Month: July 2024

You know what that means! Sending out invoices, booyah! Yeah-buddy. Turning all of those clickity- hours on the keyboard into a living wage, or at least a supplement to one. As I have previously mentioned Earnings are WAY down compared to last year. Which I think makes that year a fluke. Shame. I could have gotten used to having some disposable income just lying around. A fair dinkum bit of belt tightening going around this year, believe you, me.

Going away for 41 days over three separate months didn’t help, so no surprise there. I had saved for the trip, but failed to account for clients going a bit cool on the idea of my absences. Live and learn. My computer is now more than 10 years old, so I must purchase a more portable laptop work station, which will mean the option to work when traveling, if I must.

Now if everyone paid me during the same week for June/July work I’d be able to get a machine without too much worry, but that never happens. So I’ll need to think of a good way to do it, or scale back a couple spec’s on my desired new computer. A balancing act, if you will.

Wednesday,  hump day, middle of the week day! It’s here, and the weather has turned out better than first expected. It was absolutely pouring down at 5:00am when I took the dog out for a pee. He didn’t care much for the rain, and neither did I. Can’t blame him.

So, new news… weight loss plan is taking effect. I’m currently down from 213lbs at Christmas, to 203lbs by end of June, and 198lbs as of today. Slow going for sure. I’d like to end up around 165/170 lbs, but that is going to require my actually being active, and not just focused on what, when, and how I eat. More bike riding, skate boarding, dog walking, swimming, and hitting up a gym for weights if I can manage it. That was the part of Crossfit I really liked, all of the olympic style lifting. Good for the bones, if you do it properly, and not for vanity. I did my lower back in being an idiot, so we’ll not try to do any of that nonsense again.

I’d take up running again, except I hate it, and my knees and ankles beg me not to harm them any further. Running on a padded track is one thing, running on uneven roads is another. Whatever, I need to find something besides “wishing” that can make it happen. Let me sleep on it. Ha.

Chloe Daniel’s of Sutton is part of the women’s team canada in the rugby sevens category. They just beat out France & Australia to move against New Zealand for the Gold Medal, or potentially a Silver. Great work ladies. Very proud!

**1:45pm – Gold Medal match for women’s rugby sevens is about to begin, team canada is present! Best of luck ladies!**

Canada ahead 12-7 late in the first half. Very intense 7 minutes of play so far.

They lose it 19-12. Silver medal awarded! Still a great showing.

Anti climactic finish to a gold medal bout. I don’t know the first thing about judo, it’s scoring, or the rules, so the golden time means nothing to me. Same with the three yellow card / penalties, and the red card disqualification. Seems a shame to be awarded the win off of a random penalty, but whatever.

Back to Monday, and into the fray once more.

Usually the Olympics would be on our tv all day long, but I missed 99% of the opening ceremonies, and have only sat down to watch the ladies 4 x 100m relay, and a men’s race. No heats, no nothing. I have caught a few seconds of Judo, beach volleyball, and basketball, but nothing from start to finish.

I’ve just turned on the tv this morning to catch the closing seconds of a women’s cycling race, looks like mountain biking. The french are certainly doing fairly well this year. I saw the french men’s rugby sevens team beat Fiji to a pulp 26 to 7 in their gold medal match. Oof. Big win/loss there, depending on whom you were cheering for.

My oldest daughter has renewed her vigor for track and field, so we took an hour to hop on down to the area track to do some warm up laps, stretch, and do a timed 200m dash. She clocked in at 40.97, down from the 41.87 zhe did just before her big race day back in May. Today was a cold start, and she took off a bit slow due to my hand signals being obscured by a rep soccer team playing on the field in view between us. I think she might have cracked 39 sec if she’d had the better start. I told her that if she wanted to run more to practice, I would help. I’ll drive, time keep, encourage, and get beverages, but I can’t run the race, or make you want to do it. So as long as it’s something she leads, I’ll help. But I’ll not be taking the lead like some back seat stage mom. No living vicariously through others achievements!  Don’t expect me to drag YOU there, but if you ask to go, I’m here to help. Comprende?

