Month: June 2025

Started the day off sending project files to press, and soon enough I will begin the first subsection of a large report.bweekend looks like it will be great weather. TGIF!

Whilst I have only sold one official copy of my book through the Amazon Kindle Unlimited program, I do have double digit downloads (for free I might add) of both of my books of collected interconnected space short stories, directly from my WordPress blog. That makes me happy. I do not know if they managed to read them all or in part, or what. My hope is that they enjoyed at least some small part of what I was going for. Perhaps a giggle, a guffaw, or a nasal snort escaped them involuntarily. That’s a win in my book. I’ll take it!

It’s a rainy, and windy Thursday today. Closer to the end of the month than the beginning at this point. School is out, done, finito, as of next Thursday at noon. Time flies! I think that first day we’ll have them clean their rooms to see what items can get taken to the cottage, and not remain behind to clutter up their bedroom floors. I know we have some small kid sized plastic chairs to take, and a teeter totter as well. Perhaps the pirate water table can go too. It’s a bit big, so that might need to go up all on its own on a second dedicated trip, or something. Not that I want to treat the cottage as a dumping ground, but it beats the landfill, and also my Brice & nephew can enjoy it now too if we move it north, and not throw it all away. I can make that concession. That’s a compromise I am willing to be a part of.

What’s new? More unrest in the middle east. Bombs, bombs, bombs, retaliation, death & destruction. We now have 4K resolution tiktoks of bombs dropping. These newer ones light up like mini suns, and hit the ground before you hear anything. Unreal. Scary as all get out. I’m sure somebody somewhere is going to attack or sink the USS NIMITZ to kick things off for real. Why not get into a war because a 50 year old boat due to be decommissioned next May gets itself sunk. Cool, cool, cool. Who cares whose bombs blow it up? “Don’t touch the boats!” They will all scream. I’m sure it’s nothing.

Nice thing about the rain, drizzle, grey weather is the break in temperature. It was 31°C yesterday, and luckily only 63% humidity. Still a hot & sticky day. Even with the heavy rains in Vaughan it was a roaster, well into the evening hours. So I’ll enjoy this cross breeze while it lasts.

Maybe the breeze will help alleviate the skunk smell. I think a skunk sprayed near our AC unit because it clicks on out of the blue, and makes a real racket when it does so. Scaring a weasel friend causing it to spray on, or near the unit because that stink permeated throughout the entire house when it has no reason to do so. Skunks are pretty active around here, and with all the windows shut it didn’t make sense for the basement to get so stinky too. Must have been drawn in by the affected AC unit. That’s my guess, and I’m sticking with it for now.

I have paid work to do, so best be about my business. Ciao Bella!

My friend is currently in the midst of a move and required a little help to move his mattress and box spring out of a basement apartment. They must have got it in there with mere thousandths of an inch to spare which meant doing it in reverse order was neigh on impossible, hence the SawsAll, and a fair amount of cutting, dust, and shredded fibers. But we got both items up & out of there! To the curb for garbage day removal. Nice.

Otherwise I am waiting, watching, and hoping the weather stays decent for an afternoon visit to Wonderland with my eldest today. Everything is so chaotic I don’t really know how you could predict the weather these days. According to yesterday morning some days next week are to get close to 40°C. There was a 36°C, and a 38°C, but when I look today it now says 34 is the highest, and other days are now in the low twenties. Like I said, all over the place, and chaotic. Madness.

But here we are on Wednesday. Middle of June no less. These last few weeks have flown by. We will be knuckles deep into summer break before you know it. But, we still have one more birthday party to plan & execute, plus our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Otherwise we will steamroll right into July without pause. Day time swims! W00t-w00t!!

