Month: March 2025

Took the time to think on it and opted to upgrade both my compressor and my mitre saw. I now have a 20 gallon 200psi air compressor that allows me to use a spray gun for finishing furniture pieces. Also a larger, and more versatile mitre saw that can do dado cuts with a depth gauge, and far wider cross cuts. Noice! Go team.

And he wrought much damage to tree limbs, and power lines alike. No mercy but what was shown. Nothing like the major Quebec storms from the late 90’s though. Remember those? Absolute mayhem. About 4 full inches of ice on every single conceivable surface. They were without power for days, and weeks all across the province that time. It was so severe they called in the Canadian Armed Forces to help out. Wild

So in the grand scheme of things less than an inch of ice isn’t horrendous, more of an inconvenience. Gate won’t open, is about as much of an obstacle as I’m facing so far this morning. So I’ll move that wood burning chore at the farm to tomorrow. After my car’s oil change. That way the dog still gets his big walk, and I clean up the back yard just a tiny bit. Win-win!

The roads appear to be clear. I did a fair bit of traveling yesterday when they were threatening all of this freezing rain, and it didn’t really start to kick in until after I got home at 10:00 pm. So we were able to go climbing, and I went out to the inlaws, and I was able to watch the Leafs game in the evening. Side note: They WON! YAY.

In other news it is already Sunday, and I need to take my eldest child to a party up the road, walk the dog at the farm, sort & hang laundry, and remember the oil change tomorrow morning. So a light and breezy lazy Sunday after all. My youngest has a friend coming for a play date, so that’ll get loud, but otherwise a pretty simple day ahead.

We still have power, so far anyway, which is a good start. But I have to consider how the weather can change during the day if we drive to the west end of Markham for a ninety minute climbing session. No good going in clear weather and getting trapped miles away by freezing rain. Just you watch if we don’t go, the weather will be mild until later this afternoon, but if we do go it’ll turn to shit the second we park once there. I think we should just skip it for now, and save ourselves any headaches/dangerous road conditions. I like climbing a lot but not enough to endanger my children or myself. I can sit & read all day if I want to, no harm done.

Saturday is here! W00t-W00t! Nice. I guess I will catch up on laundry, but that will also depend on the state of our power. Heavy freezing rains cause a whole lot of havoc around these elderly neighborhoods. Mature trees are great, but aging power lines are delicate objects prone to trouble. At least to those of us whose homes were built in the 50’s and 60’s. Not quite century homes but they are nearing 65 — 75 years of age, with age appropriate wear and tear, and other such issues.

While we usually have a schedule for Saturday, that’s potentially out the window, so today is anybody’s game! Elbows up Canada.

Might have to put rock climbing on hold for the day as it involves highway driving, and a number of kilometers to get to the gym from our house. Limiting travel might be the smart play here. Shame, all three of us still rather enjoy climbing. No matter, we will be back there soon enough! I would prefer just simple rain, or another bout of flurries to the dreaded heavy freezing rain. The ice storms always cause power outages in our old neighbourhood infrastructure. Needs an extensive upgrade.

Oh well, no harm done by a localized stay at home weekend. Less gas consumption, less wear & tear on the vehicles. We can watch a movie, or play board games, or card games by the fireplace, power situation depending. We could fire up the switch bowling and take in a few frames as a family. That would be cool.

Welcome to Friday. Last night’s movie at the school gym went pretty smoothly. We had blankets and pillows so this time it was fairly comfortable. Helps they limit these things to a 90 minute kids film too. We had beverages, chips, and I bought one lone slice of pizza. I do hope they raised as much money as they had hoped to.

I would love for the spring time temperatures to finally kick in. I could do with less snow, and no freezing rain weather events. Bah. Terrible choice for weather. Bad option. Me no likey.

Whilst I do like this new Google Pixel 9, I do have some qualms about having to upgrade my old phone. Beyond the limits of the memory/space and the battery life I would have kept the phone indefinitely except apps were slowly dropping off, losing functionality, and stopped working completely in some cases. I am now in the lengthy process of becoming accustomed to the new phone, and all of its quirks. Also app placement is different so I have to memorize where I have put everything once again. I feel like Mr Peterman trying to memorize the TV guide after they swapped the channels on the television. First world problems. Am I right?

And it smells absolutely unhinged in here now because of it. Just vile. Been a long while since I last cleaned a dirty diaper, let alone an entire floors worth of loose bowel. Clock has just ticked over 2:00 am, so we are well into the thick of it now. Luckily from our summer run in with the skunk I have some nature cleaning supplies for heavy odors, and faeces smell to clean up in here with so I don’t have to spend the rest of the week sniffing the inside of the dogs colon. That’s a plus!

