Lemons and Lemonade

2012-01-16T13:20:00.001-07:00

Coldplay - Paradise (Peponi) African Style (Piano/Cello) Cover - The Piano Guys ft. Alex Boye

2012-01-16T12:21:00.001-07:00

2012-01-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

Well it hasn't been busy much this week. We tried going out to the base on Monday but only got a $5 trip. So it was back to the only Fridays and Saturdays for now unless they call routine. Which they haven't and probably wont since they're working 7am to 7pm everyday except Saturdays / Sundays. With the Canex only being open until 8pm that doesn't leave them much time to do those trips either. Plus the bus has been transporting them down to the gym and back. Probably stopping at Canex too.

Our cell phone is down again, so if we're out you won't be able to get us.

Otherwise I've been busy directly talking with the heads of FamilySearch getting their Indexing Facebook page cleaned up / changed. They're taking my suggestions and are going to be fixing it. It's got a big problem with negativity coming from the indexers and driving other indexers away. They're looking at me as a possibility for moderating it. We'll just have to wait and see now. I may have a new church calling out of it, or maybe not.

Busy Two Days and Its Only Going to Get Busier

2012-01-08T09:49:00.001-07:00

Well the last two days have been almost run off our feet busy. Saturday compared to previous Saturdays when we were busy was crazy. There were 3 taxis at the base and we still did 3 trips into Med Hat Friday and Saturday. Got our insurance into the bank a day early in between trips.

Yesterday (Sat) during the last trip in Alan was contemplating going back out. It was only around 6 to 7pm, I was extremely tired, had only got 6 hours sleep the night before. We started work yesterday at about 12pm, got to the base around 1pm after doing initial banking. So not a long day, but 3 trips into Med Hat in that time is actually darn good now that I realize it was only a 5 hour period that we worked. So Alan was thinking about going back out (told me about this later at home) and he got prompted “If you go back out there will be more trips for you, but CAN you go back out?” I had already decided that I was too tired and we were going to call it a night. Which is not normal, I usually push myself to keep going especially when I know that there could be more trips. Times like this I feel extremely blessed for the protection on the road, since my thoughts when I get really tired and we are on the road go towards and old friend, if any of you knew him, Troy Suelzle, and how he died just 10km outside of Redcliff cause of falling asleep at the wheel.

No CFL Light bulbs Allowed in This House

2012-01-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

Well ended up waking up at 8:30am was supposed to sleep until 10:30am. This is going to be a LONG day.

Just glad that the boys last night didn't call between 1am and 3am like they were maybe going to do.

Well Alan just pointed out something about why I seem to be going downhill as far as sleep just like him. He has done some research and found out that the "supposedly better" CFL bulbs if you're around them all the time, like I have been in the living room, can cause your melatonin levels to decrease because of the high blue-light spectrum they put out. He's also come to realize that since we started using those kind of light bulbs about a year before he started getting sick. When we moved from Crescent Heights down to mom's house we quit using them except for the one I have on constantly in the living room. We're planning on switching that one out after this weekend and see if we both do better.

Those bulbs are not healthy as it is. Don't ever break one. We haven't thank goodness. You can't clean up the toxic mess fully yourself. If one breaks and it gets on blankets, clothes or anything else you have to throw out those items because they will continue to be toxic for the next 20 years and can not be cleaned. You have to have someone come in and professionally clean it up and it's been known to cost over $50,000 for one bulb.

Had a Really Good Night at the Base

2012-01-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

Well it definitely was well worth going out tonight. Alan's feeling about not going out the rest of this week was good too. The boys finished getting here yesterday. We ended up with 2 trips into Med Hat and a ton of Canex trips. Almost have insurance made for the van which is due by Monday.

The last trip in was cool too. One of the first things that he said was "I remember you guys from 2 years ago!" No wonder he wasn't surprised when he walked up to the van and didn't keep walking past us to the next taxi. Most of the soldiers who are by themselves think the bigger van costs more and get in the smaller vehicles until they get to know us.

Well we now know that there are about 700 guys here and 500 more coming in February.

Just making lunch / supper meal for tomorrow right now.

So for next year, since it's too late now we're thinking about instead of a Yellowpages ad we'll add an extra directory listing (just the name and phone number) under taxis. That way during the winter time when we're not out here maybe as much the guys who look in the phone book will see our name and maybe phone. Cause at times like this where we're just getting out there again they phone and book with Care or Deluxe. Then when we're sitting out there and they come down they feel bad cause we're already there. Nothing for they're trips we'd be the first in the phone listings and probably get the phone calls from them.

We ended up handing out a couple of discount cards (they have to ride 5 times and then get $10 off a Med Hat trip) and the guys seemed to like the idea.

Just can't believe we handed out at least 50 business cards today. Ended up having to come home between Med Hat trips and print off another 50 cards.

Praying for Base Business to Pickup

2012-01-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

Been busy on the other blogs and seem to be ignoring this one. That and there's nothing really happening in our day to day life.

Index, sleep, index, sleep.... that's me when I'm not doing laundry and dishes or other household chores right now.

Alan well that's sleep, sleep, sleep, read, sleep, read, sleep...and sneak in helping with the daily chores as well if he's not sleeping. Mostly dishes and cooking. He really can't help much with laundry even though he doesn't hate it. We just don't want him breaking another light bulb with his head. It's been 2 so far since living here. Basement ceiling is not necessarily too low but the light socket for the laundry area is. Did that ever stink the first time, his singed hair that is.

Well think happy thoughts and wish us well today. We're heading out to the base to see what's happening since the boys should have been starting to come back in for the winter staff on the 2nd. We decided to wait until Friday (today) so we weren't wasting gas if we didn't get trips.

I'm not so stressed as I was this morning, headache was happening, took pain meds and ate, got ready, made lunch / supper / food for sitting at the base. Or at least I started it and Alan finished it. Read my scriptures, now just have to get my indexing ready.

2011-12-30T22:22:00.000-07:00

Dinner theatre at the stake centre was fantastic tonight! Thanks Mom and Dad Robertson for the tickets and the company again tonight!

Cleaning and Dinner Theatre

2011-12-30T12:49:00.001-07:00

Well today is a day of cleaning up the house a little, pretty much things left over from before we left for the weekend.

Then tonight we've got a dinner theatre to goto at the Stake centre with Alan's parents, should be fun!

2011-12-30T00:03:00.002-07:00

Well we had a great time at Alan's parents place over the weekend. We went up there on Christmas eve and came home yesterday. It really felt good getting away and staying away from home for those days. We went up to Calgary to see Alan's side of the family as well and had a great time with everyone there too!

Brooke's newest littlest ones were so small and cute. Got to say Nixon was really cute too! It was so funny holding him cause if you were in the gym when doing so you had to hold him so he could watch Beck and Ryder kicking the ball around. It was like "I want to run around and play with them!"

Well went shopping a few times over the weekend with Alan's mom. She seems excited cause Alan and I are getting into a new online business that is along the lines (ok i can't along the lines since it's what she's into for herself right now) of her current crafting projects. So to Michaels and Walmart we went a few times to check out beads. And I got to say wow Boxing day is especially the time to buy that kind of stuff. It was mostly on for 50% off.

Well at least this is an online business that Alan seems to be really wanting to jump into. I'd never thought he would.

Today we went off to Michaels to spend my gift certificate on a jewelry beading kit.

Oh and if you're reading this Jocelyn... Michaels here in Med Hat definitely has more for the beading than that Calgary store does. There were a couple kits there we both liked plus we found some more beads that we will definitely have to pick up later. Alan's the one I think coming up with design ideas.

I've thought about giving up on the non-sports cards but then I get a sale, it's usually a card that we didn't think would sell and then I get enthusiasm again for the online store. This time it was a Garbage Pail Kids card. One of the original cards. So I've been thinking it over and trying to redesign that blog since that's the big draw for the store for advertisement. When we have money again this summer I'm going to get my own dot com running again for it. There was always more I could do for the site than ecrater will ever do. Like people being able to look at the cards and then email them to their friends saying "hey I think you'll like this" I remember someone on Empire Avenue telling me that ecrater sucked for my store cause they're kid couldn't do that when he found things his friends would like.

Then we'll get another site up and running for the beaded jewelry and possibly other craft items.

2011-12-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

I just mentioned how much I've been indexing / arbitrating to Alan. Lately since the business has been slow I've been arbitrating 2500 names a day. Indexing probably about a quarter of that. He came back at me and said that the indexing / arbitrating would be a good graph on how our season with the charter business goes.

When the charter business is busy I don't get to index much at all. I'm lucky if I get to index / arbitrate I'd say about between 100 and 250 names a day. Now when it's slow like I said I've been setting a goal of 2500 names to arbitrate and about 250 to index. As an arbitrator I'm only supposed to index about a 10th of what I arbitrate in numbers because there's alot more indexers than arbitrators. Arbitration is always behind.

Wow just got wondering since I work on this everyday, in a month I get about 75,000 names done. Again wow!

Oh and sorry Jocelyn and Alan's Grandma Johnson, I haven't been able to work on the UK records much that we talked about. They've gotten way too hard to read. Been working on straightening out the Canada Ontario Birth records lately.

2011-12-11T21:24:00.001-07:00

Actually got enoughsleep last night to get to church this morning as well. Only stayedfor Sacrament meeting but that was better than not going at all. Again they sang “Away in a Manger” this time I didn't tear up. Both Alan and I were really tired by the time Sacrament meeting wasover that we headed home to have a nap. Slept for a couple morehours and then got up and got things ready for our Home Teachers tocome over.

I'm going to apologizenow for the next while if I'm not in a great mood. This isdefinitely not my favourite time of year. It has actually started tobecome my least liked time of year. I hate Christmas for what it hasbecome. I hate the commercialism. Probably why I quit decoratingthe house too. The only part of Christmas I love is spending timewith family. This year we're going to Brooks and then probablyCalgary for Christmas to spend it with Alan's family.

And if you'rewondering what to get us for Christmas. Well all I want is to beable to pay my bills.

This and That Updates

2011-11-30T12:16:00.001-07:00

We haven't been posting on here much lately. Not much happening lately.

Haven't been to the base for a couple weeks now. Don't feel like it's worth wasting the gas to sit out there getting no trips at all. The last week we sat out there we ended up with 3 days where we got no trips. Which meant $60 wasted in gas.

We've also been told by someone who's got a friend that works on base that this friend mentioned that these British soldiers that are here right now are kind of jerks. Which is the feeling we were starting to get from them before we left for this part of the season. We're just waiting to see how long they drive that stupid school bus back and forth to Med Hat. Which they usually quit once it starts snowing good. Plus then they quit walking down to CANEX as well.

Other than that we've had 1 wedding at the beginning of November from Seven Persons into the Med Hat Lodge and a pub crawl for the Telus Store Staff and the Intersport Staff combined from the mall. That one was their Christmas party. We also had the trip from Calgary Airport to Redcliff for Sunshine Greenhouses but I can't remember whether that was end of October or beginning of November. Sunshine Greenhouses will be a repeat commercial customer bringing immigrants in to work. Again ones who don't speak English. Seems to be a niche we've found. Non-English trips that is!

We've got 2 bookings coming up here on Dec 4 and 5th. 4th is a round trip to Calgary and back for them to go to a Medicine Hat Tigers away game at the Saddledome against the Hitmen. Then on the 5th we've got the CAPE School teachers again, this time to Lethbridge round trip for another conference.

This break from the base has got us thinking as well. We're starting to hope for more local trips like these instead of being at the base and dealing with all the crap there. We wouldn't need as many trips per month to cover the bills either. We'd still sit at the base inbetween the big trips if we didn't have enough coming in though. Or if we started getting bored which is usually the case for me being at home.

Do you say you'll be back when you really aren't going to be?

2011-11-15T21:13:00.001-07:00

A note on the charter business.... We've learned over the past month to not get upset over people / companies not following through on them saying "I'll phone back and book a little later". That's they're way of saying "I'm just searching out prices / options and I may not be back"

If the customer doesn't book that day we don't hold our breath. This happens more often when businesses call for information. Individual people not booking on behalf of a business don't usually lead companies on.

Most of our wedding / pub crawls follow through and phone back within the time frame we tell them they have to pay by. Which is usually 5 business days for business check and usually 1-2 days before for cash. Yes we make them pay ahead but that has shown the people who are serious about booking with us. You know what the non-business trips have had no problem with this. I think this also helps cause we get to meet the person ahead of time and see what they're like. They seem to be more comfortable at that time as well cause they've met us and know we're the drivers. Plus we get to answer more of their questions.

Sorry rambling on.

Expiry on Jello Powder

2011-11-15T21:11:00.001-07:00

So looking through the one cupboard tonight and we started wondering does Jello powder really expire? I know it has an expiry date on the package which I do believe Alan said was 2003.

2011-10-20T09:58:00.002-06:00

I guess it's a day for playing catch up among other things.

This past week with the boys coming off the field was busy but it wasn't busy either. It was good but not as good as other times. We did have 4 trips to Lethbridge within a 3 day period.

Friday we had trip into Medicine Hat and then managed to get one back from the mall as we were dropping off. Then got guys to Lethbridge and then had a booking that night for a pub crawl for Mad Jake's Pub girls. Was a long day.

Saturday don't remember much except we had a trip to Lethbridge again.

Sunday we had 2 bookings from Lethbridge to bring back to the base.

Of those 2 Lethbridge groups we only lost 1 guy. Never did hear if he got back to the base or not. Lethbridge seems to suck the guys in and we lose guys from the groups almost every single return.

Monday we had Judy Crawford's funeral in Lethbridge. Then we were going to go back to the base afterwards but being up around 7am to get to Lethbridge on time was a little early and we were both tired. Of course Alan's always tired so that's an understatement. So we went home instead.

Tuesday we had a feeling like it wasn't going to be busy at the base. Most of the soldiers are on their way out back to the UK right now. The years over and there's only a handful left. or will be. So instead of going out we did some banking, paid up some bills and got some food storage / grocery shopping done.

Wednesday (yesterday) went out to the base and got I think 4 Canex trips ($5 each way) which covered the gas to get out there and back and then ended up with a trip into Med Hat. First trip in a while that's played something other than Mario Kart. He was by himself so he played Resident Evil and Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Today's plan is to meet with our lawyer then maybe go out to the base for a little while. Can't stay out there late since we've got a 4:45am booking tomorrow morning for CAPE School here in Medicine Hat. Round trip to Calgary. Take them up there, drop them off at another school, go do something for 7 hours approximately and then pick them back up and back to Med Hat. Weather permitting we'll probably be going to the zoo for those hours in between since I got 50% off coupon from mom. It will have to snow for me not to go!

Haircut for Cancer

2011-10-10T13:04:00.001-06:00

These pictures are from our afternoon with Pam and Ted getting heads shaved for cancer.

Pam and Ted are a couple of best friends we have here in Medicine Hat. Pam has been battling spinal cord (I think it’s at the top of her spine at the back of her) cancer for quite a few years now. Ted had 31 inches of hair shaved off including his braid that he kept for a souvenir.

Alan’s hair wasn’t long enough to keep for wigs.

