Month: December 2023

As the year starts to finally wind down for the holiday break I still have things I’d like to accomplish before we ramp up again in the new year. Some short spurts of accounting, completing & transferring the last batch of retail projects for a large client of mine to their preferred print supplier, and starting my last full report of 2023 all before Christmas day (if I can) or at least by New Year’s Eve at the latest.

Still have to do laundry, lunches, bathing & hair washing/drying/de tangling. Dishes, vacuum and mop the floors, shovel snow, and grocery shopping in between all that too. Same as always. No breaks on Domestic Duties just because it’s winter break! That shit is never ending. I look forward to my kids being old enough to make their own lunches, sort out their clothes, and outer wear depending on the weather, and do their own laundry. Also, pick up a few chores of their own, like sweeping, vacuuming the floors, mopping, cleaning sinks & toilets, as well as the tub. Putting groceries away. Filling, running and emptying the dishwasher. Clearing off the snow in the mornings, and maybe even cutting the grass! Give pops a break! Ha. At this point I would settle for them just not being total slobs. Children. So messy.

I needed to nap during the day this weekend. I believe Saturday’s nap was due to being out late on Friday night. And yesterday’s was a mix of back pain from doing the tires, and the outdoor family gathering to wish great grandma a Merry Christmas at the long term care home she’s in. She had a good day. Was lucid, happy even. Not moaning in pain, nor looking like death warmed up. Recognized a few of us. Smiled and clapped along to some Carol’s the grand kids sang. She’ll be 96 early in the new year.

Trying to keep on top of things and remain productive. If I can get some of these presents wrapped today I will be a happy man. I wish things came in more regular shaped packaging. I’m fine with cubes, cones, and rectangular prisms. But all the asymmetrical compound curves and lumps make for challenging wrapping. Thanks. I hate it.

Back to Monday. I gotta run the dishwasher after I finish my breakfast. Laundry will go on after that. Lots to do. Best get at it. Ciao Bella.

I pride myself on being easy to work with, but I’m no push over. Unless that is, you are specifically paying me to produce 100% only what you ask for, colour scheme, jargon and all. Then I’ll take the pay cheque and will give you only what you’ve asked for. I don’t need to fight every battle going on out there. You signed off on what you want? You got it. Happy to help. You want to collaborate & get my input? Well then, that’s a whole different ball game. Let’s tussle for the sake of the finished product. Either way, I’m pretty easy going, with a can do attitude. Sounds fun right? Yeah.

Lazy Sunday is here. We have a family date to celebrate great grandma at Parkview retirement care home. I think we’ll gather outside the front room windows, and we’ll sing Christmas carols through the glass, waving cards and hand made drawings from the grandchildren. She’s almost 96, with worsening dementia and other such related ailments. So could be the last one, so best make an afternoon of it! There was talk of a rented room, but one other wing is on lock down with a SARS2 COVID-19 out break. So may be best to stay outside – again. C’est la vie.

Other wise not much else going on. I plan to start wrapping gifts tomorrow. I have a spare rigid table I’m going to bring in, so that I can set up a station to work properly. Scissors, straight edge, table, chair, music, box full of brand new tape dispensers, 60 plus meters of wrapping paper, self sticking tags, and I’m all set to go. Beats trying to wrap on the couch or floor, or on my bed. I’ll tell you that much. If I ever win the lottery (hard to do as I don’t play) I’d love to expand our house to include a proper laundry room with space to fold, iron & sort after washing/drying, but also a proper crafting room where I could wrap gifts with a good amount of table space at the ready. I’d do other things, bit I’m talking about wrapping gifts right now. Doesn’t have to feel like a study hall sized cavernous room, but one that fits at least one, if not two 4x8ft tables, and a few wheelie carts, paint easels, and the like would be awesome. Give it a picture window with a view, and a sound system and TV, and it’s the place to be for crafting! Booyah! Add some racks, drawers, and closets for raw materials and it would take a stick of dynamite to get my kids out of there and off to school!

