Can hardly take a step outside without caking your feet in slush, grit, sand, or sloppy mud. Not the time of year to be a neat freak, that’s for certain. The dog is going to come into the house with a sandy belly, and muddy paws from now until late April. As I assume we aren’t totally done with snow, ice, or freezing rains because it’s still far too early in the year to hope it’s done. While I can appreciate these sunny days with temperatures in the teens, it will swing back into double digits below zero, and ass snow back into the ground before April. To think otherwise is ludicrous. Cross your fingers for it, but don’t get your hopes up.
I will be wearing my Wellington boots for the next five weeks or so, until the ground firms up, the rains stop, or the snow officially ends. Then I will have to gear up for planting our Dahlias, and glad bulbs. I’m also interested to see how many of the two hundred old tulip bulbs emerge this spring. I thought a great many of them were spent already, but I could be pleasantly surprised, or not. They were free, so I won’t be too heart broken over it. It either looks really full and colourful, or it stays the same as it has always been. I’d feel different if I’d bought those 250 bulbs and not a one does anything note worthy.
Also it’s that time of year – again. Tax time! Have to go back through my records, and find all my billing information for every single thing. It’s a drag, but must be done. Wish me luck!
Rouge River going up about 3 or 4 feet with the temperature rise. (Fig 1.)
First it was walls and sheets of wind swept fog rolling around the neighbourhood blocking out sight at about four meters of visibility, then the temperature doubled again and we had rivers of snow melt swelling the creeks, rivers, and drainage ditches to overflowing. It flooded the road in a number of places. I bet the DVP was nearly under water in stretches downtown yesterday, close by the lake. If it wasn’t then, it will be today! All this downhill rolling water has to end up somewhere, and that somewhere is typically lake Ontario.
A good lesson to learn is to not just drive headlong at full speed into a giant puddle, because you don’t know if the road underneath the surface is still there in the same shape you expect it to be. Sink holes, upheavals, and breaks are common with these wild temperature fluctuations. You could end up driving into an eight foot deep sink hole at full speed, killing yourself and any passengers you might have. Best to traverse it at its shallowest point (if you can even identify one), or find an alternate route.
It is the Monday morning immediately preceding the time change, so the roads are going to be extra dangerous this week with over tired drivers. So take care out there! Doesn’t help that the mornings are going to be dark for a few weeks now, and that the sun will still be up at bedtime. Just more ammo for the kids to fight going to sleep. I do like that the kids afternoon programming will end and we will still have an hour or two left of sunlight to enjoy. It’ll be a few weeks yet before I break out the patio furniture, deck chairs, and lawn ornamentation, and extra lighting. I do not have faith in this weather lasting more than a couple of days before dipping back down onto frigid territory. But I will take what I can get at this point. I’ve been a shut in, a recluse since November! Let me out of this house!
It was so warm yesterday I took a load of wood junk down to the burn barrel and just about filled it to the brim with cut offs and such. Oh it was great. I was ruthless! I got rid of a bucket full of tiny hard wood cut offs I’d been hoarding for no real reason other than it was hardwood. Too small to do much of anything with. So POOF! gone to the flames now. Bye-bye. I did not, however, get rid of the train table, I think my wife might want to set it back up again to build Lego on, instead of the right seater dining room table that is down there for just that purpose. I don’t know why. Sentimental value maybe? Either way it is stored away safely where it isn’t in my direct path when wood working, so I’m fine with that. All good. I took so much stuff down to the barrel it was very satisfying. I would still like to get those three doors stripped of their hardware and taken away, but it’s not of vital importance. I just think, if I passed suddenly, how much crap would my wife & kids have to sort through that wasn’t worth anything, except to waste their time having to deal with it after I’m gone, so I’m trying to deal with it all now. Or now-ish. Now adjacent. In a timely manner, let’s put it that way. Books, tools, toys and junk. Same with excess clothes and papers etc… I don’t want to have nothing around the house that is mine, but all of the extraneous stuff can go. Why waste time, and valuable space devoted to junk, mess, or refuse. As it is almost Spring, I feel like another round of purging coming on. More outgrown clothes gone, more boots, coats, gloves, and MIT’s donated, more of what we’ve kept in excess pared down to essentials with a back up. Reclaim your spaces! Conquer your closets. Empty those attics, crawl spaces, sheds, garages, and cold storage rooms. Purge! Purge like you mean it! Unburden yourselves from these “things” we cling to! Feel the relief.
