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Getting in Shape - Innkeeper Style

5/15/2010 08:23:00 PM by Tina Macaluso
It was a quiet weekend here with some really sweet guests. George and Aidan went away for a few days to Delaware for NASCAR. They met some friends down there and camped out in what appears to be a mall parking lot. Well, Aidan camped (in a tent). George was in a luxury RV, so not really the equivalent of camping. And the added bonus of being in a mall parking lot - Aidan got to go shopping for dvds and video games. Yep, they were living the good life, the American dream. Camping/malls/car racing, all at the same time! While I held down the fort, George had sent some videos from his phone. A real guy weekend. Aidan was standing next to a fence with cars racing by. I was carsick just looking at it on my 2 x 2 phone screen. Yep, I'd rather be here all cozy with my 2 puppies. Just me, Maggie and Sam and half a dozen strangers, I mean guests.

Only a few guests this weekend, but fine by me. I need a breaking-in phase when we start up the season. Can't throw 10 rooms of guests at me. I go into a panic. Especially when I am by myself. One room of guests were men from the UK. They were traveling by bike from Boston to Chicago! Did I mention - by bike - bicycle. Did I mention they were around 65 years old. Yeah, if that didn't make me feel out of shape! I don't even like to ride my bike to the store. Even with that cute basket that I have on there to carry the groceries. It's just so much easier to get in the car. A couple of months ago George saw an infomercial for P90X. This extreme workout DVD set. He convinced me to do it with him. You work out for 90 days/7days a week. By the end of that time period (if I was still alive), I was to have the body of a 20 year old. Well, I gave it a good 34 days. I was then officially a P90X drop out. First, I gained 6 lbs. If I am going to suffer for an hour every day, I'll be damned if I am going to gain weight. Yeah, yeah, George said, "But it's muscle!" I Don't Care!!

Well, after meeting those incredibly in-shape older men, I am going to start working out again. Tomorrow. Well, maybe Monday. Not today. Too much to do with the inn this weekend. Remember, I am holding down the inn all by myself. When it's slow like this I can't justify hiring my cleaning girls yet, so isn't - checking in guests/making breakfast/cleaning rooms/washing linens a workout in itself? I am definitely going to start working out again, though. Starting Monday! Not P90X working out, but - maybe I'll go for a bike ride. To the store. With my cute basket. And maybe this 48 year old body can look - 42 1/2 again!
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If You Build It, Will They Come?

5/03/2010 07:52:00 PM by Tina Macaluso
This past weekend we opened the inn for the season. We had some really nice guests, some we knew from previous visits and some were new. It was a great start to hopefully a wonderful season. Every year we try and do something a little different as we open the inn. Sometimes it's as subtle as buying new comforters, one year we added a volleyball court, another we brought in a dvd library for the guests. This year it's a baseball field! People love to play ball in the backyard of the inn. We thought, "Hey, they'll love having their very own ballfield to play on when they stay here." I don't know what we were thinking!

A couple of weeks ago, we had someone bulldozing a couple of old flower beds away. George wanted to plant grass and remove some old rotted railroad ties. Well, when that was finished and the day was still young, and the bulldozer was right there on the property already anyway, why not just start that ballfield we always wanted to build. Why is it that whenever we do anything, we always hash it out for a good 4 or 5 minutes. We never sleep on it. Like when we bought the inn. We had originally planned on buying an investment property. Maybe a small house that we could rent out seasonally and use occasionally on the off season. Then we saw the inn. We had always thought that eventually, maybe when we were older we would own one. But why wait until then, we decided to buy it that day. Yeah, we don't like to dwell on things.


So back to the ball field. We have that big back right corner of property that we never use. "Wouldn't a field be perfect there?" Sure, George. So within the hour, there was no turning back! For a couple of days we seemed to be the talk of the neighborhood. Hmmm. Heavy equipment, lots of digging, The Meadowlark must be adding more rooms. The man that owns the land next to us was over in a flash. He'd heard we were building rooms on his land! People slowed down to see what we were doing, what we were building. Some even stopped by to ask, "So what are you building back there anyway?" Ha!


You wouldn't believe me if I told you how many hours a bulldozer has to push dirt around to level land. Day after day I would look outside and the dirt was still being pushed around. And then raked and then pushed and then raked. Damn you incredibly unlevel land! Do you not know how much a bulldozer costs per hour? Then came the base lines. That stuff's expensive too! Yep. Didn't think this out! We are a little over a week into the build and it is finished. This past weekend we spent wayyyy too many hours putting hay on the seed so that the grass will grow faster. George has worked soooo hard on this field! But in a couple of weeks it is going to be beautiful. And green. And people will play on it. George promises me that!

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