August Long

Joka and Mavis closed the shop due to the August 1st Long Weekend. For us this was the sign to have our new trailer, 22 ft K-Z Sportsmen, on her maiden voyage, the weather looked to be good. We set sail, so to speak, to Miquelon Lake which is a whopping 25 minutes drive east of Rolly View.
Apart from a overnight thunderstorm everything was ok and nicely sunny. As you can see on on of the album pictures I tried to make baked potatoes, but failed miserably.

Zeus The Zebra Dog

Isn't this cool!! A dog, Zeus (one of Mavis' her dogs), painted like a Zebra. This a feature Hollywoof Grooming Parlor also offers: Creative Grooming. Zeus is an American Eskimo who got accidentally shaven by a incapable groomer a couple of years ago. She decided to do something funny and got great response when walking him. Zeus is also know as Zeubra. He roams the Hollywoof Parlor every day and could well generate business, as the customers respond enthusiastic. To have your dog painted like this is yet another step but might well be very successful in the future as any design can be considered depending on the breed.

First 2011 breakfast outside.

At last we had a breakfast outside this morning. Rain, wind and above all mosquitoes kept us from sitting outside. Just this morning there was enough wind to keep the buggers away from our deck, so we grabbed the opportunity. Bottom left you see Riley, an American Eskimo, we saved from the shelter where his previous owner would have taken him; just because the breed is somewhat hard to handle. Joka could not stand that, hence Riley got a new home. Chances are we end up with a couple more, time will tell. At least he is adapting real nice now he knows he has a caring home and Fox needed a matey to play with and above all to boss around. And believe me he does; especially when food of whatever kind or size is involved he accepts nothing from Riley. Even an empty plastic (environment friendly :-) ) bag, when we unpack groceries, Riley is not allowed to come close to.
In case you are wondering about the grass; the JD STX38 lawnmower broke down, I ordered a new JD 1023 but I'm still waiting like in 2 weeks. Needless to say I'm starting to get pissed off. I ordered a JD for a reason: it's locally (reed North America) manufactured, given the current economic situation this is not more than logical to me. But if they don't deliver? Go to the .......?

Vancouver Riots, interesting read.

Following is a letter of apology from Tim Kwong, a rioter, who turned himself in to the Police. Following this is an awesome response from a nurse working the E.R. at St. Paul’s:

A Letter of Apology to Vancouver and Family and Friends

Hey Everyone ! The status is : I Turned myself in to the VPD today at 12pm I am now being charged on 4 counts. I am Truly Sorry for what i have done !!! I have no excuse for my actions during the Riot. To my Friends, Family, Coworkers, and of course all of Vancouver and BC i am SORRY for what i have done. I would like to say on my behalf that I LOVE VANCOUVER ! I’ve been Born n Raised here all my life !! and that This Town means everything to me !!! again i understand that my actions caused did not show any of that ! But i hope you one day see that i do care about this town and my friends n family and this is NOT like me !! I am ashamed at what i have done, I know i may never gain the respect of this town again. But I PROMISE that i will do whatever i can to make this up !! I am a big believer in Cleaning up your mess !! I WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to make things right ! I hope this will incite some of the other rioters to do the right thing and turn themselves in !!!! I will do whatever it takes to help out and clean this town up and do what i can to prevent actions like this from ever happening in our town again. I know I deserve all the hate ! but please be respectful and don’t hate on any of my friends or family or co workers since these actions are only caused by ME and ME only !!!! Again SORRY VANCOUVER ! SORRY BC !!

 The below letter by Nurse J.J. was in response to Tim Kwong’s apology:

Tim,

Just because you can string an apologetic sentence together does not mean you are sorry. Perhaps I should make you aware of the consequences of your action. To you, it’s just an overturned car that you set on fire. To me, it’s walking into an overflowing ER and helping treat a girl with a severe asthma attack because she was exposed to the noxious, acrid smoke of a burning vehicle. To her, it was just a chance to be a part of a group cheering for her team. Little did she know that later on, we were thinking of sticking a breathing tube down her throat if her condition did not improve.

To you (yes, I am lumping you with all the douche bag rioters in the ER that night) it’s a chance to congregate in the ER waiting room, pounding on the triage window demanding to be seen for teargas exposure and cuts from looting and fighting, while posturing and bragging about how you kicked the crap out of somebody and smashed shit up. To me, it’s taking my time away from the little old quiet lady having chest pain or taking time away from the person you “shit-kicked” for trying to stop the looting.

To you, it’s just a fight. To me, it’s the ER social worker looking for a teddy bear to console a 4 year old girl because she just witnessed her dad get a broken nose as he was trying to get his daughter out of the hot zone.

To you, it’s writing a letter saying “you will do whatever it takes to help clean the city.” To me, it’s walking home after a long shift and seeing all these people at 7:30 in the morning armed with garbage bags cleaning up YOUR mess and realizing that these people have more class in their pinky finger than you could ever muster in your whole life.