Also work slowly over a year or two, as it can be a big shock to the system if you’re one of those burdened by sentimental attachments to “things“. I prefer to work in layers. First it’s cardboard boxes, cling film wrappings, tissue papers, gift bags, and envelopes. Things of that nature. Inconsequential. Then a layer down, if it was unopened for year(s) maybe it can be donated, or use it now. If anything has dried out, gone bad, spoiled, or is so far out of date it’s unsafe, that goes next. Then afterwards I try to figure out what has value to me, versus what can be given away, sold off, or donated. And then I go back month after month to slim it all down more. Eventually you get as far as you can get, and it’s safe to stop there. Imagine you have to downsize from your family home to a condo. You can’t keep everything. So keep whatever is most important, and work your way outwards from there. How far out is up to you. But you want to end up with less clutter by the end, not triggered piles of the same amount of stuff. You want more floor space, more empty closets, more clutter free floors under beds etc… it’s cathartic. I encourage it. Unless you are broke or destitute, then you keep what keeps you going.
It’s almost eleven, and I’m still in bed. I dread my alarm come Monday morning. It is going to be a difficult week as we try to adjust our body clocks to the new normal. On the plus side I have very little planned for today beyond eating breakfast, and taking at least one child with me to go climbing in Markham.
The Gulf is still very much on fire, and exchanging missiles with one another. Gas is heading upwards in price. Things look dire. That which they will let us see anyway. However AI has gotten so clean now it’s hard to tell if we are seeing old videos reposted, new real videos, or manipulated videos, or outright fakes. I guess that was the point? To make us Poor’s give up, and only believe that which we can actually see in front of us. Well played douches.
It is now Sunday March 8th. I put the last touches on my Warhammer 40K Space Wolves yesterday, and I am no longer going to worry about the water slide transfers. I had done a very sloppy job of assembling them twenty years ago, so the mould lines, flashing, gummed up glue spills, and oddly leaning figures are too far gone. I improved their paint jobs, unified them all to look cohesive, based them, and now I’m done. I have a unit of 16 Eldar to do the same thing to. Then for my most recent birthday I was gifted some Ork Boyz, and I will assemble, clean up all that I can, then paint those to the best of my ability.
All 40 of my Space Wolves together at last! (Fig 1.)
I dug out my Goblin archer regiment, and my Gretchen pikemen too. Those went up on the shelf because I don’t fancy repainting those, and I’d like to get them out of my office. Now, the bulk of my minis are up on the shelf instead of hurried in a plastic cake transport that I used to house my miniatures. I have some Tyranids I can put on the shelf as well while I think about it. Cool.
I should get up and eat. Hope your Sunday is going well, even with this time change nonsense draining your body battery. A man out of time. How fitting.
I wanted a removable tray for my new air brush paints, so I measured, and cut the bottom plate to spec. Proceeded to cut out the sides and glue them in place, along the OUTSIDE edges. Now I am 3/8ths or more too long to fit inside the caddy. I’m an idiot. But! All my new paints fit in the tray, so I’m less upset about it? I need to find a spot for this tray, but the fact that all my new stuff fits in it with room for one or two more colours is kinda wild. Cool – I guess. I wanted the cardboard boxes gone, and the paints visible, so check on both of those. Would have been better if it had fit on the caddy itself, but I can try again by building a new larger caddy, and adding extra room for more paint pots, instead stopping capacity at what I currently have on hand. Baby fat, as Adam Savage refers to it. Got to remember to add baby fat into the mix, for growth.
