Month: June 2023

After giving it some thought last night, and this morning, I have decided not to shit all over Avatar 2 : The way of water. Not because it doesn’t deserve it, but because I am absolutely certain that others far more eloquent, and smarter than myself have already done so. Why add to the clutter with more noise. There is no ROI on shitting on basic Hollywood tropes, and infantile dialogue in current films. So, I won’t bother. Fin.

It’s a lovely mild Saturday, and the air quality has improved substantially with yesterday’s rain & prolonged drizzle session. All for the better. We certainly didn’t have that coastal apocalypse like NYC, but we could see, taste, and smell the smoke for several days here. Once my oldest comes home from the first of two dance recitals this weekend, I can get a move on cutting the grass. I spent much of the morning watering plants, pulling weeds, and spraying my youngest with the hose while they sprint about the front yard shrieking and laughing hysterically. Played a little catch until we caught a ball using a chin/neck combo that sucked the fun out of the experience. No tears were had, but the hard ball she chose may not have been the best choice for the occasion. Live and learn.

I feel as though a few hours spent in the park is looming in my near future. Let’s hope the breeze will keep the bugs to a minimum this time around. Have a good one. Ciao Bella!

Leaving all of your domestic duties until Friday. Laundry, sorting & folding, as well as putting all five loads worth away. Yikes. Not cool. Dishes are cool since we’ve been out of the house so much this week. Floors could do with the vacuum run round, and a wash as I look a little closer. The lawn is fine for another day. It’s been so dry only the shaded portion under the trees has shown any growth, and is still in fact, green. Everything the light touches is a dry tinder box. Glad that town car fire happened while everything was still green and had some moisture in it. As now my lawn, fence and probably the Cherry tree too would go up in flames. Phew! Made it.

Dress rehearsal at the venue last night was great, they even got a little ahead of schedule and finished early for a change. I didn’t see much, as the drop off, sign out station was back stage in a loading dock for sets and props, from the looks of things. I happily look forward to watching the kids rock their stuff on Sat/Sun. Should be a hoot.

Next week is much lighter for a change. No more dance, beyond one Talent Show performance on Thursday. A Sparks/Embers sleep over where all I need do is set up the tent, and then have the night and following morning to myself. Oh, and help edit the last book talk (report) of grade three. Which is for next Friday. Kid has done well. Read most of the 218 page non-fiction book with little to no prompting from me. Very proud of that. Happy to see the reading level maintained and improving.

Another potential interruption on Tuesday of next week aswell, but some things are worth clocking off the day job for, you know. So all in all, besides gymnastics which runs until the very last week of June we will be finishing up the kids extracurriculars really soon. My wife still has school obligations with Graduation, and a Student Athletic’s Banquet in the coming weeks, but that doesn’t involve me, or juggling kids to get them to multiple separate locations, so I’m not bothered. All that means is I’ll have the kids in bed shortly after 8:00pm two more nights this month than usual. If the weather’s good we will swim in the evening and that will draw a lot of the fight out of both of them. And bedtime should, should I say, be pretty reasonable. Neither event should see their mother come home any later than 9:00-10:00pm, so my very persistent children will lie in bed and wait for a very groggy good night kiss and then immediately fall asleep. Too cute. I told them not to try that last night, as I knew Prom would keep my wife busy until 11:00pm or later.

It is still drizzling outside (a good thing!), so I won’t cut the grass today. As much as I would like to keep all of my weekend time open, and not use it for chores, you just can’t beat the weather. It’ll win every time. No point trying to fight it. That way lies madness. Have a great Friday, and weekend. Ciao Bella!

Parched here, and we aren’t even into double digits in June yet. Going into day two of all day indoor programming for the kids. All recess & lunch breaks spent indoors due to the nasty air quality due to the wildfires currently raging across the country. My parents in Campbell River have a particularly close fire burning near by. That sounds terribly distressing. Not much fun at all.

Tonight is the last night for rehearsals, dry runs, and tweaking choreography, and learning their music cues. Then a weekend full of performances for the oldest child, and just the one for the youngest. Then those costumes will get put in dry cleaning bags, hung up and forgotten about. Just the way the gods of performances intended.

I think today is Thursday, which means PROM NIGHT y”all! Limousines, fancy clothes, expensive food, boutonnieres and corsages, neck ties, bow ties, bollo ties and shined up shoes. Suspenders, garters and every permutation imaginable in between. Oh the pageantry, the dancing, the memories and fun. Camping out and after parties raging until the sun comes up. Then the dawning realization that for a good portion of you all this will be the last time you are all gathered together. Unless you count graduation, but that party isn’t as epic as prom. At least for me it wasn’t. Graduation meant I was going to pick up full time hours for the summer months shortly thereafter before heading off to post secondary in September. Or it did twenty some odd years ago now. Oh the memories.

Yeah – that low hanging cloud of forest fire smoke from Nova Scotia, and Northern Ontario is really unpleasant. Spent a good deal of time outdoors yesterday and my eyes and chest don’t feel so hot right now because of it. When your vistas shrink visibly throughout any given hour of the day, you gotta know you are breathing in some nasty shit. Although the cooler temperatures were a blessing, the burnt incense taste on my tongue and down the back of my throat I could do without.

