something along the lines of 'foggy day.' If you let the 'ah' on the end drag on, then it means "long." When I leave work I think to myself, "Tequila." It has always been a long, foggy day so regardless of how poor my pronunciation is, I get it right. Lately its been warming up. We were on the right track with the painfully cold weather and then yesterday mother nature decided to leave us with temperatures hovering around zero, which brought rain.

Today, I could care less about the cold, the fog or the wet. I am in a wonderful mood. Chats with people I love from home always leave an impossibly big smile on my face.

Thinking of you back home.

With love from Iqaluit