Living the Dream

 I'm inside mornings doing paperwork and numbers waiting for a little warmth outside. Anything above freezing works for me. Sun comes out and time to get some work done around the lodge. The battery in the generator is dead so it won't come on automatically until I replace it. I take the old battery out and I've hooked up the red cable to the new battery and before I hook up the black one, something isn't right. In the financial world you're looking to have your business "in the black" which is positive cash flow. If it's "in the red" then you're bleeding cash which is the lifeblood of a business. In the world of batteries that isn't the case. Red is positive and black is negative. The first eight years out here I fried at least one battery every year. I'd been doing the books for Let's Play for most of 20 years and it was all about being positive cash flow in the black. Finally I've gone three or four years without frying a battery by hooking it up backwards and I came within two seconds of doing it again.

I'm looking out the back dining room window and see two figures moving in the distance. I have binoculars by both entrances to the lodge and same at the house and condo. I look through them and see two cows by the boat ramp. They aren't going to be able to get water there as it's 40 feet of ice before there is any water. If they find their way up to the pond by the house and break the artificial bottom it's about $30,000. I say to myself "Cows". Jax runs to the front door. They are in some pretty deep weeds with lots of stickers just munching away when we get there and there's six of them. I open the door of the truck to see if we can drive them back towards the lodge. Jax shoots into the weeds and occasionally I can just see a head jumping up in the air and cows running in all directions. Unfortunately Jax chases them the wrong way and they're heading towards the houses and garage. Jax comes out of the bushes and he has stickers everywhere and burrs all rolled up in his hair but he's excited. By the time we get over to the garage they're way in the corner of the property hanging out by the Bottle Place and there's nothing we can do to get them out.

We return to the lodge and I call Curtis and he says he'll be out early in the morning. I have a whole bunch of wood to unload and I'm pumping water so we spend most of the rest of the day hanging out at the Main House unloading and Jax sits on the hill making sure the cattle don't head up the hill. It's late at night by the time we're done and return to the lodge. I'm hoping cattle don't move much in the dark as there's no moon at all that I saw. At 7am I hear a truck pull up the drive way and it's Curtis with a horse in the back and three dogs. I tell him I think the cattle have probably returned to the boat ramp. He unloads the horse the same way I unload Kobae. He pulls up to a three or four foot embankment and the horse walks out. By the time Jax and I get over to help he's already pushed them out to the gate.

Jax and I follow in the truck up the sand hill and Jax jumps out a couple times but he won't go if I tag along in the truck. He wants me to get out and run alongside the horse and dogs. That's not going to happen. We turn around to come back to the lodge and I see a chair sitting out in the middle of nowhere. Jax and I hike over to check it out.

I don't know what that's about. Later in the day Jax and I go by the same place in the side by side to make sure some guests made it over to the Wind Caves and the chair is gone. I didn't see any footprints around it either time. Monolith my ass. Jax and I return to the lodge. We have a lot of stickers and burrs to get out.