I bought my Father’s Day gift for myself a few months ago, probably closer to six weeks, but that is neither here nor there. A set of master craft tool boxes went on sale at 60% off, so I bought a 41″ wide tool chest, and upper cabinet with hutch, so that I could put all of my hand tools together, and out of the dusty open spaces of my garage. That purchase meant I could tear down this awful cart that I had build from an old changing table, and it allowed me to disassemble my first tool bench ever, and give myself more open space to work in. It meant one less flat work surface, but more room to manoeuvre in. A perfectly cromulent trade if you ask me. It pairs well with the Husky rolling tool cart, and the large 90″ by 90″ rack I bought for my birthday. So now my shop space is about as optimized as it will ever be without a huge overhaul that would require construction crews and like $60K worth of work. No thanks, I’m good.

But to make my kids have something to hand me I bought two 9 mm Gear wrench brand wrenches for myself for an additional $30. They were happy, and I am happy. I bought one static wrench, and one ratcheting. I had 8 mm, and 10 mm, but no 9 mm. And when I spent 30 odd minutes drilling through my garden forks to fix the loose tines recently I discovered I didn’t have the nines I would need to tighten down the bolts I was using. I did have one 9 mm socket, and with a set of pliers I could sort of tighten things down enough to suit my immediate needs. Now I can really bear down on it. Great!

Sometimes I still toy with the idea of getting a bandsaw, but the upgraded air compressor, Mitre saw and tool storage solution has been the far superior choice, this far. I used my visa card points for the compressor, and the Mitre saw was on sale. It was still pricey, but it’s of quality make, and design, and it also takes the place of the radial arm saw I once had, but donated to my wife’s school. Their wood working course would benefit from it more so than I. My new Bosch sliding double compound saw is the Tits! It’s fantastic. 10 out of 10. Do recommend.

I don’t think much about getting a dust extractor any more. Too loud, and too cumbersome. I will stick with my shop vac. My only wish was that the central collection tub be bigger by about 20 to 30 liters. That would really help me out a whole bunch. But, eh! I can do with what I’ve got.

I also finally managed to get all of my waste wood to the burn pile at the farm, and then move my furniture grade wood into a single sorted pile in the far corner beside my Mitre saw station. Things are all coming together! It really is fantastic.

Riding that high of cleaning up, and sorting things out lead me to finally tossing 95% of all the crap in the garage. I do have some old tech I need to get rid of, but that will require a trip to an appropriate dump, or collection centre for old monitors, and an old desk top of tower from 20 plus years ago. I bought that tower in 2002. Yikes. It’s older than the majority of my neighbours kids.

How did I get from 9 mm wrenches to my neighbours kids? Train of thought I suppose. Funny how that works. Take your hat as you never know where you will end up! Happy Tuesday.

A few of the Dahlias have all ready come up down at the farm. I do not know who started them off, or when they did, but they are small of stature, but very beautiful. Mostly with a single bloom on it at the moment. Still – a picturesque scene nonetheless.

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and I hope I didn’t break my streak by forgetting to write something, that would be a real misstep on my part. Can’t turn back the clock, so no use worrying about it if I did. I was gifted a hot breakfast in bed, a lie in of about 90 additional minutes, two lovely cards, and the day to putter about the yard pruning trees, planting corn, and playing catch under the shade of our large Maples. I even had a late afternoon swim, and a meat lovers pizza dinner with a Dr Pepper. Mmmm… That’s living.

We face timed my dad later on into the night because they are three hours behind us in BC. Wished them a good day and retired to bed with a few scratches, dings, and cuts. None the worse for wear. Hell I even broke out my long board for a quick few rips up & down the street in my Crocs and helmet. I am a style icon. You out there, mouth agape at all my glory. Suck it!

It started with the bamboo like Reed’s catching my leg, and ankle in a warm, sharp embrace, and ended with an apple tree slicing into my knuckle. Not the best way to start Father’s Day, but I can scratch (quite literally) three tasks off my honey do list for the summer all ready, so I will consider it a win.

Minor aches to prove I got stuff done. Nice!

