Brighton, ON

Just another little animal video I thought I'd share.

The other night the skies really opened up around here. We had little water spouts in the lake and trees were being blown over. I hadn't experiened wind like that for quite some time. There was quite a bit of lightning in the sky, and the clouds were swirling very fast and looked as if they may turn into a twister (which is relatively rare in these parts).

I was leaving work fairly late and I noticed this poor little fellow being blown around like a little tumbleweed. He must have been blown out of a nest and he was rolling around on the grass. It was a pathetic sight, and although I'm aware that we shouldn't touch baby birds because their mom's would reject them with human scent on them, I couldn't just leave this little guy to the cruel fate of being blown into the river. I picked him up and held him until the wind subsided enough so that he could stand on his own. He was in a state of shock. Happily enough, he lives in a little shoebox now, and my son and daughter feed him with an eyedropper and take him out to excersize during the day. He flaps about, and I'm sure that he will soon be flying. I think he's a red-winged blackbird.

The Brighton Applefest has become one of Ontario's premier fall festivals over the years. 2010 will be the 36th year straight for this grand festival. This year will be the biggest and best ever, in part because I'll be there along with the Remax balloon, but also because there's so much to do.

It's natural that Brighton should celebrate apples. The area around Brighton is well known for it's apple orchards, and the last weekend in September is set aside to clebrate the year's bountiful harvest. The small town of Brighton will be filled with all kinds of things to do for the entire weekend. This year there will be an art show and some the the area's magnificent talent will have their works on display. There's going to be a street fair, and lots of vendors will be there with their wares. The art show and the craft show are sure to provide an afternoon's worth of interesting things to look at.

Barbeques, pancake breakfasts, steak dinners, and a pie eating contest should be enough to sustain the hungriest of hungry visitors for the whole weekend. The gazebo will be humming for the entire weekend, and for those who would enjoy a beverage while listening to the music, there's a beer tent. There will also be Live Theatre at the Proctor Simpson Barn, a play called Strictly Murder, put on by the Brighton Barn Theatre.

Saturday evening local (well, Cobourg is just down the road) country music singer Daynah Johnson, a Nashville recording artist, along with Rusty Zipper and D.J. Kevin Weaver will play at the Brighton arena. Tickets are only $20.00 for this show, so it's a great value. Cheryl Dunn will close out the music on Sunday afternoon at the Evangel Pentecostal Church, 30 Butler St. - 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm.

This is the time of year when many people start getting the blues because of the weather, so spending a quality, fun-filled weekend in Brighton might just be the anecdote to lift some spirits. I'll see you by the balloon. Be there or be square.

Last Sunday I had to show one of my more remote listings. Another agent was showing it to his clients, but as a courtesy I said I would be there to show them the way. It is difficult to find, as it has deeded access through another property, and it doesn't have a street address, so GPS and Google Maps would be of no help. The agent and his clients were from Toronto, and suspected they would have some difficulty with the location. I had a little bit of trouble understanding him on the phone as he had a heavy accent, but we set the time and made the appointment. I told them that I would park my car along the County Road and wait for them there.

I went to the spot a few minutes early, parked my car and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

About half and hour after the appointed time I called his cell phone, but no one picked up. I tried again in another 15 minutes, and boy, was I getting steamed. I didn't know whether I should give up or not. Ungracious thoughts came flooding through my head. Things like how the hell did this guy get his real estate license? and don't people have manners anymore? etc. etc. The type of thoughts we all have when we are working ourselves up into a state.

My phone finally rang, the agent told me he was in Stirling and would be another 20 minutes or so. Stirling, what the eff are you doing in Stirling, that's not on your way here, you don't go through Stirling to get here from Toronto you effing clod I thought to myself. I grunted something into the phone and hung up.

I was supposed to take my son for our weekly game of pool at the pool hall, and now I'd be late. I was furious. I got out of the car and paced around, unsure of whether I should just leave and screw this guy. I looked around at where I was and decided to take a picture.

