Today marked the final chapter in the story of my owning a bowling alley. We bought the lanes in February 2008, after the real-estate agent put the bug in my ear the previous Fall when we purchased the farm. Back then, the plan was that the bowling alley would be our prime business and source of income, supplemented by software work and ( Read more... )

The main plan for today was to trim PoohBear and Dirk's hooves; they have been in dire need of trimming for sometime now, but various things have continuously conspired against me to prevent the job from being done: Extreme Cold, Having my back go out, and others. Today however, the weather was warm(ish) and my back was feeling a lot better.

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It is 1:30am as I write this; Trixstir and I have just gotten home, fed the animals, and put the girls to bed. Why so late? We had another large, late-night crowd at the bowling alley again. I was about to head back to the farm (I was at the shop) when Trixstir contacted me and said that she needed help at the bowling alley. I'm not sure how many ( Read more... )

     I keep promising myself that I'm going to start updating this thing on a regular basis again, and it seems that I keep failing to do so.  I started this blog when we first moved out to the farm; Everything was so new and interesting that I had to record it all to be able to remember it later, and to be able to look back at how far we've come ( Read more... )

    I know I keep promising to update this thing more often, but it seems it's another one of those things that's easier said than done.  I have things I want to say, and/or make note of, but I keep putting it off.  The danger there of course, is that I can't always rely on my memory to keep track of everything.  Once I start writing, things often ( Read more... )

     Not any one person in particular, mind you...  Just the next person who pushes the wrong button.  That, they say, is one of the greatest causes of stress: When the brain must override the body's urge to kick (choke, beat, whallop, strangle...) the living **** out of someone who truly deserves it ( Read more... )

    And it's not over yet - It's merely late on Thursday night, there's still Friday to go.  Here's hoping it goes well ( Read more... )

     Ahhh, nothing like a brisk breeze to refresh!  Unless it's -24°c outside, and the wind is racing through at 80kmh! (50mph!) That's what it was like on Tuesday morning. I woke up around 6:30am to the sound of the wind howling outside, thinking to myself "That can't be good..." and dozed off again. Woke up again when the phone rang 45 minutes ( Read more... )

     Once again, things have been so busy that there just hasn't been a lot of time to update my journal.  One of the biggest problems is that the connection from the farmhouse is flakey at the best of times, and by the time I get home at "sometime after midnight" I'm really not in the mood to deal with that.  So my updates are often left until ( Read more... )

     Trixstir and I got home around 2:30am after the most successful night ever at Wildhorse Bowling!

How successful?  A profit in excess of $1200 for the night, thanks to a Christmas party by one of our large corporate customers.  The tally at the end of the night was just under $2k, then subtract the taxes we have to pay, and the cash we ( Read more... )