April was an unremarkable month. We settled in at home after being away most of the winter, pecking away at the piles of snow left from Wille McAmmond’s plowing. U.S. Income Tax deadline is the middle of April and the Canadian one is at the end of April. Juanita files both taxes so I have to have mine done by the middle of the month so she has some numbers to work with. Like all unpleasant tasks it takes more energy to resist putting off the task then just the energy required to do it. But it got done in time as it always does. Swallow that frog!
We got back into the swing of things with family and friends as well. We all celebrated Sonja’s birthday in mid-month. There was the wrap-up of gymnastics to attend and a piano recital. Sasha and Sonja are no longer doing piano recitals, but they were the parental fill-ins for Kohen’s recital while their parents celebrated a significant anniversary on a Colombian Island in the Caribbean.
We attended Tony Calvert’s funeral in Meadow Lake. Tony was a neighbour to the north of us when we first moved to Meadow Lake. We attended the same church for a while and he and I worked together on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in 2003. He had retired, remarried and moved to Winnipeg, but with so many friends and family here, there was a funeral here with only minor friction between new wife and old family.
One day I spent a wonderful day with Milton Drumheller looking at his line-of-sight Internet tower set-up and wandering the Makwa area checking out options for towers and drill stem. He fed me lunch and did a bit of welding on the spare tire bracket that failed on the way north. Later, after looking at the height of tower I needed and that it would need guy-wires to survive winter winds and that the chances of a tree falling on a guy wire are pretty high I lost interest in the idea of a tower. The final clincher was when I priced out the metal at $1,500 before re-bar, concrete, guy wires, anchors and cables. Buying the latest iPhone and using it as a hotspot looked like a better option. Bye-bye flip phone. Bye-bye pay-as-you go for a monthly unlimited data plan. Overall saving when we are in the country over a hundred dollars compared to what we had been doing with a cost of $80 a month increase while out of the country. Since we are here more than we are away on average it's better than a wash.
Another day, while picking up a battery for my quad at the local Ski-Doo dealer I noticed a rare side by side snow mobile in his lot. Just had to take a picture. You can learn more about these machines here.
A Dairy Queen opened in town in April. THey had some early bird specials and gifts for the first so many customers. Ernie and the kids stood in line and Kohen is the proud holder of a Gift Card good for a free Blizzard treat every week for a year.
Towards the end of the month our son-in-law, Nick’s father, Julian, passed on. We went to the funeral in Regina along with other family and friends. On the way back we visited with Weldon and Alice Gray. Weldon was the Wacky Wizard for years, but found the set-up and take-down of his stage getting to be a bit much so he inched a little more toward retirement. Now his main occupation is luthier, the make of lutes. He has turned the basement of their house in Saskatoon into a museum featuring some of the musical instruments he has made over the years. You can find him and view some pictures of his work at www.graylorelutes.com
