Are you looking for a little halloween distraction. Check this out and see how good your bowling skills are.

http://www.brandextract.com/catbowling/default.asp

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A few halloween jokes

What has webbed feet, feathers, fangs and goes quack-quack?
?Count Duckula

Where do baby ghosts go during the day?
?Dayscare centers

Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?
?He didn’t have the guts.

Why don’t skeletons ever go out on the town?
Because they don’t have any body to go out with…

What do you call someone who puts poison in a person’s corn flakes?
A cereal killer…

Q: Who did Frankenstein take to the prom?
A: His ghoul friend.

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A crafty weekend

If anyone is into crafting and craft sales this is a big weekend around here. The Hitchin Post is holding their annual Christmas craft sale. Details are here. I have never been there myself but have heard nothing but good things. Apparently there is so much stuff that you could spend hours just looking around. If you  are looking for something to do this may be the thing.

The big breakfast is out at Six Pines halloween haunt this morning. If you want to be scared this is the place to be. You just see a glimpse of what they have on tv of course, but they have definately gone all out. Their barn of doom is adult only so you know it is pretty freaky.  Find them here. I heard reports of some people that had gone to the Marine Museum in Selkirk. They also have some type of halloween haunt out there and it is very popular as well. If you go to either one you need to be prepared to be scared. There is lots of halloween fun to be had in our area.

Amazingly it is going to be a warm halloween this year. Add this year being on a Friday and there should be lots of ghouls around for sure.

It was pretty depressing to be coming back from the bus and still no sunrise. It was a dark and dreary walk this morning. This is the fall back weekend so everyone remember to change the clocks. So I guess after that our mornings will be brighter, but sunset is going to be around 5:00pm making for dark evenings.

Be sure to get out and enjoy the 14C high today.

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Fishing Derby results

Well despite the cool weather and nasty wind everyone had a great time at the fishing derby on Saturday. We had around 22 people enter the derby and they caught around 70 fish. They certainly kept the measurers hopping. Our eventual winner, Mitch got off to a slow start, but came from behind and pulled things together in the last 20 minutes or so. Mitch ended up catching 7 fish for a total of 96″, 2nd place winnter Bryan caught 6 fish totalling 86″; and 3rd place winner Andrew caught 5 fish for a total of 68.5″. Our kids winner Zachary caught 6 fish totalling 77.75″. The biggest fish caught was 17″ and went to Damon. A quick calculation that night showed that the ATV club raised $800 for the day.

Official measuring

Official measuring

Everyone had such a good time that we are already looking forward to making the SIATV an annual event and also our ice fishing derbies this winter. Almost makes we want it to get cold and freeze – no not really.
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A business tip

Get your story straight and know what your business offers so that people don’t have to waste there time coming to your store on a wild goose chase. Yesterday was the day to get the supplies for the fishing derby this weekend. We wanted to do chicken breasts for supper this time so I phoned a meat supplier who we had never dealt with and therefore never been to their location and don’t know if they have a retail area. I was told yes you can come in and buy here as long as it is not something like steaks that have to be specially cut. So I am thinking we are good to go, stop in check out what they have, what will work – thinking chicken kiev, or cordon blue etc. Well we get in there and oh no we don’t keep items in stock, you have to order them. This story was a whole lot different than the one that I got on Monday. So out we go to find plan B since we still need something to feed people on Saturday. In the end we are still doing chicken breasts, but are making teriyaki and buffalo style from scratch and we will not be rushing back to that business anytime in the near future.

Ticket sales for the derby and social have been kind of slow. It did help when we split up the day so that people could only come to one thing or another if they couldn’t make all three. If it turns out to be a nice day hopefully we will get quite a bit of drop ins. I think the forecast still looks promising for Saturday anyway, Sunday is a different story. I have heard rumors of flurries on the way.

The last hunters left here Wednesday morning and I certainly was not sad to see the end of another hunting season. Apparently the geese left early this year so Cupped Wings ended up cancelling 4 or so groups at the end. I went from expecting 12 guys on Sunday evening to finding out on Saturday evening that there would only be 6. On Wednesday there was supposed to be a group of 6 coming in and I found out on Monday that they cancelled that group too. Fortunately my plan was to go on Tuesday to get groceries so I did not have to throw too much food out.

