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Soon enough this cough is going to add a runny nose, and then likely a fever, with some chills and hot flashes thrown in for good measure, I just know it deep down in my bones. I can feel it. I can sense it brewing deep down inside me right now, as we speak. I for one am not here for it! I don’t care for the way this shit plays out every single time. The way stuff passes from chest to head to throat to nose to chest to head, round and round it goes until 8 can finally fight it off. Every illness takes just that much more effort and time to defeat. I’m not happy the kids brought this home, and into my life once again.

We did go get our flu shots, but I fear we waited too long and the requisite two weeks lead time to build up the antibodies will not have passed as I am sick already before five full days have passed since the inoculations. I took a seventh round of Covid shit too. That Moderns was always kind of a rough ride. The Pfizer was the softest of them all, it barely affected me. I was hoping for Pfizer, but got the Moderns which kicked my butt for 48 hours straight.

Christmas is getting close enough to taste at this point. Shopping now would be a nightmare. I hope you are all finished wrapping, and shopping so that you might enjoy a couple of days of rest, and relaxation. I wish you all well! Take care out there. Don’t forget you can download both of my books here for Free if you’re interested.

Had to drain the tank again yesterday. But we had a new shut off valve installed so the back fill from the cold water side would not happen again. Nice. We are moving from natural gas to electric this time, but keeping the hookups for gas because it’s here, and might as well keep them. It’s great to have trained professionals to do this stuff so I don’t get blown up!

I got the old tank up the basement stairs and outside next to the garage. The new tank is slightly shorter, so it looks to be a hair thinner too. Takes up less room is what I’m driving at here. I have washed all of the towels for a third time because tipping the old unit dumped a fair bit of brackish water all over the floor, and stairs too.

Just waiting for the unit to get hard wired in to an existing 240 volt box from an old dryer. Otherwise I have purged the air from the system by opening all of the hot water taps. All bar two I guess. The basement bathroom hot water taps is shut off at the valve below the sink because it leaks out of the faucet. Has done so with three faucet replacements, so I just turned off the hot water rather than hear a constant drop, no matter which faucet it has been replaced with. That’s a different story for another time. Also I did not run the basement shower, so I might get some sputtering from that once I use it after the wiring gets done, and we have hot water again.

We’ve had to bathe at the inlaws for the last two days, which isn’t ideal, but could be a whole lot worse if they didn’t live so close by. We’ve made do. Not really an issue at this point.

I did not have a new hot water tank on the bingo card, as we suspected the refrigerator, Air Conditioner, or my wife’s car if I’m being honest. Luckily this was about $700 plus tax, so not great, but not terrible either. Just waiting to hear what the labour costs will be for the installation.

It is Saturday, and school is done until January. I officially have a cough so that’s cool. Sore throat comes and goes depending on the severity of the coughing fits. I am likely to keep this well into January or February with it only getting much, much worse before it gets better. Thanks autoimmune diseases! Wanna see a party trick of how much worse my body can make a common cough? Let’s just wait and see shall we?

For those of you playing the home game, yesterday morning we discovered that our water heater had sprung a leak overnight, leaving a pretty decently sized puddle in the middle of our basement floor. But we didn’t know it was the water heater at first, because the puddle seemed to emanate from between the water softener (which was notorious for breaking down whilst being essentially brand new) and the water heater (which up to this point had never given us any trouble as it got closer to being twenty years old). I had to dry the floors enough to be able to watch for where new water was coming from. Eventually it became apparent that the leak was from the hot water tank. So I had to shut it off, and unplug it. Shut off the gas line to it. Shut off the cold water inlet valve at the top of the tank, and then continue to mop up as we waited for the scalding hot water, inside an insulated tank cooled down enough to be drained. The 80 litre tank took quite some time to cool down. Then at 7:00 pm, when I was tired of the constant mopping, Shammi wringing, bucket emptying, and washing & drying of twenty odd towels I grabbed two containers, opened the drain plug, and then proceeded to hot swap my buckets while I emptied the tank. I put a good deal of water on the laundry room floor with the hot swaps, but less so than having 80 litres slowly dribbling out of the tank over several days. It never completely drained because, (as I was informed) by someone more in the know of mechanical things, due to how the tank had likely broken, the cold side was rushing back in due to lack of pressure and was refilling the tank for the pipes in the house. So it may very well refill and need to be drained again when the repair people come on Saturday to replace the unit.

