Hands up everyone who's ever tried to cut your own finger nails with a pair of scissors.

It's a lot harder than it sounds – oh sure you start with your left hand (if your right handed -- your right hand if you're a lefty and if you're ambidextrous you can stop reading now).

You get a little creative, trim six or seven times per nail to try and emulate the nice round shape of a pair of nail clippers. All five finger nails done – good job!

Then the tables turn.

You awkwardly hold the scissors in your other hand and… then… well… I had thought about just chewing the nails off of my right hand, but that seemed a little amateurish.

The next thing you do is try to figure out how all the left handed people in the world cope with so many right handed things. I feel bad for you, Matt.

Bravely you press on and that's when you realize that with the scissors not only sitting awkwardly in your left hand, but the blades are sloped differently.

I tried pointing the scissors toward me for a while, but then I realized that I was forcing the blades apart instead of together. When I bent my nail instead of cleanly cutting it I changed it back.

Since the blades are sloped differently when you're holding the scissors leftly (go ahead… check yours now…), you can get your finger a LOT closer to the blade without even meaning to.

I'm sure the bleeding will stop soon.

What I'm just coming to realize now is that shortly exactly half of my stuff will be in the 'wrong' house (where 'wrong' is defined as the one that I'm not currently in).

Guess which house my nail clippers are in…

Our first moving day (June 25) was a busy, busy day. I mentioned that I left my camera on the bed, so… how… you may wonder… did I get photos of us moving?

My wonderful Mom brought her camera with a load of dishes and other breakables in her van. Dad came along to look at some structural stuff for me (mostly the heating). I posed by the dishes shortly after they were unpacked – I'm not taking any credit for any of the work, other than taking the photo.

We have big, big plans for the place, including a Central Boiler outdoor furnace. If you don't know about these things and you have a bit of land you really need to check these out (www.heatforless.ca) The idea is that you burn corn, wood or biomass to heat a water jacket in the outdoor stove. Then the hot water is piped into your house where it warms your forced air, your in-floor heating or even your hot water tank. We're hoping to hook up a hot tub to the stove as well!

Anyway, Dad will be helping install the stove and needed to know where everything will be going. I think he has a good idea.

After we unloaded the van, Sherry and I took Mom and Dad out for coffee and dessert and they headed back to Sarnia. Mom and Dad were both pleased with the house. It needs a lot of attention to make it into a Bed and Breakfast, but it has great bones and a ton of land to work with.

We spent a bit of time organizing the space and then headed back for a well deserved rest in our own beds. Here you can see just a few of the boxes that Mom and Dad drove down for us!

After surveying our grounds (all 8 acres – I went around the whole perimeter marking my turf… in my mind! Not like dogs do!) I noticed that the grass was really nicely cut. That made me think back to the first day that we saw the place.

Ken, the seller at the time – now he's the former owner and husband to Marj who wrote the letter, anyway – Ken – was in his truck while we were looking around and at the end of the visit we asked him a few questions. One of the most pressing questions on my mind was "how long does it take to cut the grass!?!"

Ken replied "3 hours and 14 minutes!" with a rather satisfied look on his face.

"What kind of mower do you have!" I exclaimed.

"A John Deer L175 with a 26 horse Briggs and Stratton engine and a 54" cutting deck" he rattled off the stats like he had rehearsed them before bed each night. "What kind of a mower do you have, son" he said with just a touch of pride in his voice.

"I have a reel mower… the kind you push" I said with an Environmentally Friendly head wiggle.

"Good luck with that!" he retorted with a smile.

"I'll just make an offer on your mower" I said with a wink.

That's when his demeanor changed. His face grew pale, he turned his shoulders away from me while maintaining an icy stare. "OK" was all he could muster.

I did make an offer and he accepted it. He's now an ex-farm owner and an ex-John Deer owner. I should send him some sort of sympathy gift. A bouqet of cut flowers? A framed photo of his ex-mower?

How about I just treat his farm as nicely as he did.

Darren.

P.S. I'm experimenting with different tools to do the posting. The first two were the builtin editor for BlogEngine.Net. This one was created with Word 2007.