A Glimpse Into Somalian Culture

2011-10-02T14:57:00.000-06:00

Well this weekend was a long one. {EAV_BLOG_VER:dfd6e7d64fd38740}

First on Friday we had a trip to Calgary from Medicine Hat through Saamis Immigrate Services which made trip number 4 through them.

Then on Saturday we had a trip to Edmonton from Medicine Hat through Saamis again. We got the trip up to Edmonton with very little problems, they spoke the least amount of English of all our 5 Saamis trips so far. Made us think we've got to come up with a cue card system with English on the one side and their language on the other side so things like bathroom stops can be understood. This time we just stopped in Strathmore at Husky and the little bit of English they spoke was ok for us to relay to them where things were.

The kids watched both Shrek and Shrek II plus Night at the Museum on the way up even though they probably didn't understand much of what was being said. When shown the movies they responded like they had seen all them before.

We got them to the home of their relatives in Edmonton and unloaded. One of the little boys that lived there already came up to both Alan and I and told us "I remember you". I was like "Really?" "Did we drive you up here?" He said "yes". He had been part of the 10 person family we drove up to Edmonton back around April of this year. They had been our first Saamis Immigration trip. When we drove him up to Edmonton we are pretty sure he didn't speak English at all or very little. He is now pretty fluent from what we heard talking with him. He couldn't have been more than 8 years old.

To our surprise we were asked to park the van and come inside for some food. So we did.

One of the brothers sat down at the table with us while everyone else was busy either in the kitchen or in the living room or other parts of the town house. He explained some of their customs, where they were from (Somalia) and how long he had been here in Canada. Before we started eating other members of the family who we drove up in that first trip came and greeted us. We recognized the 80 year old couple that was part of the group. They were really happy to see us.

Eating with them was sure different. The food wasn't really different (seared / baked chicken legs, beef (at least that's what we think it was - and it was really good) and rice which I think was just cooked in broth. It was all delicious. The different part was they don't eat with utensils. They gave us spoons for the rice but the rest was use your hands. Which we had no problem with. We're open to trying new things; new ways of doing things. They were very clean people and if they're hands were dirty they didn't touch things or wouldn't shake your hand.

Any other trips from now on that invite us in for a meal like these ones we'll take the time to do so. We did learn that in their culture if a man doesn't do this he is not considered worthy to marry off his daughter. He loses respect in the eyes of the community and then so does his family. I would guess this is because then he is not teaching his family proper respect towards other people. It's really teaching the children to respect and help others.

Walmart Great Deals

2011-09-28T00:41:00.002-06:00

Anyone who likes Chef Boyardee, Walmart's got them on for a $1 a can right now. Limited Time special. Wasn't really hard to convince Alan that we had to buy a couple flats of it. One in the kind he likes and one of the one I like :)

Talked him into adding to the green beans and creamed corn food storage tonight as well :)

Well we thought we were totally out of those two items and got home after and realized that we had some still. Oh well I told him just made for something we didn't have to buy later for food storage.

Oh and Walmart also had the 1L chocolate milk on for $1 again. Had to grab a few of them. The 500ml to go bottles are just over $1 a piece.

Trying to Find out what Rear Rotors are on the Van is a PAIN!

2011-09-14T23:45:00.000-06:00

Well it's been a busy week. Switch out on the base is happening with the squaddies (soldiers who are only here for a month). Well okay it was busy over the weekend and is now slowing down. Temporary staff were on holidays for 4 days and are now back. From what we've heard some of the soldiers possibly got gated last night. One of them I guess from what we were told bit a cop twice.

We've got a bigger group in Med Hat right now and are waiting for 1am to go pick them up.

Of course I was complaining to Alan about how we're going to lose money cause we're not working nights, especially coming up over the winter months when things slow down at the base. He reminded me that we haven't been able to get back on a total night schedule and how we weren't probably meant to be doing that shift. That and how we really didn't want to be working that shift anyways.

Of course to prove me wrong and to show that we have a hard time handling the late nights right after we got our first trip into Med Hat we get a booking to go pick up guys and then take them back at 1am. Of course I feel I'm being tested again to show that we aren't always able to do the late nights.

Well ordered the rotors and pads for the back brakes today. They'll be in tomorrow. Saved $100 on performance rotors compared to what everyone else wanted for prices. What a pain in the %&$ it was to find out what size we needed. So dad (Alan's) if you're reading this, be prepared, Alan is going to ask you to help him again. Something about all the times you made him help on your cars. That and he'd rather get you to help so we can spend some time with you guys. Even though we could still do that if he took the van to Jack. The boys go on the field sometime around the 20th so let us know you're schedule.

Almost blew a tire today

2011-09-08T20:02:00.000-06:00

We were pretty lucky today again. Heading back out to the base this afternoon we almost blew a tire. Ran something over that we both didn't see on the highway and all of a sudden heard a bang. Immediately slowed down got in the right lane cause I had been passing a truck at the time. Pulled onto the shoulder and stopped at a turn off.

Tire had a hole in it. Back one too that we just replace about 2 months ago. Brand new tire.

Starting to feel really protected in this job. Heavenly Father is definitely watching over us with the almost T-bone the other month and now this. I've blown a tire on the taxi car when I worked at Care Cabs it's not fun. Can't imagine it with a 20 foot long van. Actually I can and it's not a good image.

Can read more about what happened tonight here

http://a2bcharterservice.blogspot.com/2011/09/thanks-again-kirks-tire-in-redcliff.html

Well we have a booking at 9pm tonight to go back to the base and then it's home to bed.

Booking tomorrow morning to come into Med Hat and then right after that one from the base to Calgary. Literally right after, we drop off and then head right back out. Remember our week a couple months ago (Week of Hell) where we were doing Lethbridge in the morning, Calgary in the afternoon and Lethbridge in the evening (all one day)? Well that's what this next week is going to be. Week of hell 2.

Well so far the bookings are paying off the new tire. Craig at Kirk's was really nice and suggested that we pay in installments since he knew we couldn't come up with the tire money right spur of the moment and we needed the tire to work. Well half was paid tonight and we'll make enough to pay the other part Saturday. Plus we need to talk to him about not charging us for the truck to come out and try to help us. We need to pay him something for it.

2011-09-05T11:50:00.000-06:00

While I wait for my visiting teacher to arrive to take me out for lunch.

1. I've fixed the previous post. I could see the graphic but I guess everyone else couldn't. Weird.

2. Have you seen Mardi's new business blog? http://astitchofhistory.blogspot.com/

2011-09-02T13:57:00.004-06:00

You know who we got this one from.... Alan's dad

New Seat Belt law

This becomes effective Sep 1, 2011 in ALL Countries.

The International & National Highway Safety Council has done extensive testing on

a newly designed seat belt.

Results show that accidents can be reduced by as much as 95% when the belt is

properly installed.

Correct Installation is illustrated below.......

Please pass on to family and friends.

THIS MAY HELP SAVE A LIFE!

This can really save lives and lower blood pressure by 40%

I KNOW YOU SMILED.

YEAH......., YOU SMILED AGAIN!

Quinoa and tomato soup

2011-08-28T14:37:00.001-06:00

Well made Quinoa and Tomato Soup today. Even Alan liked it better than Tomato Soup and Ichiban or rice.

Just boiled up the Quinoa and then added it to the Tomato soup just like we would with the others mentioned.

Ended up not heating up the tomato soup so it ended up more a bisque instead. Very good :)

Alan's favorite part was the quinoa stayed on the crackers when he dipped them into his soup like a spoon!

We're slowly replacing the rice and ichiban in our food storage with this now.

Sleep Study Still Waiting

2011-08-24T23:00:00.001-06:00

Alan's dad is not the only one who's fallen between the cracks as far as the medical system.

Alan phoned the clinic today after we finally remembered at the beginning of the day instead of at the end.

He's still waiting on the sleep clinic study in Lethbridge. He's already been waiting longer than they estimated, it's been almost a year now.

2011-08-17T14:39:00.000-06:00

Well was back up by 11am. Alan took a booking for tomorrow morning, guess we're going to Calgary tomorrow morning from the base. Already been out to the base once today to bring a group of 9 guys in. Just finishing getting ready, loading up the laptops (Alan with his fan fiction stories and me with my genealogy indexing). Then it's off to fill up the van and head back out for the day.

Now just think if we had stayed up late tonight we would not be able to do the longer trips during the day cause we'd be sleeping still. The guys who phoned and booked the Calgary trip really wanted to go with us. The phone doesn't turn on usually until 10am lately. Usually it's set for 8am, got to remember to change it back. They phoned 5 times from 8:30am on till it came on and Alan answered it.

They were upset that we didn't have a PlayStation in the van, hmm now I know who they are... they're the ones who the other smaller taxi who does have a PlayStation was trying to convince them to ride to Calgary with her. She can only take 6 and I do believe the booking is for at least 9 guys.

We were going to put the PlayStation 3 in the van as well as the Wii but decided against it. PlayStation 3 doesn't have enough multiplayer games that are offline. Whereas the Wii has tons of multiplayer. Not to mention as well the same ones as well on both. Plus it'll cost too much to get the games right now with the repairs we have to do.

2011-08-17T07:54:00.002-06:00

My body has been doing stupid things lately. Like waking up earlier and earlier each week.

Was on a schedule of waking up at 10:30am every morning, well that was a couple months ago. Gradually it went to 9am then 8am. Well darn it! I woke up at 6am this morning. Just feeling tired again now at 7:45am.

It's no wonder we're not working the night shift anymore. We both don't feel it's worth it, plus our sleep schedules have changed too drastically. Plus we get more business from the base during the day than we can ever get from the bars at the end of the night. Had a couple in town taxis trying to convince us to pick up at 2am at the bars but we're like "um no thanks" at least that's what we're saying later to ourselves. When you get only 1 missed phone call at that time of night, or 4 missed phone calls from the same number at that time of night it's not really worth it staying up just for that one trip. We've ended up with alot more booking and calling earlier in the daytime because they know we're not working nights. Looking back on last year compared to this year... we've reduced our hours at the base but made more money this year. Can't say we have much to show for the $ since alot of it went into things like the $2000 in repairs on the van this month that has to be done before it ends cause we've got an inspection coming up on the 1st of September.

Actually thinking about it... it was supposed to be $2000 but we reduced it by $600 by Alan and his dad replacing the front brakes themselves instead of paying the mechanic $850 to do it. So we've still got about just over $1200 to still work on including the inspection cost plus registration on the van. Got about half of it saved up as well. Jar or envelope budgeting REALLY works well. We had such a hard time saving any money before I started doing it this way.

Oh by the way... yes I got the email about Jocelyn. I'll get Alan to phone later when we finally get up cause I'm now going back to bed. Or at least going to try.

2011-08-16T23:26:00.001-06:00

Well we really didn't think we'd be busy today at the base. But we against how we felt went out washed the van and filled up with gas at Costco and then headed to the base.

We'd only had one call before leaving the house from CANEX. At least there was one call.

Got out to the base sat for a few minutes and then got a trip down to I think the CANEX, could have been the gym but I don't remember (it was at least 6 hours ago now.) Dropped them off. Went back up to the gate and then got 9 guys into Med Hat. Dropped them off at the mall, again heard best taxi ever. Because of the Wii Game System. They also like the idea, after I mentioned it to them, about getting us a list of music they like and we'd check it out and put it on our British music SD card to play in the stereo when they're in there.

They were only the 2nd group to start all singing along to Robert Tepper song, "No Easy Way Out" which the 1st group ever introduced us to Robert Tepper and we immediately liked the song at that point.

Got a few more Canex / Gym trips and then decided to go home at 8pm. We know they're going out on the field tomorrow and not alot would be going into Med Hat.

Going Solo Canada 2011 Charity Bikecar Trip

2011-08-15T22:21:00.003-06:00

Okay we've been busy today arranging the arrival of a lad from the UK who's pedalling his way across Canada for the UK charity, Help for Heroes and the Canadian charity, Wounded Warriors.

He's in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan right now and sometime this week will be on his way to Medicine Hat and the Suffield / Ralston areas.

Paul is his name. Going Solo Canada is the name of this trip.

He started this journey in Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 27, 2011.

Paul contacted me through my Twitter account this morning while he's been resting in Moose Jaw.

Well we surprised him this afternoon by making up some posters for his cause and giving them to the manager at CANEX in Ralston.

One of his wishes for the trip was to get some of the British lads at the base here to ride with him part of the way.

So that's what we advertised on the posters. He'll be coming through Medicine Hat sometime we figure around the 19th of August. He averages or paces himself at about 50km to 75 km per day. He wanted to be in the Suffield area around the 19th or 20th.

Watch for him in the Brooks area just after that or around that date too. If you know someone who'd love to cycle along with him it sounds like he's taking the #1 up through Calgary on his way to Victoria BC.

He's always in need of a place to stay, most people letting him camp out in their yards or hotels have been donating a room for the night.

http://www.going-solo.co.uk/home.html
http://goingsolocanada.blogspot.com/

2011-08-12T22:20:00.001-06:00

We thought we’d heard all the excuses why the other taxis had raised their prices this year.

Well now they’re giving excuses to why we didn’t raise our price.

Soldiers got told today by the other taxis that we didn’t have to pay taxes and that’s why we didn’t raise our prices. Something about being exempt because of being Mormon. Um no we still pay taxes, LDS are not exempt from paying taxes. Nice try.

I think they (the other taxis) were hoping that by saying “Mormon” that the soldiers wouldn’t ride with us either. The only question was “is that similar to Catholic?” and “is that Christian?” After answering both those question they didn’t care. They were more impressed with our answers and respected us more by the end of the round trip than those other taxis.

Again Nice try.

Close Call Van Was Almost Written Off

2011-08-07T12:20:00.000-06:00

Well yesterday was sure nerve racking.

We had a booking for the Permanent Staffs Wives again last night. Got them picked up around 6:30pm from the Canex in Ralston, headed into Redcliff to pickup another one.

Started heading back out of Redcliff on Broadway Avenue. At the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Mitchell Street they have done some road changes and added in turn lanes for those vehicles turning left. The straight through lane from what I remember right continues forward but swerves a little around the turn lane.

We were behind a van turning left, I was going straight through. There was also a truck with a loaded boat trailer in the oncoming traffic turning to his left (so crossing my path) who did not have right away. So I kept going. Next thing I remember is this truck coming at us, looking in my left hand mirror and seeing his front end almost hit us. I don't remember swerving the van so he'd miss t-boning us. My mind went blank at that exact moment and it felt like I was on "autopilot". Pretty much I didn't feel like I was the one in control. I didn't tense up which surprised me later thinking about it. All I can remember is staring into that mirror and then the shocked comments ("That was amazing driving" was the most common) coming from Alan and our 11 passengers. The truck missed us.

Alan said later that when he noticed the truck, the truck's nose was probably at the middle of the van and that the truck should have t-boned us and totaled the van. He also said the van probably would have rolled because of the impact and everyone on the left side of the van would have been either seriously hurt or somewhat hurt because of bashing heads against windows / side of van including me.

