Month: March 2025

Weather up into nearly double digits on the plus side of the Celcious scale makes skiing a tad difficult. Glad we are doing something different that isn’t entirely reliant on the snow for our enjoyment. I’m holding reduced office hours this week so that I can play with my kids while they are still small enough to want to. Took a shovel outside to dig out trenches in the waist deep snow for them, and to bolster the sledding hill off the side of the driveway. It’s all very, very wet and also icy somehow. If it’s not slush, it’s fast!

I figure we could cross country ski fairly easily for atleast another few says if we wanted to, but going downhill skiing seems like a lost cause, atleast as far south as Stouffville is. My guess is people had to head north to Collingwood, or even farther to Quebec to get good snow and cooler temps. Considering we are supposed to get up to 13°C with pouring rain I’m glad we didn’t book any type of ski trip. Luck of the draw I guess. I do miss skiing, downhill or otherwise. Put the equipment on the list! A next year purchase maybe? Although I bet all that stuff will go on sale as stores move onto spring & summer related offerings.

Happy Tuesday, I think.

These tunes take me back to high school and Emmy first year at college. Not neccesarily dance music from the club scene, but rather ubiqitous music from every store, event, or location you can think of. A trip down memory lane, whether you like it or not.

While it will be lovely to still see the sun by seven o’clock this evening, the hour shift has me feeling a little out of sorts today. I can only imagine the havoc tomorrow morning when folks have to get up and go to work with one fewer hour of sleep. Add in the darkness, and then the first morning sun light glare on the roads as we are slowly starting to peak into thawing temperatures as the sun light grows stronger. Yeesh. Going to be an ugly few days. Thank the lord for March Break and a reason to slightly reduce hours and play with my kids when they are home, and available 24/7.  Climbing has been suspended for the week, and Taekwondo is running day camp hours, and Girl Guides is closed, so that leaves us ample time to watch movies, eat meals together, try to tap some maple trees, and generally get on each others nerves as quickly as possible. Ha.

Walking at the farm might need to be put on hold as the mud, and general presence of a gloppy mess is too much to subject our vehicles to at this point. I think some more local neighbourhood walks on a leash will fit the ticket for a short while atleast. Or until I can figure out how to transport the dog in a bubble that stops the car interiors from getting absolutely covered in grim. Towels and blankets don’t seem to do as well as I had hoped. A secondary crate for the van might work if I wanted to drop $200 on something we will rarely use. Sure, fine, awesome. No, I think the better option is to just walk the side walks and side streets more locally and let him sniff about, and not care so much about the step count as it were. Quality time together over quantity of steps taken. Could be a nice change up.

It’s already March 9th, and it will be St Patrick’s Day before you know it. The kids have eye doctor appointments that morning. We will be into April before you even know it. Wild! I have several nephews, and one niece with birthdays this month too. Late in the month, in a flurry of activity bam, bam, bam one after the other. One whom will be 19, another turning 18, and the youngest will be 11. My how time flies!

Plus the 1 hour we lost last night tipping directly from 1:59am to 3:00am in the blink of an eye. Lost time,  that’s a serious condition. Feel bad for anyone with a flight today. Hope you all remembered the clocks changing when booking your travel plans!

Boy how the mighty have fallen off now huh. All I see are ads and very little organic engagement on Linked In these days. Sell sell sell me something, like a course, webinar, seminar or book. It’s paid ads and grift. Not the place I would go to look for work anymore. I’m not entirely sure where I would turn to now anyway, but it sure isn’t Linked In.

I got off of X about a month ago, and I might give up on more social media sites as the year wears on. I can’t recall the last positive interaction that I’ve had with Linked In, so it might be time to leave. Perhaps not right this minute but the transition away from the site will happen. Will some other entity pop up as THE place to go to look for real jobs that companies are ACTUALLY hiring for? I don’t know. Seems like the jobs market has been in a real trough for a number of years now. Fun.

But on another note, here we are on a cold and snowy Saturday morning. Funny how true words were not written down by me than the off the cuff remarks about a lone email changing the course of your day, week, month, or whatever. Funny how life works eh? On the plus side I got that report off my desk in record time, and have the week free from it thanks, in part, to the March Break going live as of 3:00pm Friday afternoon. No shortage of folks jumping at the starting gun to run off and enjoy some sun, sand, and warmth elsewhere. Or maybe your kink is a hut on a lake for ice fishing, or a snowmobile, or cross country and down hill skiing. Who knows what you all have in store for the March Break. I hope it is something you like, and will enjoy.

The clocks move forward at 2:00am tonight skipping directly over to 3:00am, so let us all pray for a quiet morning and an easy transition to those bright and sunny evenings we grow to be so fond of. Nolonger will the sun set before 7pm from here until the fall! Yay. Waking up back in the dark for a bit is going to suck for a while. Same with that bright easterly sun rise on the commute in to work. Beware of the glare!

