The lake isn’t quite frozen enough yet; we don’t dare drive our trucks out on the ice to place the shack in its customary spot.  Oh well.  The camp roads are good enough for some snowmobiling though, so we’ll have to keep ourselves happy with snowmobiling for the time being.  This is actually a good time for that – the temperatures aren’t too bitter cold yet, so we can have a good time without getting too cold.

Well I was really thrilled when Janet called me and suggested that we go riding together next weekend at the farm. The only thing about riding with Janet is that she is always trying to get me to learn to jump. Jumping scares me a little bit, and I have no desire to compete with Beezie Madden for any gold medals! I just enjoy a nice walk, trot, or canter. More excitement than that I don’t need! Janet has always been a thrill junkie, and she just can’t even imagine being content to NOT jump. I’m more than happy to provide her with an appreciative audience.

We haven’t had the chance to ride together at all this year, what with all of the health issues that Janet and her family have been going through. Janet told me that she needs to pick up a new pair of durable riding boots this week before we go riding though; the surgery on her foot has made it too hard to get her old boots on. I don’t think that it was the surgery itself; I think that it is because she has been so inactive that she put on a little bit of weight and it has mostly gone to her calves, making her old boots too tight to pull on, even with the boot hooks.

I told her that I’d like to join her at the tack shop to drop off my ariat boot bag for repair. The zipper is broken and I’m tired of fussing with it. Hopefully they can get it fixed for me.

Glass lantern slide from Keystone View company

My sister came over today for lunch and she brought with her some glass lantern slides she had bought at a flea market that she stopped at on her way over. She had never seen anything like this before, and we hopped on the Internet to see what we could find out. We found out that people on Ebay are selling similar items for $10.15 each, and that a Museum in California has a collection of slides made by this company. We shot off an email to the museum, inquiring if they could help us to learn more about them, such as how old they were, and the value of them. I wonder if we’ll hear from them!

After he retired, he paid a lot of attention to the price of gold and took up collecting gold as a hobby. Except I knew it was more than just a hobby for him. It was a new investment vehicle, too.

He went to coin shows and found a local dealer that he trusted to check the gold price for him before he bought any new pieces. Dad keep a small handful of them at the house, but most of his collection was in a safe deposit box downtown.

I have not paid much attention to recent gold prices, but I think it is time to start. I inherited a big part of my dad’s collection after he passed, and I think I should take the responsibility seriously. I want to educate myself and add to the collection over the years.

My wife is very talented and can often use a few coats of paint to make our inexpensive leftover planters from previous years into fantastic faux High End Planters that look like a million dollars! I would really love to install a small greenhouse in the back yard one day so we could do more with annuals.

I reserved a bit of my tax refund money for a nice summer vacation this year, it has been a long year and a vacation is way over due. I found a great Myrtle Beach hotel online at http://avistaresort.com. The Avista Resort is one of the many oceanfront resorts located in the North Myrtle Beach area and it has been designated as America’s “Number One Family Beach” I like that it is only two walkable blocks away from the famous Main Street that has such a wide variety of things to see and to do.

There are tons of resorts in Myrtle Beach that can be checked out on the Internet, what a great way to find the best one to suite my needs and wants. I look forward to playing a few rounds of golf while I’m there. I come from a family of golfers and we used to always make time to play a game or two during the family vacations back in the 70′s, it’s a good sport for the whole family to enjoy all year round.

I’ll make sure and take plenty of pictures and will post a few here shortly after my return.

So now I have to deal with a cracked block on the boat just at the precise time when I want to be playing on the water, not working on the engine! What a pain that is going to be!