Author: greatwallstudios

Monday morning is here and 8 have paid work to keep me company for the day, so I thought we should take a nice stroll about the farm to get some exercise before I retire to the office to work all day. I am just hoping that the rains holds off for the entirety of the walk about. Got caught in it twice yesterday, so that wasn’t cool. Luckily I got a twenty three page jump on my report yesterday, and can focus on quality rather than quantity today and tomorrow. Let us see how much of our domestic Duties get done today, any guesses?

The corn is leafy, green and standing fairly tall this year. All are good things, but what concerns me is that each stalk carries only one, possibly two cobs of corn. I’ve seen stalks with many multiples before so I have concerns about the potential yields if it’s all plant and no corn kernels on cobs. Not that I can do anything about it, just an observation of the outermost wall of corn stalks in the nearest field. Will have to wait and see how it all shakes out in the wash.

My blog is seeing a real Renaissance from viewers out of China. I’m not sure if they are using AI agents to scrape my posts, but I can see them looking at specific articles, stories, and episodes so this feels more organic than the Germany flare up from July 2025. That was all archives and nothing much else. Where these new folks are searching out and reading specific stories. It’s all good. I’m happier this time around because I can see what is drawing them in. That’s great. I’m seeing a lot of posts I don’t immediately recognize. Easy enough when you have two 800 day streaks, plus at least one that was 700 days before breaking for one reason or another. That’s a lot of off the top of my head venting, and pre-planned deep dives on one thing or another. I’ve written several hundred thousand words here over the last seven years. Far too much to remember without help.

I did get a large project in last evening, so I plan to start that after this drizzle soaked dog walk at the farm. I’m just waiting for our guests, and a break in the rain to hop out and begin. So I thought I’d jump on the blog post while the thoughts were fresh in my mind. Here. We. Go!

First — the Gay-Lea socks that I won in the Markham Fair butter carving competition last year (my current favourite pair of socks) have had the heel give out on one foot, and I am devastated. Not even one whole years worth of wear & tear has done them in! And in such a tricky spot I do not know if I could mend them and they still remain comfortable enough to wear. I’m busted up inside. Waaah.

Secondly — the bean fields and the corn look exceptional this year, let us hope the yields match the greenery. Would be a shame to find out it was a great year for leafy greens but terrible for actual crop production. What a let down that would be.

Now it is Saturday, and I need to deliver some things to my SIL to take north for my kids at the cottage. I’ve recieved an extensive list with new additions almost hourly since last night. I’m going to get ready then drop it off, and walk the dog all in one go this morning. I don’t know what I have planned for myself just yet. I’ll keep you posted. That is all.

I actually stopped working on taking big limbs out of my front Maple when I felt unsafe on the ladder, at heights. It was most unlike me to not push on and “just get it done!”. I only go up about 15-16′ in the air at most, and the big guy that looks over my house required a good twenty five to thirty foot climb. That meant full wobbly extension on the ladder plus another almost ten feet in the tree, with a chainsaw. I saw three or four wasps, felt the wobble under my boots, and said you know what? Let’s come back to this another day when I can plan ahead and borrow or hire a much longer ladder. I know it has to come out of the tree itself in two or three foot sections to avoid creating the damage I’m looking to avoid from a storm or blizzard, or freezing rain accumulation. It’s no help if I cause the issue myself through malpractice or ignorance.

But, I got one full limb down and chopped into bits, and three more smaller ones off the bigg’un I’m looking to erase next. It’s an undertaking, so I’m going to need input, and possibly outside help of some sort. No matter. I safely chainsaws in a tree at heights and came away unscathed. I did have to screw two jostled boards back onto the garden gate, but that was a small price to pay. I figured it would happen, so I got the smallest possible chunk to drop there that I could. It wasn’t graceful but I got it done. So power line is clear, well clear. I never got within eight feet of it! Good for me.

I did manage to cut some dead branches out of the tree at the same time so that’s great. There is a lot going on with this tree, and I’m loathe to start hacking away at it too much because I don’t wish to kill the tree, not create more issues, or entry points for disease. It’s a fine line once I get to cutting. In truth I’m happy with what I’ve gotten done, and while I had hoped to do it all, that just isn’t feasible right this second. I could try again in September or October, or even next April. I’m trying to be proactive so if a storm does come we don’t get a big crushing limb onto the house that I’ve been toying with removing. Maybe I was cowardly by not following through, I don’t know. I’m alive to tell the tell, and to fight another day. Win column check!

My wife and kids have absconded to the cottage for the weekend so I have been walking the dog at the farm, visiting with extended family, and looking at the large range of flowers growing in the various plots and gardens.

That’s all for today. Yeah Friday w00t-w00t!

