Bye bye bike, for now

This and the next two posts are backwards, chronologically, but we can handle it right? I'm doing my best here. And this makes me caught up, for a while.

Please excuse the lousy paragraph breaks ... I'm still trying to figure out how to insert them just where I want, Blogger doesn't seem to see a hard return the same way I do.

I just had to note that this season I put my bike away for the winter on December 15th: latest ever. I miss the days when I had underground parking where I lived. I fantasize a lot about garages now. This year my F650 is spending the "winter" at my friend and former co-worker Marty's place, specifically in his garage. Marty is a surfer. Last year he & his wife bought a house in a fantastic location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, not too far from Halifax.

On December 15th, fearing the winter and snow might actually arrive soon, I rode my bike out to their place. It was a moderately cool, overcast day ... heated handgrips on, no need for the electric vest. Nice scenic drive. Crossing the McKay Bridge from Halifax to Dartmouth, I saw a submarine toiling across the Bedford Basin, going past BIO in toward Magazine Hill. That was kind of a cool little treat, because how often do ya get to see an actual submarine that's not in the news or up in drydock being worked on (the latter is common actually in Halifax). Anyway it was kinda cool.

This is where the bike will spend the winter - note garage on left, ocean in background.

This weekend it's supposed to top ten degrees, so I'm sort of wishing I still had the bike, but it's better for it to be away.

And it has company - surfboards. They can reminisce about the good times back in the summer. (and fall. And winter. Actually Marty surfs in the winter so I hope the bike won't feel too bad if the boards get out a lot.)

Christmas happened

This year there were children in my home on Christmas morning for the first time since I was a child myself. My boyfriend Bill and his two daughters were at my place and the girls were awake from 04:30. They woke us up at 06:30. A few hours later I understood why their family has Christmas dinner at lunchtime. (We had a lovely Christmas dinner made by Bill's Mum at her home in Dartmouth.) Because when you get up at 6:30 a.m., especially after staying up late the night before, noon feels like suppertime.

So I had to have a Christmas tree. I think it's the first one I've had in my own home, not counting the decorated potted Norfolk pine I had one year in grad school

Bill and I bought a fake tree from Canadian Tire, that fabulous emporium of efficient shopping. It has a kind of Charlie Brown quality we liked ... and built-in lights. Here is it is all decorated up.

I bought a fancy store-bought cat toy for the cats for Christmas. Guess what? They weren't that interested in it. Here's what they liked better:

The classic Giant Paper Bag.

And in case anyone thinks Ruby is not intelligent, just because they've met her, here she demonstrates her talent for jigsaw puzzles as she helps Megan with her Cristmas present. Can your pet do puzzles?

Happy 2007

Well, what use is a blog if I never post to it? Today is my day 'off' - off from The Loop, that is. I should be working on action planning consulting work, but instead I have been catching up on e-mails to friends, and other things that have used up most of the day. (Action planning looks more action-filled if I put it in italics.)

Our second Christmas / holiday season as part of the small retail business universe has come and gone. It was busier than the first one, but less stressful because we had a better sense of what to expect. Last year, we had just opened a few weeks before xmas, and felt like we barely knew what we were doing. We felt like we were "playing store". It still feels like that sometimes, but that's mostly a good thing.

The newspaper article I menioned in the last post was published this week: here is the link. And the photo the Herald photographer took.

The Loop in the news

And next week, on the 15th, we (well Mimi) will be on TV. CBC is starting a new regional 'lifestyle' TV show called Eastern Living, afternoons (1:00 maybe, I forget) and we are on the inaugural episode. If you listen to CBC radio in the Maritimes, you will recognize the name and voice of Heidi Petracek. She is the host, and Mimi taught her how to knit. It's pretty exciting because it means that, presumably, what we are doing is interesting to some people. And that kind of publicity really has legs ... based on a CBC radio interview from when we first opened, we'll keep hearing about this from new customers for a long time.

That's enough for the moment. I'll probably think of something else to post in a few minutes.