Month: December 2023

It gets addictive. Old mouldy floor boards, trim, tongue & groove pine wainscoting, ash logs, bed frames and whatever else needed to go. A couple rotten roof trusses even made it into the mix. Once I got the fire really going, and there was a healthy bed of coals we were able to incinerate just about anything. I had the fire running for two days straight. Several busted up pallets got sent to their doom in the fire pit too. I went scouring through the trees for downed limbs, and brush to clear the ground around the fire pit. It’s a shame the leaves are so water logged as we could have lit up the heavens by burning those too. Whoosh! As it was much of the burnable stuff was wet and/or damp and pretty smoky. Glad we don’t have particularly close neighbours. November and December are great months for long burns as there are no bugs to contend with.

If I had my way we’d have made it a full blaze and cleared up ALL of the cut off wood bits, and building junk on the property, but as it was I cleaned up the burn pit pretty well myself by rolling various logs into the flames and coals for a long slow burn. I should take a shovel over there to flatten out the ash/sand pile so that you can stack piles in the centre once again. Right now the centre is a massive mound of old ash, sand and soil. It stands about four feet high, and probably 10 or twelve feet wide in diameter. Not that I want to shovel all that by hand, but it should get knocked down at some point. Preferably when there are no bugs down in that low rock lined pit by the tree line. Come summer it gets brutal down there for all kinds of creepy crawlers.

It is Sunday December 31st, 2023. Last day of the current year. No big plans to do much of anything today. Except laundry. Always have to do laundry. Can never escape it. I imagine we will find some fireworks to watch on tv from the comfort of our own home. No walking, no driving, or finding parking spots in a crowded lot loaded with children. Tantrums and rain, delays and late starts, aching legs, and sore feet. We’ll give all that a miss this year.

No resolutions for the coming year. Other than I intend to make exercise a stronger personal habit and a part of every week. I haven’t thought much about doing a new reading challenge this coming year. I think I’ll read whatever takes my fancy as I find it. No pressure to read a set number. I’d like to find the time to sculpt more, and/or do some wood working. I was working on a pine bed, so I didn’t totally slack off in the shop this year!

Well, the 24 hour burn, became a 48 hour burn, is now close to a 72 hour burn. Roof trusses, old beds, and all manner of other junk was fed into the belly of the beast. It ain’t pretty, but she sure is a roaster. Burned a hole in my coat while I was at it.

About forgetting where your locker is, what’s the combination to the lock? Where is the classroom for my next class? What course am I taking? Is it a test today? Argh. Twenty years it’s been since i was last in any sort of school and i still have these anxiety dreams. Fun, fun, fun.

Had a slight dusting of snow, and now the temperatures are dropping down to mi us ten. Brr. Chilly.

Happy Saturday.

Wasn’t that a Guns n’ Roses power ballad? Or maybe I have that title wrong. All I do know is, we are mere hours from January, it’s 6°C, and raining with no hint of snow or ice on the ground. It’s weird. It’s not right at all. It used to be we’d hit the Winter Solstice and the cool temperatures would drop to cold, colder, coldest I’d ever felt. Now we’ll get two weeks into a mild hear wave in January before it kicks over with a punch, and nearly 18 inches of snow at once. It’s not right.

Pretty sure today is Friday. The first week of winter holidays is drawing to a close. Most of the family gatherings are done. And now we have one full week to chill out and get the kids school work done. Book reports are a thing once more! I have not yet found the time to watch any of the three films I was gifted for Christmas. Mind you, TMNT Mutant Mayhem is one I saw in theaters, so I’m ok if I wait longer on that particular one. But I would like to see Oppenheimer and The Creator at some point soon-ish. Although I did recently find the time to watch Ricky Gervais’ new offering on Netflix, Armageddon. It was ok. A big like Super Nature, and Humanity. I find him less and less funny, but I did enjoy After Life and Derek quite a bit. Aging, tastes and all that. I’m a complex creature.

Enjoy your weekend, it is fast approaching. Ciao Bella!

Apparently I forgot which direction the winter tires rotate, so had to spend an hour swapping them all left for right. Took me about 55 minutes, so not all bad. Had to torque them all back down again, but luckily in the short time since I put them on, one: we haven’t driven very far, and two: the lug nuts hadn’t had a chance to seize with ice, salt & rust build up on the threads. Lucky me! I’ll need to double check the van too. I thought a tire was a tire, I didn’t pay any attention to the tread pattern. Idiot move apparently. Ha. Live and learn. Atleast it was 6°C, and only drizzling, otherwise it could have been way worse.

