Month: September 2025

For this year’s Markham Fair I am sending in a generic Ninja Turtle I sculpted out of Aves Epoxy. It was the first time I’ve ever used the stuff so I was proud of it for that, but based on other full figured sculpts I have done in different materials, this one is a little lacklustre. Not a problem, perhaps I can hide my crimes with a layered paint job that adds where my physical piece is lacking!

So far it has been primed and had four layers of different shades of green, and one yellow sprayed on it. A dark green wash for the lumps & bumps. And a tooth brush spackle of dark green, plus some red, blue, and purple blotches. I will tie it together with a thinned out dark green over top. I got impaction and laid down some black under layer on the knee pads and then reminded myself I wasn’t done with the green skin, and I haven’t added any brown or yellow for the shell yet either. No point rushing forward just to paint over top of it immediately after.

I’ll see how today goes if I can do any more of it. I need to mow the lawn, do the kids laundry, and vacuum out the van, and unstack all the weights I have piled on the Taekwondo belt display that I glued up yesterday afternoon. I made a huge error and had to cut it down by 2/5ths, because I’m an idiot. So now I don’t think I have any room to router in any text. Maybe a name or initials and that is about it! D’oh!

The camera isn’t picking up a lot of the subtleties of the paint job, but that’s ok. It gets judged in person under orange fluorescent lighting. So I’m not too worried. I don’t typically win these things, I just like to enter, and have something of mine visible at the fair since I no longer draw or paint on canvas much anymore. I’m well out of practice and don’t get in the mood for it until fair time, and by then I haven’t practiced enough to make anything worthwhile to submit. Could be worse! Ha.

Time to see if my push ups and hand grip strength training have any sort of positive improvement to my climbing ability! Put the money where my mouth is type of thing. I’ve spent months, plural, now working my way up from the 50 lbs to the 175 lbs, and I even attempted to squeeze the 200 lbs gripper (with some modest success even). I haven’t promoted myself up to doing the 200 every morning as I am still finding a lot of resistance from the 175. I’ll get there though! I can see it on the horizon. Will it translate to firmer holds on thinner lips, and more intense inclines? I don’t as of yet know.

Our chalk bags are loaded up, and my shoes and harness are ready to roll. Our kit bag sometimes doubles as our day trip bag, but I have made sure to put all climbing items back inside. That includes the two partial bottles of liquid chalk, and a single bottle of hand sanitizer. I have not needed a brush for the hand holds yet. Chalk is funny, you need enough to get a solid grip but too much removes your grip, and not enough lets you slip. When it builds up on certain holds you’re gonna fall, hence why the better climbers carry a brush to clean off overly chalked hand holds.

I am also hoping that my arms and quads will not feel like bricks come Wednesday morning, because while I have done a few seconds of dangling, I have not climbed much of anything, and so the potential to grip too tightly when it isn’t required is really high when I’m out of practice. No need to white knuckle every single second of your climb. I have been practicing my forearm stretches, so I will do what I can to mitigate that overzealous nonessential gripping. Gotta save some strength in the hands for the drive home! Ha.

In other news two of my brothers have birthdays today. Happy birthday! Hope you are faring well as you reach, and near fifty years of age. It’s not all that far off for me either — yikes! As a child I thought the age of forty was “old” and that has long since gone now. I can still ride roller coasters, so I’ll take that as a win. They both live a fair distance from here so I won’t be seeing them to celebrate. Will have to take my texts & gifs in my stead.

It’s Tuesday, so that means recycling day. Plus it’s a garbage week too so I’ll need to scour the house for junk that needs to go to the curb (preferably before they swing by). I will figure that out after school drop off. Plus I have paid work to do today, and more volunteer stuff so I’ll be pretty busy for most of the day. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Chemicals to make tap water safe. Chemicals to lower pH balance from Alkaline. Chemicals to keep the pH balance at or very near 7 for fresh water fish. It’s all a bit much for my liking. So our water is good for Nitrites and nitrates, in the ideal range. Our water is soft, and our chlorine is very, very low, also in the ideal range. However we are alkaline, and our alkalinity is also high. So off I went for test strips this morning, which is why I know these esoteric details regarding our water quality. Then off I went to PetSmart to get the pH control fluids, one to go down, and one to stabilize at or near 7, which is neutral if I remember grade school chemistry at all.

