Author: greatwallstudios

The sixteen day hiatus where our whole family traveled across Florida has finally ended and along with it my once glorious streak too. Truth be told sixteen days without writing a word was pretty nice. I was too busy taking photos, and doing things outdoors in the blazing hot florida sun. I will be putting out a few of those photos here over the coming days, but I don’t see myself slavishly sticking to an every day blog anymore. I think I had just about the same number of visitors and views when I did nothing, as when I did anything. I’ll relax a little around here.

I have a number of things to do today, including a post office run, prescription pick-up, CRA check in for my taxes, and actual paid work to dig in to. I would imagine that by Monday we will all be settled in as per usual.

Yesterday’s travel day was really long. Packing is stressful with the kids leaving important items everywhere imaginable inside the hotel room. Wandering a theme park for six or more hours in the 93°F sun, highway driving in traffic, finding a gas station not clogged with people, car drop off, check-ins, baggage drops, security, finding food where there is little choice, a flight with no food service, but a very short run time. I don’t know, maybe they got out and pushed, we made it home from Tampa in under 3 hours. Nice!

Loads to do at home now too. Patio furniture set up, swings, slack line, grass and hedges. Check the downspouts, wash the back deck. All sorts of fun to keep my busy for the foreseeable future.

All the best. Ciao Bella.

I chose to take two weeks off, ending an 831 day run here so that I could enjoy some time with my family as we traveled across Florida. Starting in the Keys, hitting Orlando, Clearwater and Tampa Bay. Going to Sea World, Aquatica, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Disney Springs, Busch Gardens and Adventure Island, PLUS the last Leafs game of the regular season versus the Lightning. A great time, if a tad hectic.

I’ll be back to work in the morning, and fully integrated back into the real world come Monday. It was hot here, between 88°F and 92°F every day except one, when it stormed hard. Took lots of photos and walked more than I have in an extraordinarily long time. I have a plethora of blisters to show for it!

The lake was WIDE open this weekend. I even had a brief, yet chilly, boat ride in the late afternoon sun, as we grabbed our dock from out of the bay next to us, and refit it to the steel moorings, and anchors on the lake bottom. One more thing checked off the list besides chopping wood, boiling sap for syrup, washing sap buckets and spiels, taking down the rink, stacking the rink boards and stakes, cleaning, drying and putting away the liner tarp too. I also did some late day burning of old mouldy flooring which I started back in November! Cleaned up some dangerously hung up trees from the back lot near the burn pile, and that was our weekend in a nutshell. Well besides easter egg hunts, dinners, and a stint in the hot tub to ease my sore back. I had just a little bit of paid client work on Friday, and again on Monday which was good. Glad my clients could use that time I had set aside for their projects.

Today I’m trying to clear off any remaining items and then I’ll call it a day around 10:00pm tonight. Hopefully with an all clear!

I still need to transfer six retail projects and create some french language companion sell sheets, but otherwise I think I’m in a good spot. I am waiting on changes to one set of retail items, so hopefully I get those today! Fingers crossed.

What a lovely weekend it was though, sunny and bright, blue skies above. A few times we had a cool blast of wind, but mostly it was a face burning good time spent outdoors in the sunshine. It was a lot less mucky than we had expected. I wore my Wellington boots and didn’t really need them, like at all. Even the lane in from the main road was dry and settled. Weird winter we had this year. I don’t think we will have the usual April standing pools of stagnant water all around this year. Ground thawed out ages ago.

Pretty sure today is Tuesday. Almost missed recycling thinking last night was Sunday night. Was out watching the Leafs game at my friends and noticed the blue boxes out and twigged to it then. Could have been a catastrophe of smelly proportions! Ha.

Which reminds me, once it gets warmer I need to repair the front garbage box lid. Add it to the list I say! Have a good one. Ciao Bella.

Oh yeah we got my daughters bed to the cottage, and it’s all set up and looks like the real thing. Nice!

