Thought I had something teed up for this…

But it turns out I posted it last night, that being my epic battle with our wired in smoke detectors. It left me with two bloody fingers, very sweaty, and cursing a blue streak about four miles long. I was not impressed. But! We got them installed, with the green led showing, and the batteries activated (or so I hope!)

It is now Thursday, and I have walked the dog, been to Can Tire for water softener salt, filled the car with gas, and stopped off at Shoppers for my Rx, so now I am working diligently, just to remember I haven’t eaten yet. So breakfast it is then! A full morning of activities. The kids are at the library to see a magician of some sort. We have laundry on the go, and my book arrived yesterday (and it’s a good one!) I might have to look into book three soonish too. Oh my!

Otherwise the March Break is speeding along at pace, taking a chunk of the month with it! It’ll be April before you know it. Then May, then June, then POW! 9 weeks off with the kids for summer holidays. Man time flies eh? Holy schmoly.

Duking it out with some Kidde hard wired smoke detectors.

Hard some plumbing done which required a fair bit of soldering in a confined hallway equidistant from both of our hard wired smoke, and carbon monoxide detectors setting them off. So the plumber dutifully pulled them from the ceilings. I then fought with these two plastic bastards for a full 90 minutes while they chirped, beeped, spoke in french to me, and pulled themselves out of their brackets, and unhooked themselves from their wire nuts on more than one occasion. I shredded one thumb, and one pointer finger wrestling with those assholes. After a good fight, and very sore shoulders, and some loud expletives I think I have them installed correctly, with green LEDs showing, battery no longer asking for activation, and no other (for the moment) issues.

Not only that but the tub is now usable once again in the main floor bathroom, and the wall behind the shower is patched. I have it filled in. Needs to dry, and get repatched. Then sanded, and painted over. Good as new. We just so happen to hang a sizeable photo collage there, so nobody should be much wiser to the edit! Ha. Perfect.

I for one celebrated with a shower, and pray to the skies above that I will get a restful night’s sleep. Sad we didn’t get to do any maple syruping this March break, but the weather chose to be uncooperative for such an endeavour. We needed warm sunny days, followed by cold nights. What we got was heavy snow, and bitterly cold, blustery days instead. So — no dice. The kids did go out on the snowmobile with their grandpa a couple times, and did a fair few hours of tobogganing with all the fresh snow. They had fun. I worked a bunch, so it was all good in the end. I even took a turn in the hot tub watching all the kids at once. That was a very loud test of my patience. I prefer to relax in the tub, not get splashed and shrieked at for an hour. The things we do to occupy our littles.

My second Dungeon Crawler Carl book has arrived, so I intend to dig into that tonight, if I can lift my arms to turn the pages at all. Happy March break everybody!

The elusive good night’s sleep.

Something about this year’s time change has kicked off a round of poor sleep in our household. We are all waking up tired, groggy and feeling untested. I know the kids don’t feel tired at night time, but are really dragging ass in the mornings. I feel it too. No amount of naps or sleeping in seems to rectify the defect we are experiencing. I know we feel a bit funny with each alteration of the clock, but this seems harder for some reason. More doom & gloom on the news, worsening economy, doubts of a long or fulfilling future. More stress? I don’t know what it is but it’s getting to all four of us in a somewhat equal measure. Fun times at our house, swing on by!

I spent some time swinging an axe yesterday to split wood, and boy was it cold out yesterday, holy cow! I did split 90% of what was asked of me before I was told to stop. A little pile of logs can make a pretty sizeable stack of split wood in a short period of time. At least when the wood comes apart with each swing, and it doesn’t require ten plus swings just to open a crack, or make one piece into two, each time. I can still only go for 60 to 90 minutes at one time, so it wasn’t an all day thing. The cold would have gotten me to go inside after a short while longer anyway. The wind was biting. Long johns can only do so much, you know?

So now my shoulders, and back are feeling the exercise strain from yesterday afternoon. Not a problem. While I do have my day job to contend with, the kids are keeping themselves occupied for the most part this March Break. Unfortunately the weather has not cooperated for doing Maple Syrup, but there’s always next year. They have utilized the snow for tobogganing, and trail rides on a snowmobile. Skating has been offered up once or twice. Snow shoveling could keep them busy a few days in a row these days too! Ha. Damn snow.

March is dwindling fast because of the break week, so it’ll be April and raining all the time before we know it. I’ll have to go out for Easter supplies before too much longer. I already need to go and get a birthday present, and some hockey gloves for my eldest child, for a party she is attending over the weekend. Skates, stick, and a helmet we have, but no finger protection from slashing sticks. Trying to find old pairs that haven’t seized up entirely and started to crumble is proving more difficult than anticipated. Might just have to buy some, if we can find any for a reasonable price. That’s the name of the game for the foreseeable future, a reasonable price. Or work around, or doing without. Belt tightening. You know the game. Join the fun.

