The 76’ers are off and away!

Who knows they could be, I don’t follow the NBA much beyond the occasional goings on of the Toronto Raptors, and that is half hearted at best. A fair weather fan, would describe my involvement with sports teams. I can watch whole Blue Jay games if I’m there in person, or the house is empty, but I couldn’t watch all 162 games from a single season, even if I bounced around and followed multiple teams on hot streaks.

Going to be a busy, busy week. Had to take some time to rest my wrist and get out with my girls. Skated again! Fell again. On my damn knees this time. Argh, getting older and less limber sucks. However, have used the new skates three times now, which was more than I figured I’d get out of them this year. So, that’s a stroke for the win column. Two falls, a day apart is a stroke or two for the fail column.

So it’s Monday, and almost March. The winds have been blustery and frigid the last few days. Are these the last echoes of the coldest months or something else?

Day 75! Woah. That’s like a milestone or somethin’.

Early start on this weeks paid work project. Hoping to get through the first forty or so pages before Monday morning. Still going to be a challenging week even with a forty page head start! That’s pretty insane. But it pays well, and I’ll have two more after this one is done coming to round out my spring.

So Day 75! I’m happy to report I had a tiny spurt of creativity last night while watching Hacksaw Ridge on tv. I worked hard in the morning, and went skating (where I fell on my left elbow) ouch! But had a great time in the blustery icy winds. I dressed accordingly and was thus richly rewarded. A hard fall on my elbow and shoulder when I caught an edge, but, as I said, well padded in warm winter clothes, so beyond the pain of the bump, no real damage done. But these forties, they keep on coming with the physical disadvantages! For real. Makes me question my desire to down hill ski or snowboard any more. Perhaps a shift to only cross country skiing could save me from potential calamity! Plus – exercise and loud music!

Ten pages left to reach today’s goal, so I’ll leave you all to what’s left of your Sunday.

“Do you know why I asked you come here Ms. Darla?”

“Hm. Do you have some terrible inkling for what I might have in store you for?” The doctor asks through his surgical mask. He isn’t facing Darla whom is strapped down onto an icy cold metallic gurney. His attention elsewhere as he is looking over his personal hand written notes and diagrams tapped up to a wall in his private surgical bay. The drawings are gruesome but are also the product of someone with artistic talent, and more than a little flair.

The sage green tiles of the operating room glisten with moisture as the large overhead drum lights buzz loudly in the quiet theater. The quality of the light is a brilliant, nearly pristine blue white. Darla has to squint to make out the shape of the doctor across the room from her. But the starkness of the paper stands out against the darkness of the rough hewn rock walls above the green tiles. Massive double doors swing gently as the air circulates constantly through some whisper quiet hepa filter units. The air tastes astringent, like bleach residue and quat sanitizer spray mixed together. It tastes thickly on her tongue and sticks cloyingly in her throat. The center of the floor, directly under Darla and her gurney is a sloped polished cement floor that terminates in a large drain grill that occasionally gurgles and burps as the base UB313 tilts and rotates under its orbital stresses.

A panicked and afraid Darla can’t turn her head more than a few inches or move any of her limbs at all, the tight straps are biting into her flesh sharply with every twitch and tug. Her heart is thumping in her chest, and her breaths come in ragged bursts. “Well aren’t you the excitable type.” Quips the doctor as he turns away from his notes, pushing his glasses up his nose with a single finger. “Not to worry Darla. I’m not going to operate, but you see I have other needs of you. No- no, not those kind either, I’m afraid.” He chuckles leering over Darla’s nude figure writhing on the gurney. Leaning towards her he picks up a needle from a tray covered by a blue cloth. “No, even I have my limits. Apparently I can’t just kill all of my Risk Assessors in one fell swoop. Your friend Trevor is quite right, I do need the processing power which the Oracle network soaks up.” He says jovially. With a quick and practiced motion he swabs her arm and plunges in a syringe attached to a tube and collection bag. ” I need it to feed my babies. I know everyone thinks I’m mental and that I don’t believe it Nanobots or Nanotech, but the truth is, those are artificial. More machine dependencies. No!” He shouts angrily.”Here, with what I’ve learned, with the experiments I’ve cultivated. I have harnessed uniquely natural energies to power my beasties. My darlings, my lovelies. No-no, for you I just need plasma, some platelets, and various other minor ingredients which my standing army has trouble processing in abundance. I had hoped i would have the time to help them so that they could synthesize the remaining items better, but not to worry! A little prick, a pinch and a squeeze and you’ll be back to your desk in no time.” Laughs doctor Jang heartily. Pulling his mask down around his chin, he circles the gurney to stand at Darla’s head. Bending at the hip he Whispers into her ears, so softly she can barely hear him. “Do you want to know why I’ve exposed you? Left you nothing to hide behind? Showing me just how afraid of me you are?” His breath a soft caress of her cheek. “Because I get off on it.”