2011-07-31T00:29:00.000-06:00

Well we got a late start out at the base today. Went to Wal-Mart and bought 14 jugs of windshield washer fluid. Should have seen the looks on people’s faces! Priceless. Then when you tell them that’s about a 3-4 month supply they go “What?”. Then you have to explain the business.

Got all that home, had late lunch, then headed out to the base, which in both our minds was a waste of time. 2 hours of waiting in the hot sun for a $5 trip. We had better things to do at home. So we went home.

We had dropped a wedding card off earlier to one of our British customer’s new wife’s place. Alan’s parents might remember how the other day when we stopped in from taking a trip to Calgary how we got a couple of text messages on the phone from Matt (the one we’ve talked about before, if not on here then on our A2B blog or on Facebook) saying only “married”. We ended up having to text back asking him to explain. He never told us previously that they were planning the wedding for the last few months.

Hoping that Kayla still lived in the place where we had been picking up Matt was being shipped out (yikes now today, Sunday). Matt’s been a really good customer. Telling everyone to ride with us and telling the other taxi owners how much he’d rather ride with us then them. Especially in cases like the other day when Kayla (his new wife) picked him up and he walked right on by us. The next taxi behind us tried soliciting Matt and he told her “why would I ride with you when I just walked by A2B and could have ridden with them?” He told us this later when we took him back to the base from Kayla’s house.

Well I texted Matt today after coming home from the base to tell him that he didn’t owe us the money from the other day, to consider it a wedding gift and that we had dropped a card off at Kayla’s place. Told him that we were going to miss him because he had become a good friend and not just a customer. Asked him to add me on Facebook and that I would give him Alan’s FB URL as well later (Alan doesn’t have a user friendly URL like some of us).

He shocked me with his reply. He said thanks and said so nice of you. Then told us he loved us and that he would see us soon.

2011-07-29T22:47:00.001-06:00

So for the past few days when we've been sitting at the base waiting for trips we've had a chickadee come sit on the hood of the van and pick bugs off the windshield wipers.

Today we decided that we're pretty sure it's the same one every time. Cute, smart little bugger!

Doesn't stay too long if we've got the van running or if it notices us watching it. If we're not watching it stays a little longer.

2011-07-17T17:04:00.001-06:00

It's that time of the year when the British Temp Staff at the base will be switching out soon. Like the winter season Alan and I have come to have some favorites among the guys and girls.

Last summer / fall season was Ritchie and Trucker's group.

Winter season was James.

This spring / summer season has been Matt. Today we ended up with two separate trips back from Medicine Hat to the base. Just happened to be Matt's group split up into two. First Mark and another mate who on picking them up we realized that they ride with us all the time.

Then an hour or two later Matt texted us for a ride back to the base for just himself. Asked him how long he's got left here. Couple weeks. He was pretty quiet the whole way back, partially because he was sitting there playing the Wii Game system. Got him back to the base and when James left and said goodbye for the last time, Matt acted the same way. The look on his face was one of upset and was going to miss us. He waved like so many of them do with us, unlike the other taxi drivers where they tend to just walk off and not say a word.

Well as we were driving off Alan found out why Matt was so quiet to start. Matt had gone in and made himself a Mii character. We're not totally sure why he did since he's only got 2 or so weeks left here and has had plenty of time during previous trips to quickly make one up. Alan figured the way he was acting as he walked away that he might have done it as a legacy act. Something to remember him by. Which kind of fits Matt. Sorry just remembering why we liked Matt so much right away. He actually went out of his way to tell one of the trouble maker taxi owners at the base how "A2B was the best taxi at the base" and "they had the most customers out there". That and Matt always went around telling all the rest of the soldiers to ride with us because he thought we were the best.

Got to say thank you to the families of these British Soldiers. Since Alan and I don't have kids, and most of these guys and girls are pretty much of an age where we could be their parents, we think of them as temporary kids alot of the times. Probably why we get so attached to some of them. Most of them don't just stay customers, they become friends.

2011-06-26T11:24:00.003-06:00

Well slept in today, didn't make it to church.

Been one long week.

And it's still not over.... off to Lethbridge today to pick up our fave boys from the base.

Will be much better than yesterday. Got to learn not to trust the officers all the time. We took them up to Calgary sometime this past week and booked them to return without getting deposit which is usually okay. These guys didn't wait for us, instead hopped into a Calgary taxi, paid more and outed us gas money. Well things to learn on our part. Don't trust them all. Get a deposit. Just cause they've got rank over the other guys doesn't mean they're trustworthy. Usually less trustworthy cause they don't ride with you all the time or not at all until times like this. Oh and by the way why would I give you a deal on a return trip if you never ride with us? Plus you get paid more than the lower ranks or no ranks.

We are finding we have more problems from the officers than the lower ranks or no ranks.

It's off to Calgary to pickup our other group tomorrow. All the other groups did pay a deposit or full return price up front. And then that winds down the rush. We're thinking they're back on the field Wednesday if we calculated our schedule we have right.

Got to say we've caught up on most of our monthly bills. Put money away for more repairs on the van, will be able to replace the battery with a heavier duty one and get the A/C belt replaced. Plus get the door on the garage replaced. Had a B&E on it sometime last week. Nothing stolen. Was weird.

Well have to leave in about an hour. Going to work on more indexing before we have to go. Going into withdrawals!

2011-06-24T23:39:00.000-06:00

Well Twitter is a BIG influence in the world. Our recent experience with Holiday Inn in Lethbridge proved that. We had soldiers who were lied to about availability because of being soldiers. We called and faked a trip afterwards and were told the opposite of what we were told originally. Called the desk clerk on the lie and told her we'd be making a complaint to our followers on Twitter.

Well got a message from Holiday Inn and International Hospitality Group on Twitter asking me to email them our experience. Twitter is taken quite serious by alot of big companies. Needless to say Lethbridge Holiday Inn is most likely in trouble now.

2011-06-20T13:09:00.000-06:00

Middle of the afternoon yesterday got a text message on the phone. Our one regular customers, M, at the base was back off the field after not seeing him for almost 3 weeks. Was just going down to Canex and we weren’t out there so he had to find another taxi. Then I decided to go to bed early last night, about 8pm. That didn’t work. Around 9pm got a call from M, “could you come out and get us we want to go into Med Hat”. “Sure it’ll be about 45 minutes.” “Ok not a problem.” Got out there pulled into the booking lane. Had some problems with one of the two biggest trouble makers out there for other taxis. She thought that we were stealing a trip from her even though these guys phoned and booked with us. There were too many for her to take in the first place, 8 guys to start. She can only take 6 max. Not that she won’t overload. Asked M to go over and explain to her that he phoned us. She wouldn’t listen to him. Another 6 guys came down from camp that were with our group as well so there was too many for us to take so they split the large group so that they could fill her van, making it as cheap as possible for those 6 guys. The rest went with us. So she ended up getting a trip anyways. This is the reason we’re trying to get on base. So we don’t have to deal with these trouble makers.

M had talked to the other trouble maker earlier that day as well. Obviously he’s the one M got to take him down to Canex earlier that day. Well M told us in the van that he told this guy that we had the most customers and were the best company out there. This taxi owner didn’t like this and like usual told M he was wrong. This owner has a complex where he’s always right. M mentioned something about this owner stating that we weren’t making money either. LOL This taxi driver is always sitting there in line waiting for trips when we’re running back and forth to Canex. He used to get people walking around to him all the time last season. He’s the one with PS2 in his van. He had 2 vans last year. This year he’s down to one and can’t afford to fix it. This season we haven’t seen anyone walk around to go with him. He’s the one who upped the Canex price and made all the guys mad at him. We’ve seen lots of guys walk around him to either go to Canex or go into Med Hat with us instead this year.

Well dropped the guys off at Temptations Night Club and went home. Did some more indexing, changed the text message ring tone to something I’d hear better if it went off and then decided to go back to bed. This was around 12am. Had texted M after dropping his group off and told him I’d leave the phone on if they needed a ride later. I knew they could be heading back around 2-3am. 2am was right, got text message asking to pick them up at the Casino. Ok no problem will be 10 minutes. Scared Alan up, literately opened his door too loud and he almost jumped out of bed. LOL

Took the guys back and good thing something told me to tell M that I would leave the phone on. The guy who collected the return fare money and put it in his wallet ended up losing his wallet. The guys knew that we’d take them back anyways and collect the money later. Got the guys back, Alan dealt with the MPs, they have a system where they collect the money within 48 hours and hold it for the drivers. If we hadn’t been able to get the guys they’d have had to take 2 taxis and it would have cost them double.

Hmmm come to think about it… this is how we got M riding with us in the first place… he had to charge a ride back from a hotel in Med Hat about a month and a half ago. Been only riding with us as much as possible since then.

2011-06-19T11:26:00.000-06:00

Slow day yesterday at work. Had the one trip from the Medicine Hat Airport taking our 6 people and their ton of luggage back home. They said it was rainy in Calgary and Vancouver but had a great time on their Alaskan Cruise.

Only had the 1 call from the base so we didn’t go out there. Had decided since we had the later booking (7:30pm) that we wouldn’t go out to the base after having the really late night before. Friday night we had the Permanent Staff Wives into Medicine Hat and then a 2am return for them. We ended up getting to bed by 4am which doesn’t agree with our body’s sleep schedules now.

We made it to church today. First in what a month or 2? Just made it to Sacrament meeting but that’s better than nothing.

Should start to get busy this week and the base. New guys should be coming in and the old ones coming off the field in about 8-10 days.

Got some major repairs stacking up on the van so the busy period is anxiously being awaited for. Brakes have a couple more months before they need replacing $200 (not squeaking yet), got a ac belt that needs replacing (about $250), winter tires need to be replaced, just fixed the climate control and got an oil change this past week (that was a $400 job) plus we have to replace the battery (plan on changing to a heavy duty battery). That was the other one that needs fixing, the power steering gear box ($700). So yikes it’s going to be an expensive couple of months. That’s probably almost a couple thousand in repairs. Good thing it’s not “need to be RIGHT now fixes”

Got the wiring redone for the inverter so that is a big blessing. Hopefully no more meltdowns since we also added a fuse box / kill switch.

Good thing its just the beginning of our season!

So the big thing we’re debating right now is NOT allowing bookings to Medicine Hat from the base at all during the busy periods. Right now we allow the bookings. There’s so many times that we’re sitting there waiting for a booking and they’re 10-15 minutes late on getting down to the gate and there’s 30 or more guys standing there trying to bribe us to take them instead. They’re amazed that we don’t take their money especially when they offer 4X the amount that we’d be getting from our booking. That and we’ve had to turn down a couple of Lethbridge / Calgary bookings because of already having these Medicine Hat bookings from the base.

2011-06-15T22:43:00.001-06:00

Well we were intending to go out to the base today.

Alan's parents came down so Alan's dad could help fix our water tap in the backyard. We ended up doing some running around with them today in Med Hat. Off to Home Depot (got some more potted vegetable ideas), stopped at Fabricland (and no it wasn't mainly for Alan's mom, Alan needed a new button for his jeans), then off to lunch at Hat's Restaurant (wasn't as good as supper smorg usually is). Then back home to fix the tap. That got done. Alan tried helping his dad with something on his dad's computer, something about a PDA. Then they went home.

Alan and I were both tired by that time. We decided that we'd take the day off from the base unless calls came in. (nothing all night) (been this slow all week) I went and of course went and worked on more FamilySearch Indexing, and Alan ended up having a nap.

2011-06-11T19:01:00.000-06:00

Well I started a new blog, http://www.myindexing.blogspot.com/

Kind of hoping it helps point out problems we see daily in arbitrating these records and pointing out changes etc with the different projects.

2011-06-11T18:59:00.003-06:00

Well Boo's back home in the refuge. He got close enough and then they drugged him and brought him home.

2011-06-10T09:19:00.002-06:00

For those of you familiar with Boo in Golden. Well he's escaped again. He's only about a km away from the ski hill and they know he'll automatically come home again. He decided to go chasing after a female that's been hanging around the enclosure lately. Doesn't sound like neutering him helped there!

We Know where we’re going

2011-06-09T22:07:00.001-06:00

It’s been awhile since I last posted. Geez May was the last time. Still busy at the base. Things have slowed down somewhat since the guys went on the field on the 28th of May. That same week I ended up with a bladder infection and both Alan and I ended up with the flu as well. I was lucky due to the bladder infection that I was on antibiotics already. It didn’t stay around as long as usual even though I’m still coughing due to my asthma.

Well we don’t have a spare driver yet. Not rushing that either now. We know where this business is heading… and it’s not the tour end of things that’s it’s going to end up. Between blessings and prayer during being sick we’ve been told where we’re going with the business. The problem is we don’t know how long it will take. Could be next week, could be 6 months down the road. We’ll just say that it’ll be VERY upsetting to the other taxi companies AT the base. I’m not going to say much more than that on the blog. If you want to ask about it email me or Facebook Message me will tell in private to family members and close friends.

Nothing new happening with Alan and his “condition”. We can’t say illness to a lot of people since they freak out. It’s not mono people! He hasn’t seen the doctor since before Christmas, got to get on that. Got to find out when the sleep study is supposed to be in Lethbridge.

But otherwise I’m tired. Dropped van off at the mechanics for oil change and fixes in the morning. Thermostat is stuck open and only defrosts with the air conditioning going as well all the time.

Oh and we’re closer to getting to the temple. Just need to work on getting to church when the bookings aren’t happening. Otherwise everything else is dropping in place and getting done.

2011-05-23T07:51:00.001-06:00

Sorry we haven’t written in a little while here. Been really busy at the base. Last three weekends we’ve ended up in Lethbridge. This Saturday after dropping off in Lethbridge we ended up staying at the Quality Inn & Suites for the night since we were too tired to go back to Med Hat and then be back by 7am the Sunday morning to pick the guys back up. Was a really nice hotel and the price was great at $115 for up to 4 people. The nice thing too was they didn’t require a credit card.

So to back track a little… we’ve changed our business goal slightly. We’re aiming for getting on base now, even though we’ve only got the one van. We’ve prayed about it and felt the spirit tell us that yes we will get on with some time and patience. Since the other base taxis are treating the soldiers really badly now we have the manager of Canex behind us and trying to find a way to get us on the base. We talked to her and asked for her help on either Friday or Saturday. She is going to look into it and we know she talks to probably all the permanent staff including the BATUS commander and the base commander. Don’t know if I’ve mentioned how the other base taxis have raised their prices to Canex to $10, we stayed at $5. Soldiers are mad at the other base taxis and walk around them to us. Plus when the soldiers do ask the other base taxis the price most of those taxis won’t quote a price they just tell them to “go back to them” or if the soldier mentions “well they charge $5” the other base taxis will tell them rudely “then go with them”. Which that kind of customer service is making the soldiers even madder.