I bought it.

Book two that is, of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I resisted the urge to splurge and buy the first seven that are out (excluding the first book which I already have in hand). I have concerns that after a number of books it might start to feel a bit the same, so I’m going to go book by book for as long as I enjoy it. I must resist the completionist urge to grab the entire set, regardless of whether or not I read the whole lot. I don’t want to restock my entire book shelves. I spent a tonne of time & effort paring it down to just my favourite, best reads. I debated and thought about that selection for months on end. I dug through my books six or seven times to get it down to the smallest number of my personal favourites, and kept a solid selection of books I own, and am going to get around to reading. No point to just load up on a tonne of new books, even if I am trying to bolster my numbers of books read each year. My failing eyes gave me a bad year last year. I’m less resistant to both wearing, and utilizing my glasses daily. I need them for work now, so I wear them quite a bit. Now I just pick up my books to read because I already (most likely) have my readers on my face!

We are on the Tuesday of March Break week, not only that but today is Saint Patrick’s Day as well. Not that I’ll drink all that much in celebration of the day, but I will enjoy some green snacks, as I see some being prepared by my kids. I do like cupcakes!

Looks like last night’s storm left a few inches of fresh snow here, but nothing too crazy. I’m not too thrilled about having to shovel even more — again. Can this just please end! I vote we flip over to simple flurries with less than one centimeter of accumulation on the ground. Ugh.

Happy St Patty’s Day!

Glad I worked over the weekend.

It would have been a nasty, no good, very bad morning for me had I not done so. All good now though. Not to worry. Let us wait and see what else comes my way today.

I have just finished the first book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and I am excited to purchase, and read the next book in the set. As far as 8 can tell there are eight books in total for the entire series, but I’m good to get them on a case by case basis. Eight books feels like a lot to commit to all in one go. I did that with Dune, and still have two left to read. I found as we progressed in the story it got further and further from what I initially enjoyed about it. But, for now I am looking forward to book two, and potentially book three as well!

The weather is looking to get ugly within the next twenty four hours, as the tail end of the big storm finally reaches us. Friday afternoons snow has almost entirely gone, and the rain has settled in as of about two hours ago. It feels a little bipolar as we watch it snow, rain, heat up, cool down, freeze, and then get sunny, and then cloud over and get dark earlier than expected. It’s a mess outside! Fun times.

File not found, file no longer exists, or has been moved.

It’s Sunday-funday around these parts, and I’m looking at a particularly busy work week ahead. And while I have a busy week coming up I still would never consider outsourcing any part of my workload to an AI agent. People asking AI questions like it is a magic right ball, or to decide their day seems wildly unreasonable to me. How can you outsource your decision making to an external app? That notably doesn’t have your best interests at heart. It’s about billable tokens for tasks, not caring about your well being. Not my place to yuck your yum, but maybe pause to retain some control over your lives. Just saying. Don’t give it access to your money at the very least.

I have the fire roaring in the fireplace, and I’m thinking about starting on some work before Monday rolls around, because why not? It has to get done, and if I can get ahead of it now, then I probably should.

Looks like we are going to get another big snow storm, not as bad as the US will get, but more accumulation is definitely coming. Great. Even more shoveling is in my future. Not how I had planned to spend March Break, but things could be worse. We know a lot of people dealing with cancer diagnoses, and multiple deaths of quick succession. Amputations, chemo, radiation treatments, travel plans and surgery. We are very aware of how fortunate we are at this exact moment in time. It may not last forever, but I’m thankful for what we have right this second. So while I do detest the snow after five straight months of it, and I do not long to shovel my driveway any more this year, considering some alternatives, this isn’t all that bad.

In alternate news I am almost finished painting my sixteen Eldar gun toting warriors. So that’s cool. A few minor details left to paint on and I can put them up on the shelf. Up next will be the clean up and build my Ork Boyz. A birthday present from my wife no less! This time around I am going to carve off the mould lines, and file down any sprue points, and take my time painting them to the best of my (current) abilities. I am half a mind to order the Ork Patrol box to flesh out my shelves, but then some Adeptus Mechanicus look pretty awesome too. I don’t play the game so I don’t HAVE to have all the same people to try and paint as a cohesive army. Also it’s far more fun to paint fewer models to a higher standard than 40 plus models kind of poorly. The weather will change soon enough and I’ll be back outside in the wood shop enjoying a different set of tools. So I don’t need to go crazy with the minis.