Did I mention I did more snow tires yesterday? Guess who’s back, back again? My back pain! Yes, you guessed it. Tweaked it again when it wasn’t entirely 100% to begin with. Do I regret it? No, not really. Saved a little more than $100.00 doing the tire swaps myself. And spent 2.5 hours in total doing it. The weather was reasonable both days, so no numb or frozen fingers. I have the impact wrench, jack, jack stands, wheel chocks, breaker bar, and torque wrench to do it all properly anyway. I have an air compressor to level the tires out too. So win-win, as far as I am concerned. I get why people have those hydraulic lifts though. Way nicer to move the work to you, than move down to where the work is. Save your back a lot of unnecessary bending. Do I think that I am mechanically inclined enough to warrant one should I ever win a Mega Millions Lottery? No. Not really. It might make me try, certainly. But you need to know what you’re doing to try doing breaks, or anything along those lines. I can change bulbs, tires, fluids, and do an oil change, and replace a few filters. That’s it. An old school style pit in the garage would be cool, but they were classified as too dangerous to build new. You’d have to find a place that all ready had one. Grandfathered in sort of a thing. Plus you need some specific brake repair tools for the calipers, pins, springs etc… I’m sure I don’t have those. And they are probably all make specific between the big car companies. Also – from what I understand from our mechanic the design of the 2016 GMC Terrain brakes & rotors are a mess with hardly any room for fingers, tools and such. Doesn’t sound like a project I’d care to take on.

What else is new. Hm. Thinking, thinking. Nothing else comes to mind. I could always day dream about the lottery and the upgrades I’d make to the house & property. I could waste hours doing that. I think I’ll grab my spare folding table and get prepped for tomorrow’s wrapping extravaganza. Ciao Bella!

Got the test secured for next Saturday. Fees all paid up, and my eldest is actually practicing unprompted in preparation for her exam. They have punch combos, kicking combos and two patterns to do for the test. Plus a sparring session and a board breaking feat of strength to perform. Should be a whole lot of fun. I believe that had we started a week or two sooner she would be testing for her green belt now and not the stripe. But I’m proud of her for advancing by one belt nonetheless.  Progress is progress. We aren’t here to judge our own progress against others. That path lies madness. I’m just glad she is trying hard, and sticking with it for atleast 2 or 3 nights per week every week, thus far. Made the expense more palatable knowing she is following through on it.

Here we are – again. Saturday morning. One child slept in, the other awake since just before dawn. I was out late so I didn’t wake up until 8:00am. Have been getting private pattern #1 & #2 lessons off of my eldest daughter. It’s a whole lot of twisting, punching, kicking, and arm movements all while paying attention to the height of punches, blocks, and kicks, and the direction your feet are facing for any one movement.

I’m thinking I should swap over my wife’s winter tires today. I just don’t know if she has to go, or be anywhere earlier today. I’m going to need atleast an hour, maybe more to swap them all out. Hm.

Yeah turns out about 75 minutes to swap them all over, torque them down to the appropriate 140 ft lbs, and then check the air pressure on all four tires is my magic number. Needed a little ugga-dugga help from my impact wrench that can bust out 1150 ft lbs of nut busting power. Otherwise I could back off all but two lug nuts myself unaided. Having the tool to take the nuts 90% of the way both off and on helped to save my wrists. Always good to save my wrists. It did drizzle briefly twice over the course of those 75 minutes, but being nearly 10°C it wasn’t much of an issue. My 3 ton jack didn’t have any issues with my wife’s GMC terrain. I should probably buy a second wheel chock though. My one truck sized chock works well, but the vehicles to rock a fair bit when you give the wrenches the beans.

Not going to say I told you so, but my back aches worse this time around, because it wasn’t 100% healed after I did my own tires the first time, and I’ve gone and tweaked it again from an unpleasant starting point. Get the Voltaren! Rub down on aisle three! I need a hot tub and a masseuse. Gag! Thanks – I hate it.

And it all comes down to the choice of Beef, Chicken or Pork. It’s all based off of a Turkish Kebab anyway so I don’t know I even bothered to look into it, other than it bothered me they were all so similar but played off as entirely different regional dishes. Po-tay-to, Poe-tah-tow.