I always felt like getting back into wrestling whenever I saw the winter olympics, or a UFC fight. I enjoyed it a great deal in both junior high, and high school. Now it’s all MMA, BJJ or some form of combat karate. Not my jam. I do want to get into better shape to stay healthy, but combats not my path. No punches or kicks to the head for me, thanks. I liked the running, and mat work. The bout after bout of trying new techniques, and dry run of move sets. Didn’t care for the testicle squashing singlet, but otherwise I had a good deal of fun. I’m very fortunate, no injuries, and no coaching shower shenanigans.

I’m fairly certain today is Sunday. Beautiful warm sunny day out. Pool is partially shaded this early in the day, so we should be able to avoid sunburns. It’ll be time to eat lunch soon enough. Best be about my day! Ciao Bella.

6,300 plus photos to be exact. Which I desperately need to organize and eliminate repeats, blurred images, or subject matter which I don’t care for all that much. Why so many sunsets? Empty lake photos? Pictures of my old dog asleep? WTF? But the idea of reviewing all 6,300 images in sequence to delete a thousand or more depressed me deeply. Every few weeks I try to slim the horde down, but I’m constantly taking more, and more. I can’t attack the videos, so it has to be the photos. There is nothing else stored on my phone that takes up so much internal storage space, by a very wide margin. Ugh. Fine, I’ll do it. See you in about 10 hours time.

**After 2 rounds of whittling I’m down to 5,034 photos, from the 6,300 or more that I had to begin with. I realize now that I have spent countless hours over the years pruning these photo sets, so I don’t have much wiggle room in which to manoeuvre. If I want to save space, then I have to be ruthless. I’m not there yet. Cutting 1,000 images out of my collection is a good start, but I am not convinced I need to pare it down much more for the sake of an 8 year old phone. Could be time to upgrade after all this time!**

It only took a month but my youngest is finally ready to tackle the third, largest, and final set. So obviously after step eighteen she is taking a break, and we will lose a piece if she wait too long to put it together. Fun times.

My wife’s year off draws to a close in one month so she has chosen to lose her mind over it. So that’s a tonne of fun. Usually it’s a sadness over summer co.ing to an end, but this is fourteen months of sabbatical ending, so the “big feelings” are compounded (x7). Whee!

In all seriousness I know she didn’t get the year she wanted. There was a family death, farm obligations, trip delays, health issues, and a lack of field trips which she had hoped to attend, but there were few to none offered to either child’s class. I know she read voraciously, which I’d put in the win column. We had a vast number of lunch dates. We even recently picked up a new puppy which my wife chose. No we didn’t purge the house like I’d hoped. No we didn’t deep clean the house like I’d thought we would, but you know what, it’s easier done by one person, and I’ll do those things in September, and no harm done.

My busy period is about to kick in, more so than the last two weeks, which hits right at the peak of summer fun times (which annoys my wife to no end) but it would be the same if I worked in an office, and couldn’t work remotely when I felt like it. Yes I miss boat rides, and mid day play time, but I manage to make short appearances to see the kids have fun throughout the day.

I have forgone working on my table refinishing project during my lull period so that I could do more with the kids, and at the farm for the in-laws. If I get a chance to, I will pick that project back up in September too. I’d like to get the table into the basement and ready for use by November of this year. I think that’s doable. Fingers crossed.

This is the last Friday in July, and next week is the Gemboree, so that should be a fun time. All sorts of sparkling things, and fossils, and rock hound tools to gawk at. Expensive as zhit, but a nice time to go hang out with the family on the long weekend, and mooch about looking at stuff, all without a care in the world. Bliss.

I cut my grass again, it is still lush & green, in late July! This is so weird. Normally it’s a fire hazard. Just tinder waiting for an errant cigarette butt to ignite it. No so again this year. Four inches tall, thick, green, and damp as a moist oyster. Chef’s kiss! Muah!