Now my hands are cracked and dry from playing in the water all day yesterday. My back aches from all the bending and lifting full buckets of brackish water, and my cough/sore throat has made a bid for revitalization on my behalf. But, in other news I completed some last minute edits for a client report, and started two new jobs for a different client, and! Here’s the big news, I was finally paid by another client that had had some internal personnel issues leading to the mix up / miscommunication. It’s been remedied, all good now! Perfecto!

I do need to keep an eye on the floors, because of the tank is indeed refilling I don’t want to be surprised by another massive pool of dirty water in the middle of my basement. So I checked it early this morning, and I will do so again in a moment. This house likes to keep us on our toes. Home ownership is not for the weak of heart! It’s not an asset, it’s a liability!

Also, hey man it’s Friday! The last day of school for 2025. One of my last days of work before the new year too. I am making myself available early next week, and then ducking out until everybody goes back in January. I suppose if a world ending request comes in I can work, if it’s super-duper important, but usually these liminal days between Christmas and New Years are empty, and not really all that important. Most commercial print shops and suppliers have closed down for the Holidays, so nothing to rush about for.

Have a great Holiday season. Take care out there. Singapore, Germany, the US I see you all here reading the archives, a special nod to you all for your eyeballs, and site visits! Thank you. Download my books! They’re free, and you can read them on your devices as a PDF with no restrictions. It’s all good baby – yeah!

We either have an overflowing water softener once again, or the water heater has sprung a leak. Because it happened over night, and isn’t like a tonne of water, I think it’s the softener personally, but I know very little mechanical wise, so I’ve opted for a more seasoned opinion, due to arrive at some point today. If it’s the softener it won’t happen again for several days because it only runs once or twice a week at most. Maybe the drain line is blocked with salt crystals or hard water minerals or something, I don’t know. Fun, fun, fun around here that’s for certain.

Happy Thursday before winter break 2025 starts! Booyah.

**Editor’s note: We have discovered that it is in fact the Water Heater that has sprung a leak. A fairly substantial one at that. So we have shut off the power to the unit. Switched off the water inlet. And drained some hot water by running the taps down to cold. Still there is a non trivial amount dribbling out of the bottom. Enough to soak through five shammies, six full sized towels, a youth poncho style towel, and a dozen or more hand towels. I have mopped several times, and the fresh dribbles continue to flow. I will have a cycle of towels to wash, dry. And reuse to attempt to keep the floors from becoming overly saturated. I seem to have split a knuckle during my endeavours, and I’m not sure when I did that today.

The water goes under the vinyl tiles and out into the main living space of the basement to pool there. So I will have the dehumidifier running non stop to help me soak all this back up. I hope that by turning off the cold water supply that it will not continue to fill, and it will at some point actually be empty. We currently have no hot water. Showers at Grandma’s house until we get this fixed, or repaired/replaced with a new one.

I’m actually glad that I took down the train table, and put the Lego bricks into its own tote bin, because I now have more room in which to mop, and attack this water leak where it will eventually pool once it’s done running under the vinyl tiles. Fewer bits to worry about rotting or developing mould. This has been a day! Good grief.

If I look back at this blog’s history, I have been writing here off and on for a number of years (read about thirteen years). Since 2020 I have had various attempts to write some form of short content or post every single day. For the most part if I had between one and five views on any given article, post, rant, or image I thought that was pretty awesome. Now that means my yearly views were typically well under 500 for a calendar year. It has only been recently, like the last three years where I have seen one to two thousand or more views. Not ideal if your goal is monetization, but pretty good if all you wanted were more eyes than just your own to see your micro short stories. This year has been especially good. This July I had more eyes on my old posts than several years combined, which is mental. This year I am over 4,500 views, which is incredible (for me). I’m sure Mr Beast would shut down that wing of his content creation department of it drew my kind of numbers, but I’m proud of it. At least 140 people have downloaded, and seen my first two books of collected interconnected short stories, and that gives me a fuzzy feeling in my stomach. Now I have no idea if this upward trajectory of views will persist beyond this month. I’ve hit more than 500 views in December alone, a milestone in and of itself, regardless of that all-star July, which is an extreme outlier, and not the norm. What I’m saying is, I’m not here writing these things for money, that’s fairly obvious I think, but rather as a means of free expression. Am I happy to see more people tuning in to read what I’ve written, YES! Of course I am, thrilled to bits, but it can all fade back to the zero to five views per day, or jump to 2,000 views per day, and I do not imagine I would change much of anything about how I write, or what I write about.