So now we wait for the chemicals to percolate through the entire tank, and make the rounds through the filters, and in another few hours I will test again. See where we are. Might be forced to put the purchase of a few fish off for the night while the water gets sorted. I don’t know. I do not fancy having to break it to my youngest that she might need to wait yet another day lest we kill all of the newly (to be) purchased fish. Seems a shame to rush out and then kill them all over night with less than ideal water conditions.

So besides getting several invoices paid over the last few days, and hitting up Wonderland yesterday, and working on some volunteer projects this morning, I haven’t gotten up to much. I did just buy new locking caster wheels for my bench top jointer cart, so that it’ll stay put as I try to run lengths of boards over those spinning blades. Seems helpful to have the machine remain stationary as I hold on to four, six or eight foot long boards running over top of its cutting surface. Should feel a tad safer now. I don’t much care if the planer moves, I feed into it and walk away. The jointer however requires my presence, and active participation.

My taekwondo belt display is slowly progressing. I have the header glued up ready to be planted flat. Then I’ll cut the mounting grooves. Then cut out the shape and then glue the whole lot together. Then I can sand it down a bunch, and then add the clear coat finish. Then pop in the dowels and call it a day! Not necessarily in that order, but you know what I mean.

Back to Monday with all of us. Tomorrow two of my brothers have birthdays. They aren’t twins, just born on the same day two years apart. They will be turning fifty and forty eight respectively. Two of us are now fifty and over, and two of us are still in our forties. My my what a time to be alive! Being at Wonderland yesterday my daughter and I lamented that my brothers were not able to come visit in Ontario this year to try out the new Alpenfury ride. Perhaps next year will work out in our favour!

Namely the driving range! Ooh-ah-oh. We have done years of mini putt, both outdoor & indoor glow in the dark courses. So my oldest is well acquainted with the “short game” particulars of putting on slopes, weird elevations, and obstacles. But yesterday, once the wind had died down and the grey clouds no longer looked as though they were prepared to drop another two inches of rain on us, we came out of GloTown mini putt and dive bombed straight for the range.

I left things as easy breezy as I could because it was the first time we have ever gone together. I wanted it to be a fun experience where they feel as though they’d like to do more of it another day. Mission accomplished on that front. I might have just created a range buddy! Yay. I started her off with a three iron. A club I do not use all that often. I had her stand and wiggle the club for a bit. Then sweep it side to side. Then I let her go bananas on some 5-10 balls, and then I did a few shots. Back and forth we went through a large bucket of balls. The point wasn’t to teach all the finer points and get her deep inside her own head, but to have fun, and to spend time together where we can chat about whatever she likes. I believe we were successful on having fun, and having a nice chat too.

Occasionally I would put forth a small tip, but otherwise I let her get comfortable standing, swinging, eyeing up the ball, holding the club how she feels comfortable doing it, and finding a range of motion that suits her. We didn’t use parallel clubs to showcase swing direction, or do anything technical. This was an introduction, and we kept it fun, and light on any instruction. I’m not fit to give much instruction anyway because I am terrible at golf, but it’s fun!

That was my main message to my daughter, give yourself permission to enjoy things because you love them, and not because you are good/great at them. Not everything needs to become a side hustle or your next “look at me” moment. Enjoy doing the things even if you suck at it. Sometimes only age and lived experience will grant you permission like that, but I thought I’d pass along such wisdom so that she didn’t have to miss out on activities she likes because she hasn’t gotten good at it early on, or ever for that matter.

Today I think we might run off to Wonderland for a brief rendezvous with some roller coasters and pre-paid food & beverages. Going to get our money’s worth out of these seasons passed. Giddy-up!

Means scouring my inlaws basement cellar for pebbles, rocks, filters, bubblers, coral and terrain for these new fish we are expecting.balso means a lot of tank cleaning and enrichment item washing. I figure we let everything soak for a few days, with a couple of water changes and we should be good to go on the fish by next week or the one immediately after.