I say that, but at some point in 2026 I will be receiving a large shipment of minis from Archon Studios for the Porthaven promo I paid into. It was why I went and bought the earth work, leathers, and military colour palettes from Vallejo. I’m all ready once those boxes turn up! Yeah-buddy.

You can have it back.

We started yesterday with bare grass and now we have somewhere in the vicinity of eight inches of snow, approximately. Take it all back. We had managed to rid ourselves of so much snow! We had dry bare grass. False spring really sucks. We have mounds of snow on either side of the driveway again. We are no longer cleared edge to edge because the new snow is too powdery to pile up properly. It has to be pushed to the lawn side of our driveway. I’m hot, sweaty, and irritated as all fuck. In the back of my mind I knew, just knew it was way too early to hope we were done with major snow dumplings. But I saw sunlight. I felt grass. It was sweater weather, and that voice faded just enough for this storm to kick me in the balls. Fuck you.

I’ve had to shovel twice now. Not only that but it’s now minus twelve, and blowing the snow about a little bit. If this season could just go someplace else for the next six months or so It’d be much appreciated. Just piss off. Pack your kit, and fuck all the way off. You can take the freezing rain, flurries, and wind chill factor with you while you’re at it.

Saturday, the first day of March break. Great day for those who ski downhill or cross country. They can get another day or two of runs in. I hear we are in for a wild mix of both positive, and negative temperatures the next nine days, so it’s likely to be mucky outside after this latest dump of snow goes soft and slushy. What a waste of outdoor time. We could have started yard clean up, and washed patio furniture, and played ball hockey in the driveway. Gone to use the swings at the park. I could have looked over the bicycles, greased the chains, inflated the tires, dusted off our helmets and taken a family tour about town. But no. We had more snow, so we aren’t going to do any of that.

To be honest, outside of work I had high hopes for starting some wood working projects because the weather was so agreeable. I will likely still have to wait until late April for that. I did sneak in some farm runs to clear out wood scraps & junk.bso I’m not totally upset about how this new weather development shook out. I am disappointed by it, but I’m not hindered in any sort of way. I have a lot of work coming in the next two weeks with a heavy deadline of the 25th, so I didn’t expect to get to spend all that much time in my shop. Sometimes just ten minutes to sit and admire the space is all I get, and that makes me happy too. After all the paid work allows for the hobby. That an slow periods where I’m not focused on cleaning, laundry, or purging the house of clothes and junk. I can get pretty easily distracted by the opportunity to clear out space around our tiny little bungalow. If I felt like it, I could buy some junk wood to screw down a “floor” in the attic, to give us some more places to put long term storage items. But issue with that is it doesn’t solve the “after we’re gone” clean up issue. It just puts untold amounts of stuff out of sight. I do believe there are things up there already from previous tenants, and owners of this house.

Once we were granted access to that dumpster I had a good look around the house, and besides the things I was able to toss in there, and the water softener, and accompanying brine tank, we don’t have a tonne of trash to get rid off. Yeah the children are clothes horses, and we have far too many shoes, boots, coats, hats and mitts for a family of our size. But you wouldn’t throw that away, you’d donate it to the needy, or younger cousins in the family. I think we had some ceiling tiles, old trim, and a set of blinds that don’t fit our windows, but it’s not really enough to warrant us getting our own dumpster, nor pulling the laundry room apart to be rid of those few items I just mentioned. I’m unbothered by them at this point. I think that stuff, plus whatever is in the attic could go to the dump as one load in our van, potentially with room to spare. I’ve done a very good job of winnowing our stuff down over the last four or five years. Try as they might to restock the house with things, I’ve got most spaces pared right down. Well except the Tupperware cabinet in the kitchen, for some reason we have a differing count of kids to vessels. They don’t all match, or work together. It’s an irritant point of mine. But I digress.

I want to keep some things for when (and if) our kids have families of their own, but I also don’t want the house full to the brim with everything under the sun. It’s a hard balance to strike. Be prepared for become grandparents in twenty years versus having a cleaner, and more spacious feeling house. I wrestle with it constantly.

Our friends have just moved and I am envious of the amount of space they all now have, but my kids would still play directly underfoot, regardless of how much bigger their bedrooms got, or the basement became, or the introduction of a living room, and family room, and sitting room, plus a dining room as separate spaces that could be occupied and enjoyed all at once, individually! A bigger primary bedroom, with walk in closet, and an en suite bathroom! Oh to dream! But on the other hand our mortgage is paid off so there’s that to contend with. Why move just to have to take on a whole new, and much larger mortgage? that’s ludicrous. In a few short years the kids will be in high school, and out & about with friends, and then off to college, university, or trade school of some sort. Before long this house will feel both quiet, and empty(ish). Given this economy I think the kids will be with us for quite some time. Likely until they are married, or something along those lines. But again, I digress.

