Those long sleeved SPF rated swim shirts that are Wick dry and all that jazz. I hate how it feels to be slathered in sun screen, so it’s lovely to avoid that with a shirt. They apparently make them with hoods now too. I don’t know if I’d go that far. Maybe if I was a fishing kinda guy and spent hours looking down at the water from a boat. Neat idea. I can spray my neck, ear tips, nose and cheeks. That’s not a problem. I just hate the bodily oily feeling. Dust and grit sticks to everywhere. Yuck. I wonder if our summer with have a high UV score this year, as that’s what will get you. Sun burns that hurt for days on end suck. Best to avoid those these days. Welcome to Monday after the time change! Boy 9:00am came around awful quickly huh? Nice to have sunlight until almost 7pm though. March Break is here! Rejoice.
Month: March 2024
Trying to catch a sunset when…
My innards have other plans. Story of my life as of late. Had to skip two day trips because I knew I’d desperately need a rush pitstop every 15-30 minutes and the destination were atleast 90 minutes away. Grr. Thanks rotten guts, I love you too. I even missed a spectacular sunset because of my intestinal distress. I hope to catch the next one with my camera in hand, and not a roll of toilet paper instead.
In other news I get the results of my MRI in another week, so perhaps that will shed some new light on my current predicament. We’ll have to wait and see.
And Later On In The Land Of Nod…
The WFH movement proved without a doubt just how superfluous most supervisory and management positions actually were, and that fact threatened a lot of people who derived their power from lording over the lowly worker bee a crumb of institutional power, and turned that into a multi billion dollar leash that higher ups were convinced they had to keep. But when productivity increased, and worker happiness increased as those supervisors were kept out of the lowly worker bees lives, management panicked and tried to tighten their grip, but that’s what weak ineffectual people do, and it rippled about the world. They tighten their grip because they shall soon lose it! Rejoice for they shall soon join the ranks of the lowly worker bee or perish.
Happy saturday.
Day Dreaming about those Blue, Blue Skies Above.
Though our winter has been mild I do constantly day dream about going back to visit my inlaws place in the Keys. Beach side, near the mouth of a canal. The “NoSee’ems” are a bitey pain in the ass, but the weather and sand are hard to beat. March Break starts tonight. A week alone with the goblins should prove to be fun. Let us hope the weather continues to hold out. No skiing or snowboarding this year. Although, saying that, we could bust out the bicycles and skateboards, or even free up the hockey net and play some road hockey! Score.
Hard to not think about fun vacations when you are in & out of the can with distressed guts. If flying didn’t also upset my innards I’d be out and about to the beaches as much as humanly possible. I do love an all inclusive resort with heavily poured Rum daiquiris, white sand beaches, and king sized beds.
Have a great Friday. I hear that Kung Fu Panda #4 is out this weekend too. I imagine I’ll wind up taking both kids to go see it once this weekends crowds die down just a bit. I would think it’ll be a popular destination for folks with children off for the break. So even the off times next week will probably still be full.
Take care out there. Ciao Bella.
Truly rotten guts today.
Keeping this short and sweet, as I have a nasty belly this morning. We’ve reached Thursday, and soon March Break will be here! Let us hope for a less upset stomach by then. Ciao Bella!
The Clock Strikes Minus One!
Late Saturday night, early Sunday the clock will go back to day light savings time and the first week of commuting will be very dangerous, full of tired and weary travelers who haven’t gotten through a cup of coffee yet. Although I immediately enjoy having sunshine later on in the evenings, I’m none to keen on being more tired than I already am. Getting the kids out of bed for school after the march break will prove to be an aggravating challenge aswell. Initially they won’t be tired enough to fall asleep, but conversely will be too tired to wake up and get ready for school. You see how that works, how it sucks so much on either end? Yeah? Whee! Kids are a lot of fun. Kids and time changes, jet lag, travel, and different beds and night time routines, are all kinds of crazy, and interesting fun.
Lots to do around here in preparation for our march break plans. Things to do, people to see, vehicles to shuffle around, and lots of stuff to clean. Should be a fun week ahead. Ciao Bella.
How do you frame your week?