  To me, it’s getting home to shower, only to have my elderly neighbor knock on my door and ask me if he should make an appointment with his doctor because he was experiencing shortness of breath which later turned to chest pain in the morning. He did not think about leaving his window open as he went to bed at 9 o’clock. The smoke from all the burning cars made it to our building, into his room and triggered his asthma, which then raised his heart rate, which then became a small heart attack.

   I asked him why he didn’t go to the ER, and he answered, “I turned on the tv this morning and saw the rioting, I did not want to be a burden.” To you, it’s just an overturned car that you set on fire.

  Why am I blaming you for all this?  Because you are the instigator. You ask people to leave your family, friends and co-workers alone?!  I think they need to know how much of a colossal douche you are. Remember that your parents worked themselves to the bone so they can move to this country and give you your god-given right to flip cars over and set them on fire.

You, Tim Kwong, are a Douchtard.  Apology not accepted.

Alberta job market goes from recovery to growth

‘It has taken quite some time, but employment in Alberta has finally returned to its pre-recession glory’At least that's what the Edmonton Journal says, read here. It kind of makes sense with the rumors I hear, but does not, yet, translates to big projects floating in. The big engineering firms in Calgary are loading up engineers by the hundreds. Last week I talked to one; they all got a 10% pay-raise but a lot of them still do the walk-about, to the competition, for a couple of $$ more. So if they are busy; we should be getting busy also, right? We will see what happens.
Basically I am a happy camper, if I look at Europe I do not see it coming back online any time soon; as I had expected Italy is next, add Portugal and Greece to the equation and you see what I mean. So our decision to go in 2008 was and is a good one. Cheers.

Off they go

Off They Go.......

Collection Gone

Today I reduced our so called collection by 2 vehicles. We were fed up with them and someone at Trailblazer RV advised me to put them on www.kijiji.ca (sort of marktplaats.nl) for not too much money. Believe it or not but both were sold within 5 hours after publication. So this morning two happy people left our property, leaving behind a couple of $$ and another happy person. Getting the RV on the new owners truck was a bit of work but in the end we succeeded. The F250 was picked up by Cliff's Towing from Leduc; clearly he had done this before because he was was done in 20 minutes. Glad they are gone, putting an end to a stupid buy in the first place. But everybody is entitled to do something stupid every once and while, right.

Hollywoof Opened

On June 26th 2011 Hollywoof opened it's door to the public. We had a Grand Opening with a celebrity dog from Edmonton. Response was great, especially the colors people are appreciating; they are happy colors. The first week was really good, almost 100% booked. If it continues this way it will really take off. People are walking in telling they have been waiting anxiously for us to open as the location is very convenient to them. Word of mouth is already doing it's thing as the last couple of days potential customers are referred to us by our new customers. M&D and Waiward employees will receive a 10% discount, something I still have to set up and announce company wide. Friends of us build the counter for free, awesome.
So after almost 2 months of hard work by us and all the professionals we are in business and things are looking good. The $$ poored in and hopefully we will see a good return and is expansion not that far away, one thing I learned the last couple of years: "Think Big".  Most importantly Mavis and Joka are happy and smiling again. That's good. And the cake on the picture, baked by Mavis' her sister, tasted very good.

New JD?

I'm looking to buy a new John Deere tractor including 54-60" mowing deck, loader, scraper and a (snow removal) blade. This could be the one; especially with current US$ to CAD$ exchange rate. Still quite an expense. But on the other hand the Ford and the Jeep are now 100% owned by us and to have a loan is beneficial for your credit rating. Call me stupid but I still do not get how this works. I will have to sleep on this for a couple of nights; usually I run to the store and buy it but this is a too big of a commitment to do just that.

It's almost a collection

A F250 Camper 1981 and a F150 2009 brotherly together. One problem though; the F250 does not run and knowing my mechanical skills it never will and I do not want to spent one $ on it. So that an excellent buy about a year ago. I could drive it to our acreage, off load the slide on and do a test-run down into cooley. On the way back we hit a bump and the engine died (driving uphill), Johan found a broken wire and was able to fix it. The slide-on leaks, that sucks too. I will donate the F250 and the slide-on to the kidney foundation, and get a tax-return as a favor. Smart buy, right?

Greece?

So here I am in Rolly View Canada, after a short stop in Maarn Holland all the way from Greece when all was well still. At least so it seemed. Now the Greek claim they can make it work after a 110 billion Euro loan. I know it will go the same way as with Portugal; no no no we do not need any loans and yes a couple of months later they asked for a 82 billiion Euro loan. Greece too probably.

Opening Soon

Not the greatest picture, with the glare but Hollywoof is on it's way to become a reality. The response from everybody is huge, so I have all the confidence it will work put all great. I already have a masterplan for expansion, but the girls first have to make this one work with the help of the CFO and CMD ofcourse. Chainreaction is also a nice rocksong by Journey. Got it?