Including 2 gold passes, parking, 2X per visit meals, and a drink(s) bottle for the season it clocked in just a hair under $560.00. Ouch! But given how often we went last year I think we’ll make that back without too much trouble. Not to mention that now I don’t need to buy drinks or food as I have it on my pass, that should streamline our visits. I for one look forward to it! That allows us to also do the Halloween Haunt and Winterfest too. All of which we did this past season.

It’s Monday again, which means laundry, grocery shopping, and preparing for school tomorrow.  If the weather is nice I’ll get the girls outside to play in the sunshine, instead of using all of my wireless data on their devices! My phone Bill’s have been sky rocketing these last few months. Gotta get these kids into offline books and board games! Going over on gigs is killing me! Ugh!

I made the mistake of missing a step outside and fumbling my ankle, and then the very next day I kicked a speaker left on the floor by the front door, which I didn’t notice, and nearly breaking a toe on the same foot as the ankle. My toenail is now a deeper purple, and I’m sure over time it’ll go black. Fun times. Was aching quite a bit yesterday while we wrangled the hockey rink boards, stakes, and tarp. And especially while I was kneeling to do the docks.

Have a great Monday.

Back hurts, arms hurt, legs hurt. I’m tired. Plan on doing a whole lot of nothing today after two previous days of strenuous work outdoors. Burned up several hundred board feet of old musty, rotting wood flooring that was covered in moss, mud & leaves. Took a while to go up, but I managed. I had several facefuls of smoke, and irritated eyes to prove it. Not to mention the pile of ash left behind. Also put a good number of hours into minding the evaporator and boiler fire. Lifting wood, chopping wood, poking wood to spread the flames and coals around evenly. I even caught the sun while outdoors. My previous florida base layer of colour was of very little help.

I look a right state with sun burned cheeks and smoke irritated eyes, and a sore back. Atleast none of it hurt so much that I could not sleep. After reading some of Children of Dune I was able to go right to sleep, soreness be damned.

Monday and Tuesday are going to be very busy, if my spidey sense is any good. Lots of work to finish and transfer over to the appropriate people. Invoices to send, and missed ones to remind people of, from February. Another glorious day In the corps.

Happy Easter long weekend.

And good lord are my back and shoulder screaming for mercy today. Getting the evaporator up and running requires an extensive amount of fuel, firewood to be exact. I pulled over three wheel barrow fulls, and then split a bunch of dried Ash next to the pile. I started with just five or six small rounds, took a rest, and then split the remaining 12-15 rounds. They were pretty small, and very dry. They shattered across the pith splits, so not anywhere near as hard as other items I’ve taken an axe to, or atleast attempted to split by axe. The maul is more sharpened sledge hammer than an axe in my opinion. Great tool. I’m in traction now, but it was fun while it lasted. Rediscovering long lost muscle groups in my back today.

My FIL came for my daughters bed frame and shipped that off to the cottage. It’s finally done! Mattress is off the floor, job completed. And now I don’t have a massive 43″W by 79″H pine frame in my tiny single car garage shop. Yeah! Space to move around once more. A project successfully completed. I feel great about that.

Speaking of successful builds, my tool cart is working out really well. I am very happy with it. The use of reclaimed building lumber was a poor choice, but all it cost me was the price of four upgraded caster wheels after my little ones exploded under the strain. Custom size, and it fits my needs exactly. No Craftsman mechanics cart was going to do all that. Not for the low-flow price of just $60.00 in wheels anyway. The cart I was eyeing up would have come in around $600.00 and change. I did good.

I’ll have to think about what kind of stuff we need around the house and put my new Walnut lumber to good use. I think we can all agree that a good thorough clean of the house should be our first goal once the weather well and truly perks up for good. Not only that but I’ve been giving some thought to playing a round of golf, hitting the driving range, and possibly even dusting off the tennis rackets this spring. All depends on work load and things of that nature, but I’d really like to give it a go this spring/summer. Atleast before the bugs become a real hindrance.