Do you think of your week as a Sunday to Saturday much like the lines on a calendar, or do you start on Monday and end on Sunday? Or do you not frame your weeks except by holidays or time off? I would wager a guess that much of it depends on the type of work you do, and the schedule imposed upon you. Rotating shifts, and odd numbered days on and off might throw everything for a loop. I know from experience working nights that keeping track of days gets fuzzy at best if you start at midnight, or work from one evening and over across into another day where you book end four hours each side of 12:00am to complete a full shift. Mucks with my brain a little. Then you track your life via shifts worked and not the 24 hour individual day. Gets screwy.
So… Tuesday March 5th, 2024. How’d we get here so quickly. It was plus twelve yesterday and 98% of all the snow is gone. We’ve had massive dumpings of rain and a thunderstorm already. Spring while nearly two more weeks away feels like it’s been here a while. I fear the late coming of a new snow storm will negatively affect all the plants and trees. This is unseasonable weather we’ve had this winter. Not good. Not good at all. Just think of all the bugs and snakes that will migrate here if our winters get too mild. Horrible stinging things, and wretched venomous snakes. Yuck. No thank you.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah – framing of your week. Sundays have a different vibe than Wednesdays, Thursdays get mistaken for Fridays a fair bit, Friday and Saturday tend to be the best days for doing fun stuff, and casting off the yoke of work to go party or see friends makes for a memorable feel to a day. I do a lot of the same things each week, so there is Domestic Duties Mon/Tues, Hump Day Wednesday, Thursday is usually busy, and Friday leads into the weekend and seeing friends outside of the house. The kids do lots of programming Monday through Thursday, so we keep the weekend clear. I say that, but soon rock climbing will start on Sundays for eight weeks, and then we have dance recitals, and kids getting wings to move up in Girl Guides, and summer & swimming and, and, and… easy to get carried away into looking through the calendar instead of living the days as they come. Funerals have a good way of refocusing my attention to here, and now. Rather than gazing ahead across the calendar to more exciting times.
March break is next week after all, so the second half of the school year really picks up speed. I think getting outside and having more sun and warmth helps to move the needles on the clock a bit faster. Certainly nicer being outdoors when it doesn’t hurt your face or lungs. More brightness and more day light hours, with more to do outside. Swimming will pick up again come middle of May. I always look forward to swim season.
Given this odd weather I wonder if there will be any sap left for next week or if it has all run while we weren’t looking! I know we have wood to split for the boilers too. Lots to do in Hope’s of the sap running.
Dune: Part Two
I enjoyed it just as much as the first one, though it does seem to have lost a little of that world building touch. No more mentats, lurid family pets and things of that ilk. Still a gorgeous spectacle to behold, and it runs on rails right from the get go, carrying on after the exploits of Part One. Timelines are changed to be very streamlined, and they have changed various plot points but it reads on screen coherently as far as I am concerned. I don’t know if it would qualify as a “Master-Piece” on its own merits, but certainly as a pair, and more likely as a trio with a more definite ending after one additional installment.
I’m not going to be controversial here but I feel as though Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken were used to great effect. I can tell that Florence will be a bigger player along with the as of yet unborn sister Alia in the third portion. I’m also glad that they thinned out the royal entourage and hangers on by using just Lady Fenring as a go between hinting at a broader court of intrigue. This movie could easily bloat up to twenty to thirty hours if you tried to stay too close to the source material. I for one am glad they trimmed, blurred, and shuffled characters and events into one another to simplify the story. I never liked the Barron’s propensity towards CSA, and eliminating the assassination attempts and subsequent murders of raped children was the correct call. The gladiatorial match hints at the behind the scenes scheming which the Harkonnens are prone to, so that left me satisfied with one aspect of the streamlined divergence from the source material.
Speaking of villains, Beast Raban plays a cowardly bully very well, and Feyd Rautha was a fantastic psychopath with a knife fetish, and a insatiable blood lust. Worth the price of admission.
Otherwise it was pretty good. I enjoyed it a great deal. I will buy it on bluray if it is offered as physical media come summer time. The CGI is of a high quality. The on location filming is really lovely. The depth of field would lend itself to 3D with no issues. I saw it in DBox Atmos AVX because that was the largest screen locally that I could see it on that doesn’t require more than an hour drive each way. I was going to aim for the late late show but opted for the six PM, and it was a touch fuller inside than I have grown accustomed to. Not a fan of crowds nowadays. Too many people coughing or sniffling for my comfort. Should have stuck to my guns, although had I of done so then today would be a wash. I can’t stay up until 2AM, then do the 8AM school drop off run, and be a fully functional human adult. I don’t have that in me anymore. But I digress.