Going to start putting the skating rink together tomorrow with my inlaws. It’ll either be 90 minutes, or an all day affair. There is no inbetween. From what I can tell we need to remove all leaves, stake out the boards, and unfurl the plastic tarp. Mind you we’ll need the bobcat to carry down all the boards, stakes and the tarp itself. A 1/3 size hockey rink tarp isn’t all that light. I think it’s a 2mm or 3mm plastic. That adds up over that kind of square footage. I expect a whole lot of leaning over, bending, swinging of hammers, and dragging things around. I also don’t know if the pile of sand has been graded yet in preparation for the winter season. So that could add more time to the project.

I for one will spend several hours soaking in the hot tub to ease my back. Today’s tires shenanigans were poorly timed on my part. But the car needed an oil change, and that’s when it came to my attention. Thank the lord for my 3 ton jack, and axle stands. One more use of my impact wrench. 1150 foot pounds of torque to the rescue! That and a 24 inch breaker bar.

Ciao Bella.

Not that it feels that way, but yes, yes it is. Some companies are back to work for three days as of today, and some companies just shut down entirely until January, and it can feel alot like a lottery when it comes to discovering which is which if you’re a subcontracted freelancer. I’m (usually) never far from my office incase a surprise brief comes my way looking for a quote or to start some new retail signage. I work blind for massive portions of the year. By that I mean I don’t always get a notification of what is coming down the line in the coming weeks or months, and just work on what I’ve got, when I get it. One of my clients has research projects booked months in advance, so through them I get a rough idea of what’s coming, and I can plan for those projects. Other clients hit me up as they need me, whenever that may be. I’m fine with both. I usually expect Jan/Feb to be slower anyway. This time last year was an anomaly, I think. We will have to wait & see.

Happy Holiday float days!

After all that build up, hype & excitement the Big Day has come, and gone. Now we are waist deep in the gap between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Forget making plans. If you haven’t had them made for a few weeks by now, don’t bother. Trying to get people on the phone, or to answer text messages is nearly impossible. Or perhaps it’s just me. But, point still stands. It’s a weird time, and a strange floating, weightless, dateless, what day is it? Kind of time. Not my favourite.

I was keeping busy by cleaning the furnace/laundry room, emptying closets, dressers and drawers of junk & old clothes. Tidying up, organizing and cleaning our basement so that we could use the space once more. The other tv is down there! It now has an old dvd/bluray player so the tv has more utility to our family now. I reclaimed floor space, and thinned out my share of books to create additional play space and storage for the kids ever expanded collection of Lego sets. After I vacuumed, and dusted, and thought about mopping the floors I have finished what I can do down there, for now. Now I’m back to floating around aimlessly. I mean, I still have laundry to do, groceries to buy, dishes to wash, kids to bathe, and general household stuff. Work has been put off until January by those that request it, so… household projects it is. We’ve donated children’s clothes, adult clothes, and books in order to open up floor space and empty closets. In that regard there isn’t much else we can do – for now.

The girls opened up the last of their presents today. They decided to save two each for the next day so that Christmas wouldn’t end so quickly. I admire the restraint. I certainly didn’t show that sort of ability as a small child. But then again our family ends up having to wait for other people to begin, and pushing to open the day after, so perhaps after several years of conditioning the kids have adapted to it. I know I hate it, but my side of the family was a free for all tear through your gifts as you like, not a one by one wait and watch like my in-laws. It’s really upsetting if you transition to the “let’s drag this out over a few says” crowd, coming from a mad dash to open and start playing with it all position. Ugh! I get why they do it, but i also don’t care for ‘credit’ for the purchase. Seems intentionally slow just to make the purchaser happy or more important. But that’s just me.

Boxing day is here. Tuesday even. Seems I missed the recycling people today. No one had bins out yesterday, and this morning there are several empty bins up the street. So not only did they come, they came about 8 hours earlier than they usually do. Gonna be a big batch next week! Who-ah!

Enjoy your holidays and time off to recharge for the new year ahead. Drive safe, drive sober, or Uber/Lyft/Taxi where you need to go. Ciao Bella!

Keeping the kids sane by opening stockings while we wait for extended family to show up so we can open our real presents. Kids are killing time in the tub playing with bubble bath & bath bombs. Still have seventy five minutes until the earliest my wife’s folks will show up so that we can begin. Have to get creative with early Christmas morning programming to stop the two kids from melting down. So far so good. Ha.