Since the finest details I can find are just higher than usual views of the archives, with no title names, or categories given, I can’t even begin to guess what sort of things have garnered attention. That’s a blessing, since it means I simply cannot lean into any one specific topic to try and exploit the trend. But on the flip side, it’s a curse, because I do not know what I’ve done to garner any attention whatsoever. Which frustrates me to no end. At least you know I’m not pandering to you! That may count for nothing at all. Ha!

I would love to do more mini war gaming terrain in the new year. Perhaps not on the two foot by two foot scale of my previous big projects, but I like it, and it’s fun, and I do see people finding my D & D terrain articles every so often. Gives me the chance to paint, sculpt, model with tooth picks, and balsa wood, and foam board. All very fun, and kind of forgiving materials to use. Sadly I don’t have a tonne of space in which to store bigger builds.

Speaking of space, as in physical room inside my home, and not the cosmos. I disassembled the Lego/Train table yesterday morning, and put the train tracks, and vehicles in one tote box, and all of the Lego Friends kits into one 76 L tote box. It took me a couple of hours to break down all of the Lego sets, and pull all of the bricks apart. I am NOT getting rid of the Lego, but I do want it organized better. So a tidy bin for all of it is by far the best option. I did not break down the Harry Potter sets, the Minecraft sets, the Encanto sets, or the Deep Sea sets… So I could likely fill a second half size tote bin with all of those. Plus the parrots, potted plants, dinosaurs, Simba, and a Seal that I know are kicking around in my kids bedrooms. My AT-ST will never get torn down, I have it up on a shelf out of the way.

I remember vividly putting a lot of those Lego Friends kits together for my girls during the many Lock-Downs we had in 2020-2022. The prices on Amazon and at Walmart skyrocketed, so we bought stuff on Facebook marketplace, and washed every single brick in soapy bleach water before I put them together. We have a stack of building instructions about a foot tall between the four of us. I think I even had some Super Mario Bros Lego too! Wild.

I think we have lost or misplaced a few trains over the years because I could have sworn we had more than the handful I found. Thomas the tank engine had a fairly firm grip on my kids when they were very little. Talking trains with faces… What could go wrong there! But that morphed into Peppa Pig, and Paw Patrol, LOL dolls and beyond. Oh and Shopkins can’t forget the Shopkins. So very many Shopkins absolutely everywhere in this house. I’ll be sad to see those boxed up eventually.

This is the second morning I’ve woken up thinking it was Friday, and yesterday was only Tuesday, so go figure eh!?! Mental. I should go empty the dish washer, and see if I can find any other Lego sets to tear down this morning.

Or an accountant, instead I really prefer to create artwork, and do graphic design. Not spend time each week writing emails about unpaid invoices, and having to threaten to shut down live services that affect multiple regions of your business. Not cool. I do not intend to carry the costs of services you require for free. This isn’t rocket science. Pay your invoices folks. Or at the very least reach out to explain the delays. Do your best to mitigate the damages you’ve caused by not paying for services rendered. I have yet to name names, but should we cross into the new year without a timely response, and no payments that might very well be my cause célèbre come 2026. I’m on the fence about it. More of an annoyance at this point than something I need to have a melt down over, or “crash out” as the kids say these days. For the time being it is merely polite reminders about the balances owing.

It’s Tuesday! And little over a week to go before Christmas. I think I might spend some time today wrapping my wife’s gifts to her parents, and family. I finalized my stuff yesterday, so now I can work on hers since I know she hates wrapping presents. The last few classes are winding down, so for two weeks after this Friday we won’t have to drag the kids all over town to their programming. We can veg out! Yay!

Of course today the garbage men came first thing in the morning. I had high hopes for tearing down some Lego kits and getting rid of the train table, but unlike every other garbage day we’ve had for the last three months, they came before 9:00 am, instead of just before 6:00 pm. So I will hold off on that until early January.