Well as I said we had a trip back from Lethbridge Sunday morning. Got them back and then had a booking for Logan to go to church at 12:15pm. Ended up with a call at 11am for a group of 13 to go back from the mall so that worked out great again this Sunday since we got to the base and Logan didn’t show again this week. We knew he was working until 12pm and figured they wouldn’t let him go or he had to work later. It all worked out though since we got the trip out there plus while we were waiting there was a group of 30 guys trying to buy their way into the van again. Told them we had to wait until 12:30pm and if Logan didn’t show by then we’d take 13 of them to Med Hat. So that’s what ended up happening. We’ve been taking Logan back and forth for free to church and those Sundays he shows we don’t get trips around him. When he doesn’t show we get trips to compensate the gas that’s been wasted.

Well we’ve made enough this weekend to pay for the climate control fix we needed to do on the van. It’s been stuck on defrost / air conditioning for the past few months. Didn’t figure out the air conditioning was stuck on as well until last month. Makes sense why the van was starting to use a lot more gas. We figured it just needed a tune-up but now we don’t think it needs one yet. Plus we can get the one belt fixed that likes to squeak in rainy weather. Plus get an oil change!

We’ve been doing so great that I’ve been able to start a food storage / grocery jar and a savings jar plus of course a tithing jar which I’m able to put 10% of what we make daily into each jar. The savings jar will be used for van repairs that come up, bills during those slow times we don’t have enough money, or those extra goals we have for the business like putting a trailer hitch on and getting our United States Department of Transportation Number so we can go across the border.

Alan also had to give me a blessing Saturday night since I wasn’t doing so great health wise. I thought I had a Urinary Tract infection that was starting to go worse since I was peeing blood clots every so often. The odd part about it was that I had no pain when going, instead all I had was intense tingling sensation and then I couldn’t keep peeing. Then I’d have to go within another 10 minutes.

Blessing also told us to trust our feelings about work goals. Which my feelings about getting on base earlier that day was that we were getting on. After dropping the last guys off Sunday afternoon Alan took me to ER in Med Hat and after a 3 hour wait we saw a doctor who said he was amazed that I wasn’t in pain at all. That it wasn’t a UTI after all. It was a bladder infection, so he put me on antibiotics. If I hadn’t done some research online to find out what I had and had left it it could have turned into a kidney infection.

The Tiny Lights Foundation

2011-05-02T23:32:00.001-06:00

Have you heard about this awesome cause? The Tiny Light Foundation. My cousin’s son is one of their Tiny Lights!

The Tiny Light Foundation is a non profit organization who provides professional photographs for children and families that have life altering medical diagnoses.

Free of charge.

Here’s my cousin’s story http://thetinylight-ourtinylights.blogspot.com/2011/05/paxtons-story.html

2011-04-29T23:48:00.000-06:00

Nothing really new happened today.

Watched the Royal Wedding… kept thinking “I’m not going to watch it.” But had to see what Kate’s dress was like. Gorgeous!

Did some more indexing / helped more people out on Skype again tonight with the indexing and started transferring trading cards over from Ecrater to IOffer instead. www.ioffer.com/selling/cgccards

Storefront is a lot nicer, easier to market on the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Plus I was able to transfer all my old EBay ratings over after having a problem with that and having to email IOffer they got that straightened out right away. Ecrater would never have done that.

Well only 2 to 3 more days and the guys / gals should be starting to come back. Yes I’m counting down, have been for the past 2 weeks.

2011-04-28T19:11:00.001-06:00

I’m learning so much from the Share Batch Group on Skype for the Familysearch indexing!

Did you know when using the search engine on www.familysearch.org you can use a wildcard if you’re not sure of the spelling on a name? For example your looking for a Charles and you know his last name is correctly spelt. Maybe some of his records spelt his first name as Charles, maybe Charlie, maybe Chas (which was commonly used as shortened version on records when the clerk didn’t have enough room on the form). So put in Cha* into the search box for his first name. Put in the last name and it will bring up all the different variations starting with Cha.

2011-04-27T11:36:00.001-06:00

Alan and I are working towards getting back to church more. Our missionaries were over yesterday (I think? am I losing track of days that bad?) and they’re going to be working with us to get us back out. For the first time since we’ve been married (May will be 10 years) (oh my that’s coming up in just over a week, forgot about that!) we sat down and read scriptures together. We’ve been praying together off and on (mostly before work and sometimes at meals if we remember) for a little while now. Got to work on that too.

Even though I’ve been in the church for about 20 years now, my immediate family who all joined at the time never sat down and read scriptures or prayed together. We never had family home evening. At least not that I remember so that’s not good. So some of these things are really hard on me to start.

It does help that I’ve been reading the scriptures off and on (forgetting for a few days and then picking back up when I do remember) by myself. Did finally after 20 years of being a member, finish the Book of Mormon by last New Year’s Eve. Started over right away again as well been reading a chapter a day of each of the other scriptures.

Praying wasn’t so hard to me… at least non-verbally. When praying by myself I’ve never really prayed aloud. Don’t feel I need to either.

Just don’t ask me to bear my testimony, put on the spot I freeze and cant do it most times. But there will be times when I will catch you off guard. Done it to a few members, current Elder’s Quorum president is one that comes to mind. Usually to do with feeling the spirit and usually with work. Surprises most people. Especially with the work we do with the soldiers.

I know the soldiers are not the best examples to be around. Drinking, smoking, swearing… but I feel that it’s the place we are supposed to be. Nothing else for the opposite… for us to set a good example. James being the example last week… when he turned around and waved goodbye… the hurt on his face cause he may not ever see us again… that was the first time we had experienced that with any of the guys / gals.

Sorry have to end here… can’t quit crying.

Familysearch Indexing and Skype

2011-04-27T10:18:00.001-06:00

Been doing a lot of Familysearch Indexing over the last week or so since it’s been not so busy with A2B. Joined a Skype Group that helps people with Share batches as well. So Brooke, Jocelyn (when you get out of the hospital) or anyone else who does the indexing and would like to be part of this group or just Share batches on Skype Instant Messaging just let me know.

2011-04-24T21:17:00.001-06:00

Well since the cell phone has been down we’ve been expecting a slow week from the base. Not that there’s any business out there right now anyways. Only 40 guys total out there right now.

Did manage to make some money yesterday though. Got a trip from our neighbours 4 houses down from us. They had been walking down the alley and noticed the van parked in the back spot. So they called us to go to Redcliff and back for their group of 8 people. They loved the $15 each way and we ended up with $30 in tips as well. They get together every couple of months and will be using us anytime they need to go to Redcliff. That and everywhere they went that night they were telling everyone about us!

So that was the good thing about this stressful week.

Well a couple of days and we’re back up to Calgary to pickup our Europe group.

Low Blood Sugar Week

2011-04-15T21:02:00.000-06:00

Trying to figure out when I last had a low blood sugar episode. Besides this week. The last post I made about it was September of 2009. We know that I've had episodes in between but nothing like this week. At least not in a long time. Or so it feels.

Oh well everytime this happens we learn more about it. It's hard to deal with this when you're short on money.

Seven Persons Creek Flooding

2011-04-12T21:55:00.001-06:00

No it’s not flooding in our area of the city. We’re 2 blocks away from the South Saskatchewan River and that’s not what’s flooding here in Medicine Hat.

The Seven Persons Creek is what’s flooding due to one of the dams in the Seven Persons area. Water is being released from the dam so it doesn’t cause the dam to erode and cause further problems. If you don’t know which creek this is it’s the one that runs through Seven Persons from Seven Persons Lake (and Murray’s Lake) and then into Medicine Hat through Kin Coulee Park, past Saamis Funeral Home at the bottom of Dunmore Road, then behind Ogilvie Flour Mill, then back along the cliffs and above Medalta Potteries and into Strathcona Park which in turn ends up flowing into the South Saskatchewan River.

Last thing I saw about 1/2 hour ago was that another 2 feet and the bottom of Dunmore Road where it becomes Kingsway Avenue (intersection of it and Spencer Street) will be under water.

So far there’s 28 farms being evacuated from Seven Persons areas to Medicine Hat and 650 houses on voluntarily evacuation alert within Medicine Hat.

Flooding, Snow and More Snow = Bad Road Conditions

2011-04-03T09:25:00.000-06:00

So yesterday we ended up with the booking to Lethbridge from the base. We knew it was coming Thursday cause the guys talked to us at the main gate. So we checked the weather sites, looked at the bad road conditions and decided after picking them up that we wouldn’t take the shortcut down Range Road 93 to Hwy 524 and then over to Hwy 879 and down to Hwy 3 like we would usually in good weather. We went up to Hwy 36 just past Brooks instead and over to Taber (Hwy 3) and then up to Lethbridge. Good choice Hwy 36 was pretty much clear the whole way. Better than Hwy 1 was even. Actually Hwy 1 is always better once we get into Newell County. So dropped them off, arranged to pick them back up today at midnight.

Went to the Park Place Mall to get some food from the food court, bought some Girl Guides cookies as we left since the girls were soooo cute!

Headed down Hwy 3 to just before Bow Island and decided to take the “shortcut” back home.

Guess I should backtrack a little here before going on…. just after picking up our guys, Eddie’s Taxi phoned us and asked whether we got his trip. No we had 10 guys, it was our trip and his trip should be coming down since they phoned us first as well (they were supposed to be our booking for the day before but didn’t call) so we told them to call Eddie since there was only 5 of them. They weren’t supposed to be at the gate until 10:30am, it was 10am. He asked which way we were going (or Alan told him that we were taking the longer way) and Eddie said the shortcut should be just fine and that’s the way he was going to go (his booking was for Lethbridge too).

So back to the return part… we took the shortcut… Got onto Hwy 879… that was ok for the most part. Little drifting snow not a problem really, then it started getting worse, by this time I’m not turning around with a big van it’s not that bad if we kept the speed reduced. There was one section where if this snow continues the road is going to be flooded out. There was a lake on either side of the road (there’s no lake ever normally) for as far as you could see in the one direction. Okay not bad, not flooded yet. Continue on. Got to Hwy 524 and it got worse, down to one lane in a lot of sections, more lakes starting to form, no flooding yet. Then decided to take Range Road 93 (is dirt road) … big mistake… couldn’t do more than 30km / hr. in the van. Didn’t want to go slower since we were afraid of stopping and getting stuck. Made it the 12km (finally) down Range Road 93 to Highway 1.

Now the van is fully dirty and we don’t want to pick up anymore trips right away so we headed into Medicine Hat instead to go wash the van. Well that section from Suffield to Medicine Hat was in some ways worse than Range Road 93. It was down to one lane and I could only do about 80km an hour. The semi’s didn’t care either, they were speeding by at over 100km, blinding everyone and sending some into the ditch cause they were throwing the slush up into their windshields. Visibility was reduced as well cause of the blowing snow.

Saw 1 semi in the ditch first and then a mini van that I’m pretty sure had sped by us as well.

So if I complain about Volker Stevin for that section of the highway it’s usually deserved. We continually notice that they’re not out there during the daytime. Yet Newell County and MD of Taber they were out as we travelled to Lethbridge and clearing the roads. Actually come to think about it we passed one on Hwy 879 which is Cypress County… so what they were doing out there instead of on a major Highway like the #1 was stupid. The major highways should be done first not the minors.

Oh and we were supposed to have a booking last night at 7:30pm for the Permanent Staffs Wives again. Partway into Medicine Hat we phoned her up and cancelled the booking. She thanked us for cancelling since she had been to Medicine Hat and back already that day and had ended up in the ditch herself. They just didn’t phone and cancel cause they were concerned about having to still pay. Cancelling due to bad weather = you get full refund if you prepaid. They hadn’t prepaid either. They’re going to reschedule in a couple weeks.

In the end run we were glad we took the shortcut back from Lethbridge cause if we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t have had to wash the van, and we wouldn’t have known what Hwy 1 was like between Suffield and Medicine Hat. We would have kept that booking later than night and possibly something would have gone wrong.

So I’m thinking we’re going to take Hwy 3 today to Lethbridge (duh of course) and then from there take Hwy 36 again and down to Suffield.

Edmonton Trip this Past Saturday

2011-03-28T22:34:00.001-06:00

Was a slow week and then bam! On Saturday we ended up with a booking to Edmonton from the Saamis Immigration Services in Medicine Hat. They found us in the yellow pages in the phone book. Can’t say that monthly ad didn’t just pay off. Not only did we end up with the trip to Edmonton but from the sounds of it they’ll be using us quite often.

Again it was a family that spoke VERY little English. The three possibly teenagers in the family of 10 spoke enough English to get through the trip. Not sure where they were from.

Well dropped them off on the NE side of Edmonton, found the North Costco, filled up with cheap gas compared to here (102.9 there in Edmonton, 107.9 here in Medicine Hat) then we decided we would head over to the Mall after deciding we weren’t going to. Big mistake there! Only parking with a vehicle this size was the auxiliary parking across the street by the West Edmonton Inn and the mall hadn’t plowed the parking lot in a little while. You’d think with all that money coming in they could plow a parking lot? We got stuck. After a couple nice people during various times trying to help us get the van unstuck, while we waited for a tow truck, the tow truck driver finally got the van unstuck. $70 later, we were on the way home instead of going to the mall, well stopped for supper first, then home. The good thing about the tow company (S&S Towing) is that he was only 1/2 to 45 minutes away compared to the other idiot tow company who told us 2 & 1/2 hours and then complained like crazy when we cancelled the call cause the other tow company got us out. This was complaining after asking us to call him if we got unstuck and didn’t need him.

Roads and visibility from what I remember was good until after Red Deer then it got bad. We were down to 80km /hrs. until at least Airdrie. From there on I don’t remember much since Alan drove and I slept on and off. We left Edmonton around 6pm and arrived home at 1:30am. Had to be around 1:30am cause all I remember is getting a phone call around 1am asking if we could pick someone up from the WYNZ. Ya right, told them no, sorry.

Oilfield Booking today

2011-03-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

Sorry haven’t written in a little while. Okay only a week or so. Internet has been down. Caught the bill up and now it’s back.

Just sitting waiting for our booked trip to finish at the first stop this morning. Working by myself on an hourly rate trip for Connections Career School. They do Oilfield certification, all that stuff that goes with that kind of job.

We’re just sitting off the 41A right now at a service rig. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a rig. Good thing they planned the rig for the beginning of the trip… before it gets warm and the ground thaws out! Will be going to some of the oilfield companies around Redcliff / Med Hat later.

I went on this trip by myself since we were expecting 13 customers, to us riggers aren’t always small people and Alan and I decided it was better if he didn’t come with. After getting the trip there’s only about 12 customers so he could have come along. Oh well he’s still sleeping. Lucky duck! Probably will get to sleep in for about another couple hours.

Planning on going out to the base tonight as well around 3pm or so. Things have been getting better out there. Just have to teach the soldiers to either not go with the other taxis since they’re starting to charge more just to go to the gym which is no more than 2km extra from the Canex or to phone us and book a ride back if they’re needing a ride after 9pm.

Canex has now permanently changed it’s hours to close at 8pm instead of 9pm, which in our minds was stupid. Might mean more business for us going into Med Hat for last minute supplies before the guys / gals go on the field now instead of shopping at Canex.

