Travel Planning Well, our flight is booked, our hotels are booked, and we have both found formal clothes to wear to the wedding. Apparently I’m still required to wear a hat, so I do need to find one before we go. Not sure I like this idea, but its tradition, and who am I to buck British tradition? Considering I’ll be performing part of the ceremony, I suppose I should look presentable.

I’d post pictures of the dress I bought, but I think I’ll wait to show it to you til after the wedding. I do plan to be uploading pics during the week that we’re away, so you can all keep up with us. I just have to find the camera software so I can load it to James’ laptop before we leave.

On Tuesday this week, I went on my marathon shopping excursion to find “the perfect dress”, and I was out for 7 hours or so. Its prom season here so most of the “formals” are frilly frou frou things, and totally not my style, nor appropriate for a morning wedding. I ended up finding one at Dillard’s, its kind of silvery blue, a long tank dress, with a jacket that has beads on it. I even found a matching pair of shoes, just a slightly lighter shade of silvery blue. Now to find a hat…

James has quit his job at the local Domino’s so that he can start to arrange all the stuff he needs to before we take over the store in Wisconsin. He needs a business license, and he needs to incorporate and yadda yadda yadda. We think he may have to go up ahead of me for a while to find a house up there for us. I’ll stay here with the dogs for a bit.

He also needs to do some work on the house. I never did get anything done in the bedroom, after finding the holes in the walls under the paneling, I stopped. We’ll have to figure out what to do now to either fix or cover those. Plus there are a few other things that need to be done before the house will be sellable. I’m not even sure it would pass an inspection, and I’m seriously surprised it was allowed to be sold to my father-in-law. Bless his heart, he meant well to buy us this house, but it will likely cost us more to fix it up to sell it than we can afford. At least we’ll have the cash after we’ve sold it to use for a down payment on something up north.

I’ve kept my job at Domino’s for now, mostly because we don’t know when I’ll be able to follow James to Wisconsin, so I’ll need money to live on while he’s away. I worked my first full shift under the new GM, and already I’m terribly disappointed in the way he’s running things. He’s going to lose quite a lot of customers and very quickly, I can already tell that. He’s brought with him his own shift-runner, who makes rather sloppy pizzas, and who won’t let anyone else near the dough table. The sauce isn’t put on correctly, its too far from the edge, and there’s not enough cheese. Cutting costs, or rather, trying to cut costs, usually just looses customers. And the GM, in all his wisdom, rather than working as a manager as he should, works as a driver, thinking this will make him some extra money. Hmph! People in this town don’t tip much, he’ll be disappointed, and so will the fran be when he sees the labour costs. We had 6 people on shift last night, about 2 or 3 too many for a Wednesday. But, its not my call, so I just keep my mouth shut and do my job. I do think he’s trying to run me off tho, as soon as I walked in the door and clocked in last night, he asked me when I want to leave. Just to piss him off I stayed til 8:45 :-p ;-)

I dunno how I’ll do it, but I have to stick it out probably at least til the end of June. I’m trained to be a shift-runner and assistant manager, but he’s demoted me to CSR. Which is fine, my pay rate is still assistant manager, its not my fault he doesn’t want to use me in that capacity is it? My next cheque should be nice, last week I had 32 hours in, not bad for a part timer eh? I closed for James a couple of times because he was sick. Makes for long days, but the pay’s not bad. For around here anyway.

Gas prices are going up every day, and the delivery guys are complaining all the time. I remind them that the US has the cheapest gas prices in the western world, and if they don’t’ want to pay $60 for a take of gas, maybe they ought to buy a smaller car, rather than the urban assault vehicles most of them drive. (I need a rolling eyes git for my blog). Seriously, if your chosen profession is pizza delivery guy, perhaps the Jeep Grand Cherokee, or the Ford F-350 pickup isn’t such a good idea :-p

Ah well, wait til their gas prices go up over $5 a gallon and see what happens. Its been that way in the UK for several years, and in Canada for over a year now. If they whine about $2.50 or $3 a gallon here now…wow, I wouldn’t want to be a gas monkey that’s all I can say!