And on that bombshell I will bid you adieu. Bon voyage! Take care, be safe, and come home safely. Ciao Bella.

I do hope that traffic isn’t a nightmare when trying to go just about anywhere next week. All of the parks, and things will be jam packed with day campers, and lost souls alike. Trying to get a group together to do anything fun indoors, or outdoors will be a herculean task over the next nine days. If you didn’t schedule it before, it probably won’t happen. Just saying.

Next week my wife and I will have reversed roles, where I will be working and she will be off. So atleast the kids will be partially supervised for 99% of the time. They are a little bit older now and don’t require 100% supervision to not die. Now it’s more like 85-90%, unless they get into Minecraft and then they just sink into the couch with the game for an hour at a time. Unless they ask for a beverage they aren’t going to need much of anything at that point. Far simpler than kids under five. Atleast for brief spurts.

I’m so sick of the snow it would have been amazing to head back out to sandy beaches and sun shine. But not this time. We got out ahead of the surge pricing on flights, rentals, and hotels etc by going mid February instead. Which was super fun, but now that there is still so much winter left to go I’d rather be swimming under the warm sun – again.

I have yet another full day to go in order to wrap up my latest report, so I best be about my business shortly. I will say this, isn’t it funny how life imitates art, imitates life again. Full circle. Funny that.

Spent this snowy, blowey morning walking the dog, and grocery shopping expecting a quiet end to a mostly quiet week when BAM! new big report comes in. I knew it was on the horizon so not entirely unexpected, or from out of the blue, but it did add a whole lot to what was essentially an empty day. Now I’ve got charts, tables, graphs, and photo sets to pour over like a madman. Nice. Work in means invoices out! Happy Thursday.

Tried out the new glasses for an hour or two before they made me feel queasy. Slow steps. Did make things clear though, won’t lie about that. Just that the peripheral vision had an orange peel wobble to it that  turned my stomach. Fun times.

I am now officially in possession of my first pair of reading glasses. I should mention that as of about ten years ago I should also have been in possession of atleast one hearing sid, so while I do treat the new reading glasses as a mark of aging, I don’t think of my poor hearing the same way. I’ve had hearing loss since I was about six years old, so not age determinate. That was more genetics and not an organ slowly changing shape over a forty year span. But on that note perhaps you’ve guessed it, I am now forty five years old. Closer to age fifty than ever before! Fifty, wow. Yikes. There’s an age that always seemed so far off into the future as to be unobtainable, and yet it’s now closer than feels comfortable. Ha.

The glasses are a welcome change as I read a fair bit all day every day, so making the text clearer, and thus easier to see is a boon! Bestowed upon me for a not inconsequential sum of money, I might add. Aging, isn’t it fun. Different, yet similar for a good chunk of us.

I took my youngest rock climbing last night, which was pretty awesome. The gym is less full on Tuesdays than Saturdays.  Go figure. Tried my hand at some old trusty favourites, with success. Even went so far as to try a 5.9, which in turn laughed at me with its entire chest. Not there yet. I still have to work on grip strength, angle of attack, hand & foot holds, pivots, swings, leaping up to catch a hold from a crouch etc… long way to go yet. I just seem to slide off those tiny little nub holds. Whether it’s a foot or a hand I can’t seem to stay put on too many of them. I know my balance is bad, the Wii sports pad/board thing showed me that fifteen or so years ago. You had to stand on it and do breathing exercises, or yoga, skiing or hoola hooping, and my body was all over the place even at rest. I didn’t know I moved about quite that much, but rolling on the balls of my feet to keep my weight centered was pretty obvious when tracked on screen. It was enlightening. I’ll never be a surgeon! My hands aren’t steady enough. D’oh!

Today is Wednesday of all days. That means Taekwondo and tutoring runs for the kids after school. And it’s a real wet one today. Just pouring rain outside. So skating next week, or even later this week has been called into question. They might have missed their chance by about a week unfortunately. For next week is March Break so no school trips then either. Which puts the rain date into the third week or March and who knows what kind of weather we’ll have by then? Any bodies game at that point.

Made a pit stop after walking the dog in the rain down at the farm. Had to go all the way across town to the optometrist office to grab my new specs. They could have just handed them to me, but instead they made a big show of opening the box, washing the lenses, having me try them on etc… should have been twenty seconds, took fifteen minutes. Oh bother.

I have them in hand now. Maybe I should take the day to read nonstop in them while I get used to them. I opted for some very light frames, as I have found my sun glasses to be far too heavy. Those fall off my face at every opportunity. Slide down my nose, or fall off the back of my head if I put them up for a second. It’s an irritant. Maybe I’ll buy one of the sports cables to keep them firmly affixed whilst I have them on for good measure. Don’t want to drop them!

