DIARY

This Christmas was a lot of fun.

We opted not to open on Christmas day, so decided to offer Prime Rib for Christmas Eve. This turned out to be popular, and the whole family ended up working in the restaurant.

Christmas day we had planned on hiding out in the apartment eating chocolate and playing games, but we ended up doing all kinds of things such as helping pull a snowplough out of a snow bank, filling propane, delivering a grazing board and shoveling snow. We still got to relax and enjoy spending time together though.

Of course life would be boring if nothing went wrong, and Christmas morning brought us the restaurant heating blowing out cold air. After a little investigation I found that the glow igniter wasn't glowing. With no way of getting a replacement until Monday I put our collection of oil filled radiators in the restaurant. Sunday morning I got up early to light the stove to heat the place for serving breakfast. The combination of heaters and stove worked well enough to avoid it being too chilly, and thankfully I was able to find a replacement igniter and get it installed Monday afternoon.

When we lived in Sandpoint I used to play chess most Sunday mornings at Evan's brother coffee shop. I miss the friendships I made with the other regulars of our chess mornings, and am hoping to find other chess players to start something similar here. I've been inquiring among our local friends and associates and received some positive response towards the idea. I finally picked 2pm on Sundays in the restaurant as a good time and got busy notifying those I could. Sadly no-one has made it so far, but it's only been a couple of weeks.