It’s some serious shit. Tornado hit our farm.
**Nearly ruined my writing streak, but as luck would have it, I found a hotspot about 20 minutes south of us.
Power outage.
Month: May 2022
My life as a contract killer.
It started in the early winter of 2199. I was working sixteen hour shifts piloting my cab-barge over Sante Feyokyo ferrying people around the vast sprawl of the newest metropolis in the midwest. The ash that falls like snow in mid February makes you feel every subzero degree of the blistering and cutting winds. Especially in the open are cab-barges that became the go to cheap transport options for the working class and those just above destitute. I pulled my waxed canvas coat tight around my face, the harsh material of the collar grazing my rough cheeks.
I was hauling empty bread crates by the tonne over a thirty mile stretch between eleven pm and five am. I’d had a few calls to let actual people hop onboard with the crates to double dip on fares when my phone chimed. I was worried it was my guild calling me on my double dipped fares but it was a private number on the line. As I pulled up to the sixty fourth floor dock I heard a woman exclaim “No way! I’m not getting on that thing, it’s a death trap!” But her date, or companion told her just how expensive a covered cab would be, and she balked and squeezed onboard with the icy, ash covered black bread trays stacked twenty five high across the deck of the barge. I indicated with my chin that they should hold onto the crate tie downs and not move around once we were on our way. With a swell like a rising tide, we bumped off the dock and floated out along the dark high rises, and the vivid neon advertisements. I used my gravity paddle to steer us around the traffic buoys, and out onto the main traffic thoroughfare. The insistent drone of the advertising jingles slowly drowned out by the engine hum, and the whipping winds full of ash.
The phone was quiet while I tagged their chips to pay for transit when the phone line crackled. A message appeared then slowly faded away. Then I recieved nine more messages, from the FBI, CIA, INTERPOL, NMPD, and various other agencies requesting I terminate both guests on my cab-barge. The last message was an invoice, paid to me for six thousand dollars. Looking around the cab-barge I couldn’t really see the companion riders I was hauling. But every so often when we hit an air stream, or heat swell I could see the tension pulling on the line, from the riders holding on for dear life. So I untied the tie downs, and hit the gas into an eddy, and watched the lines spill out and a barely audible gasp escape from the falling riders.
I slowed down and crawled around the front of the dark barge to re-secure my empty bread crates as I floated four hundred feet in the cold night air, and toggled over to my banking app on my phone and watched the funds deposit from INTERPOL.
From that day forward I continued on as a cab-barge hauler, and executed anyone that the various agencies paid me to.
Phew! That was a mad scramble…
But now it’s time for something a little different. I’ve been tasked with building two new replacement newel posts for my FIL. The current ones have rotten over the two decades since they were installed, so I’m hoping that the two new Cedar ones I’m making as replacements hold up just as long or longer. I will prime them in thick white oil based exterior paint, so I hope that helps.
My conundrum is that I have two slightly different pieces of trim, enough to do one newel post cap each. Do I do them in similar but not the same trim (which I have on hand, and is therefore free) or do I go buy a full length so they both match, but it’ll cost me money to do so. Hmm. The problem with being cheap/frugal is you gotta be ok with things being eclectic, or slightly off and not at all matchy-matchy. It’s for an exterior entrance that nobody ever uses, so I think I can get away with it. The Cedar I bought for a Christmas gift for my BIL where in I didn’t need all 8 lengths, just seven of them to complete my signage gifts. So the cost was sunk in another project. I think I have answered my own question.
My wrist is aflame from yesterdays mad rush of 182 images, with an additional 74 this morning. I am done on my end, awaiting review and any change orders or additional requests. Glad for the work. It made Friday fly by without any fuss. Our holiday plans changed on us by way of “The ‘Vid” so we are searching for a way to remedy that in the near future. Oh well.