Perhaps that’s not the terminology I am looking for. It should be Thinking Ahead, and what I did was, you see, I spent some time cutting the grass, and weed eating the lawn on Friday morning so that I have the entire weekend free. The sun is out, and I can be carefree out of doors if I so choose. I do have some low hanging branches to prune, and I think my fruit trees are a tad too low. It makes cutting the grass a hassle if I have to bend down below my waist to not take leaves, and branches directly to the face. Not a fan. So I will forfeit some fruit for the sake of making a repetitive chore easier to accomplish. I also have a significant patch of garden to weed far more thoroughly now that we are deeper into June. But I can do those at my leisure instead of after getting hot & bothered by the lawn care routine. I’ll take it!

Slept in by accident after staying up to watch the Oilers win 5-4 in OT. Yahoo! So didn’t start off all that great to begin with, but, I ran the dishwasher over night, and emptied it first thing (somebody whom shall remain nameless put their dirty dishes and a cup full of chocolate milk into it which ruined several plates and the majority of the cutlery — not great.) I ran my clothes through the wash. Fresh undies w00t-w00t! Dropped the kids off at school, ran over to my MIL to take her to the farm with us to discover she didn’t need a ride after all. Had a nice walk. I mowed the lawn, and did the weed eating too. My Echo weed eater struggled to start but eventually found itself in a solid groove. Nice! Then I vacuumed out the new van, and washed the interior. I changed up some cables in the garage because one of them was bugging me. I’d left it too long, so I’ve swapped it out for a shorter version of the same cord type. And now I am ready to have breakfast and see what’s what with my day job duties. I’m in a real quiet block right now, with only a handful of small things to do, so I knew I had time to focus on the house for a bit without hurting any of my day job clientele. Bonus!

So what’s left? Well there is a years worth of school recycling to go through and toss 95% of it all. Blinds could do with a wipe down (that particular job always takes longer than expected). Ceiling fans should get a good wash off too. Floors need vacuuming (that’s Graham!). And I could likely find any other number of small tasks to do around here if I felt like keeping the pace high all day long. I’ve sat down to write this so all ready that doesn’t look likely. Ha.

TGIF. Let us hope for a pleasant weekend around here. I’d like to have a good climbing day tomorrow, and then veg out a bunch if I can. Toodaloo. Ciao Bella!

After yesterday’s heater of a day it is rather cool at the moment. I’ve had to wear a sweater for school drop off, and even thought about stopping back at the house for pants when taking the dog for a walk. Brr. Chilly. Quite the change from yesterday where it was just about 20°C at little after 9:00 am. These weather patterns are very random. I hold little envy for modern day meteorologists and weathermen. How can you ever hope to predict anything with shear chaos going on out of doors lately. Wildfire smoke is altering temperatures, while ultimately raising them due to dumping excess carbon into the air. Fun times for all of us.

Summer begins in its official capacity at the tail end of next week. The heat will be upon us fast. And I’m sure the drought(s) will not be far behind. This spring has been a good growing season as I have several small trees that have shot up over the last six weeks. I don’t think they cared for the cold snaps and late frosts that we encountered, but they are visibly growing by the day right now. How they will weather the coming dry months is anybody’s guess. I’m looking towards added shade for the house, and blocking out the neighbours ability to look directly into our windows, or over look the back porch. I don’t walk around nude, but I’d like to not be able to have neighbours see directly into the house unobstructed. Let us keep a modicum of mystery between us.

I don’t know how many more climbing sessions we have this month, but I can go right up until the 29th if I so please. Then that will be a wrap until September at the earliest. Now I turn towards the driving range, swimming, biking, and use of my long board for exercise. Pushing the lawn mower is not as fun, but still can be physically demanding when the heat goes up, up, up outdoors.

I have work to get back to, so I best be about my business. Ciao Bella!

But do I turn to AI to write my blog posts? No, no I do not. If I haven’t got anything to say, I say that I don’t, and I sign off. It isn’t hard. I seriously doubt that your brand will suffer more from one day without a post versus serving up some awkwardly phrased AI drivel “content”. Take a moment, you deserve it. Anyway, buy my book, course, seminar, coaching mentorship programme and let me keep my Bentley for another quarter PLEASE!

Happy Hump Day!