We’re still continually hearing “this is the best taxi ever”. We’ll probably hear it more as the soldiers learn that the other taxis are planning to charge just as much as the one taxi company when she doesn’t want the Canex trips. She’ll charge $10 or more for a $5 trip just to get the guys to walk around. The other taxis are planning on charging the same if the soldiers walk around her and try and get in their taxis. We’re going to tell the soldiers that if we’re in the line behind these taxis then walk around them as well and come ride with us for $5. These other taxis don’t understand that the soldiers will eventually just walk down to Canex and the taxis will lose out on business. Our plan is to take the business away from them then.

The #1 taxi out there at the base last year has become one of the more hated ones this year. Probably cause the owner of the company is working it instead of hiring spare drivers. He’s not too smart when it comes to business either.

This booking I’m on ended up being 8 hours long. Didn’t get out to the base today afterwards. Was too tired.

Busy couple of days

2011-03-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

Had a good time visiting with Alan’s family over the past couple of days. We went to the funeral of Alan’s Grandpa Johnson. Saw some of the family that Alan and I had not seen since our California trip while we were dating, so that’s over 10 years ago. Spent Thursday in Olds for the funeral. Then some of the family went down to Taber to the burial.

Parker and Alan played Wii in the van the whole 4 hours down to Taber.

There was one point when we had to stop for a break just outside Okotoks at the Petro Canada and I found it funny how when Alan and Parker were walking back to the van they had the exact same grimace on their faces cause of the blowing cold wind.

Roads weren’t too bad going down. Visibility wasn’t great on the #2 at times. We saw a truck that had rear ended a snow plow. The truck was crunched up in the snow plows back tire. From Fort McLeod to Taber the roads got worse. Drifting snow and down to one lane in most places.

There was a short burial at the Taber cemetery and then we went home. Got things ready and then headed out to the base to try and make some money before our Temple trip that we’ve got booked tomorrow.

We ended up with a few Canex / Gym trips. Then a booking at 8:30pm to go into Med Hat.

Now we’re getting ready for bed. Got to get up at 7:30am to go fill up the van for the trip to Cardston tomorrow.

2011-03-03T05:39:00.001-07:00

Just heading out the door at 6am to go to the funeral in Olds for Alan’s Grandpa J. Picking Mardi and Parker up on the way at the Calgary Airport.

2011-03-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday was a little stressful.

Had the Commercial inspection done on the van. Cost $40 more than we were quoted on the phone. Plus cost us almost $50 more on top of that cause Murray Chev Olds didn’t catch things the first time round. Like the fire extinguisher not being the right kind and the first aid kit not having everything we needed.

Big problem was that Alberta Department of Transportation never ever gave us a list of what type of fire extinguisher, where the fire extinguisher had to be placed, that it had to be tagged.

No list of things that had to be in the first aid kit. Good thing it was only missing a couple of triangle bandages. Cheap enough to add in.

Then things de-stressed when after faxing the safety inspection off to DOT cause she called us right away and let us know that we overpaid the certificate renewals. So she’s sending us back the $50 check and keeping the $180. Taking the fees out of the $180 and issuing us a refund of $70 sometime this month!

Originally it cost $290 for those certificates and this time we knew we didn’t have to pay for the Safety Certificate but thought the prices were the same for the other two Operating Authorities. Nope cheaper this time. They did send out notices but we didn’t change our address in time.

We didn’t get out to work yesterday. Don’t know about today. If we do we’ve got to quit early to get up by 6am to be at the Calgary Airport around 9:30am – 10am to pick up Mardi and Parker for the funeral in Olds.

Darn Gas Cap

2011-03-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

Oh my…memory going again today. Hate when that happens. Opened up the Windows Live Writer program and then couldn’t remember what I was going to write here.

It’s going to be one of those weeks.

Well I know we got ready for work this afternoon, van started just fine even though it was –33C with the wind-chill. Yikes!

Got to Costco Gas, pulled in parked it and then Alan couldn’t get the locking gas cap off again. Darn thing froze again. If the van didn’t have the tank capacity that it does we wouldn’t worry about having a gas cap that doesn’t lock. But with living in the Flats and people already casing out the van this winter, well we just don’t trust people.

So started the van back up and pulled to another area of the parking lot and Alan tried his “heating up the key with a lighter” trick. That wouldn’t work, too cold out. So off to Trans Canada Truck Stop we went to buy some de-icer. Which from the last time this happened (last week) I tried talking Alan into buying some then. Well it worked. Got back to Costco, filled up and as we were trying to decide whether to go out to the base or not. (Money’s tight and Mondays aren’t always great for sitting out there, so we were stressed on whether to go or not) Just as we were trying to decide, James (one of our regulars at the base) called asking whether the highway was ok to come into Med Hat and if they came into Med Hat did we think there was a chance of them getting stuck in town again. We told him that from what we’d seen of the highway so far it wasn’t bad and if they wanted to come in we’d come get them and no matter how long it took we’d get them back to the base. One of the reasons James became our regular and tries not to ride with the other taxis is because we rescued their group the one weekend morning after the Med Hat taxis turned around and refused to take them back to the base the night before cause the roads were really bad. They know we have winter tires on the van compared to most of the in town taxis who don’t put on winters.

Well promised them we’d get them home tonight and we did about an hour ago. Looked like we had a couple new guys in his group as well that had never ridden in our van. You can always tell by the comments “This taxi is awesome!” or “I’ve never ridden in a taxi like this before”. Those new guys will be back!

Oh and you know the TV show Wipeout? Well when I put it on the Wii hard drive Alan didn’t think the guys would play it. Well it’s one of the most popular games with this group of guys! All the way back I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t hear someone laughing their head off. That and they’re other favorite game seems to be Monopoly Streets. You wouldn’t think they’d be able to get a game in, in about a 1/2 hour but they do. Even to the extent of one of the property trades tonight included a Snickers bar as bribery!

Well off to bed now. Got a commercial inspection on the van in the morning at 10am.

2011-02-27T13:02:00.001-07:00

We just got the call… Grandpa Johnson passed away 10 minutes ago.

Grandpa Johnson is getting worse

2011-02-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

Went and saw Grandpa Johnson yesterday.

His health is deteriorating quite rapidly. His heart is only working at about 15%. Kidneys are starting to shut down. Problems are treatable but not together. If you treat one it adversely effects the other. Blood pressure was down quite low yesterday cause of his heart. He was mentioning being dizzy. He was able to talk but it took him a lot of concentration to get the words out and his speech was somewhat slurred at times.

The doctors yesterday, said that he could go tomorrow, or that he could last another 3 months, they were just not sure. From the way he looked to us yesterday and from what Alan’s dad describes today, we don’t think he has long to last.

Alan’s dad said he’s gone downhill quite a bit from yesterday and that his blood pressure is even lower today.

We’re trying to get Alan’s dad to set Skype on his laptop so that Mardi and other family members who are unable to get to Olds at this time have a chance to say goodbye.

If you’re in the area and haven’t gone to see him…GO. This might be your last chance.

2011-02-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

Worked at the base Tuesday. Didn’t even make gas. Ended up picking up James on the way back from the gym, he thought since he was in camos we’d have not have recognized him. Alan told him “of course we recognize you, you’re one of our favorites” Which is true. James broke it off with the girlfriend in town so won’t be probably riding in so much during the week. He’s only here for another month and then back home to the UK. Makes sense to break off the relationship when he told her in the first place he didn’t want a long term one. Too many miles in-between them after next month.

James and friends are going to Calgary this weekend. If they can’t sign out a mini-bus they’re going to call us and hire us for the weekend to stay up there with them until Sunday. Pretty much Calgary Pub Crawl + Shopping = cheaper than hiring taxis up there. Cause if they can’t get the base mini-bus then they’d be hiring us to go up to Calgary, drop them off, then come back for them on Sunday anyways. Paying for a hotel room for us for 2 nights is still probably cheaper than taking Calgary taxis for 13 guys / gals all around Calgary for 2 days.

We didn’t head out to the base yesterday after spending more in gas Tuesday than we made. But on the other hand I keep telling myself it’s the cost of advertising out there to those soldiers. No other way to get the advertising on base except to be out there. Hmmmm BFBS News is following us now on Twitter, maybe I can figure out a way to advertise through them.

Problem there is they don’t advertise businesses like Canadian Radio Stations do. There’s usually no ads in-between songs. If there is it’s usually to do with an event happening on one of the bases.

I’m getting a better feeling today about going out to the base then I did yesterday. Didn’t get a feeling at all yesterday.

Got the commercial inspection booked for March 1st. Almost $50 cheaper than last year cause we’re going to Al’s Auto instead of Murray Chev. Saved $50 off Alberta Department of Transportation certificate renewals too this year. Didn’t have to pay for a renewal on the Safety Cert. Didn’t realize until last week that our city license doesn’t expire until March 9th which is a big blessing since it’s another $200 renewal. So the Cardston Temple trip should cover most of that. Plus insurance at the 1st of the month.

This has got to be the most stressful time of the year for us in the business. Too many bills just for licenses all at once.

But I know we’ll make it through it. I’m not actually as stressed out as other times I’ve been.

2011-02-20T14:49:00.001-07:00

Okay knocking on wood didn’t work for that last post. Within 1/2 hour I got a call for a booking from one of our regulars that we couldn’t take in last night cause we already had a booking. Told Alan as he joked with J as J got into one of the other taxis that J would be phoning us to come back to the base.

Good thing it was for tomorrow morning at 5am. Works out great too. Have to pick up Jerri & Dan at 4:30am and take them to the Med Hat airport so they can jet off to warmer climates.

Having a cheaper price back to the base does work. You know what? Most of the times because of giving that cheaper price back no matter when they come back and no matter who they originally rode in to Med Hat with, they book with us later to go into Med Hat which means we’re gaining regulars.

Our one temporary regular over the weekend rode in with us on Friday, came back with us Saturday morning cause of the cheaper deal, then booked to go back into Med Hat Saturday night. Still haven’t heard from him but expect a call sometime. The bonus about him is he’s higher up in rank and only here for the week, but likes the service which will get around by word of mouth. The higher ranks like to tell the lower ranks that they HAVE to ride with a certain taxi.

2011-02-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

Geez what a busy day yesterday was compared to Friday. Had 3 trips into Medicine Hat and 2 from Medicine Hat. The nice thing was it all stopped by 11:30pm. The not so nice thing…my headache started around that time from so much dry heat in the van, then it continued throughout the night. So bad that it interrupted me getting a good nights sleep and so we didn’t make it to church yet again.

I really can’t wait till next month when the battle group gets here and we put our new spare driver on for a couple days a week. We’re seriously looking at putting the car back on as well. Insurance won’t be as much as we thought. We can register it as a charter which makes the insurance 1/2 the price!

The big blessing for today is that the phone hasn’t gone off yet today. Knock on wood. Hopefully it doesn’t go off at all, unless you’re friends calling to say you want to get together

I Wear Red on Fridays, Do You?

2011-02-18T12:57:00.001-07:00

It’s Friday.

Are you wearing red?

http://www.redfriday.ca/
I am. I wear red every Friday.
You should too.

To Do Indexing today or Not?

2011-02-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry for so many posts in one day. Not like me, huh? LOL

Right, just had to post this one.

For those who do the Familysearch Indexing …

It’s one of those days where I open up the program, download some batches to be arbitrated, and go….

“What were you thinking?” to the indexers. The indexing project I was working on was Canada, Ontario - Marriages, 1869-1927 [Part B] Watch out in these ones for the Dual Page Marriage Registers, you don’t get both pages in 1 batch.

You know at those times it’s not a indexing day, I think I’ll just put the laptop away, go get ready for work tonight and not index today.

Note for those who are indexers: If there’s only 1 image in the batch you can’t have a Duplicate Image. There has to be 2 or more images in the batch to be a duplicate. If you index sequential batches you can’t mark them duplicate either. There was no guarantee that you or an arbitrator would get both of those sequential duplicate batches. They’re not considered duplicates.

Please if you’re having problems or questions about indexing check out the FamilySearch Forums or the Facebook FamilySearch Indexing Page I would check out the forums first. They have a lot more information and help. Each indexing project has its own thread.

Thanks Two Mittens

2011-02-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks Two Mittens for introducing RWBandMe Blog to me! Loved reading the little bit I did read of her blog!

Now following her blog and will be putting it in our blog roll.

Hardwood Floors and other things

2011-02-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

So we had the plumber who did mom’s renovations in the bathroom come back and fix his mistakes. When he moved the vent in the bathroom under the cabinet he didn’t connect it to the duct. He also used aluminum dryer tubing instead of more duct work. He told Alan today that the tubing was better. No it’s not. We had my sister’s brother-in-law look at it who’s a furnace specialist and Marty told us it wasn’t better. I’m going to trust Marty.

He also told us that moving the vent from under the cabinet wasn’t going to force more air out of the vent that it would be worse. How can it be worse if the original vent which mom didn’t ask to be moved worked just fine. She told them to update it to a modern vent so it wouldn’t collect so much dust / dirt. Not to move it.

I couldn’t use the storage under the cabinet for anything that couldn’t be heated. The furnace didn’t heat the bathroom it heated the cabinet instead. Things like the glass cleaner were extremely hot the one day when I pulled them out, not previously knowing that that would be a problem.

This plumber also put aluminum tubing right up against and touching copper piping. Alan was pretty sure that was a “Do not do”. So Alan put some Gorilla Tape in-between.

The bonus about all this is Alan found out that the wood flooring under the new lino in the bathroom is about a foot thick. Plus it’s hardwood. We’re pretty sure the rest of the house is hardwood as well.

One of our plans with the house for renovations is to restore a lot of the original features of the house. The second bedroom has hardwood floors right now. The master bedroom and the living room are going to be restored to hardwood as well.

The only updates we’re doing is putting drywall in the whole place. Right now it doesn’t have any except for the kitchen and bathroom which were renovated this last summer.

We’re not sure what exactly the plan is with the City of Medicine Hat for redeveloping this area we live in. They’ve got a plan to make it a historical area. This is their plan City of Medicine Hat River Flats Development Plan

We like the idea. But will this mean if they designate the area historical will we not be able to renovate or will they have control over how we renovate the house? I’m thinking the outside of the house yes. Since it states new houses in this area have to “fit in” and look the period. But what about inside, do they have the control then? Alan and I believe restoring the house would make it more valuable to mom if she ever wanted to sell it. Especially if this area becomes a desired area to live in.

Funny fact, Brad’s uncle and aunt, (Brad’s my mom’s boyfriend, high school sweetheart) they originally built this house.

2011-02-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Wasn’t too bad a night at the base tonight. We were the only taxi out there from 5:30pm to 9pm. Nobody else showed up. We made our gas plus more. No trips into Medicine Hat but at least we got a lot of Canex / Ralston trips.

Well the phone is now turned off for the night. Too tired to go out and get anyone. It’ll turn itself back on around 9ish in the morning. One thing I love about BlackBerrys.

Just working on some FamilySearch Indexing right now. Working on the US, New York – WWII Draft Registration Cards for 1942. Indexing and arbitrating them.

So far total number of names I’ve indexed is 43,147 and total number of names I’ve arbitrated is 124,104 and that’s since July of 2008.

So I know Brooke does the indexing. Jocelyn started doing the indexing before she got sick. Anyone else?

