Month: March 2024

Back hurts, arms hurt, legs hurt. I’m tired. Plan on doing a whole lot of nothing today after two previous days of strenuous work outdoors. Burned up several hundred board feet of old musty, rotting wood flooring that was covered in moss, mud & leaves. Took a while to go up, but I managed. I had several facefuls of smoke, and irritated eyes to prove it. Not to mention the pile of ash left behind. Also put a good number of hours into minding the evaporator and boiler fire. Lifting wood, chopping wood, poking wood to spread the flames and coals around evenly. I even caught the sun while outdoors. My previous florida base layer of colour was of very little help.

I look a right state with sun burned cheeks and smoke irritated eyes, and a sore back. Atleast none of it hurt so much that I could not sleep. After reading some of Children of Dune I was able to go right to sleep, soreness be damned.

Monday and Tuesday are going to be very busy, if my spidey sense is any good. Lots of work to finish and transfer over to the appropriate people. Invoices to send, and missed ones to remind people of, from February. Another glorious day In the corps.

Happy Easter long weekend.

And good lord are my back and shoulder screaming for mercy today. Getting the evaporator up and running requires an extensive amount of fuel, firewood to be exact. I pulled over three wheel barrow fulls, and then split a bunch of dried Ash next to the pile. I started with just five or six small rounds, took a rest, and then split the remaining 12-15 rounds. They were pretty small, and very dry. They shattered across the pith splits, so not anywhere near as hard as other items I’ve taken an axe to, or atleast attempted to split by axe. The maul is more sharpened sledge hammer than an axe in my opinion. Great tool. I’m in traction now, but it was fun while it lasted. Rediscovering long lost muscle groups in my back today.

My FIL came for my daughters bed frame and shipped that off to the cottage. It’s finally done! Mattress is off the floor, job completed. And now I don’t have a massive 43″W by 79″H pine frame in my tiny single car garage shop. Yeah! Space to move around once more. A project successfully completed. I feel great about that.

Speaking of successful builds, my tool cart is working out really well. I am very happy with it. The use of reclaimed building lumber was a poor choice, but all it cost me was the price of four upgraded caster wheels after my little ones exploded under the strain. Custom size, and it fits my needs exactly. No Craftsman mechanics cart was going to do all that. Not for the low-flow price of just $60.00 in wheels anyway. The cart I was eyeing up would have come in around $600.00 and change. I did good.

I’ll have to think about what kind of stuff we need around the house and put my new Walnut lumber to good use. I think we can all agree that a good thorough clean of the house should be our first goal once the weather well and truly perks up for good. Not only that but I’ve been giving some thought to playing a round of golf, hitting the driving range, and possibly even dusting off the tennis rackets this spring. All depends on work load and things of that nature, but I’d really like to give it a go this spring/summer. Atleast before the bugs become a real hindrance.

My old war gaming terrain build posts are really gaining traction as of late. Had 37 views yesterday alone. I wish I could build more, and better quality stuff, I really do. I just have nowhere to put it. And I don’t know who to approach about buying it off of me. I’d go whole hog on moulds, grasses, static applicators, resin pieces, water effects, whatever I could add in to make it awesome. Maybe some other time. It was a great Covid lock down project to have on deck while my kids were small.

Speaking of building, I do intend to rebuild an Urn, using hand cut dovetails. Going to polish that mo-fo up to a glossy shine. May even try some exotic cuts to the lid for decoration! Maybe. If I can figure out an easy jig to make that will keep things even, consistent, and repeatable. Big ask.

We’ve made it to Saturday. Only had one minor thing to work on yesterday, a portion of a document I had been swapping over for another language translation had one corner of text left untranslated. Simple fix. Solid catch too. Have a great weekend. Ciao Bella! Now where’s the Voltaren!

Now that the kids are off school for a four day long weekend the sun has gone, and the temperature has plummeted once more. Haha! I just wanted to play some basketball and ball hockey in the sunshine this morning! Is that so hard. Damn. Gosh!