“Come on Darla, are you being serious right now? We’ve all had to take turns donating blood, why would he put you in the surgical bay naked for what amounts to a blood drive. That’s insane. Just tell us where you were, and why you’re three hours late for your shift?” Quips the short, fat man with a ridiculous moustache. “I just fucking told you why, Ricky!” Screams Darla as she shakes and trembles at her desk. “Yeah, well… un-fucking-likely, am I right!?” Snivels Ricky in response. “Oh, your buddy Trevor left you a note on your desk. He wouldn’t let me read it, said it was for your eyes only. Technically I’m not your boss per se, but I’ve been here like three weeks more than you, so… you know. I kinda am.” He trills weakly turning back to his own work station, leaving a very upset Darla sitting alone in her cramped office. Slamming the door shut after Ricky leaves, Darla crumples into her chair with hot salty tears streaming down her cheeks. After a brief period of tremors she sniffles, rubs her eyes with her palms and finds a small envelope sealed with black wax tucked in beside her computer terminal. “Where does he get all this shit?” Darla mumbles to herself, looking over the black wax seal, and the rough off white paper envelope. Using her finger nail to pick the wax seal off whole, she pulls out the slip of folded paper and unfurls it. The rough hand made paper smells like lavender, and is rough to the touch under her fingers. Her fingers make an audible scrape as she runs her nail over the textured paper. Two words are scribbled in the center of the slip of paper, along with a red blob. Pulling her desk lamp over towards her, she flips on the dim bulb to reveal what it says.

The blob at the center looks like a bloody finger print, and the note reads “We’re fucked!”.

Part Twenty Six: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Busy one.

The next monster report came in midway through yesterday, and then other clients had changes I wasn’t expecting, so now I’m working off & on over the weekend to capture those missed hours. This is a long one, with lots of extraneous parts, so I have to concentrate. Kids are home, and they chose not to sleep in, so now things are getting messy. Weee!

Sun is out and shining, so I’ll wager that it’s cold as all get out outside today. Trying to stay sane and get work done in drips and drabs.

Seventy three feet below the surface,

And i’m beginning to feel a lot like Hans Moleman. Short, shrivelled, thick coke bottle glasses and desperately in need of a kick to the balls to remain relevant in today’s media environment. Or was it a football to the testes that garnered him the win during the short film contest? It’s been so long that I forget. A lone “Ha-ha!” Booms out from the distance, as Nelson Mandela Muntz skitters back into obscurity behind a dumpster somewhere.

Yeah, so…. busy week I guess. A long feeling short week coming off the holiday Monday. Looks like Ukraine has a shit tonne of bad to look towards for the foreseeable future. That’s just going to be a horrific mess no matter what. You know what, I don’t really know enough to make any real qualitative statements, so I’ll just leave it alone, from a policy, or action view point. Just to say, I feel for Ukraine and its people. I hope they prevail, and that most of their people make it out the otherside alive and well. But, God-Damn!, what a mess.

Looking like white out conditions here. The starting temperature was minus twelve, plus whatever the wind chill factor is because she’s a tad blowy out there fellas. It’s fucken WIMDY, as the memes would say. Sad wind blown fox on a field of white .jpeg – as it were. It usually doesn’t snow once the degrees drop that low, but again, not a meteorologist. Studied weather, climate and ecology a little in university, just enough to be a useful idiot I suppose. I had a broad but shallow base to my post secondary education, excluding the Print & Web Graphic Design stuff. That was laser focused and very intensive. But that was from two separate Art Schools and not the University I attended as well, so – Nyah!

The last couple weeks have been busy with work, so my brain hasn’t occupied the creative writing space in a number of days. Next week won’t be any better in that front as I have the first of three big spring reports coming, and those will soak up some serious brain power, focus and wrist strength. Although, you know I’ll say that, and then will desperately need a break from it all and will write something. So who knows any more. I don’t think this second book will reach sixty thousand words, but if I hit forty thousand then cumulatively I’ll have done 100,000 which is like a short-ish full sized novel. Which is cool.