What else am I to do now. The adrenaline rush of hearing him spray fart in the dark, and the onslaught against my senses has left me wide awake. Dog seems none the worse for wear, at the moment. We will have to see if an angry bottom round two will rear its ugly mug. Best sleep lightly.

I do believe we are pulling a head full steam into Wednesday, hump day! If I can get my work email to synch up with this new phone I’ll be golden, otherwise I can only check emails directly from my computer. You would not believe just how long the process was to get all set up in my new phone. Ridiculous. Main reason why it was nearly eight full years in between physical unit changes. What a day it was, all spend connecting gadgets and accounts, passwords and the like. Endlessly doing two factor verifications, updates, and such. Bah!

The wireless transfer of contacts & such was pretty primo though, not going to lie about that. Last phone change over I had to go into my contacts and name them, and enter all details one by one. It was exhausting. Not the way it is now. No sir. All whizzing gadgetry now. The times we live in.

I wonder if I will see three am or if my body will slowly succumb to sleep. My acid reflux has made a cone back tonight, so I need to find my Tums before I burn a hole in my oesophagus. That shit burns and sucks the life out of a good night’s sleep that’s for sure.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to talk about today, but the dog messing in my room wasn’t a part of the top twenty five guesses that I would have put forth. Fun times. Floor got a good scrub down though, so that’s a plus, I suppose. Where are my Tums.

I have held off because I find doing this sort of tech swap over so damn tedious. Life moves on, and I hold on to a phone for nearly eight years. Golly-gosh!

It finally happened, we took the kids kitchen play set up north to the cottage on Saturday, and I put the last load of burnable wood cut-off down in the burn barrel at the farm. Phew! Glad all of that mess is finally out of my way. Only took, what? Six or seven months to get rid of. But, it is done, and now that I have the space to maneuver my jointer, planer, and table saw I can make more dust, chips and cut offs. I have two small projects in mind to complete first. One is a 4″ stand to get my APC up off the basement floor in case of a flood, I’d like atleast some room/margin for minor errors, instead of a total catastrophic loss. Get the electrical up off the floor, and save my computer, printer, router if i can. The second is a kitchen counter top organizer for ladles, spatulas, and the like. We currently use a big beer Stein, but it’s crowded, and difficult to pull smaller items out of. I think a three chambered counter top unit would be better suited to the space. Look nicer too. So once it warms up a bit more, I will build both of those items. I also need to make a slim profile book shelf for my youngest daughter’s bedroom. One that’ll fit behind a door.

I’m so over the moon with how empty the garage shop space feels now.  More open I guess would be better terminology, as it certainly isn’t empty. I’ve been trying to declutter, clean, and organize the space for a very long time. Nice to see it come to fruition finally. Must resist the urge to fill it up with new tools! Ha. I have had my eye on a full size bandsaw for a while, but I think I missed the boat on that purchase. Too bad. Maybe another time it’ll come up on sale – again. Fingers crossed. Though, factually speaking, I am more likely to get more, and better use out of an upgraded mitre saw station. A 12″, double compound, sliding mitre saw to be exact. I have the make and model on my wishlist from Home Depot, and other big box stores. I would also benefit from a higher capacity air compressor, one that is big enough to run a hvlp sprayer. That way I could complete my furniture projects with a higher quality sprayed on finish, versus a rattle can application or wipe on poly like I would be doing now. The hope would be for a more uniform, and higher gloss final piece. But finishing is it’s own challenge, and requires a skill set all it’s own. My dusty garage is not the ideal setting. But! A thorough cleaning in between sanding, and the finishing stage my temper some of that settling dust which I struggle with. But a boy can dream can’t he?

Oh well. I have not committed to any purchases as of yet, so I’ll get back to building soon enough, and then I can figure out what item(s) is the most pressing to either upgrade, or introduce into the work shop. I have dreamt of a full sized bandsaw for so long, and I desperately want to resaw a bunch of Ash, but after that, then what? I can buy 4s dressed boards to work off of, and don’t really have to mill my own lumber if I don’t want to. It is cheaper to buy the rough sawn wood. But then there is considerable time, and effort to bring it around to a useable state. I’m a noob so my time is next to worthless as far as wood working is concerned, but my day job hourly rate is much, much higher. So if I can complete my hobby projects quickly, and do more working hours, that would be beneficial to me too. I’ll need to mull it over some more.

