Month: May 2022

It started with more than $150 in European cheeses and cured meats. A hand made Ash cutting board. And now I need to get enough soft drinks and juice boxes on hand for the quiet event. I have crackers, cheese and meats. Ingredients to pour Sex on the Beach beverages to the adults who aren’t driving. I will order pizza, and pick up a veggie tray and a seven layer dip, because my wife loves that shit, so she can have it for her day in the sun. We have the table & chairs set up. Grass is cut. Wine for the guests is chilling. Ice cubes are a go in the freezer. Music on hand. Speaker will charge up this week. I just need to get fresh baguettes on Friday.

Today will be general house cleaning, and outdoor prep. Pulling weeds from the visible garden beds. Cleaning the table, and patio/deck areas. Making sure our play equipment is clean for all five kids to play on. Should be a fun time.

Laundry is almost done it’s wash cycle, dishwasher has started. Floors vacuumed and mopped. So I’ll finish up this post and head outside to tackle the deck and patio. Should be in a great spot for Friday afternoon. Though it is a hot one today, boy, I’ll tell you that much. 31 degrees Celcius. Not yet a scorcher, but closing in on it once the humidity kicks in. Which remind me, I should grease the AC fans again, so the damn fans not so loud. Our unit is old, but it works. Ugly as sin, loud, but functional. Knock on wood.

Until we meet again.

As mostly nothing is open. There has to be people like me who wish to run errands right after school drop off. I cannot believe people go home first, for a half hour or so, then go right back passed where they were and then run errands. It is ridiculous. I hate it. Probably why everyone goes to Walmart, it’s damn near open 24/7 around here anyway.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see, in a few years Walmart brand lawyers, dentists, doctors and Banks. All run on the same schedule out of those ugly misshapen blue buildings. Oh, the future, it’s going to be ugly.

I’m still having a run of likes on a random post from weeks ago. I don’t know why, but the bots, or bot-like accounts are drawn to it. Liking it without reading it. New follows along with those random DNR (Did Not Read) likes. If it brought ad revenue with it I wouldn’t mind so much, but I really don’t believe that anymore than 5-10% of those accounts are real people who would get any enjoyment out of my material/content. Not that I write for the void, but still.

We had a busy, travel filled weekend. First to the cottage for the night, then to Ottawa for the day, for golf and farewells to family that are moving across the country – again. Then back to the cottage for a night, and some boat rides, odd jobs, and then driving back home. It honestly felt like a weeks worth of travel in 56 hours time. Kids travelled better than expected, but always seem to fall apart ten minutes from home. You can set your watch to it. Ugh.

Covid times really robbed us of some precious family time. Which really hits home now that a large portion of my side of the family are moving away – again. Oh well. We will have to make plans to meet in Las Vegas, or a Disney in Florida at some point in the next 3-5 years. I had hoped we could go see a Sens game, or play a full round of 18 holes this summer, or amp up our go-cart chops at the track in Hull. But it wasn’t meant to be. I did however, use my new-to-me golf clubs for the first time this weekend. The nine iron was my go to, along with my 3 iron and putter. I played like shit, but at least it wasn’t the hottest day of the summer this time. Way better when it was twenty degrees cooler and almost no humidity to speak of.

As mostly nothing is open. There has to be people like me who wish to run errands right after school drop off. I cannot believe people go home first, for a half hour or so, then go right back passed where they were and then run errands. It is ridiculous. I hate it. Probably why everyone goes to Walmart, it’s damn near open 24/7 around here anyway.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see, in a few years Walmart brand lawyers, dentists, doctors and Banks. All run on the same schedule out of those ugly misshapen blue buildings. Oh, the future, it’s going to be ugly.

I’m still having a run of likes on a random post from weeks ago. I don’t know why, but the bots, or bot-like accounts are drawn to it. Liking it without reading it. New follows along with those random DNR (Did Not Read) likes. If it brought ad revenue with it I wouldn’t mind so much, but I really don’t believe that anymore than 5-10% of those accounts are real people who would get any enjoyment out of my material/content. Not that I write for the void, but still.

We had a busy, travel filled weekend. First to the cottage for the night, then to Ottawa for the day, for golf and farewells to family that are moving across the country – again. Then back to the cottage for a night, and some boat rides, odd jobs, and then driving back home. It honestly felt like a weeks worth of travel in 56 hours time. Kids travelled better than expected, but always seem to fall apart ten minutes from home. You can set your watch to it. Ugh.

Covid times really robbed us of some precious family time. Which really hits home now that a large portion of my side of the family are moving away – again. Oh well. We will have to make plans to meet in Las Vegas, or a Disney in Florida at some point in the next 3-5 years. I had hoped we could go see a Sens game, or play a full round of 18 holes this summer, or amp up our go-cart chops at the track in Hull. But it wasn’t meant to be. I did however, use my new-to-me golf clubs for the first time this weekend. The nine iron was my go to, along with my 3 iron and putter. I played like shit, but at least it wasn’t the hottest day of the summer this time. Way better when it was twenty degrees cooler and almost no humidity to speak of.

