Every time I talk to a techie person about our online presence, I get a similar response: your website is great, your blogs are fine, but they are all far, far too wordy.
Nobody in the 21st Century, they tell me, has the time to read 1,000 words of unbroken prose however witty, worthy or entertaining (and I claim to be none of these).
Bullets, I am told, (not the kind that our neighbours slip into their shotguns after a six pack of Bud but little formatting knobs on the side of the page) are what is needed.
So, here it is, a special bulleted edition of our blog, specially formatted for all those of you reading this on a blackberry, iphone, thinkpod or digital watch: Grizzly Bear Ranch, December 2009, state of affairs.
• Cold. Minus 12 this week and falling. Water line to house froze. I marched around with propane heater and spanner. Kristin mocked my lack of technical knowhow. I went from feeling inadequate to smug when I finally unfroze the offending pipe and the water flowed again.
• Diesel Land Cruiser that we have just spent several thousand dollars winterizing in far-off Vancouver and bragged to all the neighbours about wouldn't start because of the cold. (Its supposed to start at -40.)
• After laughing my head off at the dogs gingerly negotiating the ice on our driveway, a little like ladies in high heels outside the Moscow opera, I fell hard on my arse on the same. Too painful to be funny.
• Finished chopping annual mountain of firewood. Far from feeling a sense of accomplishment and delivering an understated manly grunt on completion of the project - as is the wont of the true Canadian lumberjack - I dispensed with the itchy checked shirt, bitched and moaned through the last several splitting sessions and quietly promised myself a mechanized log-splitter for next season.
• Too cold again for my heroic snow plough. First of all I couldn't open the driver's door so I had to force my way with the help of a kettle of boiling water through the passenger side. Then I broke the wipers while trying to clean the windscreen. Then – a recurring winter theme – the snow plough winch decided that it didn’t want to work in sub-zero temperatures. As I moaned in a previous blog it seems that when it came to buying a snow plough I got a summer model.
• Annual vodka-drinking party. Usual casualties. Me drunk and obnoxious, calling out toast after toast in shot glass inscribed with militaristic Soviet slogans. Sunny, friend and neighbour, all happy and smiley and then, just as last year, fell off his armchair. This time he split his head open and bled but it didn't stop him drinking or driving straight past his own house (again) on the way home. Gillian and Lily danced with abandon. Young bucks smoked weed outside. Mark, who runs the local store, drank and enthused. Forest settled into the whisky. Only Kristin stayed relatively sober. She wanted to make sure that guests vomited in the right places and break up any incipient fights. Finally packed it all in around 3.00am when the stereo overheated and the vodka ran out.
• Submitted books to our accountants after days of miserable deciphering and cataloguing of mountains of receipts stuffed away in shoeboxes and corners of the house throughout the year. After we paid sales tax, employment tax, payroll tax and countless other contributions to the government that seem to offer nothing at all in return, we didn't quite make a profit but for the first time since we started Kristin and I took a salary out of the company. Grizzly Bear Ranch Ltd paid each of us an annual wage of $9,678.25. That's more than 5,000 pounds each for the year, a princely sum.
• Still trying to stop the grizzly hunt but things inching along in the planning stage. My campaign strategist in deep thinking mode after we both made expensive trip to Vancouver in November to get the ball rolling. My handsome idea, running naked through the streets of the provincial capital Victoria and then storming the parliament with a tractor is apparently not a guaranteed path to success. Canadians, I am told, don't do revolutions. Since I have little experience with any other kind of social change I have agreed to shut up and be patient.
• Finally got Tenure, the equivalent of a licence to operate. After three years of applications returned and resubmitted and a whole host of ridiculously complicated paperwork, what we do (the hugely controversial activities of hiking up paths and watching wildlife) is now legal in the eyes of the province of BC. Between us, Kristin and I now have: two gun licences, a boating licence, two sets of wilderness first aid credentials, a bear-viewing guide licence, a river rafting licence, a river rescue licence, a federal ATV operator's licence, a provincial ATV operator's licence, Food Safety 101 and a "Serve-it-Right" alcohol licence (this last one obviously not me). All that so we can share our little corner of the wilderness with a few chosen guests a year.
• Last of all, and amid all this chaos and freezing temperatures, we are off to Europe for several weeks. After nearly five years out here it's time to catch up with family and friends for more than just a fleeting visit. We'll be basing in Hungary and plan on heading to the UK, Estonia and possibly Russia. It all begins, Air Canada permitting, in Budapest next week in my apartment where, only yesterday, Emma, my loving daughter held her 18th birthday party. I'm confident the flat will be wonderfully clean and smelling of roses by the time we arrive. So, to all our friends and guests: Have a Great Christmas and come back to the ranch soon. We're booking up fast for next season but can usually find a spot for our favourites. By then the temperatures will be balmy, the sun will be shining on the river and the snowplough might even be working again. lol. :)
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