Constructing Hollywoof

We are underway to building Hollywoof. Today the electrician and plumber are busy doing their thing. On the picture we hauled in some construction lumber for the carpenter. Load her up boys. At the lumber yard they told us we could move it this way as long as it is red flagged, well we got 2 so it should be okay. Fortunately for us is was only a 5 minutes drive.

Life's good

Today, February 21st, is Family Day here in Canada. For office employed staff this means a, paid, day off. So far so good.  The morning was pretty cold, -24 but in the afternoon it soon warmed up to -3 with a partially clear blue sky and some great sunshine. Thus the garden chair came out accompanied by a nice and cold Molson Canadian beer (like they advertise: Made from Canada) and sat down in front of the garage wearing a t-shirt reading the morning news-paper, where I was joined by our dog Fox. When outside Fox always does the walkabout first but eventually settles down around the house, temperature permitting; below -20 he starts barking at the kitchen door. It was nice and warm and the day kept being good.

And then there were two.

So after Thursday December 9th 2010 we are back to two again. Emma and Johan left Canada to live their lives in Holland again, quite emotional to say goodbye at Calgary International Airport. It's quiet here in rural Alberta with them gone now, but in time we will get used to that. At moments like these you start doubting the decision you took a coupe of years ago. We should have gone 10 years earlier, our kids could have developed their lives here. Other milestones, driving back to Edmonton, in your live also spring to mind; looking back there is one decision I deeply regret; I did not have the balls to take on the adventure of switching jobs to a steel-fabricator in my birth province. Even in hindsight it would have been the better move as steel-drafting was shifting to the fabricators who were being saturated with 3D solid modeling software. Some 12 years later I do have the balls to cross the pond to Canada at age 50. I wonder. On the other hand we probably would not have moved here.

Dear Canadians....

Please do not start throwing German words at me when you ask if I am Dutch. I understand you are trying, but really there is a very large difference between Germany and Holland, size wise and language wise. But maybe we add to the confusion ourselves: The Netherlands-Holland-Dutch all the same but where is the correlation? Canada-Canadians, America-Americans, Germany-Germans, The Netherlands-Dutch, see what I mean. Not much of a post but I needed to get it off my chest.

Nice background, eh?

For those of you who have no clue on the background picture. It are Pink Floyd album covers. Beautiful isn't it? The rest I will leave to your imagination...... Personally I favor "Wish you were here"

Huh???

Mavis, Chad, grooming shop? Maybe some explanation? Yes please. Mavis is one of Joka's co-workers. Both of them go along very well, personally and professionally. So well they decided setting up or buying their own grooming shop. And Chad? He is Mavis her boyfriend. Both of them are in their early twenties. We are, lets just say, considerably older. Nevertheless we all go very well together and age hardly has any relevance here in Canada; experience on the other does matter. The four of us are the proud owners of HollyWoof Inc, where Joka and Mavis are the directors and Chad and myself are, as we choose to, the collateral damage so to speak. We have a shop in our eyesight that is for sale at the perfect location to combine business with the boarding kennel from the previous post. We have made them an offer, a month ago, but it was declined being too low. Still there are developments that raises hope we can purchase the shop in the near future. Victor O is helping us out here, we are too eager and would probably pay way too much. And he is very good at what he is doing. So the next few weeks (days?) we are hoping to make some really good progress on this endeavor in the second half of our professional life.

Opportunity knocks

Saturday a week ago I had to go to Victor O to settle some financial matters. Dropped Joka at the Petsmart, drove the Whitemud-WinterburnRoad-Yellowhead-Range Road 15-Cole Anne Heights to his place. I got out of the car and at the same time I'm on my butt, slippery as hell. And it hurts. Guess what; nobody home except the cleaning lady. So now what? Standing there asking myself what to do I see Jutta's car approaching. "Are you telepathic?" she asks me. It turned out she wanted to call me on some dog grooming matter. She talked to a boarding kennel who want to do grooming too, as we are in the market to set something up, Joka and Mavis want to start their own business. This kennel also does rescue dogs and as it happens they were at a grooming-shop in Edmonton to promote this. So I went there, made an appointment for the next day. So we, Joka-Chad-Marco-(Mavis had to work), paid them a visit. It's a big boarding kennel with no room to do the grooming but we agreed we could accommodate them by starting up our own shop and set-up some kind of transportation service as they get many grooming requests. So this opens a real nice business opportunity as we can feed off their clientèle too. One problem, we have to find a place where we can start. Or buy an existing one.

+6 to -31 in 4 days

Last Thursday we had a comfortable +6 degrees. Very nice. Today, Sunday 20:00 it is -31 below. Temperatures are like a jojo this winter. Also we do not have very much sunshine and thus no clear blue skies. The sunshien and clear blue skies make the wintercold very bearable. But the last couple of months we have had a lot of snow, some 60 cm. And very cold temperatures that came with it. An odd combination; usually it's cold and sunny or warmer with snow. The really really condsnaps of 40 and below have stayed away for the now, we have had one at the start or winter -37 in the morning. Next Wednesday the forecast is +3.