Busy Weekend now I’m Tired

2011-02-14T00:46:00.000-07:00

So other than the Pronghorn sighting we’ve been somewhat busy this weekend. The week started out kind of slow, some days seeming like “would we even make gas while sitting at the base” but each day we’d end up at least making the gas for sitting out there. Which has paid off for sitting out there. More and more guys are phoning and riding with us. Only 1 group this week even took advantage of the phone ahead and get a discount off the trip from the base. The rest are phoning and booking either cause of the Wii or because a lot of them really like the two of us. Plus when they start finding out our prices compared to taking multiple taxis well that helps too.

Each day this weekend (Friday, Saturday) we (I think) only did a couple trips into Medicine Hat. Had at least 1 trip back each of those days as well. Sunday ended up with a booking to go into Medicine Hat and then take them back home later.

Will have to decide whether we’re going out to the base tomorrow to sit or just wait till calls come in. Both of us are tired from the weekend.

Not sure how busy it will be Monday with Valentine’s Day at the base.

But Tuesday should be payday so might be busy.

Well finally off to bed now.

Pronghorns inside Medicine Hat

2011-02-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

So as we were driving around Crescent Heights in Medicine Hat the other day, would have been the 9th of February (Wednesday) first of all we come up Altawana Drive going up to Crescent Heights and what do we see? 12 pronghorn deer grazing within the city. These guys don’t come into the city, they like the open fields. There’s probably been too much snow out in the prairie and finding food is getting hard out there. Got to the top of the hill, turned left onto 7th Street NW and down the block and around the next right hand corner were these guys, munching on someone’s front lawn.

We were so amazed at them being in the city we had to go around the block and come back to take a picture!

Did you know that Pronghorn are not antelope? Pronghorns have branching horns and shed the horns annually, whereas antelope horns are unbranched and never shed. There are no antelope that are native to America, North, South or Central. Bet you Alan couldn’t have told you what the difference was between them, just that what we call antelope in Alberta are not antelope.

Non-Stop 3 Days

2011-02-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

First I just had to check when the last time I posted was… Friday.

Saturday…

we….mind is drawing a BIG blank right now….I know we had 1 trip in to Medicine Hat. It was our Walmart guys from last Friday. Oh yes we took another trip into the Arena for the hockey game. Plus did a whole bunch of Canex trips.

Got the Walmart guys (don’t know they’re names as of this moment yet)…back, geez can’t even remember where we picked them up from but I know we took almost an hour to get back to the base, roads were ok but the visibility was nearly nothing. We called the night “quits” by 11:30pm or so. Roads by that time were getting really icy. As we were half way back we got the call from the guys at the Arena and gave them Care Cabs number. We really didn’t want to go back out since the roads were getting worse. They were ok with that, thanked us for giving them another number. We went home and turned off the phone.

Set the phone alarm to go on by 8am. Went to bed around midnight.

Today…

Got up at around 8am, we both were still tired from Friday night and we decided to stay home. Noticed we missed 2 calls around 3am. Glad the phone was off. Didn’t make it back to bed for very long when we got a call from some of our regulars, they were at the Parklane Motor Inn and needed a ride back to the base. Okay so told them 20 minutes and quickly got dressed and headed out. Woke up Alan first of course again! I was pretty sure it was them that called at 3am looking for a ride. So we got them. They told us the taxis they got early in the morning after the bar rush got not far outside of Redcliff and then had to turn around. The roads were just too bad. So they ended up staying in the motel. I don’t think it was just cause of there being 8 of them they decided to call us. It was probably the cheaper price combined with the Wii as well.

We knew a few of them were coming back into Med Hat this afternoon to watch the Super bowl so we arranged for them to call us when they were ready. We ended up going into Medicine Hat to fill up with gas, got home, Alan was ready to go back to bed for a nap and they called. They were ready. So back out to get them. Dropped them off and now we’re just waiting for them to call back to take them back to the base. Probably another hour. They said they’d be done around 9ish.

Friday Night Musings

2011-02-05T03:05:00.000-07:00

Don’t know how many of the family members check out our A2B Blog so I decided to repost this post here as well….

You’ve got to love nights like tonight. It wasn’t big trips to Calgary, Lethbridge or Edmonton. Just little ones compared to those. All they were were ones to Medicine Hat from BATUS at Ralston, Alberta.

For those of you who don’t know that’s where quite a few British Soldiers spend their time training throughout the year for deployment to the warzones that they have to fight in. We’re starting to make quite a good name for ourselves out there as a charter / taxi company. This is our third year out there as an independent company. Gradually growing each year.

The first year starting was with a 5 passenger car, then the 2nd year with the van we now run.

During the 2nd year especially we focused on customer service by having the two of us (Alan and myself) both working all the trips together in the same vehicle. I drive most of the time. Alan acts as a doorman usually, helps the guys / gals find information either by searching on the internet on the Blackberry or phoning companies. Setting up the seatbelts which can be confusing for people. Setting up and running the Wii Gaming System. Helping people in the games if they’re having problems. If he knows the game! Answering the phone like a business should. Unlike the rest of the independent taxi companies at the base who don’t even answer their phones with a business name, just “hello”. Being honest with the customers out there on how long it’s going to be before we can actually be out there. Not lying to the customers like some we know do.

We had one guy tonight that unknown to us, we had impressed quite a bit by just being honest in the time it was going to take us to get out to the base gym the other day from home. We had taken him and his mate (friend) down to the gym that afternoon, and then gone home cause I wasn’t feeling too great. A few hours later we got a call from him and we had to tell him we couldn’t be back out there for a couple hours to get him. We were actually in the middle of making supper at that moment and didn’t want to put it on hold right at that moment, yet again. He was fine with that, he’d find someone else to call. I do believe we even gave him the number of one of the other companies. Didn’t see him again until tonight. He was our 2nd trip in to Medicine Hat. They came down to the main gate in a group of 4 guys, we were 2nd out behind a Deluxe taxi, there was 6 other guys following them, unknown to us not part of their group, we thought they were all one group. The 4 guys made a B-line to us, telling the Deluxe driver “no were going with them” and pointing at us. The other 6 guys found out we could take 13 guys so decided to hop in as well, making it cheaper for all.

Okay got them into Medicine Hat, no problem. The guy we had taken down to the gym previously, C., told us he already had our business card and would arrange for us to pick the 4 guys up later. Dropped them off, went back out to the base at 11:00pm to “take a chance” on getting another trip in. Got one in, dropped them off, went home to rest until C. would phone with where they were. 15-20 minutes later he calls, pick him up. Okay out we go. Got C., he was by himself, Talked the whole way back about how he didn’t like the other companies out there at the base. He’s been testing every one of them. Telling us how this one raises and lowers his price depending on what he feels like that day, having done it a couple times to C.. How that same one was really grumpy and rude on the phone. How he didn’t feel safe driving with the guy. How another changed her prices as well depending on the day. How she smelled like alcohol really badly some days and a little less on other days. He also complained how the “city” or Medicine Hat taxis were always out sitting at the base instead of being in Medicine Hat serving their customers and how some of them he’d never seen before. Now C. has been here since November so therefore should know most of the regular taxi drivers that sit out there at this time of year. Which are not many. He didn’t even recognize the one city company, asking “what’s with all the white taxis?”

Then C. starts going on about how he loves the way we treat people, how we are honest about the time it’s going to take for us to get there. We told him tonight that it was going to take 20 minutes to get to him at the bar even though it only took 8 minutes according to him. He loved that. He praised my driving. Pretty much it boiled down to we were reliable, friendly, good service and that he’d only take us from now on.

Oh and get this, the funny part, odd part, Alan handed C. a brochure about us and C. told us that he had already seen that same brochure sitting on a seat in the UK airport before he came to Canada. In the UK! We were like….WHAT? You found it where? It’s amazing where you’re printed information can end up.

Stayed Home Today, Swapped Blogs for business

2011-02-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

Well we didn’t go to the base tonight. Obviously from the lack of calls we got from there it was the right choice. Thursdays are not really busy out there for us anyways. Spent the day instead changing around the A2B blog. Moved it from Posterous to Blogger. Like the way blogger does they’re layouts better, being able to change things, move things around. It was a lot of work moving over 40 posts that I advertise on Twitter and other social media locations.

Well the other day I get this email from Google. It had been 3 months since we’d used our Adwords account. Because we hadn’t used it they decided to give us another $100 free credit. Was kind of blown away by that. I’ll take $100 worth of free advertising again. So now during one of our slowest periods we’ve got advertising running that I don’t have to pay for!

Wednesday at the base wasn’t very productive. Got enough trips to cover gas plus a little extra. Had one of the guys run over to us while we were in line. He wanted the price for Lethbridge. They’re looking at going on the weekend. Monday wasn’t very productive either but being out there a little is advertising big time. Monday some of the guys noticed the Calgary Pub Crawl price we advertise just for the soldiers and told us it was cheaper than them going with the base’s arranged transportation to Calgary. Even with them adding on hotels for themselves. They were pretty happy and decided they were definitely not going with the big bus and would go with us instead. We figure the big bus would be like they transport them down to Med Hat. Take them there but once they’re there they are on their own. They don’t drive them around or anything, they’d have to hire a taxi. Where as we’d drive them around, they get to play the Wii all the way there and back, the bus is just a school bus without entertainment. Obviously a better deal with us!

Got a call tonight looking at a group trip to the Calgary airport in April. 10-12 people. Off to Europe. Plus they’ll book us for the return as well. They really liked the price. We’ll have to work on getting that trailer hitch by that time if we can so nothing else they don’t have to drive a car up as well for the extra 2 people plus luggage. It should be a workable goal since it’s $75 for the hitch plus a little for the assembly. Alan figures with dad’s help he could install it all.

Well we’ve got another temple trip on the 30th of April if I hadn’t mentioned that previously. Med Hat 2nd ward again.

We also made it to Sacrament meeting on Sunday and a member couple started talking to us about how the business was going and when they found out that we were looking at going into tours they had some ideas and are now planning on working those ideas with us. Advertise for Calgary Airport, take groups to Banff, Columbia Icefields, then Jasper and then back down to Med Hat to stay as a Bed & Breakfast type deal at they’re place and then take the group back to Calgary to fly out. The whole time one of the couple or both of them would be with on the whole trip to help “tour guide”. Looking at targeting Japanese tourists since they’ve stayed over in Japan before. Sounds like they’ve got connections maybe. Probably do it once or twice a summer. We still have to get together with them and discuss things.

Crazy Saturday

2011-01-30T15:06:00.001-07:00

Crazy day yesterday.

Alan was tired and was trying to nap when I got a feeling of we needed to get ready and go to the base.

So woke him up, got brunch made, ate and then got ready and left for the base.

Roads were not so good in town but as soon as we got on the highway they were awesome. I could actually do the speed limit, even though everyone else thought they couldn’t.

I think we ended up with a trip down to the gym first. Then got asked by a soldier to go down to the gym and pick up the rest of their friends. Then we got a call from one of the other taxi companies saying there was a soldier on his way down to the main gate who wanted to pay by Visa to go down to the Canex and back and was wondering if we still took the credit cards. So we got that soldier. Then waited a little bit, and got a trip into Medicine Hat. That had to be closer to 6pm when we got them there cause the mall was just closing so we told them about Walmart and told them what restaurants were around that area.

We decided to go to Walmart and get some groceries. About a half hour or so later as were heading home, hadn’t gotten past the mall yet, so not far from Walmart, we got a call from some Fijians. They needed a ride from Superstore to the base. Ok told them we’d be there in about 10 minutes. Had to pull over in one of the parking lots, move the groceries around so they were in the back of the van instead of on the bench seats. Then headed over to Superstore. Got those soldiers back to the base. As we were heading out to the base to drop these guys off (Alan’s driving at the time) I’m checking out Twitter on the phone and realize there’s a Tigers hockey game starting at that exact moment. Rats! Drats! There goes our parking in front of the house. We were planning on going home to make supper! Well we decided to head home anyways and if we had to we’d move the car to the back parking spot and find room for the van. It’s about 7:30pm by the time we get back home and amazingly enough no body took the van’s spot. Not a spot anywhere else is seen to be able to park. Why didn’t they park there? Blessing? If we’d have parked the van in the back spot it would have gotten stuck again.

So got in the house, cooked up the pasta, cooked up the hamburger, and then got another call…it was the guys we’d dropped off at the mall. They wanted to go back to the base and were at Walmart. Ok drats why does this always happen in the middle of making supper? Turned everything off, headed out the door and went and got them. As we turned off on the Jenner Highway we got a call from that same taxi company earlier saying there was a group up at the gate and another group coming down to the gate in 10-15 minutes. We got the group at the gate asked them if they’d want to wait the 10-15 minutes for the other ones. Nope just go. Got halfway to Medicine Hat when the other group called us…it was our boys from last year that loved riding with us and we’d helped out in tough times last year. So we arranged to head back out after the trip we were on and pick them up at 11pm. Got back out there at 11pm and they were no where to be found but there were 11 guys waiting there by the time we decided to give up on them and take the group of 11.

So it ended up being a busy day. 10 hours of work. Plus a lot more customers cause of the Wii. We got home at 12:30am this morning finished making supper and then went to bed.

Got up in time this morning and went off to church for sacrament meeting at 9am.

Home teachers came by at 2pm, Alan went home teaching with his companion at 2:45pm and now I’m thinking I’m going off for a nap!

2011-01-28T23:27:00.001-07:00

Oh my gosh! Just when we were thinking we had hit rock bottom as far as money and bills a blessing came along. Alan and I had talked about going out to the base tonight cause it was Friday. We were stressing cause we’ve got a $270 payment coming up for the business van insurance. Not something we can afford to lose. Not to mention the catch-up we’ve got to do with the one bank account cause a couple or three things bounced this month. Got to catch up so the debit /credit card machine monthly payments don’t bounce and make more of a mess. But the van insurance was the bigger stress even though we can phone our broker and delay the payment by 2 or 3 days which we might do anyways. The payments are to the broker themselves cause they outright paid the actual insurance company so we’d have better rates or something like that. We end up having 7 payments in a year for insurance instead of 10.

Well we got 2 trips into Med Hat, a double Canex (there and back to the gate) plus a single Canex. $135 in the middle of winter from the base is awesome. Of course $20 of that went into gas, and $5 went into a new fuse for the inverter power cord. At least that $5 was for 3 fuses. Thank goodness for The Source.

That’s still $110 towards that $270 insurance payment. Not bad so far. Plus we’ve got both groups we took into Med Hat tonight saying they’re going to call us back. So that’s another probably $40.

Roads aren’t great going back out right now but we’ll try and take it easy and get them home.

Sounds like we’ve also got a new adopted son…lol

Don’t know his name. One of the soldiers loved us so much tonight cause we’re willing to blare the music. He’s now calling us mom and dad. “We’re the coolest taxi drivers ever” I do believe I also heard. The mom and dad part came because his parents wouldn’t let him blare the music like we did! Doesn’t bother me so I don’t care. The loud music or calling me mom!