So the long and the short of it is, fuck the snow, yay to spring cleaning, no need for any more major purges because I’ve likely gotten to it already, and while a bigger house sounds awesome, we’re all paid off, and the kids will make themselves scarce in only a few minutes.

An immaculate Friday the 13th, the second one of the year to boot!

I read somewhere that 18% of our Fridays so far have been Friday the 13th’s, and that pretty much sums up 2026 so far. Now you can take that or leave it, as you will. I thought that was funny, not only funny but clever, so shout out to the person(s) that came up with that little tid but of information which I saw on Threads this morning. Ha-ha! Solid work.

I made an off hand comment from what I thought was an Eddie Murphy line on some random thread and it now has over 1,425 likes. I’m not funny folks, I just grew up in the 80’s and 90’s without memes, we talked in movie quotes for just about every occasion, and I often spout them off at random times. It’s all lifted material. I cannot recall more than a handful of jokes that I have ever told that were actually mine. I made a crack about a beaver selling tooth paste having bad breath when I was a kid, and that got a good chuckle out of my dad, but I didn’t understand the innuendo from what I said, so I didn’t know it was a gold mine. To live & learn. His mileage on that joke might have varied from mine when he got out of the house, and went to work the next day. I don’t honestly know.

Either way, it is Friday before March Break, it is also the 13th, which is odd that it has happened again for the second month in a row. There will be a third for the year come November. Interesting. Maybe we should watch some scary movies to commemorate this happening? We’ll see how we feel about it once the school/work day ends.

Fun fact, I finally finished my omnibus. I am now reading Matt Dinniman‘s Dungeon Crawler Carl book one. It’s a fun, snarky read. He has just killed a room full of Goblin babies with high explosive, and I feel a sort of way about that. I was having fun up until then. That goodness it’s ridiculous fiction eh? Who’d want to be found responsible for using a bomb to blow up a bunch of children, I mean Sheesh. Too on the nose for this day and age, am I right!?! Still, good book this far, sans mass goblin baby murder that is.

Oh I have an episode of The Pitt to watch at lunch today, should be a load of fun! I’m excited.

I hope you all have a safe March Break, and don’t get stuck in an airport with no TSA agents running the customs counters. Plan accordingly for extraordinarily long waits. Ciao Bella!

I’ll say this about the cold weather.

It makes the dog walk at the farm a whole lot cleaner, with all that mud, muck, mess, and water locked up in ice so it’s not carried into the car or my house via the dog, or my boots. Otherwise I still very much so hate the cold. I could do with a month to six weeks of weather in the low to mid teens, with some sunshine, and all the rain at night until early morning. But I’m not getting either of those things!

It is now the Thursday prior to March Break 2026, and the kids are getting awful squirrelly at school I’d imagine. With nine whole days off, and only two full school days left I cannot imagine how much pent up energy is rolling through those halls. I don’t think they are doing much work this week with all that excitement bouncing off of each child. Makes the month blow by quickly when you remove one entire week from the classroom.

I have some new projects to get to, so I should get a move on. Ciao Bella!

Heavy rains and then a deep freeze? Count me in.

No way to escape the weather at this point. On the plus side the majority of the snow has melted in the places where it matters, and the heavy rains will do lots to help with what remains. Unfortunately we will then start to get colder, and this precipitation will fall as snow, and we’ll soon be right back where we started from. Oh winter, I hate you.

It is Wednesday of the week before March Break and the heightened number of spirit days is slowly killing me. At first the kids were all for it, then declined morning of, then want to do it once they’ve committed to not doing so, once we make it to the school doors. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, and something I have very little patience for. Make your decision and stick to your guns. Flip flop, wishy washy nonsense makes me angry for some reason. I don’t much care for it.

Next week will fly by no doubt, and then we will be inching closer to April, the Easter holiday weekend, and then it’s a head long sprint to the school year’s end, and my youngest daughter’s birthday party. Things only pick up speed from here on out! Hang on tight, things could get rather bumpy.

I am getting close to 700 days of a writing streak, and I could very well finish my Warhammer 40K omnibus today too! Lots going on in the background. Potentially have the family friend coming round to fix the main bathroom shower/tub plumbing fixture. I have marked out the area on the wall behind the shower, in the stair well, and cleaned it of clutter. I have also exposed the main water shut off valve so that I can execute that manoeuvre too. Keep this short, and sweet. I’ll help where I can, then stay out of the way as much as possible. Now that’s using your head!