Strike that from the bucket list. Check! Just need to write and record at least one song, produce a comic book of 32-64 pages in length, and I will have a good chunk of my childhood dream projects completed. I’m a working artist, I own my own business, I sculpt reasonably well, I have made tables and wood working projects. Went to art school, but also did Soc & Business in university, traveled across Europe, got married, have kids, had a lovely old fat dopey mutt (until he passed away at 12 yrs old) and have worked on major campaigns for multiple big breweries, and have helped launch smaller micro breweries too. Do I wish we were rich beyond measure, sure, but we’re also not doing too badly either. Working for myself affords me the time to be with my kids, instead of leaving the house at 6:00am and getting home after 8:00pm, and being a grumpy shit. I do school drop offs and pick ups, I’m here for sick days and appointments. I fix lunches and breakfasts. I brush teeth and hair. I can do bath times and bed time stories. It’s rather lovely when you compare it to my days before kids.

The last Thursday in February.

It holds no special meaning beyond its proximity to March, and thus March Break and the foretold lead in to spring. The winds are bitter and cold, but carry slightly more moisture than weeks passed. And are therefore more biting, and cut deeper toward the bone. A listless jab to the body on the way out for another year.

Almost two months down into the new year, and once again the threat of war looms low over the headd of Eastern Europeans, and eventually the world. Let us not forget that West Taiwan wants to attack Taiwan proper for similar land grab and control reasons. Colonialism at its worst, and therefore also its finest. Because that’s what the machine does best, slow roll over everything and everyone in order to enrich itself and crush that which stands in the way of ever increasing expansion, and the industries created to maintain it. Weee! Splat.

Perhaps the sanctions will be enough to send the incursion packing after they’ve done a few days of random, yet targeted shelling in Ukraine’s “contested” territories. I used quotes here as the only one contesting it is Putin, and his Colonial over reach across borders. Eating up another country bite by bite, like he did with Crimea. Carving up a smaller neighbour for the sake of expanding a border and reclaiming some semblance of the USSR’s control over the region. Talk about boomer energy. That’s some rose coloured, nostalgia heavy talk of returning to the past. But with heavy casualties, death and dismemberment.

On a lighter note, who wants icecream? Hard to make a segue into any topic after talk of war in Europe. But I tried, an attempt was made. So – big picture talk here. What to do with the house come Spring & Summer? I think i want to tackle the screen door again. Build one from scratch. The basement needs to get more reasonable air flow. I also invested in a bigger and better table saw late last year, and think i can do a much better job of it now, that how i did it before. Still going to be a challenge, but i think i can get it done this year! I’d also like to challenge myself to build either a table or a chair this year too. Just one chair, not a set. That sounds tedious to me. One off items are way more exciting to produce, as far as I’m concerned. Spring will also bring a new round of heavy cleaning, decluttering and a broken toy purge. Have tackled the girls closets for ill fitting clothes. Bigger kids stuff if not ruined goes to the youngest when she’s big enough for it, and clothes from older cousins & friends filter back into the older ones closet in a seemingly endless cycle. Glad for it too. Besides pant legs much of this stuff doesn’t see enough action under one kid to go into a landfill. What we don’t use/need goes to other family members in the surrounding area. I’d love to do one in one out, but sometimes that’s not the case. Swim suits get destroyed by the sun and chlorine and heavy use, so we couldn’t donate as many of those as we actually use. If you swim two or three times a day, as is the case with us during the summer, then they (swimsuits) disintegrate pretty rapidly. Girls get duck bum, as the elastic goes in the rear and a saggy duck tail appears in the fabric as it settles. Straps wear out, and whole thing sags, and then it’s just trashed after several months. Wouldn’t want to give that mess to someone else, that’s just rude.

Will need to look at my mower again this spring, see if I can convince the old girl to give me a sixteenth cutting season! Wash and clean the filters, new oil, blades sharpened, clean the spark plug, oil it up and hope for the best. Bought it in January of 2006, and has started by the second/third pull every single year since then. Doesn’t owe me much, but I’d be thankful if it kept going a few more years yet.

A taste of earlier today in this dad’s life. Sorting out laundry loads five and six. Which was the last scraps of the kids stuff, and my wife’s clothes. Then sorting out all the one off socks we seem to have accumulated. Stacks upon stacks of singular socks. Now I don’t know if the opposites have been lost, left behind places, developed holes and were thrown away, eaten or sacrificed to the washer and dryer, but I know this. One day I will go and buy bags upon bags of plain black and white socks, that fit my wife and daughters, and then I will never sort another sock again. You get 2 lbs of B&W socks, so do you and you too. I don’t want to pair, fold, stash another sock after that happens. Theme socks seem like such a good idea until no one can keep them together to get washed at the same time, or sorted and paired again after wearing them. I’ll wager good money a fair few socks are under beds throughout the house.