The kids had to go in directly at drop off today. All school trips were canceled as well, which means no Zoo, and no Track & Field Finals, and I’d be willing to wager that both recess & lunch will be spent indoors today.

Add it to the ever growing list of weird weather patterns and occurrences we’re experiencing more and more frequently. 13°C and sunny in January is not typical for Southern Ontario. Frosts up until the last week of May are not typical. Province wide smoke clouds are usually a West coast thing, so while they are known in Canada, not usually felt in Ontario for days on end. Such fun!

As I think I might have mentioned previously we are in the midst of Recital week. So full throttle on dress rehearsals, dry runs, additional hours of choreography, and soon visits to the venue to learn lighting cues, and staging in place. I’m going to be driving between home and Vaughn at least four times this week. Looking forward to seeing what they have been practicing this whole year. And also the quiet calm that comes once it is all over for a three month stretch.

Oddly enough it is Wednesday. Very strange week. I feel a little out of it given all of the off screen interruptions. Not to mention the birthday planning for my wife’s big 4-0. Even though we added some last minute travel plans into the mix yesterday, we still enjoyed the day, went mini putting as a family into the evening, swam, and had a roast dinner & cake with the in-laws last night. I was exhausted by 8:00pm. Could hardly keep my eyes open.

The campfire breeze is wafting into the house to remind me once again of what is going on outside. I best stop reminiscing and get working. Ciao Bella.

With a significant interruption no less. Should be back to normal by 8:30am tomorrow morning. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

As soon as I commit to sitting down in the bathroom a kid needs to use the toilet aswell. Every single time. Doesn’t matter if I ask around first or not. You can set a watch to my youngest’s “I need to poop” spoken softly through the door once you’ve set the action into motion, and can not stop. Flabbergasted. Of all the people living under this roof, I would be the last person you want to follow in. Read the room. Take the hint. Go first, or go downstairs. By the time my body says ‘press play’ we have only the merest few moments to manoeuvre about. Every instance is an emergency not to be trifled with. From gut twinge to fall out, a handful of heart beats, and that’s it. The joys of Crohn’s Disease. Also **TMI**.

Which means we are busy, busy, busy shuffling the kids around from event to event. Dress rehearsals, costume fittings, hair sessions, other extracurricular activities that haven’t ended, or that also have their own year end bonanza. It is exhausting. I have to go to Vaughn several times this week, and twice over the weekend. We have a car in the shop for muffler issues, and birthdays, and senior prom which my wife must attend, don’t forget graduation in a few weeks, athletic banquets, and anniversaries, and more birthdays. A crazy month ahead. I’ll come up for air and we’ll be moments away from school ending early on a Friday morning, the Strawberry Festival for the Canada Day holiday, and then July & summer break. Whoosh – as it all flashes by! Insanity. Best to check the tires, gas, and oil levels a few times in the coming days. All the best to you out there doing much of the same, whether it is baseball, soccer, swimming, dance, or whatever else your kids are engrossed in. Take care out there. I’ve got laundry with uniforms going as we speak. I have to run out of town to pick up my wife for her physio appointment, switch vehicles with my in-laws, pick up the kids, send one to 3 hrs of dance rehearsal, take the other to a different city for gymnastics, prep for my wife’s birthday tomorrow, and a potential day trip to Wonderland (maybe?), and get back to pick up my youngest from school. Ugh.

Been out of the house for several hours, and not likely to return any time soon. Did spend the morning servicing all of our bicycles, so we can ride whenever the mood takes us. Washed, greased up, and tires properly inflated, and breaks tested under load. Helmets located. All good for now.

I’m having delusions of spending my time restoring old smaller engine motorcycles, and/or mopeds. I’ve been on a real tear the last month or so watching people work on cafe style bikes, and smaller vintage stuff from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and into the 80’s. Stuff that looks like it’s around 150CC’s or just a little larger than that. Banana seats, short straight handle bars, low volume gas tanks, and most importantly, not a whole lot of electrical beyond the front & rear head lights, and tail light. I think. Oh! I could tear something like that down. I can use rust remover, and paint stripper. I have used a wire wheel before, and to great effect. On a wood working project mind you, but still, I’ve done it to remove bark, i can certainly remove paint & rust pitting. I would want to keep any welding to a minimum as i am very rudimentary in my arc welding. Did a bunch in machine shop class, and not a lick since. I can read a parts catalogue for thrust bearings and things of that nature. I’m not even averse to painting with an air gun, I think I could achieve a half way decent finish given what I know about using an airbrush. My major cause for concern is the engine itself. Like, the reassembly of it. I can pull shit apart, but you need to have some sense of what is what to put gears, and a clutch back together. There I’m not so sure. Hence watching all the videos. I think it’ll pass, like most fixations of late. But I enjoy watching the videos all the same. One slight hiccup is that I do not own, nor operate a metal lathe or milling machine so I couldn’t make some of the fixes I see in the videos without sending out for it to be done by someone else. A dream, little more than that at this point. Perhaps one day.