Getting back deep into my excel spreadsheet groove takes quite some doing. Not really there yet. Still slow going at this stage. However, I am happy to announce, I am drawing ever closer to being three quarters of the way through this document. I’m on to page 70, so that is a ein, even if it doesn’t exactly feel like one.

Long reports feel like you are making no progress at all until you can suddenly see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s all a mind game. I can see the lines of the spreadsheet disappearing under my hours of work, but it all looks so similar it feels like going nowhere. Early visual wins are key here, otherwise it can be very easy to feel defeated, and slow right down, which adds to the feeling of never getting ahead.

Frequent rest breaks, a walk about, and snacks go a long way to brighten my mood too. So snack on that! Bam!

Another eight hour day should put this mostly to bed. Followed by tweaks, soft proofing, and a review of my own. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Boy is it a hot one today, even at 9:00am the fields were heating up under the July sun. What was a sloppy soupy mess of mud on Friday is now rock hard, dried out concrete. Neither is really great for pulling up whole bulbs of garlic with their necks attached. I knew I should have stick to my guns and continue used on Saturday. Now it’s really slow going, hotter, and the ground has pulled my forks apart.

I’m going to have to wear steel toed boots with sole protectors in order to be able to put an appropriate amount of force on my forks to drive them into the ground. As my ceoc’s weren’t cutting it today. Great for easy clean up, terrible for stamping force on a localized spot. No wonder my soles hurt late yesterday, now I understand why.

With 18 rows, and nearly 300 bulbs per row we will likely be at this for quite some time if we can’t get the Plough figured out for this tightly spaced harvesting job. I need to repair my forks now too. They’ve pulled put of the handle. So a drill, and a bolt, and maybe some epoxy might be in order. I say that but I’ve just had a major project in, and I need to go start that after lunch is over. I could be at it for 3 or more days just to get my first rough pass at it completed. So I’ll need to pause my farm help to complete my paid day job.

Today is Tuesday July 23rd, 2024. A year ago today my friend and her daughter died in a tragic atv accident. It feels both very recent, and like it happened a life time ago. We celebrated what would have been a sixth birthday surreptitiously, so as to not draw too much attention to it with the kids in attendance. Striking the right balance between remembered and not dwelling in the past is rather more difficult than I care to elucidate right now. Grief is a terrible, all consuming thing. Survivors guilt is its own beast, and I would not wish that upon any nine year old child, ever.

But onwards and upwards. Lunch is done, time to get down to work. Ciao Bella!

Spent the weekend mostly alone with our new puppy, and you know what? I’m exhausted. No word of a lie. I must be sleeping like shit to feel this way. I think I can sense the puppy moving about in my room at night, and I’m not falling entirely to sleep. Looking forward to a time when he can be left unattended to sleep on the main floor, rather than at the foot of my bed where I can hear every yawn, stretch, scratch, harrumph, and puppy fart. The jingle jangle of the collar cuts right into my ears at night. Good thing he’s cute, because he is a whole lot of incidental bother.

In other news I got to watch a whole lot of The Grand Tour uninterrupted. Which was very pleasant. Seasons four got fewer episodes, but each one feels like a 90 minute movie. I had given some though to immediately rewatching Clarkson’s Farm, but I can give that a few weeks or a month.

I took my oldest daughter to a birthday party filled with her ten year old Male classmates and they were absolute savages. My kids are no angels, but this was madness. No wonder her former grade four teacher never took those boys on field trips. They were a menace. Scaling walls, jumping from balconies, fighting, screaming, disappearing out onto the grounds, putting their meals into their faces on a dare. It was bizzare. Gentle parenting gone awry, or is it so passive now that it’s borderline neglect? I was ready to burst at the seams. BUT, I remembered it’s not my circus, not my monkeys, and I could walk away and sit down in the shade, as I was there just to make my daughter feel safe, and not to police twelve ten year old boys. Went a lot smoother after that. For me at least. Ha.

Stay healthy out there.