Good movie, great sequel, better as a whole. Fingers crossed for a third and final installment from Denis Villeneuve. Have you been out to see Dune: Part Two yet? What was your assessment of the film? Ciao Bella.
Airport run this morning.
Taking the inlaws to the airport this foggy rainy morning so that they can get some sun down in Key Largo Florida. Plus it will be my MIL’s birthday later on this week. We all pray they have warmth and sunshine aplenty. It’s been a tough year or so what with the passing of her brother Frederick from cancer on February 2nd, 2024 and the continued descent of her mother, a 96 year old dementia patient at Parkview here in town. Maybe now she can relax a little and swim and forget about all the trouble for a little while.
Otherwise happy lazy Sunday morning to those of you not sleeping in this AM. To the rest of us, we have this lovely grey gloom to be enrobed in. Take it easy. Ciao Bella.
Will soon reach 10% of where it was…
I do not know if it will be a blessing or a curse to have lost seven hundred and thirty days off of my writing streak through an innocent mistake, but I will tell you this, I’m glad to still be here, going on like I have a second chance to revisit things I may have skimmed over, or given short shrift. I do tend towards glibness when I’m not feeling much love towards a subject. I continue to stumble across posts written from a few years ago which I do not recall ever writing. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. More than 1,000 posts over the lifetime of hosting this blog so it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that I can’t remember every single thing I’ve written. Some of those posts were pretty decent. Others are crap. I’d like to try to raise up the overall quality of the writing here. Perhaps I do that by making notes to myself before hand. Having a good think on topics first, or spending more than just five minutes reading over and editing posts. I should not be afraid to keep a post short if I have nothing to say. And… I’m surprisingly ok with that.
I’ve said it before, so obviously I’m going to restate it again, an affectation of mine, repeating myself that is, that I don’t want to make this hobby of a daily writing challenge to be any harder than it needs to be. The moment the vibe is off, I’m done. I keep it lax, and lazy, and go with the flow of the moment. It’s not a paid gig, nor a side hustle. This is where I go to order a few thoughts, or to leave a paper trail of my wood working exploits. If I have to get up and dance to make it happen, or I put pressure on myself to ever be increasing view numbers & eye balls I’ll hate everything about it. It’s low rent for a reason. I’m not a “content” producer. I’m just a forty year old dude saying shit. You feel me, cuh! Silly stupid shit. Sometimes I write random shorts of absurdism. It’s fun. It’s easy. It only requires that I put pen to paper and make the words come out. They don’t have to be great words, eloquent words, gracious or empowering words. I’m not looking to showcase vocabulary; though that being said I have stumbled across a few interesting words and used those as a writing prompt, but that’s rare. Uncommon even.
Sometimes I like to discuss the writing and illustration of my children’s book. That is a fun little project which I have allowed to stretch on for years longer than it should have. I came up with the story when my oldest was about to turn four, she’s almost ten. I started to put the art work together over the Covid lock downs of 2020, 2021, and parts of 2022. I don’t know if I even opened it in 2023. That has required me to paint digitally which is not a strong suit of mine. So I resist it, and thus the project has dragged on for years now. I don’t imagine it would be some surprise hit with the masses either, so no rush there.
I even go on a bit about the two books I wrote of collected short science fiction. There are also a few autobiographical shorts from life experiences mixed in there too, but that isn’t really a big draw for people. Lots of folks have kids. It might he relatable, but not a big motivator to buy the book, or read them on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. I do intend, at some point, to mash both books together into one document and have four copies printed just to have it as a physical thing I can put on my desk. I think that that would make it seem really real. Just a thought. A day dream I’ve had a few times.
Yeah – so, quality is what I’m aiming towards now that I’m on the path to revisit my old writing streak high score. Maybe I’ll figure out how to become a more clear, and concise communicator? Who knows perhaps I’ll even pick up a tone, or a voice all my own on the way. Those smarter than myself tell me perfect practice makes perfect, rather than just repeating your old stupid mistakes and calling that experience. We will see! Ciao Bella!
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