Depends on if we are buying distilled water or letting the tap water sit and off gas before we use it on anything worthwhile. Depending on the volume of water we are using will alter how long that step takes. It’s not something I am very familiar with, and off the top of my head do not know how to calculate it either. Time to learn!

Just out at the farm walking the dog. Or I was and now I’m taking a moment to sit and collect my thoughts on these impending fishes coming out way. Fresh water and not fancy salt water fish. It’s a cool morning by any standards at just 13°C. Not so long ago we were deep into the high thirties and low forties. Now I’m in a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt and a sweater combo. Still clinging to the shorts though. I’m still Canadian! Ha.

Wife and kids are off shopping for fish accoutrements. So that could be a while. Likely also expensive given my children’s tastes, and my wife’s love of top of the line gear when it suits living creatures. For herself not so much, but for animals in our care, whoo-boy! They live like kings! Kings I tell ya.

I best go enjoy my Saturday. Ciao Bella!

Made from Walnut I sourced from KJP out of Napean, near Ottawa. It came in two heavy boxes in the mail about a year or so ago. Possibly longer than that, I have a bad habit of moving on from projects once I hit a snag that requires me to wait on materials. But nevermind that.

I started out with several skip planned boards that border on being S4S quality, a near miss. Which is a good thing because I did not pay S4S prices for this rustic Walnut. So I have eight or ten four foot lengths that are all one inch thick, and varying widths. Some four, some six, some are even eight inches wide. I ordered twenty board feet and if you mix n’ match them all together you get what I needed out of it. All is good.

But the project 8 have in mind is delicate, decorative and doesn’t require one inch thick pieces. And, because I do not own a handsaw with more than three inches of resaw capacity, I turned to my table saw, fence, tape measure and about twenty passes to cut two thick boards into four book matched thinner boards. Those I ran through the planer here to get a somewhat consistent thickness across all of my pieces. The table saw resaw is a tad sketchy when you have the blade all the way up, as you lead a four foot length of board through it on its narrow side. Huge potential for life altering, nay, life ending calamity. Some of those accidents are diabolical. Yikes. Viewer discretion is advised.

Next I cut those four boards into the appropriate widths to form the two backbone pieces, and ten plates that will eventually sit flush inside those two backbones. I rounded over the four corners of those ten plates on my bench top sanding machine. My trusty old WEN. It has a four inch wide by thirty six inch long belt running on it, and made short work of the round overs. Not particularly consistent, but that’s more my error than the machines. Ha.

Today I set up the dado stack on my table saw, along with the wider blade guides, removed the riving knife, and used my dado stack table top sled to give me a reference surface, and a way to get out of sight of those spinning collection of blades. I measured out the gaps I needed with the ten plates and a set of calipers. Marked off what was to go, and what needed saving, and tapped the backbones together and had at it. I followed along with my vice and a small hand plane to get everything to fit. As with all my table saw dado work, some were loose, some were right, and some were perfect. I’m not talented, but a three way 33% split has got to count for something! Ha.

I have to figure out my top panel. It was going to have my daughter’s name on it, or just say “Belts” or “Taekwondo” routered into a shaped panel. But I have not made a panel yet, and the shorter the routed text the better. So I have a glue up to do, and then some shaping before I can even think of how to add text to it.

Then it will require dowel pins for the belts to be drilled in and glued, and/or elastics too. Plus hours of sanding, and at least two layers of a satin clear coat finish, with a mild scuff in between to knock down any raised grain fibers. It’s a process. I’ve made progress today so I will quit while I have all of my fingers, toes, and both eyeballs in working order. A win! Yes.

If I remember to I will post again once I make even more headway on this project that I started back in June.

Or a singular fish, or a whole school of them, I’m not entirely sure. All I know is is that I had to locate my wife’s old tank, which the kids used last year to hatch Monarch butterflies, and then promptly discarded, and filled it with junk. So I found it yesterday evening in my inlaws basement, along with the lid and light fixture. As well as the MDF veneered stand covered in tin foil astrological stickers. Those have since come home and been brought inside. The stand at least. The glass tank has been hosed off, scrubbed, rinsed, and is now drying itself off. Then it’ll come inside, unless the threat of rain makes me bring it indoors sooner than later.