Ciao for now, gotta get ready for work!  ¶ 3:40 PM 1 Comments

  Porn. Is it really? One of the message boards that I frequent has a discussion going at the moment about porn and what it does to a relationship. I haven’t responded in the thread mainly because my views greatly differ from the majority, and its 25 bleedin’ pages long and I got bored reading it.

The “problem” was a woman who found out her husband looks at “porn” on the internet, even after she told him that it bothers her and she told him to stop. So now he hides it. Most likely because she said it bothers her. In all likelihood, he was unclear as to what exactly it is that bothers her, the “porn” or that He looks at it. Now she claims that she’s only bothered now that he lied to her and goes behind her back to look at it. She found a pop-up link on the computer to women in skimpy bikinis.

My own experience on the internet is that those dang pop-ups can come from freakin’ nowhere and then won’t go away until you clear out the worm attached to them, but I figured she probably wouldn’t believe me if I said that. One day I was surfing thru a Druid’s website of all places, and a banner ad opened up a porn site pop-up that had a worm on it. It crashed my PC, I was mad! Was I mad at the porn? No, I was mad at the intrusive pop-up with the worm on it that crashed my PC!

Y’see, my opinion regarding porn is a bit different than the masses I think. My father’s Playboy’s and Penthouse magazines were all over the house when I was a kid, they were not hidden in a box in the garage (tho there were several stacks of them out there!) they were right there, under the side table next to his chair in the living room. Anyone could readily see them, pick them up, read them, whatever. My sister’s and I were “reading the articles” at a fairly young age. And yes, we looked at the pictures.

I don’t think it bothered my Mum, otherwise its unlikely they’d be out in the open like that. My parents are both open about sexuality and nudity (tho Dad didn’t wander around nude often, being the only man in a house full of, at one time, 4 teenaged girls, was likely a tad uncomfortable, and as 2 of them were fostered, could likely have been construed as, at the very least, inappropriate). My parents were “hippies” in a sense that their teen years were in the height of the 60s and they spent quite a lot of time in Yorkville (Canada’s equivalent to US Height-Ashbury in San Francisco). My Mum lived there, Dad flopped there. Where ever there was room to flop apparently. Sex and drugs and rock-n-roll was the order of the day. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t dirty, it just was. At least, that’s my understanding of it.

I don't care if my spouse or boyfriend goes to watch strippers, heck take me along! I've been to strip clubs, and women behave much worse than men do in most cases. Its embarassing to see the women pawing at the poor guys, and yet if their significant other ever goes out, they go berserk.

To me, porn is not sex. Sex is not porn. Nudity is not sex, nor is it porn. Its all in the delivery. If you see a picture of a woman in a skimpy bikini in say Sports Illustrated, is it porn? No. If you see that same picture of the same woman in Hustler, or Playboy, is it porn? Not to me, but to some people, yes. To some people apparently, even in Sports Illustrated its porn. Any form of nudity is bad, dirty, porn. To me, its all in the delivery. Some photos in “porn” magazines are tasteless, but not because the subject is nude, its just the delivery. Just like some “dirty” jokes seem more dirty coming from some tellers than others. It’s the delivery. Some are crude and intend to harm, others just think its funny. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I feel, that as long as nudity has to be hidden, as long as people find it distasteful, or dirty and wrong, then it will be something that has to be hidden. It will be something that will make people feel uncomfortable and ashamed if they’re “caught” looking at pictures or reading a story or watching a movie or whatever.