In other news today is Friday, and I’m busy, busy, busy working away on paid projects. Good times. I’m fairly certain the next few weeks will be pretty quiet. I do know one report is coming, but with no expectation to be completed before the new year. I may just get it done anyway as I hate to let a project languish. Focus, finish, and move on! Otherwise I will be wrapping presents from now until Christmas Eve by the looks of things. I got some absolutely massive rolls of paper for wrapping gifts, and I’m super excited to get them done & off my mind.

Have a great weekend. Ciao Bella.

It’s like clock work, you can set your watch to it. Bend over slightly more than usual – back ache. Lift more than you regularly would – back ache. Sleep funny or twist a bit while slipping on wet tile – back ache. Gotta love getting older. I think this proves I need to actively exercise & strengthen my back gradually over time. Or build a gantry that I can move around my garage so I don’t have to lift as much stuff as I get older. Either way I need to do something meaningful or this ache issue of mine will not go away for more than a few weeks at a time inbetween my doing something slightly out of the ordinary. Ounce prevention, pound of cure scenario. You catch my drift yeah? Yeah.

Thursday. Big day yesterday. My eldest turned nine! Nine, can you believe it? Where did the last few years go. 2020-2023 all seems to run together. Not sure if that’s because I am now in my forties, or because every single day felt mostly the same. Be it week day, weekend, holiday, school day, lock down, open up, summer, fall, spring, winter it didn’t much matter. I do recall putting a lot of emphasis on whether we had sunny blue sky weather or dull dreary grayness. But there she is. Getting taller month to month, moving up in school. Taking on cool new hobbies. Love it.

I have no plans for the weekend, so I’m sure there is something afoot. I just know it. Oh well. That is weekend me’s problem. Ciao Bella.

I’m not much of a car guy, but I do know how to change tires! So today I finally got to put my impact wrench, torque wrench, 3 ton jack, and wheel chocks to the test. Feeling mighty manly getting the winter tires put on the van by myself. Glad it was only zero outside today, and not much wind. Did not lose a single lug nut! Had to figure out how to get a few wedged lug nuts out of the 19mm socket, but that was easy enough with a blunt thin object and a sudden sharp whack! The lone rear tire I swapped out in late October due to a flat/burst tire was still in place, and tightened down to the appropriate torque. So I am hopeful these will last the season. Checked the air pressure too. Only one needed air. Might have to watch that one to see if it has a problem as it was real low compared to the other three. Something to keep in mind. I have an air compressor, so not exactly a hardship to pump up myself once a week, or two weeks depending. I surprised myself, even with fetching the tires at the farm it only took me about an hour to do the swap over. Mind you I went slow, was outside, and doing all four myself for the first time. Like I said, I know how to change ‘A’ tire. Ha. Never done all four at once before. New skill unlocked! 10XP awarded for Dad Duties.

I’m back at it now. Have some paid work to send out for a client. I also heard back that I have three reports coming in the winter, which is good to know. Happy about that!

I realized recently, after our latest vacation in fact, that I truly prefer eating with a smaller spoon, than a larger one. You’d think that as I got older I’d like a hefty spoon with which to consume my hefty man sized meals. But you’d be wrong. Turns out, years of conditioning is hard to break. Conditioning? You say. Why yes. As a child, right up until my mid to late teens I had a small soft palate. Thin but deep. Not enough room for teeth, and all that fun stuff. So I wore a contraption, namely a “bridge”, that with the help of a key would every two to three days widen my upper jaw/palete millimeter by millimeter over the course of two plus years. It was very unpleasant. And all before, and during that, if I ate with a larger sized spoon, as I was want to do as a child straining to grow up & be independent, I would more often than not wind up biting said spoon, hurting my teeth & jaw. Do that enough and eventually you smarten up and choose the small spoons to eat with, and now that has stuck with me. I absolutely prefer a smaller spoon. Metal, plastic, biodegradable mock wood, you name it. I’ll take the tea spoon over the table spoon any day of the year. A peculiar quirk of mine, no doubt. But atleast I can trace it back to why I prefer it. Some things are still a mystery to me. But on this particular item, I have a very clear picture/understanding of why I do what I do with regard to spoon choice for meals that require one.

