Retired Competitive Curler

My last entry dealt with “productive days.” I had two of those over the weekend. Yes, unfortunately, this is still a time of working on weekends. Activity within Parmasters Southern Ontario is finally starting to heat up. We’re deep into lease negotiations. We’re starting some marketing activities. And we’re attracting more and more investor attention every day. More on each topic below.

Regarding the lease negotiations, you didn’t really think I could/would provide more details did you?

And the marketing activities. The franchisor lays out some 30 or 40 proven – primarily direct – marketing techniques and strategies. These are divided into three time frames around pre-opening, opening and ongoing operations. Lots of work to do. We’re starting with one or two special sections within the KW Record. They’re both coming out in April. Look for the Parmasters logo!

We’re also working on our website/pages (we’ll exist within the large www.parmastersgolf.com) site.

As for the investor activity, we’ve intentionally focused more energies and time on site selection and lease negotiation of late. Once the lease is signed, we’ll work night and day to quickly close the remaining financing.

On a lighter note, I did take some time off during Sunday evening to watch the Brier final. I recorded it, and then started watching it midway through, allowing me to fast forward through the commercials and boring parts.

I used to curl competitively. Certainly not at the Brier level, but only one step below. We had some successes. In years gone by we’ve played matches against some of the players and teams that were in the Brier this year. I recall in particular a great game in Ottawa against the team that represented Quebec this year. Our lead made just about every shot perfectly. We won handily. The team from Quebec was less than gracious in defeat. Unfortunate.

I “retired” from all curling after the 2003 season. We had played at every level, except the very top/elite. Basically, we’d been there and done that before. And to play at the elite level, you basically have to arrange your entire life around curling. I wasn’t prepared to do that. And truth be told, I’m not certain that I had the skill to compete at the elite level.