Do I watch movies? No, I think they’re ridiculous and boring. I work in a pizza shop, none of the delivery guys have come back from a delivery saying they were propositioned by anybody, like you see in stupid porn movies. Tho a couple of times they’ve been surprised at the door by a big fat drunk naked guy. *snarf*

Do I look at pictures, sure, if they’re there. I don’t go out of my way to buy magazines or surf porn sites (remember the aforementioned worms :-p ) I don’t think nudity is bad, or dirty. I think there’s a time and place for everything. If you’re on a nudist beach, or in your own home, or sunning in your own backyard, sure. Tho you may want to put a robe on when you order pizza ;-) Personally, I don’t sunbathe nude. I don’t sunbathe, period. I’m getting older on my own as it is, I don’t need the sun to prematurely age my skin so that I look like that lady in “There’s Something About Mary” *shudder* My boobs sag enough, they don’t need to be wrinkled too!

I was at a beach in Toronto one day shortly after the law allowing women to go topless was passed. There was a couple of young teenaged girls flashing their boobs at anyone who cared to look in their general direction. Ok, they’re young, probably raised their entire life told to cover up at all times. Then there’s a LAW saying they don’t have to. Woo Hoo! But, IMO, they, and others like them (teen and adult alike) were just perpetuating the adage that women’s breasts should be covered. They were flashing people like they were doing something naughty. Other women were just taking off their tops, lying down and sunning themselves. No big deal. No one was gaping at them, they were gaping at the young ones making such a big deal about being nekkid in public. This is my point, in a round about way. As long as people make it a big deal, it will be a big deal.

Some people, because of the way we North Americans are raised, with “good Christian values” are told from birth that naked is bad. Sex is bad. We should only be naked when we bathe, and when we have sex. People of the opposite sex should never see you naked. People of the same sex who are not your mother or your doctor should never see you naked (I wonder sometimes at the women in public change rooms at the gym or pool who try to dress and undress as much inside their locker as possible! Do men do this?) There was a time when even during sex you shouldn’t be naked. How boring! And, I imagine, static-y! :-o

The Vatican at one time defaced and de-genitalized paintings and statues that showed naked subjects. There are very few remaining in their original form, with breasts or penises still attached, or showing in all their glory, not covered by a later added leaf.

I was told one time by my darling husband that we couldn’t even put a nude painting in our home for fear that anyone who would come to visit may be offended. I have some prints that I bought at the AGO when the Courtauld Collection was showing there. Hmph! I’ve seen and heard some even say that if “art” is nude, its porn. Double hmph! Some people have said that the statue of David is porn, because it has a penis. The Venus de Milo is porn because it has naked breasts.

Recently a man was denied his immigration application to Canada because when he was inspected by Canada customs upon entry, they found naked photos of his toddler son on his cell phone. They said he was importing “child pornography”. Really? Since when is having pictures of your naked baby “child porn”? Every parent on the planet is guilty of that then! Who doesn’t have the cute nekkid baby on the blanket picture, or the picture in the bathtub? If you have shown it to family, or given them a copy of it, you are guilty of trading child porn. Imagine that! Shame on you if you’ve posted it anywhere on the internet! Hmph.

I suppose we should be glad its not so bad anymore that we need to wear skirts down to the ground and collars up to our ears. We can thank the Flappers of the 1920s for that ;-) Or that we’re not living in a country where women are covered head to toe. Propriety is one thing, but that’s just a bit much.

If we were meant to wear clothes, we wouldn’t be born naked. Yes, clothes are a necessity in most climates, it doesn’t necessarily need to be mandatory. :-p

  ¶ 3:00 PM 4 Comments

  Springtime and the weather is HOT! The past couple of days its been well over 30C/86F already, and I think the guy on the news said this is record breaking temperatures for Easter weekend. I had planned to do some work in the garden but its been too stinkin’ ‘ot! Plus we haven’t had any rain for a couple of weeks (I think since the day before we left for Wisconsin) and the ground is too hard to break. Again. Same thing happened to me last Spring when I wanted to dig up the front garden. Oh well. Maybe the temps will go down next week and I can get started.

