It was certainly a very busy long weekend up here: The back-pay from the gov't tax-refunds finally arrived, so that's letting us pay off some debts; I was insanely busy at the Iron Pony shop, and we spent the better part of Sunday and Monday getting the vegetable garden put in. We've been wanting a vegetable garden here ever since we came ( Read more... )

     Just about done here in Calgary for this trip; I got most of the final stuff I needed yesterday, but an overlong stay in Home Depot made me miss the last shop I needed to go to (B&E Electronics.)  I've been awake since 5am, and went out around 8am this morning to head over there and get the batteries I needed for Jack.  The ones I bought are a ( Read more... )

     May continues to be a good month so far: I'm getting more machines out, which means money coming in, and more machines and more customers continue to come in as well.  My GST rebate for Iron Pony came in the mail today, which was a relief on two fronts: 1) I have the money, and 2) the arrival of the cheque means that I'm not going to be ( Read more... )

     It's about 5:18am as I write this.  I've been awake for over an hour now; some other odd dream waking me up, and then unable to sleep again.  Between problems with the well (it's been nearly a week now!) and financial worries, I haven't had this much stress since the Nortel days.  Thankfully I went to bed a little earlier last night, but even ( Read more... )

     The Bank of Canada will be issuing new banknotes starting with the $100 bill in November of 2011.  The new notes will be made of polymer rather than cotton paper, and will feature a number of advanced security features making them extremely difficult to counterfeit.  Here's a blurb from the bank's YouTube account:

Click to view

     I was outside, mucking out the girls' paddock when a couple of vehicles pulled into the yard.  The first was a 1/2-ton pickup truck and trailer, and the second was a sedan.  Turned out to be Dave Taylor and his son (and a friend of the son, I think) come to take care of the tree growing next to the house.  Dave makes a living clearing trees ( Read more... )

     Yeef, what a week it's been!

My Mom has been visiting since the first of the month (hard to believe it's been more than a week already!) and has been an incredible help around the house and the shop, getting things organized and tidied up, as well as providing baby-sitting service so that trixstirand I could get more stuff done as well.  We (Mom ( Read more... )

     Well....  poot...  Gotta love Mondays.

When I arrived at the shop this morning, I noticed a letter slid under the door.  It was from Tim, the guy who had dropped off the cheque on Saturday for the door, asking me to please call him before cashing the cheque.  Fortunately, I hadn't done so yet, so I gave him a ring.  Turns out that he had ( Read more... )

     o/~ Take the money to the bank!  o/~

Way back last winter, Marcel (the guy I bought the shop from) and I salvaged the two overhead garage doors from the old carwash building he owned before the wrecking-ball levelled the place the next day.  I paid Marcel $1000 for the two doors, and had one of them installed here in the shop.  A few weeks ( Read more... )