Dennis is in the city now picking up some pipe to fix some drainage problems that showed up with all the rain this summer. Lake Sandyken and Minigolf Lake will hopefully be no more next year.

I guess it is time for me and my girlie assistant to go to the rec building to get some stuff ready for tomorrow.

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The tale of camping cabin construction

 

I finally got the pictures done of the cabin. Follow the link below to see my picasa album. The interior pictures don’t show very well with no lighting yet. Anyone that wants a personal tour sometime just let us know and you are more than welcome to check it out. Yesterday they got the soffit and faccia finished and now all that is left is furniture and some decorating touches. I already have the first opening special advertised – the first 4 paid reservations or paid guests will get a complimentary gift basket.

Cabin construction
 

 Cabin construction

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New event for 2009

I have been thinking of this idea for a while, and I am finally going to put into action for next year. The weekend is still undecided and the final details still need to be worked out but, the working title is ‘Pig out weekend’. It will include things like a cupcake eating contest, and a hot dog eating contest. I also want to do a big burger challenge. You may have heard of places that have giant burgers (anywhere over 1 pound) and you have to finish them in a specified time to get a prize and have your picture put on the wall. I am going to have to do some research on different ideas, then do a trial run on the big burger. I have been to a few places that show some eating records including things like cow brains, butter and mayonnaise. Why someone would want to eat large quantities of these things I just don’t know. There are of course normal things like pizza and burgers. Someone even ate Six Pounds of Baked Beans in One Minute, 48 Seconds. Now I don’t even want to think about the after effects of that one.

We had an interesting ‘event’ here on Saturday. Does anyone know what you get when you cross a cell phone with a toilet – a soggy phone and a brand new toilet. What goes in does not come out in this case. We are not sure how he managed to do it but the old fella dumped his phone in at the same time as the toilet was flushing and whoosh it was gone. It was jammed in there so good the only way it came out was to break the toilet itself.

I hope everyone was able to enjoy and take advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend. I just checked the forecast and it is still supposed to be sunny and fairly warm today then back to more rain for Tues and Wed.  I guess as long as it is not snow we shouldn’t complain.

We were just thinking last night that our Lucy goosey who has stopped in for the past two years has not been around this fall. She is a lonely blue goose that shows up, stays for a while then takes off again. We are thinking that she is not going to come this year since we are hearing that the birds are gone already. Hopefully we are wrong and she is just late cause it was really a neat thing to have her here and hang out with the ducks.  There are apparently no ducks and geese around the area anymore. The outfitters staying here are even cancelling hunts this week. Instead of 6 guys coming in last night, I had 2 guys. There is supposed to be a group of 6 coming on Wed, but we don’t know if they will or not.

The ATV Club has decided to break down the pricing for the fishing derby this weekend in case someone wants to just come for a portion of the day. The derby only will be $20; supper and social $15 and social only is now $10. Of course the best deal is still everything for $35.

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Cabin and hunters update

I have sat down to write this a couple times and it just has not happened yet. I have completely started over once already and am going to try again.

The Ducky Construction Crew is installing the flooring in the cabin this afternoon. They were able to get the painting finished last night. Still a few finishing touches to do and furniture to put in, but it is sleepable if ya absolutely had to.

Our boisterous group of 12 Louisianna hunters has left and made way for a quiet group of 6 Arkansas hunters. Man what a difference in the two groups. The Louisianna guys were a little over the edge, but a lot of fun anyway. It sure made the time fly by when they were here. It is nice to be down to only 6 for cooking for a few days. Those Southern boys sure knew how to eat and it kept me on my toes to make sure there was enough food to keep them full. One of the guys bought me out of Canadian nickels so that he could give them to his 8 year old daughter. She was going to take them for show and tell then give each kid in her class a nickel.  A rather interesting idea. I was kind of taken aback by a comment by one of the hunters today. He asked me if we are only open for goose and duck season. I thought it was a little strange that someone could be here for almost 24 hours and not notice that there is more to us than just rooms for hunters to stay in. My first instinct was to say “Are you serious?!!”, but that wouldn’t be polite. So I bit my tongue and politely said no our rooms are open year round and the campers in the summer.  How can you be so engrossed in hunting to not see anything else around here? Things that make you go hmmmm.