The garage doesn’t look too shabby now that all the major messes are gone, and the new rack is up, and my furniture grade wood is sorted, and I have removed a large excess of crap from the space. I should go at it with a leaf blower, and then the shop vac to get it as clean as possible some time soon. Just need to make sure the neighbours cars are gone, as I don’t want to make them look like powdered donuts. That’s not neighborly behaviour.

I recently went back into my file folder of dream items for the garage to revise the list a bit. I now have a propane fueled heater, so that’s pretty awesome. I run a good fan in the summer time to keep a steady breeze in there while I work, so I don’t think I’d worry about climate control all that much anymore. If we won THAT much money I think we’d go buy a house with a proper shop, or an insulated 3 car garage elsewhere. I’m also not convinced I would bother with the tongue and groove walls anymore. I do still think about the bandsaw, as mentioned above. And if I could replace my tiny drill press with a mill/drill so that I could tap & drill holes in metal too, I’d  do that in a snap. But it would be cool to be able to mill slots, and mortises, and work in metal too. So while a mortising machine would be on point for my furniture building, it can’t do anything in metal, and only does the one thing, albeit, realy-really well. I would upgrade the small air compressor I have to a 30 gallon tank, so not quite industrial, but large for home/garage purposes. That would allow me to add a water trap, and get into the hvlp spraying of certain finishes. Also a mitre saw upgrade is a must have. My decade old, and then some, Skil chop saw has seen better days. Has worked pretty good thus far, but I could do with being able to make wider cuts in my furniture grade wood selection. I think the threads on the locking nut are wearing, as I constantly have to tighten it down or else the blade spins freely for a long time after the breaks were supposed to have kicked in. It has to be going on fifteen years old, and I gave build a lot of stuff with it. I also use it to cut down waste bits so I can toss it in the trash, or fit it in a cardboard box. So of all my “power” tools, it has seen the most wear, other than my drills, drivers, and impacts.

So that’s monday morning day dreaming for you. I hope you also had a productive weekend, if that was your desire anyway. I tended to the evaporator, and kept the fires raging for a few hours. Moved many a bucket full of sap all around the property, and had a hot tub session while I was at it. Even watched the Leafs lose to the third worst team in the league, after nearly going up 3-0 in the first period. It was disheartening to say the least. Opened so strong, and then fizzled out so weakly. Yikes! But I digress. Ciao Bella!

Spot welds would have been bad enough, but glue? I guess $100,000.00 doesn’t buy the kind of quality it used to. I just cannot fathom what kind of engineer figured that a flat metal panel under constant wind resistance would stay put during highway travel, or would remain in place during extreme temperature shifts, or the added weight of ice, or any number of other issues. Boggles the mind. Hell a few flush headed driven rivets would have been preferable to just glue/adhesive. More and more these things start to feel like bespoke jury rigged contraptions where folks paid a $60,000 premium for the name, and early 90’s polygonal design quirk. Heavy, limited range, and more delicate than expected. What they wanted was the Halo universe Warthog, and what they got was a papier mache golf cart. Reminiscent of the early years Jaguars, where all the wood trim, and body panels were individual to the car, and not 100% in any instance. So this isn’t a localized phenomenon with just the ugly truck, it happens all across the automobile industry. QC just isn’t really a thing nowadays.

Sunday is here, and my god is it ever cold. Woke up to a minus thirteen degrees Celcius. I’m tired of these lows, I want my sunshine and above zero temps! Damn it! We are currently trying to finish up the sap we have on the evaporator to make some more maple syrup. It’s a slow process, even with the added bonus of freezing off a lot of water, and doing reverse osmosis to filter out even more water, to start with a more concentrated sap in the boiling pan. Hours upon hours of rolling boil to make any headway whatsoever. Fun.

With any luck the further we get away from the first official day of spring, the better off we’ll be. Fingers crossed for no late in the year dumpings of snow. I would like to avoid any heavy accumulations of snow over an inch in depth. As that would put the roads, parks, and driveways right back to square one — again. Bah!

If the dog whinging and whining all night wasn’t bad enough, tripping over him at four in the morning while bringing him back inside from a pee break certainly takes the cake. Luckily it is not broken. The toe I injured in September by dropping a solid wood table on it just hasn’t been the same since, and falling over and bend/cracking it on a combination of hardwood and tile floor was not going to make it any better. Doesn’t look swollen or discoloured, so I may still be able to climb later today. Fingers crossed. Not my strongest move to fall over our black dog while walking through our pitch black house when I wasn’t entirely awake. It was my fault , not his so I remained cooler than I otherwise might have given the hour.

That’s how I started off my Saturday, how has your day been? Mine is going swimmingly. Perfetto!