It is I, the recalcitrant blogger! Since I last wrote about birthday woes, I enjoyed another birthday party, where I got to be a zombie with a missing eye socket that was both highly disgusting and satisfying. Kate turned the airstream into a submarine, complete with huge Japanese-style art waves crashing against it, dry ice, flood-lights and aquarium backing on all the windows, making it seem like we were underwater while inside. Then a group of us went out Halloween clubbing, which somehow seemed like the perfect thing to do on one's 40th. We were quite the gruesome party!
Other snippets:
- our furniture arrived from our storage locker in Vancouver, so this winter we will have all our sports equipment, and I will have my baffling array of gore-tex based gear.
- Kate completely locked up the plumbing with her attempts to ensure our water tanks were all clean, and it took Diane's Ollie, aka "the pocket" to dismantle and muscle back together our bathroom pipes... and about a week with no functioning tap in there...
- the great vegetarian experiment is over for the time being. I allowed fish into the diet a couple of years ago, and that was a pretty healthy choice, but given the nonsense that's going on in our oceans, another option was required.
We took not less than 12 calendar months to debate this option, but this home now accepts free-range, organic chicken/turkey when it can be found. Having first broke my chicken fast about a week ago, I have suffered hugely messed up digestion ever since, and also realized to my surprise that chicken is really not that tasty. I preferred my fish-aterianism. Oh well, we are trying this.
- In Modevation land, we have gone from a dry spell over the summer and into the early fall to being perfectly awash in work. We were at a distribution warehouse yesterday shooting safety videos, we'll be several times to a retail chain for a big lot of training videos, and all the sales pitching Chris and I have been doing has resulted in more contracts, more relationships, and a suddenly too small staff. We just hired another editor, and we've had to contract out a fair bit of local shooting too. So I think we're fairly on our way now, and we are so totally pumped! I think my big takeaway from this process is- you have to take ownership of the sales process, at least early on in the business. Business won't just come to you, you can't just contract the sales process out before you've properly defined market strategy, collaterals and the sales process, and most importantly- it's going to take a lot of hustle. I learned that I really like that word...
- In Dallas news, our little girl took a hard fall one day, and we had to have xrays done. She didn't break anything, but all those xrays revealed a mass in her lung that they told us could be cancerous... I don't know why the default always seems to be to tell the owner that it might be cancer, but it has been our unhappy experience... After a couple of days with my head feeling like it was in a vacuum cleaner, we were told that it is *just* pneumonia, (probably, but maybe not), and Dallas is now on 2 sets of pain meds, plus antibiotics for the pneumonia, and more antibiotics for something going on in her eyes. We were soaked for something like $1300, all in, and we have to go back next week for more bloodwork, xrays and inspections. I think they will be naming their new wing after us for sure.
Dallas appears to be mending well thus far. Her mobility seems to have taken another turn for the worse, but she is still standing, and we hope that once her joints mend, she will get a little better again.
- So what else... OH YEAH- I finally got my iPhone!! Actually, Kate got it for me, as a sort of booby-prize for turning 40 perhaps. : ) What made it sweet was that I didn't have to deal with Rogers- all the delayed gratification has resulted in me keeping my same phone number, and getting to stay with Telus. So I am LOVING LOVING LOVING this thing. I feel like I'm in a new relationship, and I can't get enough of the other person, but in this case I'm in love with my iPhone. It is suitably ridiculous to match my concept of what a great present should be. This beats that awesme jack-knife any day.
So those are my latest bullet points, and all I can add for now is that we still have no plans for the two months we must be out of this park. I think we are lulled into inaction by the unseasonably warm November we are having. I've never seen anything like it- or at least I don't remember such. I know the shoe is going to drop one fine day, but I don't mind. It's strange that we're having a nicer November than we had Sept/October though... maybe it's those darn Americans messing with things way up North.
I'll leave you with that paranoid thought, and hopes that your November is shaping up as well as mine. And maybe a picture of our old girl at 14, enjoying the fall leaves...