Now I have never owned fish so I am not 100% certain of the level of care they require. Feeding them daily I get, but filter maintenance, bubblers, cleaning the tanks, adding items into the water, oxygenation levels, pH level testing, is all unknown to me. I had dogs, a rat, a hamster, and later on a veiled chameleon. My family had rabbits and a brother had gerbils. So I’ve known pets, and their various modes of care. But aquatic life is beyond me at this point. I’m a noob, such as it is, with fish anyway.

I’m under the impression we can’t use tap water unless it has been left to offgas for at least 7-10 days depending on the quantity. So to fill the tank and soak all the elements and enrichment items and let that work itself out might require about two weeks of set up and processing time before we can even think about getting fish, and adding them in together in the one tank. I have a separate smaller tank made of plastic where I can house them if I have to do any major clean outs of the big tank. But again, that will need to be scrubbed and cleaned before any fresh water fish come out way.

My wife apparently has her eye on a cool tank of her own so now we might end up with two full time tanks, plus the third and much smaller holding tank in the kitchen. This is looking like it might spiral out of control quickly. We still need bubblers, filters, rocks, plants & grasses, food, nets, snails and/or shrimp, logs, caves, and whatever else they can sell us easy & eager marks. I know when I’ve got a bullseye painted on my forehead, believe you me. They’ll smell us coming from a mile away.

Oh yeah this holding tank needs a major scrubbing.

So unless I get any work e-mail this morning I am going to be otherwise engaged in cleaning these up ready for our new semi permanent house guests. Who knows how long any of them will survive in this house along with us! I see a raising fish for dummies book in my near future.

Expecting over an inch of rain this morning which means no tree work, no driving range, and definitely no golf as an option. It seems pretty windy too which will likely place our farm walk under suspension as well. This is just going to make the grass grow more than it needs to now. Where was all this rain back in July & August when we were desperate for it, you know? I realize this is good for the water table, and refilling the ponds, and streams and such around here, but… Gah! Never can get it when we want it.

I’m glad I took some time yesterday to remove a portion of the larger tree limb that required the ladder, and a chainsaw. I made three quarters of the cut before the saw gave out. Which is concerning. I suspect bad premixed gas as the culprit. Hope the saw isn’t too far gone because of it. So once the saw quit I took the rest of what I was going to cut with a hand saw. I lopped all the whispy bits off, and broke the larger bits down by hand. I still have a good portion of the remaining limb left to go, but eh? What are you going to do? Wait out the rain.

It is Thursday. I saw the Jays make a 5-0 come back from the middle of the third inning to win 13-9 in the ninth. That was initially disappointing, and turned out to be rather exciting to watch. The bleachers in Cincinnati were 90% empty, so I’m sure that didn’t help the Reds out all that much. No cheering, no fanfare. Crickets. I never did get the kids out to a Jays game this summer. Prices went up — of course. Too expensive to take all four of us and get halfway decent seats. I’m not certain that they’d sit through a full three plus hours of baseball anyway. So maybe, no harm done. Have fun on this rainy September Thursday in 2025.

Luckily I have an appointment early on this morning so I do not need to answer that question right away. I can mull it over. Let it stew. Let me feelings regarding my current level of back ache to marinate for a spell. Afterwards on the drive home I can ask myself if I am realistically well enough to spend an hour or more moving ladders, ropes, wedges, and lopping apart tree branches all while bending over, reaching to one side or the other, and kneeling in the grass.

I honestly think that by Saturday it won’t be an issue, so I should stop being so impatient, and just let the muscles heal without further aggravation. Seems simple enough to do, but I really want that particular chore done. It’s loud, and messy, and not at all safe (as far as potential calamity in yard work is concerned). It involves heights, heavy weights, a chainsaw, exhaust fumes, and ladders are rolled into one task. A smorgasbord of high risk factors. I need to actually wear steel toed boots, a helmet, ear & eye protection, and if I can find them chainsaw pants/chaps to reduce the risk of a horrific meat grinder-esque fall onto the moving blades. It’s food for thought.

I’m just killing time right this second until I have to drive into the centre of Markham for my appointment. Lots of heavy traffic left turns that will either go smoothly, or require me to sit and wait for an extra fifteen minutes. No telling how it will fall until I’m in it. Gotta love traffic and commuters.