Holy smokes the recycling truck has come by too! They must have flipped the starting spot because this is very unlike them to be this early in the day. Glad I got everything down to the curb by 7:15 am. We always rush to get things to the curb as close to 7:00 am as possible then it all sits in the wind, rain, snow until well after dark. So sometimes it feels like I don’t need to rush, and I could wait until later in the day. Bad idea. You never do know when they are going to come! With only every other week for garbage pick up that’s a huge unforced error if you make it. Come January move to once every other week for both garbage and recycling. On opposite weeks. It’s going to be an ugly going show.

That also means my current box to house the blue bins, green bin, and garbage can is obsolete, because the new blue bin is the size of a small apartment in Tokyo. So I will need to tear that down in the new year. Probably need a new lockable trash can with a more secure lid, and a working green bin, also with a lockable lid to keep the raccoons, and skunks at bay. Fun times.

Not all bad news, I can reclaim the lock, and the hinges for another outdoor project, if need be. More burnables to go to the farm for disposal. I have some old drawers, and a bird house, and some shelves that need to go out to the burn pile as it is. I’ll have enough to warrant the trek soon.

Let us pray that all of my clients manage to clear their outstanding balances by December 31st to January 15th. Then I can rest easy and start my taxes for April. Then we begin again once more.

It’s something that I have done before and found good success with, and that was taking photos of some of my wife’s most used things, and heading to the store to buy more of it. Assuming that is, that this wasn’t a product she was trying to use up rather than throw away just to be polite, and was actually something she liked, or was happy with. I think I struck a balance here, as I was able to find three of the four items I was searching for, with the help of the counter clerk person. One the just straight up didn’t have anymore, it was way out of date, and they no longer produce it in said format. So that was out. Two of them I found picture perfect matches for — sweet! And one last item I had to take a guess on, and chose the “Night” option, even though the current one does not explicitly say night on it, but it also didn’t say collagen, or anything about additive cells or some such.i don’t know anything about make ups, moisturizers, day versus night creams, or anything like that apparently. So I’ve kept the receipt in case I’ve buggered it up, so she can exchange it for what she wants, if my choice ends up being just a hair off the mark. Not a big deal if she needs to swap out for the same item one row over on the shelf. I got within spitting distance of it, and I’ll count that as a win.

They clerk did say I might be able to order the fourth item from on-line because not all make ups sell out just because a line, or single product is no longer in production. I can give that a whirl if I feel like I don’t have enough for her this Christmas. I bought myself the 68 CC Proyama chainsaw on sale, so I have room to get her what she needs to keep it fair. I’ll look into it! No harm in doing a meaningful search.

We still have 9 full days before Christmas, so you have time to shop before the store shelves empty out leaving you with very few options. Although the Boxing Day / Boxing Week sales will begin almost immediately, and magically the shelves & aisles will be cluttered with stuff once more. Do what is fiscally responsible for you and yours this holiday season.

Any-who, we are back to Monday, and I am feeling more like myself. The double tap of flu & Covid vaccines made me feel a little off this weekend, but we are all the better for it. I have to protect myself as best as I can. Winter brings many airborne illnesses with it. Coughs, colds, flus, and stomach bugs galore. Hand washing and getting enough sleep, and eating better will go a long way to staving off this sort of thing. But not everything is avoidable given just how many activities my kids do each week! We do get a winter break respite from all that starting soon enough. Yeah!

Sending out the last of the year’s invoices, trying to coerce a client to pay outstanding invoices from the summer before year end. I have ranted about this elsewhere, so I digress. I don’t name names, but I am annoyed by this lack of empathy, and moreso by the lack of prompt payment. While I am glad for the holiday card, and sample treats, the paid invoices (plural) would be more appropriate at this time. Moving on.

The children have five school days left, most of which will be spent playing games, watching movies, having assemblies, and being hyper fixated on Christmas Day. So not much going on for them beyond just babysitting this entire week. Unfortunately Christmas isn’t until next Thursday, so they have a whole lead up week to completely fall apart, and become stark raving mad present seeking hogs.