So that was kind of an idiot move on my part, but also worked out (for now) so that’s cool. I set up my new corded microphone yesterday for a good old fashioned karaoke session in the basement. My old wireless mic/receiver combo was louder, it had a preamp boaster build into it, but I can live with what I’ve got going on here. Might buy myself a mic stand to help me not have to clutch the mic in a grip of death when crooning to myself. Free up my hands to read lyrics, change songs & volume from my phone and what not. I’m happy. Since my old set up died back in the summer time, it has been a long while since I’ve enjoyed some home bound sing along time. No audience, just me – vibing. Feels good.
If the spring weather keeps up I can think about taking all my old burnable wood down to the farm. That will make me feel a bit better. Keep the garage shop as clean as possible. Makes it safer to work in there, and more pleasant to be inside of. I have three doors (of which I need to remove the hinges, and handles, and hardware) to go down to the farm. Along with bird houses, old tool boxes, a tray extension for my drill press, our old garbage bin box, and the kids train table, plus various wood cut offs. All ready for flames! Have to be mindful of the rusty pin nails, and cut off screws, and fasteners that wouldn’t come out of the sun stained wood pieces. Don’t want Tetanus!
No climbing today as the kids have maker space 3D printing course to go to today, then a Mani/pedi with Grandma to celebrate her birthday. I think I might paint my 40K Space Wolves, see if I can’t get them finished up this weekend.
Busy three weeks is a good thing, money being made, invoices in & out, payments made, all good. But it does mean that my zest for Domestic Duties Monday has flagged recently while I toil. So while I have a second (having lunch!) I’m gathering up the kids laundry to run some through the washer/dryer so they don’t run out of underwear, or clean t-shirts. I had to skip eating lunch a few times which is why I hadn’t done it earlier in the week either. The weekend is upon us shortly, and I’d rather not spend hours over the weekend trying to catch up on household chores, of which the children have done none in almost a month! Craziness.
I’m going to eat my reheated McDonald’s, do some writing, and listen for the bell to swap out loads between the dryer and washer, and hopefully enjoy some family down time this weekend rather than work through it — again.
Morning has been a bit jumbled because we had an oil change scheduled for my wife’s car, and mine was to go out for detailing. With the freezing rain, ice sheet this morning that was a lot of fun! Whee! All done, back in time to get some new projects completed, and make edits to another. It’s all good. Relative to other parts of the world we are doing just fine.
If it stay warm over the weekend I wouldn’t mind getting into the garage shop to make some extra trays for my paint caddy, now that I’ve ordered, and received my new air brush paint sets. I’d like to make that as seedless as I can utilizing my current caddy, rather than build an all new one. I now have 2x or even 3x the amount of paint I did when I built it in the first place. It’s handy, and I’d like to keep it that way. It won’t be a fancy build. Butt joints, glue, and pin nails. But I could document it if that’s something anybody else would care to see. Who knows?
Happy Friday, may you live to see another year, or ten, or forty.
Had an inkling about a project that came through my studio recently, and my initial feelings about it are looking as though they are going to pay off. I’m not mad, I just knew something was going to require tweaking, but didn’t know what, exactly, until after I had gone through the whole thing at least once. And it may just come down to the client wanting to add or subtract materials now that they’ve had some time to think about it, now that it’s out of their hands. Like realizing a statement you triple checked was off, but only after you’ve hit send. Nothing to be mad at. It happens to the best of us. With any luck it’ll be simple changes that make the item better as a whole. That’s worth it, on my end.
I haven’t lived, and breathed this event for a year. It graces my desk for a week to ten days, and then POOF! gone. So I welcome edits that make it a stronger document. Also since the client knows the audience better than I do (for this sort of study) I won’t knock them for having strategic image replacements needed, in order to thread the needle to achieve better, or more funding in the future. If you know who you’re playing to, you know how & when to pander just enough to elicit a positive emotional response. You’re the expect, I’ll follow your lead. I’m at your disposal.
I felt that type of interaction coming when I looked deeper into the study because it does NOT follow many of the structures of projects I have done which came before. When there’s an outlier like this you have to know going in, that it WILL require additional massaging to make every one happy. That’s ok. You do this stuff long enough and you get a sense of when that’s going to happen. I sensed it. It happened. All good. That’s learned in place, on the job type knowledge. Institutional knowledge that you would be hard pressed to write down in a manual.