When I looked at the picture that I just took, I suddenly started to calm down. I realized that I wasn't just in the middle of nowhere waiting for people who will have made me wait for over an hour. I was on a gorgeous country road on a gorgeous late summer's day. I am fit and healthy, I can see all these sights, take in all these smells, feel the sun on my body. How many people in the world would have given their right arm just to be where I was right then and there? How many people live in squallor and would never experience anything remotely as pleasant in there entire lives? Just last week a shipload of Tamils arrived on our shores, people who could probably only have dreamed of such peace before. Here I am, living in the most free nation in the world, standing by myself in absolute peace with no-one harrassing me, not a soul in sight, soaking up the sun, and I'm angry because someone is making me wait a little.

Why do we ignore all that's good around us and place unnecessarry stress upon ourselves with these artificial deadlines and self imposed boundaries? The sun will always rise, I will always have a meal in my stomach, I will always be able to appreciate the beauty around me, yet there are times when I choose to let silly little things get in the way of all that.

As luck would have it, the people did come soon and they did see the property, I got to see the elderly grandmother take absolute delight in the flowers, trees and plants that were surrounding her, I got to see her bend over and run her hands through the soil, I saw her laugh as a frog unexpectedly hopped past her feet as she was walking. She looked as if she thought she was in paradise. I could learn a lot from her.

Today I'm getting an offer on the property. I'm glad I waited. My son? When I came to pick him up for our pool game he hadn't even noticed that I was late. I could learn a lot from him too.

By and large, search engine optimization is a rather tedious chore. Link hunting, fresh, relevant content on a constant basis, keeping up on the SEO news and tips, etc etc can be time consuming and dull.

There is one task that I rather enjoy though, and that's figuring out exactly how people stumbled across my site. My website has something called "visistat", and I can go in there and check out some very comprehensive information. The part that I like the best is gleaning the "keyword" or "keyphrase" information. This tells me exactly which phrase was typed into whch search engine by the person who eventually clicked into my site. As you can see by the graph above, most of my visitors use Google.

Being primariy a real estate site, the overwhelming majority of phrases and words are the usual suspects, ie; trenton real estate, quinte real estate, homes for sale, new homes, waterfront, Remax, individual addresses of listings, yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm quite thrilled that I'm on page one of most of the search engines for the "meat and potatoes" keywords. I have worked pretty hard on that, and the results are showing.

I do have some "dyi" videos and other related information on things like Radon gas, moving with pets, local information, etc., and I get a surprising number of visitors to those pages too because my subpages are showing up in the searches too.

I have learned that there are a great number of atrocious spellers out there and that people sometimes search for the strangest things. Some of the funnier phrases that have appeared on my "visistat" information (and I'm puzzled as to how my site even showed up) are; Quinte bikini girls, Trenton pet cemetery, trenton river sludge, on the level trenton ontario, joomla ja purity demo, "quinte fall thru ceiling", how to become fabulously wealthy, are many ontario schools 100,000 sq. ft one storey buildings, and a few other pretty strange ones.

I suppose it's a good thing that the site is starting to show up for all different types of things, however, it really makes me wonder what some people are looking for.

Only $250,000 - Unbelievable

100 secluded acres with 1320 waterfront feet on the Trent River. Imagine owning 100 acres of recreational property? This parcel used to be a farm some time ago, so the soil is very fertile and great for growing things. You could start the world's largest pumpkin patch right here on the banks of the Trent River.

This property comes with a small 600 square foot cottage with a basement. Be forewarned though, you will not be able to expand the cottage on this land, as the Lower Trent Conservation Authority will frown upon any attempt to do so, and will stop you with all their conservationey might. There is nothing stopping you, however, from renovating this cottage and building a really kickass one as long as you use the existing footprint.

100 acres is a lot of land, and it's not all waterfront. You'll have your very own forest (or part thereof) where there is quite a few deer roaming around, and there's little clearings where you could build a campfire and scare the crap out of your kids by telling them ghost stories while someone sneaks behind them dressed as bear.

Start traumatizing your kids and building your family memories right here on this gorgeous 100 acre parcel on the Trent River in Murray Township.