Bit of a late start today.

Needed to get some Photoshop work done first thing, and then I started to build out a template for a new report that is coming at some point in the next week. Could be a long one, so best to get as much ready up front before the deadline begins to loom over me, and I feel the weight of it on my shoulders until I’m done my first full draft. Gathering photo materials is kind of a fun task at first, and then it can spiral out of control pretty quickly. Have to make a conscious effort not to pull photos from the wrong countries too. That is a sticking point I find later on, as I’m not always up to date on all of the products on offer by various brand names or multi national corporations. But they know, and they’ll tell me I’m sure.

Even when I worked at a major brewery, it was easy to forget which location had which sku’s associated with all of your brands and/or partner brands. If I recall I made myself a massive heart to keep track of it, but partners would come onboard or drop out so often that I had it covered with sticky notes until it was more of an eye sore than a helpful visual aid.

So Day 71 eh? Well now, look at you, reading along with me, awesome. My kids have hit school day number one hundred today, so there’s that. They did some fun stuff to commemorate that feat, or so I’ve been told. So more than halfway through the school year, which means that spring and summer are screaming towards us at a break neck pace. Yeah! I wonder if Covid will be beaten back enough for summer camps this year? I’d like to have some kid free time to work on stuff around the house. Hell, I’d like to have a kid free evening so my wife and I could go eat or hit the driving range by ourselves for an hour or two. Did I mention I bought a used set of clubs and bag for forty dollars the other day? Oh, I’m so excited! It had the few clubs I wanted and use most. Putter, drivers, a nine iron and a couple other clubs too. I’m like a par three course kind of golfer. Mainly because I only really play once every decade or so. Ha! But I’ll be sure to go to the driving range now! Or at least I’ll hope to go, whether I do or not remains to be seen.

I need to grab some water softener salt, so I’m going out into the cold again. TTYS

I suppose yesterday’s entry should have been called ‘Feast of Crows’, but now we’re at Day 70!

Took it pretty easy this weekend  as far as writing was concerned. Did some paid work on the holiday Monday, but otherwise kept it fairly chill. We did some outdoor skating as a family, which was nice. Had a few family movie dates at home, which were fun. Obviously Encanto made the rounds – yet again. But the kids will watch it and sing along, so we don’t have to entertain them ourselves. Although I will say this, it has become very noticeable how well, and for how long the girls will play together without fighting these days. It’s slowly getting less contentious between them, which I love to see.

So things on the list for today, laundry, vacuum,  mop the floors, dishes (via dishwasher) and maybe sort all the loads and put them away. Will depend on how quiet my ‘work’ day continues to be. Partly why I worked yesterday, so I could clean while the house was empty of other people. So much easier that way. And a general tidy up of the main living space, as the toys migrate out here, and I step on them, and kick them, and trip on them, which makes me furious.

Had enough time to break down a bunch of card board. “Woah-woah” you say, save some excitement for the rest of us. Breaking down card board, cleaning, dude you could drown a toddler in these panties. But nay! I say. I can only stand so much clutter and ‘lived in’ mess before it drives me crazy. So not so much a ploy for sexy time, as it diminishes an anxiety I feel when I look around the house and see messes everywhere. Ugh! But still, we are working our way through the last vestiges of the Christmas present cardboard delivery box horde that I keep finding in closets and cupboards and on shelves. Our house is tiny, and clutter makes it feel even more so. At least in the summer we have the doors and windows open and the house feels less claustrophobic.

I think my next household purchase will be a big Hepa filter unit to gussy up the air quality. We have good filters on the furnace, but still. A dedicated upstairs unit moving the air around seems like a good thing for all of us in this older house. The furnace filters have really been given a boon since our elderly dog passed away. Far less hair in the vents, nor pet dander to screen out. I do feel a rather epic purge coming in April though. For as much stuff as we donate and give away, we seem to get back in kind. Which is awesome, but overwhelming in such a small house. When the price of plywood becomes more reasonable I am going to have to build some serious storage cabinets for the basement, and possibly, living room/dining room. Open concept it great, except if you want to store anything out of view. Then the lack of wall space becomes a liability. Plus sounds travels unencumbered across the entire house with no walls to muffle or dampen it. Nice and bright, but loud AF.

