Author: greatwallstudios

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!

It took a while to finish because the gym my child uses came home with the second highest number of medals for all gyms involved. With a whopping 105 medals in total, between 74 individual athletes. That shakes out to be 25 Gold medals, 25 Silver medals, and a humongous 55 Bronze medals in all. I’m sure all of the parents and athletes are proud as punch with themselves. Some are reinvigorated with a desire to move up from a Bronze to Silver, or Silver to Gold, or to keep their Golf as standard, and for some it set a fire to work towards a move onto the podium itself. Great job all around.

Today is area track day so my daughter now needs to compete in running long jump, and the 200 m sprint. A busy couple of days for her!

The kids and my wife spent some considerable time out of the house yesterday evening so I sat down to watch Robert Pattinson’s Mickey 17. And you know what? It wasn’t half bad. Now I do need to add a caveat here that states for the first 2/3rds of the film I did NOT have CC activated, and I likely missed a whole lot of nuance, and exposition because I was trying to listen to it, rather than read it. Maybe that might be cause for concern among you other Gen X’ers or elder Millenials out there. I don’t know. I liked what I saw, and for the most part felt I could hear the dialogue just fine. Mind you I am partially deaf in one ear. But!, but – I did not have my phone on me, nor my laptop so I actually sat down on the couch and watched the film, and just the film, attention undivided. Do with that information what you will.

First off it looked great, sometimes that’s a terrible give away when you discuss sci-fi or fictional works, but in this case there was more to the film than just looking good visually. But I can dig the aesthetic. I thought the space suits, uniforms, and general wearables looked good. Not always brand new from off the rack, but lived in, worn, and scuffed up a bit. The CGI was decent, the live streamed view of the creepers circling the ship was outstanding. BUT CGI isn’t the big draw it once was, it now goes without saying sadly. Every single movie is going to have it whether you think it does or not.

Robert was very convincing as two very different versions of himself as numbers 1 to 17, and the number 18 (a murderous nutcase). It was well done. Bravo. I have seen a couple of sci-fi space man movies of his now, along with The Batman and I no longer think of him as Edward the shiny, sparkly vampire. Good for him.

There was a lot of social commentary with Mark Ruffalo, and Toni Collette chewing up the scenery with their villain portrayals and what not. Fun stuff. A mix n’ match of Elon, Trump, Bezos and a many number of other billionaire fools out and about in popular media right now. The main stream culture is rife with the deluded bunch. The propagandist, and the doctors were fun characters too.

It wasn’t really something I see myself sitting down to watch again any time soon, but it was enjoyable enough. I had originally intended to go see it in theaters, but we went to Florida for sixteen days back in February, and I couldn’t find the film still available anywhere local upon our return. My next step was to buy it on BluRay, but other things we needed took that off the list of immediate purchases. Then I forgot all about it. Until, that is — yesterday. I looked through Disney+, and Netflix, and Amazon Prime, as well as Apple tv, before I remembered we also have Crave. And then BAM! There it was, Mickey 17 on the title screen, landing page or whatever. Two plus hours later it was in the bag, watched in its entirety. What a Sunday evening to behold.

Do you know why I used to buy the BluRay for movies? For the behind the scenes stuff. The making of featurettes about the writing, the filming, the pre production art and design, music, costumes, fight choreography, weapons training etc… you used to get information that was as long as the main feature or longer. Now there are far fewer physical releases of anything, and all we get are YouTube shorts spliced together from that type of stuff. I loved nothing more than to inure myself in the minutia of a favoured film by watching, and rewatching the BTS stuff and then finally capping it off with a rewatch of the theatrical release, unless a directors cut was the better option (not always the case, but when it hits, oh! It hits so good!). I have spent many an evening in the thrall of a great long list of featurettes about LOTR, or Blade Runner, or Avatar, or The Abyss, or even Apollo 13. Love it.

I did not have the chance to see any of those kinds of details about Mickey 17 because I streamed it instead of buying the BluRay with those extras added in. C’est la vie. Ciao Bella!

This is the third time this week that I have seen the same sizable coyote wandering around the farm. I usually come across it by the far side of the barn. Not sure I want to walk the dog here in case there is a pack nearby. They’d likely lure him away and then tear him apart. One coyote isn’t much of an issue (apparently) but you put multiple together and you have yourself a problem. So for the moment we are going to sit in the car and wait a moment to see if it peeks around a corner, or if the coast is clear.

The first taekwondo sparring & pattern competition that we’ve ever gone to happens today. I’m going for the first time, yes – but it is my daughter whom is competing in it! I am very excited for her. I watch her practice three times a week and I believe she will do well. The pattern portion is a lock, for sure (I jest, there are some 1,100 participants, I don’t really know where she ranks among that many kids). I think she can hold her own in the sparring. We unfortunately missed the sparring special class when we went to BC a few weekends ago to see my parents, and all three of my brothers. No matter. I realize that now they are expected to go full force which might startle my daughter, as when they spar at the gym they typically go 50%, and aren’t trying to hurt themselves with devastating kicks to the midriff. I have faith that she will acquit herself admirably.