Still no new progress on my childrens book. I might shelve it for the time being. Mind you, I still have five more weeks of school days in which to pick it back up before schools out for summer and my minions are home full time for 9 weeks. Then I will get very little done by way of hobbies. But I will accomplish paid work, don’t you worry about that. I think I have one or two reports coming for the summer and one more for the fall. Not terrible, not great. I hope for more than that. Or some extra can labels, t-shirts & apparel, retail signage, catalogue work or build from the ground up branding/packaging work in the alcoholic beverage space.
Though, maybe I should stop chasing the nostalgia of my alcoholic beverage packaging days. Rose coloured glasses and all that jazz. I once had the opportunity to build, from scratch a proprietary glass bottle, and it was looking amazing, but the job was put on hold during a personnel issue inside the brewery/distillery and I never got to see the design go to market. We had built a series of eight flavoured cans too for a Mimosa project, well ahead of the curve, but that got stopped too. Much to my chagrin. It was good work on my part, and that of the brand team. I was very upset to see it go nowhere.
So wrapped up in a new project
I just about forgot to keep the streak going! Near miss on my part. Have a large, urgent project in my lap that I need to do so gonna be a quiet one from me today folks.
Peter Pan is the villain,
He kidnaps children, whisks them away to Neverland so that they’ll never grow up. You know who doesn’t grow up? Dead kids. He’s the angel of death, and Captain Hook always tries to stop Peter Pan, and rarely goes after the lost boys. He’s witnessed the transmogrification of so many children in his life time, that the ticking of the clock drives him mad with grief and despair for those he couldn’t peel away from Peter’s endless parade of unwitting dead. Carried off, in the night, on pixie dust from their bedroom windows. Captured in a web of childish delusion as they fell to their deaths, never to grow up. Sad story bruh.
Amazing how much better everything looks…
When the leaves are out on the trees and the blooms are all as colourful as ever. A slight sheen of rain on the grass, and a shine on the rustling leaves in the breeze. A quiet morning, rich with the scent of damp earth and wet pavement. The slight crunch of grit on the asphalt as you walk about your day. Peaceful and serene.
It is Thursday, and I haven’t put any work into my childrens book in about seven or more days now. I think on it some times, but not enough to move forward with it. I have three backgrounds left to paint, and then the characters left to populate the scenes. It all feels oddly disjointed, but that’s how things are these days. I am slowly coming to terms with building over days, weeks and months, rather than rushing to complete a task in a day. I have to actively stop myself when I feel that draw to rush ahead, move faster, just “get it done”. Not that by being slower I’m getting closer to perfect. I just don’t want to take short cuts because I feel pressed for time. Take the time I need to complete the task properly. Not just to get it finished.
The screen door is now built and assembled. I need to measure and cut my hinge slots. Do the same for the frame where it will reside, and then hang it up for good. I pre cut some internal trim, to keep out bugs and such, and have a latch to attach, but I am otherwise very close to done.
I started to cut strips for my kitchen window screen as well, so that is progressing along side the door. The window is a combination of Cedar and Walnut. An odd combination, to be sure, but one that will hold up over time, I hope! These will be mitered and require a little more finesse than the bulky, chunky Ash door, that is outward facing. Thus, not seen as much as the kitchen window over our sink.
Unanswerable questions.
If God is good, and so great & powerful, why didn’t he strike down the Devil, and save us all that grief? Why do we buy garbage bags for the sole purpose of to throw them away? Why buy insurance when they are far more likely to stiff you than pay out when you need it most?
The age of nuance, context and “it depends” is rapidly receding in the rearview mirror of contemporary society, and I got one and wary to see it go. Rare that a subject be completely black or white, rather a vast continuum oscillating along the spectrum of varying shades of gray. As we learn more, and come to terms with our past selves we should have the grace to slide the dial on said continuum to better reflect what we “now know”.
Listen to me prattle on, and wax poetic. Not even my thoughts. Mine are a jumble. Mostly fixated on odd jobs around the house. I’m more than a little excited to get the new window screen project up and running. Viva la breeze!