Plans are up in the air, as family members felt I’ll last night, so I don’t know what’s going on for the afternoon. We have Easter goodies for the kids, but I now do not know if it’ll be done here at home, at the farm, and grandma’s house, or elsewhere. Ugh!

I realize I was fairly vague, and short here all this week. I had been waiting on a few large scale projects that I’d hoped to have for last weekend, but which I ultimately hot access to on Tuesday lunchtime. So I’ve been very hard at work tackling a multitude of projects. Eight promo items, six retail displays, four sell sheets, and a report that clocks in around 66 pages, or there about. A non-trivial amount of work for what would be a short week (atleast for the kids). I’m choosing to work the whole weekend, or at least making my services available to offset the time I missed when in Key Largo earlier in March. I made promises to my three largest clients, and I am keeping them. C’est la vie!

I won’t be hard done by anyway. It’s not like I’m driving to go sit alone at an office building for the whole four days. I work from home, so I can, and will interact with my spouse/children inbetween work e-mails and projects. Part of being a freelancer is making yourself available when you have work. To be a larger part of my kids daily lives, by not commuting to an office, I occasionally have to work into the evening or night, and spend a few hours over the weekend prepping for a Monday morning project review. I don’t mind. Like I said earlier, weathers crap, so we’re not out playing ball hockey, basketball or tossing a baseball around. My kids are currently firmly entrenched in Minecraft, so I’m not going to be missed for an hour or two, or three over the course of the morning.

It’s a pretty sweet deal. I like it a lot. I try very hard to be as good a deal for my clients as I can be.

Happy Good Friday, Easter long Weekend, and Easter Monday to all whom have some or all of that time off. Ciao Bella.

$600 for the busted radiator,  $670 fot all new rear breaks, calipers and rotors, oil changes, gas, insurance, tire replacements. Ugh  these things are definitely handy, but are such a money pit of an object. Just needed it all at tax time when I’m about to get smacked with my income tax, HST bill for 2023. Yuck. Not a fan of the timing.

Work is busy. And I need to get back to it.

As far as I am aware I have recieved all of the work I’m going to do this week, and weekend, and so now I can get down to brass tacks. Glad I’m nolonger in a holding pattern while I wait. I have my plan of action, and a very, very long couple of days ahead of me. I need to take frequent breaks, move around a lot, stretch my hands, flex my neck, but ultimately stay on task as I have very brisk deadlines, and lots to do.

I think it is Wednesday today, atleast I hope so as I went light on the kids lunches expecting them to be served a slice of pizza for their troubles. The school is doing the first of two days of Olympics today. Kids have their colours on, and are ready to party.

I’ll keep this brief as time is precious! Ciao Bella!

I’m amazed that was caught entirely on camera, and so clearly too. Good grief what a thing to happen. I have seen on CP24 that two people have been rescued from the water so far. Let us hope that more will be found safe, and that the reason for the collision with the bridge was a medical emergency on the transport freighter, and not anything malicious. News says they have dive teams out looking for seven individuals. Find them safely, or at least find them to add closure to such a horrible incident.

Groceries, laundry, banking, and more tax related stuff going on this morning as I await the deluge of incoming work requests. I’ll make and eat some breakfast and then see what’s what in the in-box.

Crunch time is upon us!

This one is going to be hectic. I need to start and finish a new big report once I get my hands on the data set. I have multiple retail projects on the go using slightly different die lines and sizing for a promotion coming up, I have a brand guide to update for another client, and it’s a short week due to Good Friday and the Easter Monday. Who boy, it’s going to be a nail biter! Let us pray that the report is a bit shorter than its companion document. Though I do have one section completed all ready. Thankfully. Going to be a few very long days ahead.