Yuck. Thick swarms of them everywhere. How gross. Makes my skin crawl. Yikes!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. I think, compared to last weekend, this one should be a whole lot quieter. Far less physical activity, that’s for sure. Have some family things to sort out, so I may not be too engaged with the blog come Saturday/Sunday. No biggie. I’m not certain anyone besides me visits every single day anyway. I don’t bring it out of people like that. No biggie. I’m not famous, or a voice of a generation. Just some dude keeping his streak going for just a little bit longer. Taking by the moment, as the days progress.

I’m willing to bet that at least 75% of my current “followers” are bots or junk accounts. It’s weird how some innocuous blog entry will just randomly go on a run of likes and gathering new followers. But the post in question is never anything worth while. Not a short story, not a wood working of sculpting post, nor a think piece about tragedy or anything meaningful. Plus many followers share the same avatar image, or are about passive income, crypto, or some internet money making scheme. It’s all very weird and strange.

I managed to finish and hand off the two newel posts for my FIL. I got the kitchen window screen fitted (kind of), and I have yet to cut the hinge slots. Still feeling a bit of trepidation about committing to that step. So close to finishing though. So close! I will do it. I’m happy that come the fall I’ll be able to have that door open to the breeze like I have dreamed of since we moved her in 2009. Baby steps! Measure three times, just to be certain.

Not a whole lot, I’ll tell you that, now, for free. It has been a busy couple of says. My shoulders are feeling the pain from it all. Carrying debris around homes and lifting trunk chunks into trailers is busy work. Tiring for this middle aged man. Whoo boy! But what a work out. Speaking of which, started push ups again, which are boring and tedious, but my back has really been feeling it these last few days. Still haven’t gotten up the desire to go for a run. My knees and ankles implored me not to, so I heeded their call for calm.

In the shop I am almost done the two newel post caps for my FIL. Done in Cedar with some trim tacked around the outside, and a nice round over on the top. Looks like it’ll end up 8.5×8.5×2 inches high. Had to break out my hand planes for these rustic fellas. Smell great when you work it too. I opted to attach the mitered trim with Brad nails and not pin nails. They aren’t going anywhere. Especially since I used glue as well. Should be rock solid. Three coats of thick oil based primer, top and bottom, and they can go to their new home.

Then I need to tackle my hinges and finish of this screen door for good! Makes me nervous to cut into them and the frame on the house. Hard to fix if I fuck it up. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow I’ll pluck up the courage to measure it all again, and lay things out. Perhaps I’ll get the itch to start cutting, chopping and chisel my way through the task. Stranger things have happened.

The inclement weather kind of robbed us of a long weekend. The 26+ hour power outage didn’t help much either. Could be worse though. By 9:00pm Monday night we had all of our residential clean up done. I’ll take that as a win. At some point this weekend I crossed over 160 days of writing every single day. Might have been with the short contract killer story I roughed out. I think I could pretty that up some, but I like the bones of the story. My time constraints made it a bit rushed, but the spine is in there, hard & fast.

Spent cutting, and hauling brush, climbing ladders and assessing damages to rooves, and other buildings/structures.

My hands and arms are exhausted, and I feel like I could sleep for 24 hrs straight and still wake up bone weary. I can’t imagine how others, whom were harder hit are keeping up. Weather calls for rain tomorrow, and possibly for a few days in a row.

Our house clean up was minor, my in-laws house was more involved, as they lost fencing, a shed, and three trees plus numerous limbs. We also helped a neighbor, and then I got up on a farm hands roof, and found a limb had harpooned his roof, leaving a white onion sized puncture in the top of his roof. We cleared his downed brush as well. Three full to over flowing dump trailers worth of debris.

They called it a derecho, that stretched 800Km, from London Ontario, all the way to Montreal, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Others were hit far worse than us, but parts of the farm could take weeks to clear up all of the snapped or downed trees. Limbing and felling the ruined trees will take a very long time just due to the sheer number of dangerously leaning trees covering our trails and walking paths.

As far as the actual physical farm buildings I’m not sure, as I’m not privy to that part of the business. Could be insurance, Parks Canada, the Conservation People or private contractors, or even us charged with fixing the damage and making the property safe again. No idea.

I have heard the term Derecho in relation the the 800 km line of wind storm that stretched from London to Montreal, doing various amounts of damage, and even weak tornados along the leading edges of the wind driven event. I hear that it’s a pretty rare event here. So that’s fun.

The sound of chainsaws, wood chippers and sirens has been pretty consistent since Saturday afternoon was the storm passed over us. Our home had minor branches come down on the front port, door over hang. But 12 minutes further south the farm was struck hard, and twenty minutes north east Uxbridge had some devastating destruction as well. My folks in Ottawa had close to 20+ trees come down on their street and lost roof shingles in the process.