Finished another book recently. I am behind on my 12 books to read this year. But then I was writing one of my own, working and trying to do some wood working. Excuses, all. But now I’m in the thick of it – again. James S. A. Corey’s “Memories Legion” collected short stories was a nice, if brief return to the Expanse universe. But now I have exhausted all related materials in that universe, excepting the tv show. Which didn’t do it for me. Maybe another try at it would spark some joy? But I’m kinda snobby when it comes to sci-fi tv show production quality.
I am now ready a Robert J Sawyer book about Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. I like it a great deal. Then I will read Don Winslow’s, City on Fire, and then a couple Children of science fiction books by Adrian Tchaikovsky. If I read all four in the next six weeks or so, I’ll be on track for one book a month for the year. Not including what I read to my kids every night, or political doom scrolling on Twitter.
Waiting on a grocery delivery, and having the tires changed over. Not exactly a full day today. Best of luck to you all.
Back in the shop for a partial build day.
Yesterday I milled down all of the Cedar trim I would need to fill in the inside portion of my screen door. I cut a 1x6x8ft board down into eight .25 strips, and then trimmed those to be .75 inches wide by 8ft, by .25 inches thick. I pin nailed in the first layer. Now I have to cut up and staple in place the actual mesh material. Another big step forward. Makes me nervous. I have the second layer of trim cut and ready to sandwich in the mesh material. Fingers crossed I don’t screw this up, as I only have so much mesh to work with before I’d have to order & wait for more to arrive.
Once this goes in, I’ll affix the handle, and push plate. Then we are on to hinges, and hanging the heavy thing up in the door frame. Wish me luck! I’m going in.
The rain has come!
And we are all the better for it. Getting a touch dry round these parts after several weeks with no meaningful rainfall. Usually we get into mid June, or early July before we start with the thoughts of a drought. Times they are a changing. Not for nothing, but the change in the trees over the last five days has been non trivial. We have the leaves! The Lilacs are blooming and everything smells like fresh cut grass and flower blooms. It is a welcome reprieve from the nearly 30 degree Celcius temperatures of last week. And we are still a full month away from summer. But that is our weather for you. Miserable through April, a handful of days in the late teens, early twenties (i.e. ideal spring weather) and then BAM! a punch right to the tits as we snap over into 90+ percent humidity, scorching sun shine, and heat waves. All fine and dandy during the summer when school is out, and you can crawl into a pool, lake, pond or river, not so good when your kids are stuck inside an ancient school with no AC, as the temperatures reach the mid eighties or higher for a sustained length of time. I’ll be picking up sweat drenched cherry tomatoes from school for the next six weeks. Poor kids.
I did manage to sneak in a grass cutting session just moments prior to the downpour. It felt like there was some hail mixed in there too. Will have to check the plants to see if they were shredded by those fat, ice cold drops. Front yard only, this time around. We like to leave some wild flowers out for the honey bees, and bumblebees to putter around. Plus the purple and blue look nice for a week or two.
It is Monday, again. So that means domestic duties get pushed to the front of the to-do list. Laundry, dishes, floors and unclogging a sink. Whee! Blargh. Seems like I’m unclogging this damn sink every six to eight weeks. Not the most pleasant task around here. But I thought we were going to get thunder and lightning so I didn’t want to be out in the shop mid cut if the power dropped out, or we had a power surge.
The screen door is finally painted up. Four coats, and a light sanding with 320 grit. Now for trim and the mesh. Then hinges and hardware for the door itself. It is moving along, slowly, but surely. All the best to you and yours this fine Monday in mid May.
Multiple events in a day
Is not how I wish to spend every single weekend. One per day is perfect, a chance to get out, do something a little different, off the beaten path, chat with friends, then BAM! Right back to regularly scheduled life programming. Doing two or three in a day is a messy endeavour. Kids get over tired, and then we all feel out of sorts. I’m not built for that lifestyle.
However, as we speak we are gearing up for two separate birthday parties which the kids need to attend. Luckily, same day, same time, in two different cities. So we will divide and conquer rather than try to do both in the same day. That’s an ugly rush filled trial when you have to attempt that trick.
Also it is now Sunday, and I am exhausted. I feel as though I could sleep for two days straight if I gave it enough effort.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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