The pool is now officially put to sleep for the winter. The cover is on, the water is drained and the pipes are winterized.  It is such a warm sunny day that it’s hard to believe that the ground could be white any day now.

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As I sit here writing this the sun is just starting to get up and the big ole moon is just going down. It sure is nice to see that orangy color to the East this morning. It has been a dreary and depressing couple of days.  I believe that most seasonals have their winterizing done and everything packed away for the snowy season.  There are still a couple that I haven’t seen yet and expect should be here in the next few days. As we all know the weather can change quickly at this time of year. It makes for a sad weekend to say goodbye for a few months. Saturday was our thanksgiving potluck with about 14 people all together. We were originally expecting more, but as everyone’s lives get busier there are always conflicts and some couldn’t make it.

Sunday afternoon we had a group of 12 hunters from Lousianna come in with CWO. There are some real characters in the group and they have some different accents. It was 81F when they left home and they seemed to think that we were a little crazy for sitting in the hot tub on a cool Manitoba evening. It was actually quite relaxing even with the cool temperature and rain misting over us. Not sure if I mentioned it somewhere along the way, but back in the summer we upgraded the hot tub in the courtyard. This is a much more efficient one so we are able to keep it open all winter without any problems. The other one had a few issues and made it very high maintenance and difficult to maintain in the cold temperatures.

Now that we have the hot tub good to go, I have started doing some extra promotion for winter time and snowmobiling.  I talked to the owner of Sno-much fun about snowmobile rentals and tours. If anyone is interested in renting a snowmobile he will deliver it here and if there is a big enough group he will do a tour in this area. I heard at one point that they were forecasting more snow for this winter so the snowmobilers will have a better winter. Unfortunately it is time to think winter since it will be here whether we like it or not. At least we are not in Regina though, sucks to be them this weekend.

Fast forward to 10:30am and the sun is still shining brightly and just starting to warm up the house. The ducks have been silly creatures lately. Now that the traffic has slowed down they have been cruising all over the place – in front of and beside the rec building, by the pool area, you name it. They seem to think they own the place now.

Today is election day so finally we get an end to listening to all the political bad mouthing. Hopefully Stephan Harper and James Bezan will stop calling me too. I am sure some of you were fortunate enough to get the recorded phone call.

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Correction

I must make a correction on my previous post. Geri did not snitch on me. Metro was just that curious that he had to find out as soon as he got home what I wrote. Ahhhhh my plan worked perfectly, now I will rule the world (or at least The Duck)

I am in the process of switching over our website to a different web host. It is very similar to the old one, with a few minor changes and improvements. I am still tweaking a few things. Some of the behind the scene things are easier for me to use now. It is now more user friendly for me to make changes. On the old site I had to learn html to make changes on the home page, now everything is similar to a wordprocessing program.  The pictures page is a big improvement since I never did like the way it was before but I didn’t know how to make it better. The reservations page is still getting a few kinks worked out of it, but I don’t expect a huge rash of bookings for this weekend anyway. That wind is just a howling outside right now, certainly not very appealing for camping.

We are having our Thanksgiving potluck this Saturday. I think that I counted maybe 14 or so people. I will only have 4 hunters to cook for that night as we have the rooms booked with non hunters. I had an interesting surprise at 9:30 last night when I found out that the group of 5 hunters that I was told were leaving after lunch today is actually leaving after lunch tomorrow – small communication breakdown. That left me scrambling to find food for an extra 5 guys for supper, breakfast and lunch. On the upside I have another break with no supper Thursday and no breakfast or lunch on Friday.

The boys have been busy building the camping cabin last week and this week. It is coming along good and is going to look pretty darn good when it is done. I have been taking pictures as things progress and will post them here in the next little while.

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