The one appointment has become two, with a requisition form and a second location back in Stouffville. More blood work in my future, and now an ultrasound to go along with last year’s MRI. I’m just loaded with surprises as of late! The joys of growing older I guess.

I’m glad I left as early as I did, as that twenty minute drive took nearly a full hour. Delays, detours, and 9:00 am road traffic are a hell of a thing! Good thing I had that blood work done yesterday, because this update to today’s schedule is a direct result of those findings. Exciting! Could this be why my skin itches so badly all spring/fall/winter long? Probably not, but it could be.

Next steps if my current prescriptions stop working are incredibly expensive, like $15,000 – $25,000 a year expensive. Yikes! I’m not going to dwell on that right now because it hasn’t happened, and I don’t need to borrow stress that hasn’t occurred yet. And on that note I am going to sign off for now. Ciao Bella!

It was a seamless transition back into grades three and six respectively. I met my youngest daughter’s teacher (a very lovely lady we’ve had before with our older child) and I told her about what we are doing to support her learning outside of the classroom with a tutor, so we have an understanding about how to catch them up in class, and how many years it could take to do so. Hopefully encouraging for everybody involved. Covid really put a damper on both reading and writing, so we are taking steps to address that with both kids.

So far so good. I met a few other parents I haven’t seen in the last nine weeks, and we had a brief catch up session while we waited for all the kids to filter into the school. They have new classrooms, hooks/cubbies to claim, and desk order to find. Today might be a slower day, or they may just dive head first into new material with little to no time to spare. I do not know. It’s anybody’s game at this point!

Us parents have a dinner excursion planned for Saturday evening, so we can hopefully all catch up, commiserate about the hot summer, and how it feels both too short, and oh so very long all at the same time. I did see several familiar faces in my youngest child’s class. The best friend was placed elsewhere, but rosters aren’t final until the first week of October, so no need to worry too much yet. I think I saw a student returning whom left after senior kindergarten, so that might be an interesting update for my youngest, as the student was a treasured friend at the time. We will have to wait and see.

My back is a bit better, thankfully. So yesterday I trimmed a shrub out the front to make me feel like I did not waste the whole day with aches and pains. Today I have taken down one of the two limbs I want removed off of the maple. I took the smaller, lower one, because I can do it with a hand saw, loppers, and about 20 minutes of down time. I need a ladder, saw, some ropes to tie off limbs so I don’t squash our fence/gate directly below it. I don’t fancy hanging off a ladder with a heavy chainsaw while my back still hurts. So maybe I can get to it on Friday, or Saturday morning.

The maple is dying, slowly at that. So I see a bunch of dead limbs that could be a spot of bother in the future, which I want to remove. I don’t have the right gear to get too high into the tree, but my ladder can reach 20 or so feet, so I’ll do that much, and no more. I fully expect this tree will need to come down within the next 5-10 years. Easily. Its had bark coming off it for ages, and the outer reaches are dead, and much of the very top is dead too. Now don’t get me wrong it still gets a full canopy of leaves, but in amongst all that is a whole lot of dead limbs, and crumbling, flaking bark. I’m no arborist so I don’t know which pestilence it has.

I can not bring myself to wrench on the pull cord of my chainsaw for twenty minutes just to get it started either. My back is tender as it is without seventy tugs to get the old girl going. I bought the Stihl ms170 in 2006, so it can be a bit of an operation to start it for the first time in a season. That is also why I am not chomping at the bit to get going on tree work. I made myself feel ill pushing and lifting the Seadoo docking pods, and I don’t feel like going that hard for a little bit longer. Bit of a shock to the system to go from all out leisure to push till you puke sort of thing.

I really do need to work out as that feeling will persist until I can get beyond it. I look forward to getting back into doing Olympic lifts again. Not vanity lifting, but good for the bones heavy lifting. I miss it. You can listen to music and go slowly. I like that very much indeed.

Wow! Can you believe it? The first day is school is really here. All ready an hour in. Madness. Now I need to turn my attention back to working since my time is mine own again for seven hours each week day. Fare well. Until tomorrow!