As an aside: That’s the type of on the job learning that gets raises, and then gets you let go once your salary is too high and the C Suite wants to cut costs. But with it goes the unwritten in situ learning you carried, and then folks don’t plan for these additional steps, deadlines get missed, clients become angered, and jobs get sent away to other places. But I digress. That’s just an anecdote. See how easy a cost cutting measure can have wider, and farther reaching knock on effects!?! Do you see it now? Ha! Again, I digress.
So Thursday is here, and freezing rain is on the way. Might have to put tomorrow’s dog walk on hold. No biggie. Better safe than sorry. In other news a good portion of the middle east is trading missiles and destruction with one another. That’s not good. We celebrated a birthday recently which is nice. Closer to 50 than 40 now, which is frightening to think about. Both kids will be full blown teenagers by the time I turn fifty. Yikes!
Who doesn’t want to begin their day with tantrums, tears, crying, and endless delays from their child(ren). It’s a week day that ends in Y, so of course the morning is going to be a battle. It is however far better now than years prior, but I do hope that eventually the youngest will grow out of these “Big Feelings” regarding school, so I don’t have to drag her kicking, and screaming to the school doors to drop her off. I will say it has happened far less this year than any year before, so maybe it can continue that trend until it stops happening. I know the younger one isn’t as happy with school like my older child is, but I’m not smart enough for homeschooling, and I still need to work a good portion of my days. She can’t stay home and just play VR, or on her tablet watching YouTube shorts on make-up or among Us reactions. That’s just lunacy. I won’t stand for it.
Welcome to Wednesday! Hump Day, middle of the week day. I need to eat, and get right back into my work. This is but a brief stop while I do some things around the kitchen.
From all of yesterday’s running around, jumping my wife’s dying car battery, racing home before it died a second time, going hunting for battery’s, getting it tested, working, cleaning, and then doing the kids extracurriculars, I thought it was Wednesday or Thursday all ready, and it was just Monday evening. Oh my! But I still got the dog walk in, still did my days work, still had a hot lunch. It was a ram packed day, one which I could have fewer of if I had my way. Turns out the battery in my wife’s car had gone bad, and the ABS, Power Steering, and a bunch of other functionality in the car are electronically controlled. Odd. But ok.
Let us hope we can get another several months out of the vehicle now that we have updated a few less expensive items. Only time will tell. I miss the time period when you could buy a reasonable car for $22,500.00 and it wasn’t a lemon, nor did it require yearly subscriptions to pertinent abilities that are integrated into the vehicle. What a racket this stuff has turned into. Moreso now than ever before.
I’m on the hook for some render updates, and a new big project came in last night, so I best be about my business. Take care out there!
We just had it back from the shop for a wheel bearing issue, and then it died on her way to work this morning. I had missed nine calls under my jacket while dropping the kids off at school. My FIL and I were able to jump the battery so I could coast home with it. The electronics died about halfway home, and I just had to leave room to roll it keeping the engine going. The ABS, TIRE SERVICE, SWERVE PROTECTION, POWER STEERING lights all came on then the dash died, and nothing much worked. It was a harrowing wait at a couple of intersections believe you me. Hopefully it’s a bum battery and not a costly wiring issue. Batteries are plentiful and relatively cheap. Who knows, car is on its last legs at this point. Just trying to get more miles out of it without too much additional cash put in. The ever present struggle. Fun morning. I need to eat, and work.
Come on sunshine and warmer weather, I can feel you in my bones drawing ever closer! Soon the clocks will push forward an hour, then the sap will begin to run, we will have March Break, St Patty’s Day, and hit the first official day of spring by the 20th. I feel like we can make it. I see the light at the end of this snow covered tunnel! I can feel the return of vitamin D to our lives with each day making the sun’s rays just that much stronger. Oh it’s a wonderful time to be alive. Soon the grass will be green, there’ll be buds on the trees, and most importantly, soon the ice and snow will be gone! I love to see it leave for the year.
Wow the third month of the year is here. I’ll need to gather my tax stuff together and get that stuff in order. That’s always no fun whatsoever. Gotta love data entry.
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