Our first egg

We got our first egg ever from the chickens. We aren't sure which of the chickens it came from, because they abandoned it and it was frozen solid. I boiled it and ate it rite away, it was a small egg, and a bit rubbery, but it had a nice dark yoke. In the picture is their dog house converted to two story chicken house, and the rooster perching on the flat deck trailer spair tire. The silkies are all hiding out under the trailer trying to scratch in the grass that is still exposed.

New car

I went to Chevy looking for an Astro van, for my electrical business. To my horror they discontinued the Astro van in 2004, and now the only thing available is the full size 6 liter and up gas guzzling pigs. They tried to sell me their pannel car, which is their version of the small tradesman van these days. I snubbed that idea, I don't need to drive PT Cruiser type thing to jobs. Then I found Cargovanscanada.com, and found lots of Astro vans available but I figured out the gas milage is hardly better than my 19' dodge half ton. Why bother, I figure no big deal if I am making $400ish for the day working, whats $60-$80 for gas for the day. Then I saw an add for those chevies in the paper and they were bosting 40mpg, with a monthly payment of $300 a month. As you can imagine, working in town for 5 days would make that car payment in gas payments for the big truck. And I have come to realize that I don't need the big truck for my electrical business, with some creative space use I could get by with a much smaller car. We go to Toronto for July and August, for Michelle's time off, and Mexico for Septemberish to Decemberish, for some more Spanish lessons. If a real estate agent can't sell our house in those 6 months, we will return, and I will most definitely buy one of these new cars for my business. But if we sell and move to a city, there would be no cost savings in buying a new car, and I would probably buy a discontinued Astro van. The other option is one of those litle japanese trucks, their payload is only 800lb, but I think they get better milage than the Chevy HHR. I already checked into those, but they have a top speed of 90km/h, and the highways to town are 110km/hour

Dreamy images

Michelle's previous post refers to babypips.com which I recommend to anybody that wants to start trading currencies. I paid a lot more for the education they provide for free. My forex blog has not gotten any attention in the past month. Once it has more of a purpose and I have my forex club more together I will post a link to it.
Michelle's picture of Andrew painted quite a dreamy picture. I almost left the house, to walk to main street to see the blue sky's. But this is a view as soon as I step out the back door, everything is covered in snow and whore frost, and its -25ish. This is really the neighbors yard, but he dissapeared rite after he bought the lot. He told me I can drive through his lot, and I have taken full advantage of that, with a sled track around his lot rite now, it might as well be our property, but we didn't have to pay the $30,000 that it recenty sold for.
The chickens are doing well in their insulated dog house that Cosmo snubbed. We know their water has frozen over when they come out of thier house in the cold and eat the snow, wile they stand on one foot, and alternate cold feet on the ground. Everybody finds a way to survive the cold.
House is going up on the market in June, we should stand a good chance of selling it, because it is the bottom end of the market. I have been buying and selling stuff on Kijiji, and it seems like everybody is leaving Alberta. But nobody has anywhere better to go to, they are just moving back into moms basement in Saskatchewan, or Manitoba, or what ever, but they are all renters as far as I can tell. Not to say home owners aren't leaving too, because there is a glut of stagnant homes on the market rite now. Hopefully the weather cooperates at some point before June so I can paint the barn and clean up the yard.
I have been messing about with live web cam feeds, I have a cam on my note book which has a 'URL' which can be seen by anybody with that URL, as far as I understand. But I am having trouble setting up the 'kitchen cam' on the Tower computer. The whole purpose of learning this software was for the kitchen cam, because we have this ungrateful 18 year old staying with us, and we told him he can't have any friends over, but yet he keeps trying to figure out when we are both going to be out and repeatedly asking Michelle, then me if he can have someone over. Our house is just about too small for 2 people, don't ask me how we ended up with 3 living here. He is as sneaky as a dump truck, you know he is going to have someone over, and he will open the curtain to the driveway window, so he can watch us pull in, and push his friend out the window or what ever. It would just be fun to go to the bar, and watch with all his friends at the bar on my lap top as he has someone over. Then we can sneak home, park on the street, and bust him, all on live web cam, I just think it is pure comedy.

Pip'in Aint Easy, Thats Why I Have a Day Job

So if you follow our Blog at all, you will have noticed that everything seems to be "Drama" for Malcolm.
And yet i am presumed to be the "Drama Queen" in our house. Go figure.
And re: the title of my little rant today.........
Well i was on one of Malcolm's websites, more of a 4-ex online support group / bitch fest really, and one of the user names that a member had was
"Pip'in Aint Easy"
And i love it.
But that having been said, it is also true.
I have tried to understand better what it is that Malcolm does and wow it really is hard.
Or at least stressful.
So this is the new hair.
I needed change, again. and i like it dark in the winter.
not sure yet, but i may go for some high lights in the spring.

Hey lance!..........what do you think?
Anil? Feed Back?