This is one thing I don’t particularly like about living here. Summer lasts too bleedin’ long. I don’t like Summer to begin with. In Toronto its too hot (try getting people here to believe that!) and its too humid. Here’s is a bit less humid, (also difficult to get people to believe) but its too hot for far longer. Like March to December. :-p We’ve already got the air conditioner in, and the dogs don’t like to go outside now. Unfortunately they have to go out when I go to work :-( but at least I only work evenings, so it’s a little bit cooler and shady.

Holiday weekends here are different than home. For one thing, most people don’t actually get a day off for holidays. Mostly only government and bank workers, everything else is still open. The pizza shop was totally dead last night, and not much better the night before. Tonight will probably be even worse. I don’t like being bored, there’s nowhere to sit down! ;-)

I found Jesus yesterday. He was pacing up and down the street. But then I lost him again. He must have gone to a different corner. I was on my way to K-Mart to try and find some shorts I can wear to work and there he was. Standing at the intersection, wearing a long tunic made from a bed sheet, with red paint splashed on the back and front, some sort of crown made of sticks, and red paint all down the front of his face. He was carrying a cross made from 2x4s. I saw his pick-up parked on the side of the road; the back window said “I ride with Jesus”. But if he *is* Jesus, who is driving?

James says this guy usually sets up on a corner in Lenoir (a town about 15 miles north of here), and he is a recovering crack addict. He (the Jesus guy) says Jesus came to him one night when he was all strung out, and Jesus told him to get off the crack. So he did (good for him) and then he hammered some wood together and made himself a bed sheet tunic and stands on street corners to freak out the masses. At least he’s off the crack.

We have a similar lady in Toronto, only she’s wearing a bed sheet toga, and she stands on a bridge over the Don Valley Parkway holding an Israeli flag, and one hand up with fingers in a Peace sign. We call her Lady Liberty, because she also has a crown on, kinda like the Statue of Liberty, only hers is made of aluminum foil. At one point she was ordered by the courts to stop doing that and take her meds (she’s schizophrenic or something) because it wreaks havoc with traffic. Sometimes she forgets her meds and goes back out there tho. No idea if she’s Jewish or what, sometimes the flag is something else. I think she uses the Israeli flag just because its white and blue and goes with her toga.

*shrug*

So here it is Easter and I have no chocolate bunny to eat. Oh well, I’m trying to loose some fat anyway. But then again…I saw a tabloid magazine cover yesterday that said “I lost weight by eating nothing but chocolate!” heheh, I want to try THAT diet! ;-)

Our trip to Scotland is just about all taken care of. Our flight is booked (Thursday 5th May, connect in Newark), hotel in Edinburgh is booked (7th to 12th) and a 3 day Edinburgh pass is purchased. The only thing left to do is find out from Chris which hotel he’s booked for us in Kelso, and then go shopping for fancy clothes. I hate clothes shopping down here. I’ve been reduced to tears so many times since I moved here its pathetic. I don’t like the “fashions” and can never figure out what freakin’ size I wear. Its different with every single design make I try on. Rather annoying really. :-p Plus James needs to get a suit. And I’m trying to decide should I get 3 outfits, one for rehearsal night, one for wedding ceremony and early reception, then another for supper reception? The ceremony is at 11am, then followed by a lunch/brunch reception, then another reception in the evening for supper. Or should I just get a shawl or jacket for evening? Decisions decisions…My main concern being of course traveling with formal clothes that may need to be ironed after sitting in suitcase for a day. I hate ironing.

Ah well…I know this is a few days late, but here’s my tulips. I actually took the pictures a few days ago, so now the tulips are dying and look nothing like these pics.