My old war gaming terrain build posts are really gaining traction as of late. Had 37 views yesterday alone. I wish I could build more, and better quality stuff, I really do. I just have nowhere to put it. And I don’t know who to approach about buying it off of me. I’d go whole hog on moulds, grasses, static applicators, resin pieces, water effects, whatever I could add in to make it awesome. Maybe some other time. It was a great Covid lock down project to have on deck while my kids were small.

Speaking of building, I do intend to rebuild an Urn, using hand cut dovetails. Going to polish that mo-fo up to a glossy shine. May even try some exotic cuts to the lid for decoration! Maybe. If I can figure out an easy jig to make that will keep things even, consistent, and repeatable. Big ask.

We’ve made it to Saturday. Only had one minor thing to work on yesterday, a portion of a document I had been swapping over for another language translation had one corner of text left untranslated. Simple fix. Solid catch too. Have a great weekend. Ciao Bella! Now where’s the Voltaren!

Now that the kids are off school for a four day long weekend the sun has gone, and the temperature has plummeted once more. Haha! I just wanted to play some basketball and ball hockey in the sunshine this morning! Is that so hard. Damn. Gosh!

Plans are up in the air, as family members felt I’ll last night, so I don’t know what’s going on for the afternoon. We have Easter goodies for the kids, but I now do not know if it’ll be done here at home, at the farm, and grandma’s house, or elsewhere. Ugh!

I realize I was fairly vague, and short here all this week. I had been waiting on a few large scale projects that I’d hoped to have for last weekend, but which I ultimately hot access to on Tuesday lunchtime. So I’ve been very hard at work tackling a multitude of projects. Eight promo items, six retail displays, four sell sheets, and a report that clocks in around 66 pages, or there about. A non-trivial amount of work for what would be a short week (atleast for the kids). I’m choosing to work the whole weekend, or at least making my services available to offset the time I missed when in Key Largo earlier in March. I made promises to my three largest clients, and I am keeping them. C’est la vie!

I won’t be hard done by anyway. It’s not like I’m driving to go sit alone at an office building for the whole four days. I work from home, so I can, and will interact with my spouse/children inbetween work e-mails and projects. Part of being a freelancer is making yourself available when you have work. To be a larger part of my kids daily lives, by not commuting to an office, I occasionally have to work into the evening or night, and spend a few hours over the weekend prepping for a Monday morning project review. I don’t mind. Like I said earlier, weathers crap, so we’re not out playing ball hockey, basketball or tossing a baseball around. My kids are currently firmly entrenched in Minecraft, so I’m not going to be missed for an hour or two, or three over the course of the morning.

It’s a pretty sweet deal. I like it a lot. I try very hard to be as good a deal for my clients as I can be.

Happy Good Friday, Easter long Weekend, and Easter Monday to all whom have some or all of that time off. Ciao Bella.

$600 for the busted radiator,  $670 fot all new rear breaks, calipers and rotors, oil changes, gas, insurance, tire replacements. Ugh  these things are definitely handy, but are such a money pit of an object. Just needed it all at tax time when I’m about to get smacked with my income tax, HST bill for 2023. Yuck. Not a fan of the timing.

Work is busy. And I need to get back to it.

As far as I am aware I have recieved all of the work I’m going to do this week, and weekend, and so now I can get down to brass tacks. Glad I’m nolonger in a holding pattern while I wait. I have my plan of action, and a very, very long couple of days ahead of me. I need to take frequent breaks, move around a lot, stretch my hands, flex my neck, but ultimately stay on task as I have very brisk deadlines, and lots to do.

I think it is Wednesday today, atleast I hope so as I went light on the kids lunches expecting them to be served a slice of pizza for their troubles. The school is doing the first of two days of Olympics today. Kids have their colours on, and are ready to party.

I’ll keep this brief as time is precious! Ciao Bella!

I’m amazed that was caught entirely on camera, and so clearly too. Good grief what a thing to happen. I have seen on CP24 that two people have been rescued from the water so far. Let us hope that more will be found safe, and that the reason for the collision with the bridge was a medical emergency on the transport freighter, and not anything malicious. News says they have dive teams out looking for seven individuals. Find them safely, or at least find them to add closure to such a horrible incident.