I forgot to check but I think I am inside of ten days of reaching two (2) straight years of writing something every single day. I think I will try to save my book review for the day of my two year writing streak. I’m always interested in seeing what my yearly word count is. Won’t be anywhere near as high as in years previous where I was actively writing short stories of 1,500 words or more. Some of these posts have been but a mere couple sentences only. Rookie numbers! Got to pump those up. Way up.

In some ways I think the writing challenge has helped me out a bit by showing me what a jumbled communicator I am. And how often I make massive leaps along a train of thought, circle back sometimes to fill in the gaps, or jump about wildly again because I’ve said what I needed to say, no more, no less. Then off to another point or tangent, and on and on we go! So I have at least identified that about myself. That, and a constant need to rush. I have been trying to ease up on the sense of urgency. Not everything can by a five alarm fire, good way to burn out, and/or hurt yourself. Gotta be able to chill just a touch in regards to paid work. All that stress and urgency will give you an ulcer or a heart attack/stroke. Take the time required to do it right, not to do it on somebody else’s arbitrary deadline. But I digress.

Happy Tuesday. Tomorrow my eldest turns nine. Where did the time go. Seriously! Ciao Bella.

Party over the weekend went off without a hitch. Cost me enough, but then I didn’t have to host, cook, clean, nor do much but pay and stand back while the kids had fun, and ate their snacks. I’d call that a win if ever I saw one. The new Trolls movie was good, great music, if a bit short on plot/story. Better than the second one, but no contest for the first. Kids all enjoyed it, clapping along, and singing to themselves. Not sure if anyone over the age of nine would care to go see it, but our group enjoyed themselves.

I’m waiting on feedback for a few projects, so I’m going to eat some breakfast and wait for further instructions on the last few items I have before the new year.

In alternate news I have both birthday presents, and Christmas gifts to wrap before the holiday break. I’m going to need more tape! I just know the kids have gotten in to it and used 95% of it “crafting” new clothes for their dollies. I definitely need to go have a look. Best not to guess!

Have a solid Monday! All the best. Ciao Bella.

The energy level of a room full of nine year olds, plus some additional kindergarten littles is a spectacle to behold. You may not like it, nor care for it, but the amount of bombast & noise could power a small townhouse complex for a few days at a time. Running, pushing, shoving, games of tag, chasing, squealing, burps & farts, the list of activities is as endless as it is unplanned. Add in some sodas and theater candy and these kids will launch themselves directly into the sun with their energy output. I’m glad they are all happy. Better out than in. Also, glad it’s not at my house. I’d fear for my Christmas tree, and I’d worry about the structural stability of our floors with all that jumping, leaping, and running about. Madness. Absolute mayhem. Chaos incarnate. Other descriptors that are evocative!

Welcome to Saturday morning people. Almost 8:00am after a long & busy week back from our vacation. I’m almost sleeping more like normal now that we are neck deep in our regular schedule, and I am in my own bed. The vacation was a resounding success. Had a bump or two but was ultimately very effective in the use of our time. Could we have used atleast one sunny day for the eight we spent near Orlando/Kissimmee? Sure, one would have been appreciated, but we got none. It was still warmer than home, by a sizable margin, and we were able to swim & sit in the hot tub during the rain, so not a total loss. Our condo was big enough to not feel cramped which was a relief. Our two Tampa hotel stays the started & ended our trip were much smaller and would have been a challenge to occupy the whole fourteen days. Eleven total days spent between three theme parks was… alot. Tired feet and sore hips by the end of most days.

Now we turn towards Christmas once we get past this ninth birthday party, and tonights Santa Claus Parade. We will have to see if the kids can manage both a raucous mid day activity, and a late afternoon, in to the evening one. Especially one where they will have to stand the whole time. Could wind up being too much for them. We’ll see.

Already had a few kids drop out of the party with fevers & coughs, so i have to imagine one, some, or all will have something unpleasant by Christmas break. I could do without that! Ciao Bella!