Like I said previously, not much writing done beyond the blog posts. Could change if I catch a thought that takes me some place exciting, or unnerving, or different. Stay tuned.

Holiday Monday! Also known here as Family Day.

Woke up to some freshly prepared crispy bacon, and made myself a breakfast sandwich from as many strips as I could handle. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. Now we are watching The Spongebob Movie on Ytv.

I finished another book yesterday, and now I’m in a weird spot where I know the next book I want to read isn’t going to show up until the fifteenth of next month, but I don’t want to not read anything between then and now. So I’ll dig through my TBR pile for something short enough that I can read it before my next book arrives.

I went for a James A Owen book about dragons. I think the series was written in the early 2000’s. Each volume is made up of two or three actual novels. I can read the first one quickly, then the last one or two seem to drag on for months. They aren’t bad, but I don’t consume 1000 page novels like I used too. I’ve been gearing down to three hundred pages of fewer. Could be writing short stories has rewired my brain for quicker and more concise tales. Or I’m more distracted, and don’t have the attention span for massive tomes any more. Seems like a reasonable explanation. But I’m no scientist, and I could just be making things up as I go along.

My concentration is still good, do you want to know how I know that? My love of assembling thousand piece model kits on the semi regular. My office is crowded with Gundam kits that range from 1,500 pcs down to like 500 pcs. Assembly via pictograms and drawings, as I don’t read Japanese text, like at all. Lots of prolonged concentration. So I know I can still focus when I need to.

Time to take the kids skating. Have a good Holiday Monday people.

Sixty Eight degrees° the elevator muzak from Helsinki.

And what a fine specimen of a mind bending psychological disorder it is too. All kazoo noises and garbage can cymbols, with a soft synth wave chorus throughout. Pulling off the melody with a saw blade and violin bow was a stroke of genius. Could do without the canon blasts and the nails on a chalk board, but you have your tastes and I have mine. Let’s just agree to disagree on the finer points, shall we.

In other news I found a line on a nice looking set of used golf clubs from nearby, so I hope to acquire those later on today, for a modest price. Score! The point of the purchase was to be able to continue a new (hopefully yearly) golf outing with my older siblings, and my father for as long as he can manage it. I’ve never owned golf clubs before, so this feels momentous. Similar to how i felt actually buying my own pair of ice skates. Perhaps this summer I’ll be fortunate enough to have a date night with my wife and we can go to the driving range or mini putt by ourselves! Like we used to do all the time, prior to having children. How we long to have a quiet meal out together. Damn you Covid! Going to be a while yet too.

Think we might take the wee one to go see some fish today. Obviously the first choice would be an aquarium, but that’s down town and full of people. So we’ll go the closer option, I imagine, and hit up the Zoo. Lots of exhibits have fish, and we have family yearly passes, so – cheap too! The large wall tank near the jellies is my favourite, but I know others like the massive curved tank option as well. I have never owned fish, but I do watch a guy on YouTube from Alabama who spent many months and lots of money building a five acre bass pond on a corner of his peanut farm. Maybe I like the building more so than the fish, but it was interesting and entertaining at the same time.

I’m feeling the terrain building bug again. Problem is, I don’t have anywhere to store or maintain yet another 2x2ft playing board. I could build it and give it away, or sell it. But I have peculiar tastes, and I’m not sure I’d want to part with it when finished anyway. Could be I just want to work on something physical, as writing is fun, but it’s also just more digital output. Not a tangible item to hold, that has weight and a realness to it. Plus, to build more terrain I need to buy a lot of expensive supplies, where as I have clay on hand that I can use, bought and paid for, just waiting on me to get down to business. Choices – choices.

I wonder if I will keep the streak going up to one hundred days. I’m sort of amazed I have made it to 68, to be honest. Something tells me if I’d have tried this with exercise it would have fizzled after day five. Which, honestly, reflects poorly I’m sure. I just passed chapter twenty five, so I think I’m down to the last few chapters. Although every single time I say “only X number of chapters left” I find something new to expand upon and the count goes higher. So let us say, the last handful, and we can draw this portion to a close. I don’t think I will be able to let this universe go, so I can forsee new stories developing after I close out book two. Could take a full year to come back to it again, but maybe not. These daily writing entries tend to get me thinking, and that ends up as a new chapter getting written. Once the wheels are in motion, I have to write it down, or else rely on my memory to recapture it later on. Not my favourite way to go about it.