I’ve used two computers, my phone, and three separate browsers to try and book myself a Lifelabs appointment for early next month and no dice. I’ve tried Safari, Firefox (even an incognito Firefox window as well) and Chrome but each time when it gets to the confirmation button the screen freezes. Not cool. So do I wait a day and try again, or keep mashing buttons until I get a spot. I’m not sure spamming the site for an appointment is the play to make here. I gave it almost an hour and double digit attempts, so I’m going to do something else to not get so enraged by technology. Foiled by a confirmation button! Such is life.

If my calculations are correct today is in fact Thursday August 20th, the anniversary of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip giving their last live performance together before Gord died of an inoperable Glioblastoma in the brain. My friends bought the DVD, we have sat down to watch it within the last year. I think the CBC will be airing it again this weekend in honour of the event.

Back tracking here, tomorrow I may just attempt a walk in if I cannot get the site to accept my scheduled appointment. It could take me an hour or more to just sit and wait, but I’m bothered enough to just go and try. It’s like four minutes tops to get the blood work down once they seat me and stick me with a butterfly needle in the hand. It’s really not that big a deal but when things go awry it’s hard to not feel like things are starting to spiral out of control. Not that I have any control over any of it. I just need the illusion that I do. Get it?

Here’s hoping for a great weekend once we get through today & tomorrow!

**EDITOR’S NOTE: Now my inbox has been flooded with at least seven different appointment confirmation notices more than an hour later, so the bug has struck me repeatedly. I now need to cancel a number of appointments over those two dates that I tried. This could be fun. I have a few weeks to sort them out, so I’m less concerned about canceling than I was about not being able to get an appointment in the first place.

I will just have to wait and see how many more notices I get to know how many I need to nullify. Pray for me.

I have been on a longer than usual stretch of bad games played where I’m not even reaching forty million points. Typically I would consider reaching level thirteen with a minimum of forty million points an ok game played. I’m happier when I can hit fifty, sixty, or even seventy million points or more. But as of late I am struggling to get out of the thirty million range, which makes my all time high score of up & over 170,000,000 points that much more elusive. I rarely reach one hundred million points nowadays, so I cannot for the life of me remember what type of event I triggered to get such a highly inflated score on Bejeweled 2. I’m just glad I don’t put quarters in a slot to fund it because after reaching such a fabulous high score (even if I do say so myself!) I’d go broke trying to tie it or break that high score. I’ve gotten score into the hundred million range before, so I know that I can do it, but… Man. Adding a gambling element to this would be deadly. So glad I don’t use betting apps or hit the casinos around here except to go see live shows.

It is now Wednesday. I have been notified of a new big project, so I have set myself up to begin that once I have all of the details in hand. I have the photography downloaded, and my document template set up ready and raring to go. I am assuming it will be a comparative report, of year over year data from last year. That would be my guess, but I could be wrong, and have been before. No matter. I’m geared up for its arrival at some point this week.

The start of the new school year is quickly approaching, and I do not think the kids are ready to fit back into such a rigid schedule full of structured days just yet. They have grown accustomed to a certain level of freedom of choice. I look forward to their return to school because in September I will have a severe clear out of the house. A massive purge of junk & waste which will make me feel better about the state of our home. I have piled of the children’s homework to sort out for recycling or to keep. Clothes and closets to attack with vigor.  Toy bins to empty, and damaged crafts to dispose of quietly and discretely.

Don’t get me started on the joys of a good household purge. We have shoes and boots to do again this year too. Coats, sweaters, pants and winter gear we’ve grown out of too. I send it along via donations or hand me downs within the family, and my wife, and several local friends help to load is back up with all new stuff. It’s cyclical! And I appreciate it dearly. As do those whom receive our stuff after we no longer need it all. Avoiding landfills, and giving others the same help we got is good for everybody. Plus it makes me happy when I can see the floors, and the back of our closets once more. I love to get rid of boxes, and wrappers, and open items for use instead of keeping things in their boxes until they are no longer useful, or break down on their own from lack of use. If we haven’t used it in more than a year or two we likely don’t need it (depending on what it is of course).

On a side note the lights and power has been surging quite a bit today. The lights and fans go nutty, and it’s very distracting. Odd because it hasn’t been hot enough to have everybody using their AC units, so I don’t know what is putting so much strain on the local power grid. Maybe we are all doing loads of laundry at the same time, or busting out microwaves, fans, and our dryers all at once! Shouldn’t be as hard as 100% of the town running air conditioners and pool heaters though. I don’t know. But I do know that the lights flickering gives me a headache, so I shut off most of our lights to give my eyes a break from the fluctuations.

We are also approaching the time of year when every window and door with a bug screen should be kept open to enjoy the warm breezes. Not too hot nor humid, and not too cold yet either. September and October are fantastic months in southern Ontario. Makes September at college or university just that much better, and far more memorable. I hate winter so that’s my opinion anyway. Not a fan of snow once we’ve hit and passed New Years Eve. But I digress.