Would have preferred a win rather than an OT shoot out loss, but I had very little to do with how my beloved (yet heavily criticized) Leafs perform. Coming off a six game heater to lose to the second worse team in the league certainly is something. Made downing multiple large Coors Banquets that much easier, I’ll tell you that much.

For some reason I had the game starting at seven, but it didn’t kick off until seven thirty so that should have been my first clue that the night would go long. I thought (stupidly?) That we’d catch the 10:12pm train/bus combo home and I’d be in bed sound asleep by 11:30pm. But when we had to catch the 11:15pm bus I knew that hope was a bust. Home before 1:00am though! Yay! That’s a very late Monday night for me. I try not to be up after 11pm if I can help it.

The Taco Bell Deluxe Box with a 32oz drink was as spectacular as ever. Came out  as hot as the surface of the sun, so I held it gingerly whilst eating, so as to not burn all the flesh off of the roof of my mouth. A whole lot of hasafasafasafasaa while chewing early on in the meal. Delicious, if a tad hot. At least my Dr Pepper was vast, deep and cold. It was very tasty. Could of had another later on in the evening.

Now we are back to normal, and I’ve got work to do for my accountant, and for clients alike. Tax time, and the tax man approacheth. Tread carefully! Ha.

Oh oh oh there’s a Leafs game tonight and I’ve got tickets to go, yay me! Taking my good friend with me this time. I did at one time feel bad that I wasn’t taking my eldest daughter, but I think she’ll get over it while playing at her grandma’s house for the evening. I do hope to be home and in bed by 11:30pm, so I’m not going to be out and about partying afterwards just because I don’t have a child with me. But first — work.

Not sure if I picked this up from my youngest child, from the optometrists office, or because I had a laughing fit that make me cough violently, then checked on my drink the same day, but it’s irritated, and exacerbated by lying down, which makes sleeping less enjoyable. Either way, not feeling 100% right now, but I’m also not bedridden, and feeling like death, so that’s a plus, and a check in the win column. Tasting blood during bigger coughing fits is unpleasant, but thus far, few & far between. Nice!

Somehow yesterday I thought it was Sunday already, so last night was weird. I may have fipped too deep into the cough suppressant to enjoy my evening coughing fit free, and slipped into an alternate dimension. It was — weird. But luckily today is actually sunday, so huzzah! Another day or rest. If I can keep my cough under wraps I might actually enjoy tomorrow night’s Leafs game downtown.

Now that it’s March I should take some time and put my taxes together for real. That means three plus hours of data entry! yippee. Has to get done, so I best get at it some time soon.

My new glasses should show up either on Friday or the following Monday of March Break. Here’s hoping I didn’t waste a bunch of money on them, and that they actually help me on a day to day basis. Turns out my right eye has gotten weaker, by a fair margin over the last three years. Since my last eye exam anyway. Numbers on the microwave and stove were getting fuzzy from my vantage point on the living room couch. But it wasn’t due to being tired, or low light. My right eye just isn’t very sharp at certain distances, and type sizes any more. I had to close my right eye to be able to (kind of) read small text at a distance. But now, objects kind of disappear at a certain focal depth, so I was having trouble clipping my kids toe nails because it all goes blank, and I lose what I’m looking at if it’s too close and too far away. That’s been a fun experience. Now my entire immediate (childhood) family wears spectacles. I was the last hold out, and it finally got me at age 45! Ha. Grey hair, glasses, and I do need a hearing sid for my left ear. I’m positively geriatric at this point. Don’t let me stop rock climbing, or long boarding as they’re among the only things keeping me young at heart. Besides model kit building, and miniatures painting, guitar, sculpting, wood working etc etc… it’s a state of mind. Gotta keep the body moving though in order to enjoy that other stuff.

I need to sort out tomorrow night, because the kids need to be looked after while my wife has her staff meeting, I need to get down town, and the kids need to get to their programming as well. Though in all honesty, we could miss one day of Taekwondo, if we still pick up Wednesday & Thursday of this coming week. My eldest can pick up one additional bout and still get the same amount of combat experience for the week. Tuesday nights will now be for climbing with my youngest at The Hub, so my dream of going twice per week will actually be realized soon enough. Put my monthly membership to good use, with four additional days of usage. I can dig it.

Starting to feel the urge to purge now that spring is near. Boots & shoes need to be sorted out because we have just so damn many of them, every where. Boots of all types, cuts, heights and adornments. So many shoes, sneakers, and dressy sandals. Flip flops and crocs, and water shoes. High heels, fur lined, uggs, the list goes on and on. Soccer cleats and rain boots, ankle height galoshes. It’s like a payless warehouse in here. Coats, coats, and more coats. Snow pants and splash pants. Ponchos and more just littering our front hall closet. I need to regroup. Ciao Bella.