Ms.Huxtable

Wow Shane. I am SO proud of you and of course you know how jealous I am. You're living my dream man. Well done.

Happy birthday to one of my favorite people. I can't wait to give you a birthday squeeze on Saturday. I'm going to fill you so full of French food you won't speak English all night! MWAH! Enjoy your day.

It's too bad. I've really been enjoying Conan since the strike. I never really knew how much of him was funny and how much of it was his writers. The truth is his show is way better without writers. I do miss my dramas though. I'm aching for a scripted show. TV has been pretty stupid lately.

So it's been a while since I've been on the Sanctuary here's why: Last Wednesday we get home from work and our back gate is wide open, the door to our house is wide open and our dog was gone! Searching the house for her, bouche noticed that every room in our house had been robbed. All our electronics, his cameras, wii, xbox, SO much gone. As we waited for the police to arrive I was in hysterics over our missing Abbey dog. Our neighbor took me in and tried to calm me down as bouche set off around the neighborhood looking for her. I tell you all that I do not beieve in God, but I prayed and prayed for him to show up with her. He did not. The police came, searched the house, interviewed the neighborhood and spent about an hour and a half with us. As he was getting ready to leave, a neighbor knocked on our door and said that she had our dog! I ran out the door and down the two blocks to get her. It was a wonderful reunion moment. She was likely wandering the neighborhood for 4-5 hours, but she is unharmed. Over the next few days she didn't eat much, she barked and growled in her sleep and was extra clingy, but she's doing fine now. Anyway, as we compiled our list for insurance we were shocked to see the missing items exceed $21,000.00 in value. Our insurance company has been super, they came over the very next day with a cheque to get us started. So our house had been cleaned up, new super duper locks have been installed with a new security system, and bouche, Abbey and I are all doing well. I'm still going through a bit of a roller coaster ride of emotions. Mostly feeling fine but sometimes crying when I think of the invasion of privacy and what could have happened to Abbey. I wish I could give you all advise on how to secure your home, but the truth is that these faulkers picked our locks and there's not much we could have done. They obviously had been watching us and knew we'd be away at work. Shudder. So no need for sympathy, we're all doing well. I just wanted to share this because I know some people have heard and others have not and I wanted to set the story straight for anyone concerned. The Sanc is also like my diary I guess. Maybe I'll search this a few years from now and be reminded of how lucky we are. Oh and I need to thank Douglas and Booche for hauling ass over to help us. I had no idea their car could fly.

AD I just love how you pay attention. Great ideas everyone, thanks for your help. My incentive brief is written and ready for proposal. I decided on a monthly ipod incentive and a quarterly $500 Gift certificate incentive.

I like the digital picture frame idea. They're still priced just out of range though. The purpose is to create an incentive program for agents to book business with us (book 10 clients, get a free ipod, free room night, ) The reward should speak to the high end product that we are. We also have a pretty strong energy saving department so giving out gas cards might not align itself very well.

Oh yeah I should add that it needs to be of use to someone no matter where they live in Canada. That's why I'm thinking item, not a GC.

I am setting up an incentive program and am looking for ideas for a "carrot". I need it to be in the $80-$100 range and can only think of an ipod shuffle. Does anyone else have any good ideas?

I had to watch this again! So funny. Bump!

MoMoack, are you using this in a commercial setting? Are the complaints you speak of from customers? If so I may have some advise for you. Our company just switched to an environmentally friendly line of products in 2007 called Eco Gent. Both our employees that use it and our customers like it. Not one complaint in almost 8 months of use.

I'd stay there.

Fuggin right. Purple rain IN THE RAIN! That was good stuff.

Totally Myrna.

Wonderful! HAhha.

The recipe (makes two) 5 Tbsn Raspberries 5 Tspn Blueberries 1 Banana (I keep a whack of them in the freezer) 1 cup soy milk 1/4 cup pomegranate juice 2 Tbsn Lecithin Granules 1/4 cup dried Goji Berries 2 Tbsp Wheat Bran 1 Tbsn ground Salba 1/4 Tspn cinnamon I should also mention that these supplements go well with the smoothie, the ingredients work together (Lecithin helps absorb omega 3 fatty acids found in flax seed oil and the like) Multi vitamin B 50 Glucosamine Flax Seed Oil capsules (or just add 1 Tbsn oil to the smoothie) We try to have this every morning and just like NaturalMystik, we sure miss it on the days we don't have it.

Steven was in town for work. I'm so glad to have seen him. Great guy, great visit, except when we were all expecting a warm soak and got denied!

Or the plastic bottles they have now at The Wine Rack. Blech.

So I called Mermaid Pools who we purchased the tub from several years ago and who we also had replace the circuit board in November. I told them that I have a crazy service call for them and explained the situation. I said "Have you ever had this type of service issue before? Have you ever even heard of such a thing?" and she said she heard of it happening only once before, several years ago. I figured if she said it happened frequently that I would suggest she interrogate her service technicians, but because it doesn't happen to their knowledge how can I blame the service guy? If it happened to other Mermaid spa customers, they'd report it to the spa service department and there is only one in all of the Outaouais. Weird, weird, weird. Oh and Thanks Velvet, that about sums up how I'm feeling.

For gawd sake people, I'm eating lunch over here! Ralph.

HAhaha, I know Myrna, as I laid in bed awake pretty much all night I kept picturing a body in our yard with a smoldering sweater or something. Can't say I would have felt too bad for the facker if he got shocked.

Yeah we called the cops but he pretty much just made a quick 5 minute report and didn't sound to hopeful. I agree it sounds like an inside job. The guy knew which of the four sides to destroy to get to the board, he must have been pretty knowledgable about our GFI, because he couldn't get to it, it's covered in snow, he must have known our dog wasn't going to bite his nuts... and that's all I want to post! I do have the serial number on the invoice actually. Though I'm not sure how that will help save us the $1000 deductable. To me that's the worse part. I think of what good citizens bouche and I are. We make an honest living and work DAMN hard for $1000.00. That's a trip to Cuba for Christ sake. I know it's just money, but it sucks when someone you don't know decides how you spend it. The thought of that guy even looking at my dog (we have a doggie door so she may have wondered out) just eats at me. Grrrrrr.

So tonight we had the lovely Steven Franke over for dinner. After dinner we get in our swim suits and robes and head out to the hot tub. We open it up and "What the fack? No water?!?!? How does this even happen?" So Mike investigates and walks around the tub only to find that someone has broken all the trim boards apart, clipped a huge electrical cable, unscrewed a pipe and stolen our whole circut board! We just had it replaced less than 3 months ago and it cost us $700.00. Who the fack would do that? They left our snow blower, BBQ, bikes, everything. They were specifically after this piece and knew exactly which side of the tub to break into and must have been pretty certain that we had a GFI before attempting to cut a live wire like that. Our insurance deductable is $1000.00 so it looks like the repair is coming from our pockets. Jesus Christ. What a sick feeling I have. Not sure I'll sleep well tonight.

Owning a home is so rewarding, good for you guys! I hope an invitation is extended once you get settled. I'm a farm girl at heart.

They do Brad, and brining meat in salt and sugar is something we do all the time. I love it. But it's not that great for fries. They have enough starch without the added sugar. Salt does the job just fine.