  ¶ 1:39 PM 0 Comments

  Wisconsin is very far away! And a really long drive! We left at about 2pm Monday the 3rd, and arrived in Rice Lake at around 9pm Tuesday 4th. We stopped half way in Lebanon, Indiana. The only hotel at the half way mark that allowed big dogs was the Comfort Inn, Lebanon. I left behind my bottle of Watkins Vanilla shampoo and Aloe & Green Tea body wash, so some housekeeper is smelling nice now >:-| Yanno, the Comfort Inn I worked for required their housekeepers to turn in *anything* left behind by guests, whether or not they figured they were ever coming back. They usually call for it once they realize they’ve forgotten it! It should be hotel policy worldwide to keep things in a lost and found for at least a month after departure!

Anyhoo…rant off.

From Lebanon we drove to Rice Lake, which is in the north western portion of Wisconsin, and 1083 miles (or so) from here. We stayed at the Super 8 there, the only hotel in town that allows dogs. George and Bruno behaved surprisingly well, and didn’t terrorize any other guests. Though they did give a quick bark 2 mornings when someone was going out at 4am! Our room was on the end, right next to the exit, so there was quite a bit of traffic. They got used to it after a couple of days tho thankfully. But boy were they just bored all week! The poor things didn’t get much chance to play we were in the car all the time. :-(

On Wednesday we spent some time driving around town, checking in at the Chamber of Commerce, the local Police Station and the local newspaper company. I walked the dogs along the lakeshore while James and the Franchise Regional Manager went into City Hall. It’s a very pretty little lake, and it was still frozen. The dogs went in a bit, but I guess the water was too cold, even for them. They were very confused by the skill of the ducks to walk on water tho! ;-)

After we ditched the FRM, we walked around town some more, just to check out some of the shops down Main Street and to exercise the dogs a bit. We stopped into Dairy Queen (there’s one in every town in the Midwest it seems!) and some of the folks inside just had to come out to see the dogs. They’re very popular and love the attention.

The entire following day was spent in the car driving around north western Wisconsin and portions of Minnesota, checking out other Domino’s franchises that are also for sale. The FRM at breakfast promised a 6 hour day, which turned into 12 freakin’ hours in the car! >:-| The dogs were exhausted and wondering why we were torturing them, and James and I were not much pleased with the FRM either. That’s just too much and very hard on the buttocks after a 1000+ mile drive up there in the first place. But he wanted us to see other options, because Rice Lake isn’t doing all that well, and no one is convinced that it can be turned around. Apparently it hasn’t done well in about a dozen years. Previous frans tho have been caught dealing drugs, and subsequent frans have all been “hands off”, and in small towns that doesn’t always work.

A couple of the other available franchises are in suburbs of the Twin Cities, and are fast growing into large-ish cities themselves. We were impressed with the new shininess of the stores themselves, and they’d be pretty much turn-key making us money as soon as we walk in the door (assuming the entire team doesn’t quit that is). But I don’t think James would be happy in those towns, he doesn’t like “big cities”, and would be miserable. Rice Lake has a little of the “best of both worlds”, and is only 2 hours away from Minneapolis/St. Paul. I can survive in a Small Town, better I think than James would survive in a Big City.

We just need a business model that would turn around the store in Rice Lake. Or we may lose our shirts. And more.

On Friday we looked around for houses that are for sale, spent some time with a local agent and then drove around on our own. There’s one 5 acre hobby farm with a pond that would be good for the dogs, but its kind of isolated, 6 miles outside of town, with the nearest neighbour barely within shouting distance. Which is both good and bad IMO. Other homes we looked at either didn’t have a big enough yard or were just too darn close to an active gravel pit for our liking. We’ll have to keep looking. We may end up living at the KOA for a few weeks until we can find a house. I don’t think the Super 8 will suffice for more than a few days. The dogs need better in/out access. *sigh*

There was still some snow on the ground after their last storm a couple of weeks ago. Just the piles where the plows had put it at the edge of parking lots and whatnot. The dogs weren’t quite sure what to think of it, they’ve only seen at most about an inch of snow at a time, and we never get enough here to pile it anywhere. They’ll enjoy next winter, that’s for sure! And I may be able to talk James into getting a snowmobile for us to have some fun too. :-)

This is all assuming of course that he doesn’t change his mind again and we don’t end up in the ‘burbs of Minneapolis, or somewhere else entirely. Me, I don’t much care really, as long as I get a decent kitchen with a dishwasher, and a sizeable yard for the dogs.