We’ve been fortunate enough to use the same photographer for the last twelve years or just about, to document our children’s lives, and get high quality Christmas card images. Yesterday evening was a continuation of this trend, with a beach front, light house on the point as background for the session. 90% of the session is spent on the kids because that’s who we are ultimately concerned with, but we get a few shots of us all together. We do our mandatory shots of just the ladies, and one where I pick both girls up at once. It is sad to say that I do not believe I will be strong enough for much longer to physically lift both children at once after yesterday’s photograph was successfully taken. I need to hit the gym, and hit it hard if I want the tradition to continue on for years to come. From what I hear it should be a high quality photo. One I will likely make my avatar across several social media platforms. Possibly even my phone, and screen background. We will have to wait and see. I might have to do some cropping to keep my belly fat out of the frame! Look at me I’m a pear.

The kids had their hair deranged, for which I owe my wife a great debt of gratitude. She spends many an evening working on both girls hair. The eldest is better at keeping herself looking reasonable, but the younger one still can’t be bothered much of the time. I think a shorter bob, or a pixie cut might serve her well since she hates the maintenance required for long, finer stranded blonde hair. We knot and become matted very easily, with very little effort. Her hair turns up on itself and twists into a clump almost immediately. God forbid she swim, as it will become a mass of  tangles instantaneously. POOF! knots.

It’s Tuesday. Let us see what the day brings.

Is what we were met with as of 7:01 am this morning, and it has lasted nearly two hours before any kind of appreciable gap in the noise. Neighbours are having their crab apple tree removed from their front yard. Shame, it has such beautiful pink flowers in the spring time, but if it’s sick & dying or dropping hundreds of apples every single year I can understand doing away with it. Now we should start to hear chainsaws for an hour and then a peaceful return to silence. How is your Monday morning starting off?

Got home around 1:30 am this morning from my friends patio party, and couldn’t fall asleep until nearly three o’clock. It was a terrific night, and my spouse joined us for nearly the entire time (which rarely happens) and we are, and spoke animatedly about everything you can think of, then finished the night sitting around the fire pit sipping drinks in the cool night air. Saw an old friend I hadn’t run into in almost two years, so that was an unexpected boon. Nice!

I don’t typically drink, but I had two Rye and cokes and that was enough for me. The hosts are heavier pourers than myself, so those two were likely more of four to five of my own make if I’m being honest. Luckily spread out over five hours so it didn’t hit me like a Mack truck, but I could feel it whilst seated around the fire pit that’s for sure. I would normally have a 10 my edible and not drink because I don’t like feeling as though I need to pee ten times in one evening, but that wasn’t a problem with having just the two beverages this go around.

My headache is from poor sleep and staying up too late, not so much from the drinks. No spins in the bed, no nausea either, so ultimately no guy rot to follow on from the night. Also a plus! I did a lot of outdoor activity in the sun yesterday so I was likely dehydrated, and thus now sport a headache for my neglectful ways. Fun-fun-fun.

So now it is Sunday, the house has been tended to, and I am angling to take one or both children climbing today, so I need to find socks, a clean water bottle, and gather up our climbing gear ready to hit the road in the next ten, fifteen minutes or so. Luckily I have some new tunes loaded onto the playlist that we can enjoy on the drive over.

We inadvertently kept the dog up until 2:00 am last night so he wasn’t all that ready to get out of bed much before nine. Small graces, eh?

It’s finally fixed, and paid for, and returned home to my possession where I have gassed it up and run it around the property cutting down (now let me count on a proper calendar) 12 weeks worth of growth since May 21st. And it runs like a champ now. So yes whilst I’m angry it took twelve weeks to get done, I’m happy it cost me less than $200.00, and it worked on the second pull, so that’s great news!

Cutting the grass took a little longer than usual because we had many sticks down, a full rotten branch, and thick grass & weeds about fourteen inches tall in the front yard, and closer to eighteen in the back. Had to cut slower, and at higher rpms, so I burned more fuel than normal. Not a huge deal given I neglected the lawn for the better part of three weeks.

I did have to clean up the fish tank. We’d had a power cut that stopped the water pump/filter combo, and the house sitter added far too much fish food, so I had to fully pull out all the bits and flush the gunk and go out of it. I’m sure by Monday I’ll need to do it again because the renewed strength of suction should pull more of the gunk out of the water. It’s a process. I’d like to get a water vacuum for the tank, but we have volatile fish that don’t last all that long. So I don’t think I can justify the cost. Could be worse.

I ran several errands today too. Picked up the weed eater, grabbed water softener salt, picked up some office supplies too while I was at it. Now I can focus on the house and resting up for tonight’s festivities. Looking forward to getting out to visit with friends.