Have a wonderful day today. All the best.

Finished one of the two partially read books I had in my pile all ready. And I am now going to attempt to complete the second book before the year is through. My resin build has sat untouched for at least two months or more. I need to finish the arms, and primer all the parts and then begin to paint in earnest. Not going to happen this year. But, I did finish the basement tidy up and reorganization. Excepting the water softener, which I need a dolly, ratchet straps and a plan for where I am taking it. Like to the garage is step one, but to the dump or elsewhere as a final destination has yet to be determined. I took all of our broken electronics out to the garage. The change table is there too. I can’t work in the subzero temperatures so I might aswell store the crap out in the garage while the space isn’t in use. I bought storage racks to put in the laundry room, and got them to fit. I tidied up and put everything up on those racks more safely. I bought clear bins for our Christmas decorations, and swapped them out to get rid of the too tall opaque green ones I was using before. I got rid of clothes, old bags, boxes, general garbage and placed things up on the shelves and not on the floor. Still have access to the furnace, and the furnace filters, humidifier unit, and duct work. Better than it was, by far. What started with moving nine bags of childrens clothes cascaded into cleaning closets, thinning out my books, opening up shelf space for the kids things, reclaiming the floors, and sorting out & organizing the basement, as well as removing bulky items and broken technology from the basement. It is now a cleaner, more useable space. I’m not done yet, as I have some drawers left to empty of ten year old unused clothing of mine & my wife. We have dressers full of old untouched, unused clothes that should get donated to people in need. Let the clear-out/purge continue unfettered! That’s what I say. I’m on a roll.

Honestly I have sat and thought about all of these things for months and months. Feels good to start and finish a bunch of those tasks. I can feel the urge to stop and let good enough for now take over, but I’d really like to empty some drawers, get the clothes off to a drobo box for textiles and THEN call it a day. In reality it’s not really done until the junk I. Oved to the garage goes to its final testing place, but I am willing to overlook that right now in favour of “inside the house” being better than it was.

I went into a Walmart and a mall this close to Christmas and I gotta say, I see a whole lot of folks still Christmas gift shopping. Doesn’t this feel a bit late to you? I do mine in October-ish. I was later this year due to our vacation in mid November. But I’d had the kids lists on my phone for months. It’s handy that whenever they saw a commercial for something they liked they would shout about it, so I just made notes about it during the summer & fall. My wife was kind enough to tell me what she wanted this year as well. I had ordered some stuff before we went away, and filled in the gaps once we returned from the US.

Two days until Christmas. Hope you are all well fed, and looked after. Ciao Bella.

Catchy title huh? When it comes to artwork I’m still searching for what defines my style. I believe I have located it as far as sculpting is concerned, but in regards to drawing & painting, I’m still mirroring (as best I can) the reference materials from those artists I admire. Finding a style or voice in those mediums has proven to be elusive, and very difficult. I mostly gave up drawing & painting because I was tired of doing a poor copy of other, much better artists. I still fancy having a go every now and then, but I have since lost a deft hand, and any nuance I could control as brush or pencil with. Use it or lose it honey! So very cruel yet true.

Here we are, the last Friday before Christmas. The last school day of the 2023 calendar year. Still have laundry to do. Trip planning to fi ish for 2024. I have three projects coming for winter/spring 2024 that are scheduled all ready. Very happy about that! Good to be able to look forward and know there is work on the horizon. I’m sure the kids will just watch movies and hang out today. I can’t imagine they’ll be in any sort of mood to do school work. I know my oldest has to knock out a book report over the break, so that should be fun. Oh, what’s that? Yeah – no, that’s going to feel like pulling teeth, and is going to suck. That Sunday January 7th evening is when she’ll scramble to do it, in a mad panic. They never learn. Do it now and forget about it. Get it over with before you get all these new Christmas present distractions. Bah!

The next two weeks will be a bit of a time warp bubble. Who knows which day it is. What’s the date? Do we have plans today? I still gotta do the laundry? Where are all of our spoons? Did we run the dishwasher yet? Ugh this floor! What do you mean I have to vacuum? Again? Why is there so much paper & tape on the floor? Oh yeah. Never mind. It’s a weird time. Not the best for hosting people without a major clean-up.

All the best to you out there whom are hosting, cooking, cleaning, and celebrating with friends and extended family. Bless you for it. Take care. Have fun. Enjoy the brief moments of levity and love. Ciao Bella!