I broke down and bought the next three books in the Dune series, books four through six. Now I don’t for one second believe that I will read through them all one after the other, as I have two other unrelated books on order, ready to drop once released later this year. I have changing feelings about sci-fi, fantasy, war stories, monsters, and crime/drama. I rarely stick to just one genre when reading over the course of the year. So reading two sequels back to back is rare. Reading five sequels in a row is unheard of! Crazy talk for crazy town residents.

Today is a busy one with early family Easter plans at the LTC, a children’s birthday party across town, lunch & dinner plans and all the driving inbetween. Doesn’t help that it’s really cold today and we’ll need to bring various changes of clothes for both kids. Snow suits, splash pants, winter boots and running shoes, sweaters, dresses and regular pants. Complexity! It’s a spice in life.

Otherwise not much going on here, so I best eat some breakfast and get on with our day. Ciao Bella!

I was within sixty pages of finishing my book last night, so once the kids were in bed, and I had done a second go round on the shoveling (yes – even more snow!) I sat up in bed for an hour and finished Dune: Messiah. Good book. Liked it a lot. Far less dense than the two or three books in one which you get with the original Dune. Far less world building, and nearly no location jumping between planets. Also the long list of characters drops quite substantially in the sequel too. Far easier to read. I still don’t see Paul as a villain, or anti-villain though. I’m told I should. I see him as being withdrawn, and desperate to try to follow a narrow path to victory, and not lead the universe to ruin, though the Jihad does go on in his name once he loosed it upon said universe. He couldn’t control the ever expanding grasp of his religious jihad, so he’s a villain for having killed something like 60 billion souls, according to the book. That’s not great. He set it off, but on an individual level he wasn’t evil. Maybe our view of him is too myopic, and doesn’t consider the grander scale of what he unleashed. Hard to fathom being the guy responsible to 60 billion deaths, yet not being totally awful as a human being. Super charged and altered though he is. I guess he didn’t do enough to curtail it, and step aside, and that’s what makes him not a “good guy” in all of this. Ok, I see it. Can’t look at him directly as the charming cool guy, but rather judge him from what he set in motion. Hard to like a man with 60 billion deaths hanging around his neck, with no way to put the lid back on the jar.

Anyway, on to book five, which looks like a further exploration of his sister Alia’s decent into madness, and Stilgar’s growth towards… what? Corruption, tenacity to not lose his place of power and influence, though the Fremen ways are deeply instilled but slipping away from the old Naib of his seitch Tabr. Plus the children and their rise toward filling Paul Muah Dib’s throne. It’s a lengthy book, around 600 or so pages. Not sure what will happen.

I have steered away from books that long for quite some time now. I’m concerned the length feels off putting and I may make the book drag on longer than it needs to. Just because it takes so long to make any kind of considerable head way in a book that length. It’s a mental thing. Early wins makes it easier going when reading. If I keep coming back to read for hours but so much is still left to go, it feels defeating. I hate that. It’s like working on a 150 page report. You could have an excellent day and do 25-30 pages or more, but you see how far you still have yet to go, IF you can maintain that pace. If you can’t and you have a 10 page day, or a 12 page day, it drags on, and feels like a heavy weight pressing down on my shoulders. Yuck.

As a teen with no responsibilities I loved getting lost in 1000 pages or more of a book, but now that just feels like added weight, bloat, and an obligation to muddle through. Writing my own short fiction made me far more open to shorter works. Time and effort are rewarded. Lots of material can be covered that way too. But I digress.

The book looks good, and so far reads as easily as the sequel. Plus it’s a sunny Saturday morning, and I’ve been out to shovel for a third time in less than 24 hours, and I don’t have any plans until this evening, and again tomorrow mid morning. I’m thrilled.

Gotta love it when that happens. You knew it had to happen. I  couldn’t imagine an April that didn’t have a bunch of slush and frozen pools of stagnant water every where. Although given the ground thaw we’ve experienced maybe we won’t have weeks of dirty water pooled every which way, and only for just a few days this time around. Worse things could happen.

Strange day I’m having here today. Can’t quite explain it, but it’s been a weird one. Anyway have a great weekend.