The Grand Finale

It seems so fitting that since today is our very last day and our doors will be closed at the end of our run today..... to be immediately followed by the consumption of copious amounts of wine and whisky..... that this weekends Winnipeg Free Press colour comics included this comic strip of The Wizard of ID by Parker and Hart. We worked hard and did everything right and today we close the doors on 14 years of self-employment.


It's bittersweet. We are enjoying the whole experience of moving on to new things - aside from the whole 'how the heck do we pay the bills this month' thing. That's a wee bit scarey.

Some of the stress has been lifted by the news that Al's new minimum wage job, where initially he was told he would be guaranteed 'part-time' status which we figure would be about 20hours a week, is looking more and more promising with talk that he will be full-time with 40hours in the very near future. He trained in record time and they are all very happy with him. Life is good! Al's already looking and feeling so much better. He enjoys going to work. Life is good!

I figured out recently that with 40hours a week, even at minimum wage, the amount of money he will bring home at the end of 4 weeks is only slightly less than we he was bringing home in a month from our own business......and with a whole lot less stress. Life is good! It will be better once I find a job but we aren't in imminent danger of having to choose between satelite service or internet service.....or dinner service for that matter.

Hasn't this post been all cheery and positive. Life is good and all. Believe me, it's not all roses and champaign because there is still the pending doom of business debt and the desperate need to sell off equipment as quick as possible. Closing our doors is an emotional thing for us from a customer service perspective too. Sure our contract customers still have service through someone else but our private customers from all the free-lance work we did are left hanging. There is no one else providing this service to them and each time someone calls about a job and we have to turn them down it's a reminder of just what's been lost - for us and them. We'd been planning to expand the free-lance stuff more this year because the demand for it is there but without the contracts to support us, it just isn't possible. That's a hard thing to swallow, knowing a viable business has shut down at the hands of politicians for some unknown reason - be it political agenda or budget cuts. The only part of this that makes it a little easier to swallow is knowing that the local politicians are now taking the flack for putting us out of business....and yes....I do blame them and so do A LOT of other people. Political Suicide? I hope so!

Tomorrow's a new day.



~K