Watch your step!

The following is a public service announcement.

The picture below was taken during our first weekend as owners (I only wish we were getting this kind of weather now).

I can hear you now:  "Cracker, that was more than four months ago, yo!  What is your point?"

All right, you see the ramp that leads to the main deck, eh?  Well, you can also see that there's a gap between it and the stone wall separating the property from the road.

It is very easy, when leaves or snow build up, to accidentally step into that gap and take a tumble.  Or sink.  So watch where you're going.

WTF?!
(Reenactment.  The above was performed by a professional in a closed environment.
Do not attempt in your own living room)

I can hear you now: "Cracker, it's mid-January, yo!  What were you doing there anyway?"

Well, we still drop by from time to time to make sure everything is OK inside and out.  If we have a leak, for example, we'd rather know about it ASAP then let it accumulate until April.  This time, we had a dying battery in a smoke detector.  Hardly an emergency, but may as well take care of it.

We also wanted to drop off a few things, but before we get to that, I need you to have a look at the listing picture for the living room:

See those magazines on the right?  We moved those out of there and left the built-in nooks (I hate that word...Who came up with that?) empty.

I filled one of them with the bad boy at right.

I first laid eyes on that foot-long stringed coolness in North Bay last year.  We were in the middle of our (fourth) annual visit to the area and it caught my eye at the mall over there.

It was inexpensive (it's actually a money bank.  CFB Crow Lake now accepts tips, by the way...) but I couldn't pull the trigger.  I didn't know where I'd put it (the cottage didn't belong to us yet) and didn't want to clutter up the house or spend just to spend.

When the cottage became ours, we were trying to figure out what to do with those...nooks.  Flag guitar came back to mind and I regretted not buying it.  There was a chance Christine would go back to North Bay and could pick it up, but that fell through.

I was sent to Waterloo for work training this past week and what do you know, killing time at the mall while waiting for my hotel room to be ready, I see another location of the same store.  I sacrificed about 40% of my suitcase space to bring this guy home (and am now minus one pair of socks).

Significance?  My favourite band over the past 15 years or so has been Big Sugar.  I've seen them in concert 10 times (which would not have been possible without Kathy making #9 a reality years ago...thanks again) in eight different venues.

They often end their concerts with the Canadian anthem so this little guitar reminds me of how much I've enjoyed those shows.  It's just additional pleasant scenery in my proverbial "happy place". :-)