Speaking of dogs, we were grocery shopping yesterday and the dog catcher told us there’s a 2 y/o male Saint at the shelter. If our house was just | | that much bigger! But alas, even just one more may collapse this floor, so we did not go to see him. I hope he finds a good home with a nice family who treat him well, with good food and a shady place to lay down.

Here are some pictures of our trip. I didn’t take many really as it was more work than pleasure.

Bruno, admiring himself in a mirror in Lebanon


George, asleep in the back of the car, somewhere in Indiana. I think.


Strange rock formations in Wisconsin. Somewhere near Madison. I think.


Blackbear, the Dashboard Pirate


Bruno, getting ready to say Hello to tollbooth operator, somewhere in Illinois


Somewhere in Kentucky


Self portrait


Getting bored, just trying to stay awake


This is actually pretty good, if I do say so myself!


And another


These were all taken with my HP M415 5.2 mp digi cam, in a moving vehicle (except the Bruno in the mirror one). There was a point somewhere in Kentucky that I wanted to get a shot in the review while I was driving. But my camera was in my bag at James’ feet and he was asleep so I didn’t bother.

Now why is it that I’m not allowed to sleep while he’s driving, but first thing he does when he asks me to drive is fall asleep? :-p Rotton Dark Lord! Hmph!  ¶ 12:00 PM 7 Comments

  Crashing Thunder Wow, we had some pretty good thunder boomers here last night and early this morning. The first one was around 10:30 pm, the next one at 3:30am and then another at around 6:15am.

The last one at 6:15 was right over the house, and the windows were rattling, and the thunder was so loud and constant that I couldn't even hear the fan going, not 5 feet away from my head!

Bruno got scared so first he just stuck his nose in my face like "Mummy, I'm scared". Then I sat up and patted the bed near my feet and he climbed up, then put his head in my lap, trying his best to be a lap dog. Every time the thunder crashed, he'd look up at me, and in the dark I couldn't see his face, but I kinda got the feeling he was saying "Mum, I'm glad you're here, I don't like that noise!"

Normally thunder storms scare the bejeebers out of me, but since we've got the dogs I am so busy calming them, that I don't have time to be scared myself.

We really need a bigger bed, poor George was on the floor scared and alone. She just shouldda got to me earlier I guess ;-)

The storm soon passed, and Bruno went back to sleeping on the floor. Right next to big sister George, to protect her of course. :-)  ¶ 10:24 AM 0 Comments

  I'm an idiot! The other day I went and bought one of those car top cargo carriers at Sears, and had them install it. When I was driving home, James called to remind me not to drive into the carport, because it wasn’t tall enough with the carrier. Which I already knew of course, he just felt it necessary to remind me.

He should have reminded me the following night, when I was going home from work. ‘Cuz what did I do when I got home? Forgot the carrier was on top, drove right underneath the carport, and crunch….crash….grind…What the he….Ooooh! heh heh. I got out and looked up, figured there’s no way I’m gonna get out of that without help, so just went into the house to watch TV and wait for James to get home.

He walked in a few hours later, cocked his head sideways like the dogs do when they’re confused or hear a squeaky noise, and he said “what did you do?” I said “I forgot…”

The next morning we went out to see in the light of day what the damage was. Not too bad considering. Check this out…



and


James had to remove a few screws and hold the top of the carport up so that I could back out without ripping anything to shreds. I wonder how many of the neighbours were watching and laughing? *snarf* I’m such an idiot. It really was funny though!

Once I was out, James got the lids to the garbage bins and put them on the driveway under the carport, with a big stick over them so that I couldn’t drive under there anymore. We had a good laugh about it at work later that day. :-)

And no, the idiocy does not stop there! No siree!