We need to be there about an hour before she fights, and does her pattern sequence so I think we should leave around 11:45 am. I think that by the time we find parking, walk to the venue, sign in, and locate the staging area we should be nearing that hour mark,and can then watch a few bouts, and patterns being performed on one of the eight mats. Should be a blast!

What a weird week it has been. Busier than usual, outside of regular working hours, I mean. The kids extracurriculars are all coming to a head with their recitals, performances, tournaments, testing, and event night get togethers. It’s a lot to deal with. Not a fan that everything ends on the same week, and on the same day, and all at the same time. I was hoping to go from the tournament in Markham to Vaughan to see both my kids do their thing on Saturday, but nope! All samesies! So I can’t see the dance number my youngest has spent the last ten months working on. Which sucks. But on the other hand I can be there to cheer on my oldest daughter for her sparring & pattern bouts in taekwondo. They really couldn’t have put one of them on Sunday. Or had one in the morning, and the other in the mid afternoon. Nope! No chance. Both go on within an hour of each other in two separate cities. Nice.

Hopefully this means the rest of June can mellow out a bit. Just chill out man. Everything’s cool. Float for a second before the oppressive heat, and added humidity moves into the fray. Air quality is dog shit, thanks wild fires for that. These are the few days each year we can enjoy having the windows open to enjoy the breezes, and the scent of the flowers around us. But not now. Too smokey. Air quality is listed as poor. Not just poor but properly unhealthy at that. 153 on the ppm counter according to the weather network. Bah humbug.

So the AC will need to run if it warms up, and the Honeywell air purifier is going all day long too. House interior certainly smells better with one going than without. I was not a believer in them until COVID hit, and we had to stay at home so much, and the house just smelled stale, neigh on stinky all the time. Now that is not an issue. Bonus! I’ll take it.

Knowing the AC was going to need to run now that we are firmly into the month of June I took the liberty of changing the furnace filter. So let the cool air flow unobstructed! Keep me chill my good dude!

Now to plan for Monday’s PA Day. Had to sneak one last one in before the end of term. Report cards and all that fun stuff. Whatever will I do with these two hooligans?

To get the small bag of dog food we like (which is just 2.2 Kg) you have to pay half the price of the large bag (which is 9.9 Kg). That’s nuts, for half the price you get less than 1/4 of the amount of food? Insanity. Doesn’t help I spent nearly $150.00 on dog food, and the various types of treats we use throughout the week. My bill today was nearly $500.00 bucks. Insanity. Mind you I did also pick up my wife’s birthday present which consists of six different cheeses, and some freshly baked French baguettes. It’s not very romantic but it’s something I know she likes, and can enjoy for several weeks (the cheeses more so than the bread). My kids won’t dig into it, and beyond the gruyere, neither will I. So not a self serving gift, but something thoughtful at least.

I also picked up a few other things I know that she likes for lunches over the next few days. If we can get through today, tomorrow and Saturday then the rest of the month will ease up quite considerably. Clear sailing from here until summer break from the look of things. Or, perhaps not clear sailing, but not the total cluster this week has the potential to be with so much going on, how about that? Sounds more reasonable. Have to set our expectations appropriately!

Toilet paper has gotten really expensive eh? I saw some packages going for thirty dollars or more. Yikes. Looks like running a hose from the tap might be in some of our futures if this keeps up. We’ll be stripping trees of leaves and then bark. We will be a haggard, and ornery bunch by then, believe you me.

If my count is correct then today is Thursday June 5th, 2025. I heard an interesting fact that as of June 2nd we were officially closer to the year 2050, than the year 2000. Holy-moly! That’s wild. I still think of fifteen years ago as being some point in the mid 90’s. I don’t know why, I just do. Ha.

Years ago we were gifted some poppies by my MIL which we planted in the front garden, right in the centre because they were big, red, and beautiful. And then a few years ago I noticed this strange black sludge appear on some of the leaves. It spread to the flowers, and the stems, and across to all of the leaves, and then it withered and died in a puddle, and never returned. It was too late into the season to be from a late frost. It wasn’t from lack of water, or nutrients in the soil. I have no idea what did it. Last year our Peonies turned black and died shortly after developing flower buds which never opened. But, it has returned this year, better than several years previous. How odd.

I’m still sad about the poppies though. They added not only additional height, but a pop of colour, and a different textured leaf too. We are very green and purple here. Not much red, orange, yellow, blue to speak of. I also liked that they opened fairly quickly but lasted a while when in bloom too. We do have roses in the fall, and Day Lillie’s, and actual Lillie’s but those are late summer blooms. The Dahlias will present colour well into October, early November if I don’t chop them down when cleaning up the yard in preparation for winter, and the falling leaves.

So I guess we do have some variations in colours, but not right this second is what I am griping about. I also need to do a few hours of weeding, but lack the motivation to do so. Perhaps on Sunday once this week is done I will venture outside in the morning and pull up weeds for an hour or two.

Hard to believe we have made it to June. Half way through the year! My oh my. School comes to a close soon and the kids will move up a grade each. They’re not so little anymore. I can still recall events from when I was in grade six. I think I remember stuff from before that, but I can no longer tell if those memories are real, misremembered, or manufactured due to repetitive dreams. Funny feeling that. Not knowing for sure if memories you think you know are even real. Ha. So odd.

Lots going on around here this week. Stay in touch. Ciao Bella!