The other amazing thing tonight is the lady taxi driver that was a problem last year has made from what it looks like a 180 degree turn. She’s trying to work with everyone who’s an independent taxi company out there. So that means us especially. Well she told us 125 guys came in this last week. Making the total to around 500 British soldiers on base right now. Those bills are going to get paid! Maybe we won’t have to go talk to bishop about groceries.

Sorry got distracted by email…. Someone’s trying to book for May already just to go from Calgary to Medicine Hat. Just got to wait for the response on whether the price was agreeable. I have a feeling he’s thinking we’re a shuttle service.

Oh and some of you wouldn’t have known this but since we moved we’ve been under the impression that our business license had automatically expired cause we couldn’t pay the moving fee of $200 – $300 to the city. Well the city license inspector stopped by our house yesterday to talk to us and it hadn’t expired. Our development permit expired cause we moved but after hearing how his staff told us because of the move we’d have to re-apply for our business license again, he told us that it was just the development permit, that his staff were wrong and it was coming up for renewal at the end of February. Big Blessing. Still going to cost around $200 but at least it’s when I decided I was going to pay it either way.

Oh did I say that we had our meeting with Medalta Potteries this morning and things are looking great there! They’ve been waiting for someone to come along and do this kind of tour thing. Nothing else bringing people down from the mall / MH Lodge. Doesn’t start up until May long weekend. But the Med Hat tours are started then.

Oh and that’s the other thing we went down to Police Point Park and talked to them a little about bringing people down there for tours as well. Nothing else we’ll get some kind of geocaching tour going on down there. Talk about work being fun and doing something you love!

2011-01-27T00:03:00.000-07:00

Nothing much happening since we took Mardi and John and the kids to the bus early, early this morning. Bus was supposed to get to the Medicine Hat bus station at 3:20am. Well it didn’t get there until around 4:30am. So they’re now on they’re way to Brandon and then home.

Well this morning I got a twitter message from Medalta Potteries here in Medicine Hat. They knew we were putting together a tour package for Medicine Hat and wanted to get together to work on it. Well we’ve got a meeting with them on Friday. So the “unconventional” advertising that I have done cause of the blessing telling me that was the way to go is paying off.

Now if we’d just get some trips. Got van insurance to pay on the 1st.

2011-01-25T00:44:00.000-07:00

I think it’s time to go to bed now. Spent probably about 12 hours working on my Legacy File today. Didn’t get much indexing done either.

Got one phone call for the charter but couldn’t help them. It was Expedia Cruise Ship Center here in Medicine Hat looking for a shuttle type service for their clients. You know the one of the biggest problems I’m hearing with the Shuttle Service is the fact that they have to run on set times. These clients couldn’t take the shuttle cause they’re flight out was at 6pm on the day they leave. By 6pm the shuttle has already been back at home and off work for 3 hours or so. Can’t lower the price much either or at all. $100 is gas, then insurance, maintenance plus we’ve got to have money to pay the rest of the bills.

Well got to go to sleep. Got to be ready by 1pm when my visiting teacher is taking me out for lunch

Legacy Family Tree Program

2011-01-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

To answer Brooke’s question…

So what does this Legacy Family Tree do? Does it have information on it or is it just another way to keep track of information? I am confused.... How does it compare to ancestry.com?

First of all here’s the link to the Legacy Family Tree site http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/

Legacy is like PAF, or Family Tree Maker, it’s a program to keep track of your information. Ancestry is just a site to find information on mostly, yes you can put information on ancestry but family search is free and better.

With Legacy version 7.5 you can put all your information in and then you can easily find out which family members need ordinance work done. Merging of duplicates is a lot easier I’ve found with this program than many of the others I’ve tried. You can also search Ancestry.com, rootsweb.com, mytrees.com, the new historical records on familysearch.org (these are the ones currently being indexed), and you can add you’re family right from Legacy to the https://new.familysearch.org/en/action/unsec/welcome site which is better than ancestry.com. After what ancestry did to Jocelyn’s account I never did use the site again. Heads up some of the information on ancestry isn’t accurate. If you do the indexing then you’ll know this. Familysearch indexing has been redoing a lot of ancestry's census records. And they’ve got a lot that are done wrong.

Let’s see what else do I like about it… full integration with familysearch, mapping where your ancestors lived, research guides for each individual person you enter.

Did I say that through the new familysearch integration you can reserve the temple ordinances right online? Plus print out those ones you want to take to the temple with you.

2011-01-24T11:22:00.001-07:00

Genealogy:

WOOHOO! For those of you who use Legacy Family Tree…version 7.5 is out! For those of you who don’t, why not? Personal Ancestry File (PAF) is not going to be updated ever again. The church has stated that there’s enough good programs out there that they are not going to pretty much waste time building a program when others have already done that.

So we all know what I’ll be busy doing in the next while!

Work:

Been thinking we need to come up with a letter / plan to get on the base. Especially since finding out that other bases across Canada the “taxis” are allowed on. The big charters here are allowed on. Been thinking about a letter proposing % of fares from off the base (if we go directly on) go back to the base itself. It would help the base get rid of the problem taxis. Especially if we got busy enough to add on extra vehicles, even if it we got extra drivers that the base could use on their mini-buses like they wanted Totem to supply but it never did go through. So they’d be on their mini-buses but under our name. We’ve got 2-3 people who are great people that would come work for us right now. 2 of them have their class 4 license and the other is working on his right now. Alan doesn’t like the idea of paying the base anything. But to get exclusive rights I think we would have to make an offer that pays. Even if it’s just 10%. Alan keeps saying that when it’s slow we won’t be able to pay. Well if it’s % then if it’s slow, it’s less money cause the business isn’t there. If there’s zero business then they can’t collect anything. It would increase business for us as well since they guys would go with whoever gets to drive on base. It’s something like a 10-15 minute walk to get down to the gate from the one set of housing. Now in bad weather who are those soldiers going to ride with then? I know we’ll have to make up a letter to the base commander. I’m just not good at letter writing. Might have to get Jocelyn to help. Just a heads up dad.

Other than that we’re going to focus on the base and the tour trips. I’m getting more responses from other places like Lethbridge and Calgary than I do Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat is pretty much only interested in a shuttle service. They are interested in tour trips but not the city to city trips so much. Other than tour trips around the city itself. They thought that was a good idea. Now just to come up with a itinerary for that. Got some time for that though. I think I’m going to make it a pick and choose type of tour option. Have a list of places around Medicine Hat and they pick what they want. Depending on how mobile they are, whether they’ve been to some of the places already, etc.

2011-01-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

Long eventful day. Got up at 7am and got ready to go to Calgary for the family gathering cause Mardi, Parker, Kierstan and John are out. Pretty sure we were out the door around 8:45 am.

Went up to Costco filled up van. Followed / lead my mom and her boyfriend to Brooks where we dropped off the mini-bus at Alan’s parents place. It’s too expensive right now to drive back and forth to Calgary without a paying trip. Mardi and John have our car so they can get around during their stay here.

Roads weren’t great going up to Calgary.

As we left Redcliff we saw gravel on the highway for the first time ever. The highway was plowed but was icy. The plows were working on Redcliff to Suffield stretch. Right lane was not plowed. Then the fog started not long after.

At this point we passed the second car in the ditch. Couldn’t see Suffield as we passed by it at about 9:30am. As soon as we got into Newell County the fog started to lift but the roads got worse.

Then right before entering Brooks there was a road block cause a semi went into the middle meridian. They had two tow trucks there to pull it out.

Only took 10 minutes from the time we got there for them to pull the semi out. Not long after this Alan’s dad phoned us to let us know about the black ice west of Bassano. He mentioned the cars in the ditch.

Went to Alan’s parents place, dropped off the van. Headed back out with my mom and her boyfriend.

After Bassano we saw a van truck that had rolled and traffic was lined up really long. Then this truck a little ways more.

Then another vehicle crashed in the middle meridian and then

vehicle balanced on it’s side in the right hand ditch. Then at least 2 more vehicles in the meridian after that.

Eventually we made it to Calgary around 1pm. Saw most of the family on either side of Alan’s. Aunt Cheryl, Aunt Debbie & Uncle Joel, Grandma and Grandpa J., Lara & Duane and family, Kerri & Doug and family, Heather, Jayci (which just reminded me June 4 ~~almost~~ did forget, sorry Jayci, good thing I made the list of people!) Alan’s parents, Bree and Brandon and family, and of course Mardi and John and family. Had fun. Went back to Brooks with Mardi and John while Parker and Kierstan rode with Alan’s parents. Then got in the van and came home. Roads from Calgary to Suffield were great no snow anywhere on them. Suffield to Medicine Hat was another story. Really bad drifting snow and blowing winds. Didn’t look like Volker Stevin had been out for hours and needed to do their job. Had one close call where the drifting snow tried pulling the mini-bus into the meridian. Alan didn’t let it.

Well I’m tired and off to bed. Trying to get Alan up in the morning for church at 9am. If nothing else if we can’t seem to be able to get up for that we’re aiming for 5th ward at 11am. Then got home teacher coming over at 3pm.

2011-01-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

Well that trip we were waiting on, hoping that they’d call back, did call back but they kept trying to haggle the price down to our one way price to Calgary. Told them no. Oh well lost a trip. There will be others. No way I’m doing a round trip from MH to Calgary on the one way price. Especially with the way the roads have been. Plus if we do that everyone will expect us to do it. She was a word of mouth advertising. We’d taken her Nigerian friends from Calgary to MH. Guess the one thing we’ve learned today is try not to give too many deals. Word gets around and people expect the same deals.

Good news is that Twitter is getting us known out there more and more. We’re getting more MH organizations following us and possibly be using us for tours for their company. For example today Palliser Region. Not Palliser Health but the Economic group who helps businesses. Funny part is one of their agencies is Entrecorp which didn’t want to fund us cause they didn’t believe we’d make a go of it. Yet they’re looking at using us when they do their tours for their consultants in Southern Alberta. lol

So what else is happening…

Mardi, Parker and Kierstan have left Ontario on the Greyhound. They’ve already been delayed a few hours. Bus ended up with a flat tire at one point. We’ll be seeing them sometime on Thursday when they get off the bus here.

K is keeping me updated on Facebook so we know if they’re going to be late getting here.

Still Advertising

2011-01-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Okay just checking stats this afternoon and I see people have been checking in to see if we’ve updated anything. So probably time to update, huh? lol

Still busy advertising. Twitter is going crazy with it. Nothing booked yet. More and more travel people getting on board with us. So we’ve got the ski resorts at Nakiska, Fernie and Kimberley like I said previously http://thehatters.blogspot.com/2011/01/been-busy-working-on-advertising-for.html Then yesterday one of the condo chains in Kimberley / Radium and Invermere got ahold of me through email / Twitter and offered some great deals. The best one being for us of course…we bring in groups we stay for free! Got another email from them today giving another deal for the groups we bring in as well. $30 per person per night for any groups we bring into Kimberley, BC. They’ve got condos that fit up to 10 people per unit.

Well the snow doesn’t seem to want to quit. At least the winds have died down. Snows not bad as long as there’s no wind.

Sounds like you don’t want to be around Banff right now. Last I heard there was a 5 car pileup and the roads are really bad around there. Also sounded like avalanche problems throughout there to Golden. At least I know there was on the #1 Hwy east of Golden.

Oh and did I say I got the A2B Blog going again? Now just to find a decent camera…got some time since we have no money right now.

Unconventional advertising was and is the way to go.

Ski Resorts Asking Us To Advertise Them!

2011-01-12T17:53:00.001-07:00

Been busy working on advertising for the past 5 hours. Can’t believe it took that long!

Had done some blog posts that connected to Twitter for the charter business yesterday or day before advertising Sunshine Ski Resort and Lake Louise Ski Resort. Well the blog must look good and the Twitter advertising working cause I had an email in the box this morning from the sales rep who takes care of Nakiska Ski Resort, Fernie Ski Resort and Kimberley Ski Resort asking if I’d advertise transportation for their resorts too.

So spent the past 5 hours working on 9 blog posts. Figuring out prices, distances, what kind of trips we could do, and posting what events and info about each of the 3 resorts. 9 blog posts cause I made up one for trips coming from Calgary, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat areas. Then set up rotating scheduled tweets for Twitter after that to advertise them on there which is turning out to be the best for advertising. Almost 800 followers now from around the world. Which anyone can be our customer if they’re coming into Calgary!

www.a2bcharterservice.posterous.com

2011-01-09T18:14:00.001-07:00

So last week especially after the booking on Saturday (the New Years wedding) both Alan and I were stressing about the business. Which way to take it? How to advertise without money? How to pay bills when there’s no money? So Alan gave me a blessing, again. Well between that one and the previous one from Alan’s dad they both said to advertise the charter business in “un-conventional” ways. Which I was doing for a very small amount before. But I had slacked off quite a bit with the one way. Well the un-conventional ways I ended up coming up with were some free online directories, which I found a site that listed over 3000 different sites to list the business on. Slowly going through that. With that we’re advertising for people coming into the Calgary Airport and tours from Calgary. Figured those online sites are international so why not target the international customers who fly into Calgary and need to get to other cities. Or those ones who come into Calgary and then want to site see. The few trips we’re getting from Medicine Hat to the Calgary Airport sure seem like new residents / family visiting new residents to Medicine Hat. Family from Nigeria, lady going back to Europe to meet up with her husband, etc.

Then an unexpected surprise Friday night… got a call from the base wanting to go into Medicine Hat. Haven’t had one from there since the middle of November. We were a little leery about going out. Usually at 10pm they say they’ll wait and then you get out there and they’ve gone with someone else. We got out to the gate at the base and saw a taxi car leaving…oh no we lost the trip we thought. Then we took another look. OH MY! 13 guys still standing there waiting for a ride, including our booking of 3 guys. Not something you expect at this time of year. So we got them in, dropped them off at a couple places. Noticed a few other soldiers in town as we dropped them off, unusual again for this time of year. Planned with them to pick them back up at 2am. We ended up getting them again at 2am and as we were coming back from dropping them off at the base, we counted 8 other taxis dropping off at the base.

So our engineer regulars who told us they’d be back in January weren’t kidding. We got at least 2 calls yesterday, and were hoping to be able to go sit out there but the weather has been too bad.

They actually closed down Hwy 1 between Strathmore and Brooks today because of the snow.

Back to the advertising… been more active on Twitter again and it’s helping the charter as well. Had at least a couple people asking prices and info on there yesterday.

So as far as direction to take the business… I think we’re thinking more of the tours and catering to the soldiers. And not so much with the locals here in Medicine Hat. Meaning we’re not pushing the hourly rate business much. If we get it we get it.

2011-01-03T15:20:00.001-07:00

Alan’s doing fine. A little yellowing on the nose as the bruising changes color, still a little sore but ok. Had to make a run down to 20/20 Vision Care today as well to get the glasses adjusted.

Little bit of stress with it all especially when trying to decide what kind of services we’ll be offering from now on in Brooks. Probably not much, since people seem to be very violent when they get alcohol in their system up there. Nothing else we’re thinking of doubling the price for weddings / receptions etc. for the Brooks area (if it involves drunks) plus not allowing town to town weddings for that area anymore.