On Friday I took the dogs to the groomers in Hickory about half an hour away from home, and because it takes 4 hours to finish with that, and I didn’t want to waste gas driving back and forth a couple more times, I figured I’d just wander around and pick up a few things that we need for our trip up to Wisconsin this week.

First stop Sam’s Club. I do think Wall Mart is evil, but Sam’s Club has the cheapest packages of Pig Ears treats for the dogs. 25 ears for only $9.99, and everywhere else is like $11 for 10 ears. Even if they are evil, that price is difficult to pass up!

Next stop was IHOP. I wanted to try their Cinna-Stax. Very tasty, a bit on the sweet side tho. And doesn’t look nearly as pretty as on the TV ads. I had my fill there, and headed to the mall, because it was still 2+ hours til I could pick up the dogs.

Somehow, a few things managed to fall out of my wallet while I was walking thru Belk’s in the mall. Nothing incredibly important, just my Air Canada points card, AT&T calling card, and a few other odds and sods. One card in the mix was the business card of my accountant who is now doing our taxes. That was the only identifying phone number in the bunch, so Belk’s security called him, he called me, got my voice mail, called James, who then called me. I went back to Belk’s and got my cards, all neatly bundled in an elastic band.

I then promptly lost them again in Hallmark! But I didn’t know this until hours later when I was on my way home with the dogs, and already late for work. The lady at Hallmark called me to say they were there, and I said I’d have to go get them the next day because I had to get to work. She had my phone number because I have one of their frequent buyer cards.

The lesson in this of course is to either always carry your wallet in a purse or in your pocket. I had neither on that day, and stuff was just falling out all over the place!

I have been on the prowl for “the perfect purse” for about 15 years now. It apparently does not exist. The fashionable purses these days are either throwbacks to the 80’s, or are just too small to carry much more than a cucumber and a tube of lipstick. I have no need for either of those things really, so the search continues. *sigh*

Well, we’re heading up to Wisconsin tomorrow. We’re driving of course, and taking the dogs along with us. This should be fun….ummm….yeah….my ass is screaming in pain already!

Its over 1000 miles from here to there so we’ll be making a stop at the halfway mark in Lebanon, Indiana. Its difficult to find hotels that allow large dogs, most have size restrictions of maximum 50 pounds. Ours are a bit bigger than that. ;-) And there aren’t any campgrounds open yet, its still a bit early in the season above the Mason/Dixon. Its already over 80F here and humid. When I was making our reservations at the hotel in Rice Lake, WI I asked “what’s the weather like up there?” The lady said “oh, its nice, its about 49F today!” The dogs will enjoy the cooler temperatures I’m sure, unless James cranks the heat up in the hotel room like he does here at home and at work! Then I think the dogs and I will just sleep out in the truck. :-p

We plan to “spy” on the store up there for a couple of days before we make ourselves known as the prospective new owners. Apparently the store is losing quite a bit of money, and we want to find out why. It could be crummy service, bad reputation from the previous owner (who was caught dealing drugs there apparently), or it may be that the locals just don’t care for Domino’s for whatever reason. We want to find out before we invest too much time and money and move all the way up there.

If we do decide its worth a shot, we’ll also be looking at real estate listings probably. We will still need to do some more fixing up of this house before we can sell it, but its not likely we’ll be able to rent a house up there, not with our 2 beasties, so we’ll need to buy. Hopefully something with a bit of land for the dogs to play, if its already fenced, even better!

Our trip to Scotland is also taking shape now. Hopefully moving won’t interfere with that too much. We can’t back out now, Chris & Alison have asked me to do the hand binding ceremony. Chris says its my fault that they met, so I might as well. ;-)

Good grief its hot in here…we’re going to have to put the a/c box in the window soon! Ugh.

Catch ya later! Probably when we get back from Wisconsin.  ¶ 5:52 PM 2 Comments