Leading right into the rest..........My day job,
For those who dont know, I started working for The Elk Island School Board as a Substitute Educational Assistant ( Teachers Aid ).
I work mostly w/ kids who have behavioral and or cognitive issues.
And i started school w/ Athabasca University in the BScHS program and have started my first class, Bio.
I love it.
But also I took on a Pub Job.
Bartending at the local. Its fun and the tips are good
Tips are always good. :)
So i am ridiculously busy, but that is what is keeping me going.
That and knowing that Malcolm and I are Coming Home (Toronto) for the whole summer.
LOOK OUT TORONTO..............THIS TIME I HAVE A CAR TOO.
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !



If you have ever wondered what Andrew Alberta looks like.....
TaDa!
This is it.
No really...... this is it.
This is Main Street. In the summer of course.
In the winter there are Skidoo's Parked on the road too.

They roll up the sidewalks at about 8pm every night.





This is our Tourist Attraction
---------------------------------->

A Great Big DUCK
People come from all over...............................
............................................................................
..........................Saskatchewan
To see our Big Duck.




Did I mention I was coming home?

ttfn.
m.

office drama

This is a picture of the heated flooring I just put in my office. What a lot of work this office is to build, it didn't seem like a big deal at first, frame the walls in an extra 4", add some insulation, and prove to myself that I can drywall, since I am teaching 8 people to drywall in May. Well then came the window, and a frame around that, had to get spray foam for the window edges. The extra window frame made me short on 2x4s so I had to get more. Then wiring, and insulation. I added a vapor barrier, and I couldn't find the stapler to staple that up.
I got some left over pot lights from the job I was on so I had to cut those in and wire them up, it is a huge deal to crawl up into the attic to get the lights in.
I thought it would be a good idea to make the attic extra thick insulation, and you can buy bails of the blow in stuff. Thought that would be a great idea, I could open that compressed bail of fluffies up in the attic, watch it all poof out and rake it in level. According to the bails I got enough to make the insulation 18" thick in that room. Well I pack them up there, crawling through the rest of the barn attic to get to the back room I made, dragging these bails one by one, I got 4 of them. I even crawled back out to grab the rake and drag it back there. I slice the first bag of insulation open and it didn't expand at all. I had just installed some 15 bags of pink insulation, and it expands to 3 or 4 times its size with the first strike of the knife. I tried clawing some of this 'blow in' insulation off the brick, and it did not want to come off. I fantasized for a moment about having a big industrial chipper aimed into the attic, that I could just drop bails into, and then I clawed the 4 bails apart, with cold fingers. It took hours, and made a tremendous amount of dust. In the end my 18" only worked out to be 8", because it wasn't fluffed out. Next time I will definitely rent the machine for 'blowing in' the insulation.
I was ready to board the warm room at that point, with a thermostat controlling a small 120v heater, I was in a controlled environment. I forgot about one receptacle, and made a big bubble in the drywall that was later easily patched up with the mud. After it was boarded I put all the light switches and plugs in so I could work in there without trouble lights at night. I taped the seems, mudded, sanded, muded, sanded, and mudded one more time with a final sanding. Primed the walls, and had an argument with Michelle over what color I should paint the walls. I wanted it to be like an electric blue, but that didn't go with my furniture, and I had 5 gallons of this grey from the bar foreclosure. She said grey was wrong and I should do it a green tope type color. I said no way. I opened the bucket of paint, dumped it in the roller tray and rolled it on and had a moment of disbelief when my walls were a green tope color. Then I remembered I had a half dozen 1/4 full gallons of neutral colors that I had dumped into this grey, because 1/4 gallons are good for nothing and dry up in no time. I figured grey was a powerful color and it wouldn't change much. Well it was a brilliant color, I couldn't be more happy with it, but it doesn't photograph well.
Wile I was in town I checked out my heating options, and I really wanted a small mat for under my desk, cause my feet frequently get cold, probably my boots soaking up water, and cold steel toes. I ended up leaving there with the biggest 120v heated floor cable, 500 watts and 100' long. I precisely cut sheets of OSB to fit this 100' cable in the 1" gaps through the floor, only to find that it is actually longer than that, because there is apx 4' of cold cable on each end. so I had to add a litle section of pathway for the extra cable. Once it was stapled down the second time, I grouted it in with tile grout, which I had never used before, and don't like very much. I had 25kg of grout and I ran out with about 16' of heated wire left to grout. So I called it a night and now this morning the local hardware store is closed for some reason, so I am going to wait for Ron to come home and bum bout 10kg of grout off him, and finnish that job so that I can put underlay down, and laminate flooring. Then I still need to wire internet out there, and do all the trim. The door will have to come off and be cut down now since the floor was raised 3/8 of an inch with the heat. I have to make some shelving for all the latex paint and cordless drills, and anything else that we don't want in our house, and doesn't like being frozen. Hopefully I can get the flooring down and the desk back in for tonight.