We’re not concerned with pub crawls, weddings, receptions and parties in the Medicine Hat area. People are a lot tamer here. We’ve done 1 wedding, 2 stag / stagettes, and 1 Christmas party here in Medicine Hat without problems. They only ones besides friends we’ll drive drunk from town to town will be the British Soldiers. We’ve still have had the least amount of problems with them.

Our focus with the business will be the normal city to city trips, even if it means more Calgary Airport, tours in the summer months, and driving the soldiers. I know with the advertising right now I’m focusing on the Calgary Airport, tours and international advertising. It’ll eventually make more money anyways.

Long Booking / Alan got assaulted

2011-01-02T14:15:00.001-07:00

Copy and pasted what I posted on Facebook originally.

Alan got assaulted by one of our booking customers last night. The RCMP officer who is in charge of the case won't do a thing because we kicked the group out of the van that were causing the problem. According to the RCMP in BROOKS if someone is trying to kick the crap out of you, you HAVE TO drive them where they want to go.

According to another officer earlier as long as we called the police, which we did, it was within our right to kick them out.

At that time we kicked 1 person out (the guy who assaulted Alan) the other 5 voluntarily left. We left them behind because the guy after punching Alan through the window was trying to break in the van to get back in. We had 5 left in the van which 2 of them started calling the police themselves and telling them we were kidnapping them. So we pulled over and they voluntarily got out as well. As well as complained that we kicked them out. So what is it? Are we holding you hostage or letting you out? Then drove the other 3 to their destinations.

Those 2 girls wanted out so we let them out. The officer taking care of the case now says because we let them out we'd be charged with criminal negligence if they found the guy.

Well at least the groom who hired us was going to be going after the guy that assaulted Alan and "Take Care of Him". He knew exactly who he was and was willing to help us with the charges against the guy as well.

--what’s happened since posting on Facebook --

Alan phoned the RCMP in Brooks again and made a complaint to the officer’s boss. The original officer told Alan that the case was closed. His boss told Alan that it wasn’t and only the boss could close the case. We’re thinking the officer didn’t want to work. Hoping Alan would just drop it.

So the RCMP got 4 calls that night. 2 from us. and 2 from other people. We know 1 of the calls was from the 2 girls. Which the RCMP could only find them. The RCMP have no record in the calls of the girls mentioning “kidnapping or hostage”.

The ones who did call the RCMP told them that they were 4 miles outside of Tilley. We dropped the first group off between Petro Canada and the 1st overpass (within 1 km of Brooks). The other 2 girls got dropped off at the 2nd overpass right by McDonalds. The RCMP boss agreed they were REALLY drunk. He was also told that they didn’t want us calling the police because they had weed on them. That’s why the RCMP couldn’t find the 1st group. They obviously called taxis and got out of there since they knew the RCMP were coming.

The boss took the groom’s cell phone number from us to get the guy’s phone number and address who assaulted Alan.

The big thing that was stressed to the RCMP boss was that if we hadn’t dropped those two girls off, they were claiming kidnapping because we left they’re friends behind. Afraid of an illegal confinement charge we let them get out of the vehicle. Of course we didn’t phone the RCMP because they voluntarily left the van, they weren’t kicked out. Those two are claiming we kicked them out which causes a criminal negligence charge possibly depending on the judge if it goes to court and those two defend the guy.

Alan is still going ahead and charging the guy with assault.

Happy Anniversary Jerri and Dan!

2011-01-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Before I forget… Happy 1st year Anniversary to my sister and brother-in-law!

2010-12-31T13:04:00.001-07:00

Got Christmas over and done with. Hate the gift giving. Really wish it didn’t have that part of it. Especially when you don’t have money. But had a good time spent with Alan’s parents up in Brooks. (I originally typed down but now realize that it’s up from Medicine Hat) Spent the night there Christmas eve then had an early dinner with the family friends the Asplunds in Brooks.

Headed out for home between 6 and 7pm.

Went straight to my sister’s parent-in-laws place for their family gathering they had invited us over for. We had a great time there too! Enjoyed watching our nephew, Drayton, induct more people in his “Funny Club International”. He’s in grade 3 and a big clown. The adults had to audition to get in. His great uncle pulled a couple of good pranks on him that night. Including calling the house for Dray and Ollie (Dray’s cousin) pretending he was the police / principal of their school. He almost got him with the principal first but Uncle T pronounced the principal’s name wrong and the kids caught him.

My sister’s mother-in-law was asking the youngest, Carolyn, to say her name (I think she’s just over 1 year), she does really well with it. Then Cheryl got her to say my name with no problems, but C had problems with Alan’s name! Then Cheryl was trying to teach her to say Auntie April after that.

Heaton’s are so much like the Johnson’s. They’ll travel hundreds of miles for a family function. They had a houseful and some where out from Ottawa.

So what else happened this week…

Went and saw Tron in 3D of course. Got gift certificates that we had to start using right away!

Furnace kind of went on us again. This time it was the thermostat. My sister’s brother-in-law (her husband’s, sister’s husband) from Silverback Heating and Sheet Metal came over again to replace that. Now we just have to get used to it in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.

And then there’s tonight. New Year’s Eve. We’ve got a booking that before yesterday was going to be 10 hours long. Now they’re thinking more like 12 hours long. Going to be a lot of driving. Back and forth from Tilley to Brooks.

Only an hour and a half until we have to leave. Got to start getting ready some more.

Happy New Year’s Everyone!

2010-12-23T11:50:00.001-07:00

Well just got some more info on the booking we ended up getting for New Years eve. It’s actually a wedding that’s happening out in Tilley. Which is even better than just a New Years party. Better because weddings happen more often during the year and word of mouth advertising will get us more from a wedding than a plain New Years party.

Now to just get our schedules kind of flipped around again so we can stay up until 2:30am! Think we ended up staying up till 1am last night so it should be no problem.

Just hoping we get a lot more of these kind of bookings rather than have to be at the base next year all the time. I’m finding since we’re at home I am getting a lot more done around the house. It’s also nice to know a couple days or a day in advance even that we have a trip coming up instead of sitting at the base for hours on end wondering when the next trip will come down. Now don’t get me wrong, when the weather is nice again and the soldiers are back we will sit out there on our in-between days mainly so we’re advertised out there to them as well. Hard to advertise on the base otherwise. Will have to continue advertising on Facebook again when we have money. Was advertising to people living in the UK for a while there and it hopefully will work. Will have to advertise something worldwide as well on Facebook for people coming into Calgary Airport for trips. Never thought of advertising that way when we started running the van, but since we’re getting a lot of International customers lately, mostly people going to and from other countries to the Calgary Airport why not? We’re licensed to pickup anywhere in Alberta and we can drop off anywhere in Canada so even if they’re coming into Calgary and then going somewhere else besides Medicine Hat we’ll go get them if they’re willing to pay our prices.

2010-12-22T14:40:00.001-07:00

Things are going from stressful to non-stressful again this week.

Didn’t really turn down a booking for the 24th of December since they didn’t ask to book in the first place. They were looking for the shuttle from the Calgary Airport to Medicine Hat. Conversation got to “we’re not a shuttle” stage and that’s it. Didn’t try and push the booking like we usually do since we are planning on going down to Brooks for the 24th and 25th. Going to Brooks is more important to us right now. Plus bookings like we just got today make up for it and show the blessings from spending time with the family.

We were out and about looking for Escargot sauce. I was disappointed cause it didn’t take much to find it after what I thought it would be like a treasure hunt today since Alan’s parents couldn’t find any in Brooks. Well Safeway’s at the mall had it first try. Just had to look in the gravy powder section.

So on the way from Safeway to Costco we got a phone call asking if we were a charter service first. Yup we are. Then came the statement instead of the question “well you’re probably booked up for New Years by now”. Think I may have surprised him when I said no we weren’t. He was happy since his original company he booked with double booked them. That is one thing we’ve never understood how companies get so greedy that they double book. We know one at the base who double books at the end of bar night on purpose. We’d rather not double book and pay attention to our booking more carefully.

So we now have a booking from 4pm on to 2:30am on New Years from Tilley, Alberta to Brooks, Alberta and back! Really didn’t expect a 10 and 1/2 hour booking on New Years.

Uncle passed away

2010-12-14T17:11:00.001-07:00

Got home phoned the lawyer about the landlord security deposit thing. Got things figured out with that. Next find out from the same lawyer that he found out through his secretary reading the newspaper about my uncle (on dad’s side) passing away. I knew my uncle had had another stroke and was not going to recover and they were pulling the plug the other day. What really pissed me off was the fact that my family on that side couldn’t even bother to phone and let us know when the funeral was? Or that he actually passed away. I had to find out from our lawyer? If anyone of you are reading this (from dad’s side) don’t give me the excuse you didn’t have our phone number, most of you are on Facebook and our phone number has been on there under my profile info since last February when we started the business. The same # that is our home and business # plus our cell # which hasn’t changed. Shame on all of you who knew and couldn’t be bothered to phone.

Well we wont be at the funeral. It’s on Saturday and we’ve got a booking that day that I’m not going to cancel. Oh well I know he’s in a better place.

Security Deposit Rip-off

2010-12-14T17:00:00.001-07:00

$450 dollars to replace lino in a bathroom that’s around 25 square feet total? Looking at Home Depot site… the most expensive lino is $75 for enough to cover 24 square foot. So we got charged $375 for labour costs? Old landlord will be taken to court over this one. For a place where we lived there for 6 years. Lino needed replacing because of a stain that a rubberized bath mat caused that that same bath mat didn’t do that to the floors in the last couple places we lived. That should be normal wear and tear after 6 years. Oh and the original lino was install improperly by the landlord’s son who used to own the place. Oh and to boot we didn’t get given inspection reports what so ever.

Cherry Scented Windshield Washer Fluid?

2010-12-13T14:54:00.001-07:00

Had to go to Walmart to buy some groceries and other things today. Alan decided we needed windshield washer fluid. That was the good thing. The bad thing is the kind he found. Cherry scented? Who in they’re right mind makes washer fluid scented? Not like you can smell the stuff once it’s put into the car! How STUPID!

2010-11-25T18:58:00.001-07:00

Going to the base was a no go. Roads are too bad. Got half way to the base right past the couple of cars in the ditch and decided because of the black ice and the high winds it was too dangerous tonight. Fishtailing is not an option I like. So we came back home.

2010-11-25T17:27:00.001-07:00

You know how you see in the movies how the taxi / limo driver is standing in the busy airport holding up a name sign to find their booked fare?

Well I never thought I would ever have to do that. Never been around a big airport to know whether that is really done or something that’s just in the movies.

On December 2nd we’ve got a trip coming from the Calgary Airport to Med Hat. Well they don’t speak much English (or so we figure) (they’re coming in from Africa) and the sign thing is exactly what we’re going to have to do. Especially since we’re going to have to go into the airport to find them. Well no way we can get out of parking in the charter section of the airport for this trip. Darn it! If we didn’t have to park there it wouldn’t cost us about $25 to pick up. Stupid Calgary Airport.

Oh well the lady that was going to ride up with us to get them can’t go with now and is going to pay us ahead of time. That part is a BIG blessing since we thought that we weren’t going to be able to make enough in time for rent. Especially since after moving 1 trip of stuff today it wore us both out. Alan cause of lack of energy, me cause of stress. Tomorrow unless we get phone calls for bookings we’re not sitting at the base. We’ll be packing all day.

2010-11-25T13:37:00.001-07:00

Just going through old papers and found this good joke sent to me by my cousin..

After every flight, UPS pilots fill out a form, called a “gripe sheet,” which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humor.

Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.

S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.

S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.

S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.

S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.

S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.

S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.

S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.

S: That’s what friction locks are for.

P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.

S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.

S: Suspect you’re right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.

S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.

S: Aircraft warned to: straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.

S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.

S: Cat installed.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.

S: Took hammer away from midget!

2010-11-25T12:43:00.001-07:00

Sorry nothing new yet today… Just moving a few little things down to the new house today before work. Things that can fit in the van without removing the seats.

Got to head to Walmart to buy a new toilet seat for the old place. I broke the old one a couple months ago by accidently dropping it. Surprised it cracked in half on the front part. Got to get a couple of blind sets as well. Good thing Walmart has then for cheap.

Then it’s out to the base to work for the evening again. Was nothing but Canex / Gym runs yesterday. But we one group of guys to take posters to put up around base in exchange for a free ride back to the gate.

At least it’s only –4C out here today instead of the –20C. -6C in Ralston isn't bad either considering yesterday was –30C out there.

2010-11-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

Went out to the base and sat at the taxi rank for a couple hours tonight. We weren’t the only ones out there either. A couple of the other companies were there. So much for “nobody sits out here during the winter months” spiel we got from one of them. We didn’t think he was telling the truth fully.

Sat around for a couple hours before getting a trip. The guys like the discount we offer for phoning and booking an hour ahead. They’re going to do that from now on. Especially since they can play the Wii all the way into town. Then I told them about our Calgary Pub Crawl deal…they loved that idea and talked about doing that next weekend. We had to tell them we were moving that weekend and so they said they’d wait for us and do it the next weekend. Now we just have to tell them it’s going to have to be Saturday / Sunday not Friday / Saturday. We’ve got a Christmas Lights Tour on that Friday evening for our ward.

But things look better than we expected for the winter. Not as good maybe as summer but enough to survive the winter. Moving into mom’s house will help as well.

2010-11-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

So Wednesday we had the return part of the previous pickup from the Calgary Airport (previous weeks trip). The girls parents didn’t want to drive in the bad weather to drop her off at the airport so we got the trip. The night before we weren’t sure if we really were up to doing it. The roads were really bad as far as the AMA site listed. We decided to do it anyways. Wasn’t so bad going up there. Most we could do was 90km / hour. Worst was between Bassano and Cluny.

Got her up there on time.

Went and saw Jocelyn (Alan’s mom) at the Foothills again. After leaving there as we’re stuck in rush hour traffic (it’s not rush to me…since it goes so slow!) But 16th Avenue was flowing the fastest compared to Deerfoot and Crowchild. We were heading down to 17th Avenue and 70th Street SE where my mom now lives. We got about half way down 16th Avenue when we get this text message on the phone asking if we were near Calgary. We didn’t recognize the number since it wasn’t programmed in the phone. Alan phoned the number (a little confused at who it would be) (it was an Alberta # so we knew it probably wasn’t a British Soldier). It turned out to be one of our best friends, Ted who was dropping a vehicle off in Calgary and was pretty much stranded since his buddy got called into work and couldn’t drive Ted back to Medicine Hat.

Ted didn’t know we were in Calgary. He didn’t see my FB post the day before saying we were heading to Calgary that day either. He just had a hunch that he should call us. He was stranded at a Safeway Store close to my mom’s place and had no chance of getting a taxi to where he needed to be by 8pm in Calgary. So off we went first to pick him up. Got his running around done, went to mom’s for supper and then the 3 of us headed home to Medicine Hat.

It took us 5 hours to get home. Roads were considerably worse. Most of the time we could do no more than 70km / hour. I think the most we got up to was 80 km / hour after Brooks. But we got home safely.