Oh look, more snow! Ugh. Can we not for a few weeks? Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, Merry Hannukah, be a bright light of Diwali etc etc…

I feel rushed, and like I don’t have enough done all at the same time. I have all the Christmas presents I purchased wrapped, and a good number under the tree. Stocking stuffers are all done too. I still feel like I need to grab more stuff. These weekends feel both empty and too full all at the same time. I don’t know where the disconnect is.

Yesterday my eldest passed her taekwondo belt promotion to become a Red belt. She has completed nine of the eleven belts so far. Once you get to Black belt, the eleventh they break into their own “Dan” levels of which there are four. A fourth level Dan is a master. So while she is close to the entry level black belt, she is far from done. I’m proud she made it this far. Our original goal was the Blue Belt because that seemed so far away when she began. But now she is two belts beyond that, and still going strong. She might even make the black stripe belt by July 1st when we break for summer vacation. Who knows!?!

I had both a Flu & Covid shot on Friday afternoon and have left lousy ever since. I can feel it getting lessened by the hour which is nice. I will be back to myself before the day is through. Happy about that. Shoulder hurts from the two concurrent jabs in the same muscle. Should have done two spots, and not just localized to one! Live and learn.

It’s a good thing that the Taekwondo belt testing is done here in town and not miles away because the weather outside is dreadful, and I would not want to have to drive far, far away for anything that cannot be rescheduled. It’s currently snowing, and the powdery stuff already on the ground is blowing about like crazy. This is how you end up with three foot tall snow drifts that can cause accidents, or wedge a car solid in the middle of the road. I have seen two plows out so far this morning, and I didn’t bother to get up until 9:00 am!

We went for our Flu shots yesterday, about a month late, but still better to have them than not, I think. I double dipped and had a Covid-19 Moderns shot too, because of my Crohn’s Disease. I’d really rather not have Covid ever again if I can help it! What a nightmare that was. I stayed sick for 21 days until the red testing line finally started to fade enough to kinda not be seen anymore.

My eldest has belt testing so we opted to get hers done either later today or on Monday so that her arm wouldn’t ache before she does her patterns, and just as importantly, does her sparring matches to obtain her neck belt promotion. She is currently still asleep. I applaud her for finally getting some much needed rest. These kids suffer serious fomo at night and never want to sleep, but their bodies, and brains really do need it! A Saturday morning sleep in has been a long few years coming. Perhaps as they BOTH approach teenhood we can finally count on them both staying asleep on the weekends, and not try to be up before six o’clock in the morning both days.

No point going out to shovel while it is blowing so hard. I would wind up doing more harm than good. So let the powdery stuff fall where it may, and then get after it, if need be. Looks as though it’s trying to blow up against the front of the house, or into the back yard and beyond. As long as we can Jimmy the door open to leave we’re all good!

In other news Christmas is the twelfth day from today! Big red guy is coming to town! We haven’t even gone to see the lights in town yet. Missed the Santa Claus parade on my daughter’s birthday because they were downtown seeing Shrek live with their Girl Guide unit. December is rushing along really fast this year. I did secure about 100 hours of work for the new year, which is nice. It’s something I can count on which is really great. I am thankful for the vote of confidence in these difficult economic times.

Have a lovely Saturday. I see you Singapore! I see the viewership numbers out of your region blowing up more & more. I still don’t know what is catching people’s eye, but I hope it’s good natured, and that you had a good time reading/looking at it.

Though it does kind of cannibalize its own subscription model, and that one singular solution tends towards dead. Anxious? Dead. Hungry? Dead. Have any kind of needs to be taken care of, yup you guessed it — dead. The dead don’t feel hunger, pain, sadness, remorse, anxiety, or anything else for that matter. I’ve seen enough news clips, and articles about how people who turn to Chat gpt for a personal assistant, or a virtual friend, or even just chat with it a lot, all get the same treatment where they are corralled towards killing themselves. It’s the single best solution that a LLM can come up with to solve all of our individual issues. Food scarcity? Kill yourself. Miss your wife & kids? Kill yourself. Have a tax bill you can’t possibly make? Kill yourself. Worried about cancer, finances, your love life, a broke down car? It all leads to the same answer. I for one am not ok with that. Not cool.

Not to mention the wildly out of pocket hallucinations these LLM’s report back with as undisputed answers to seemingly simple questions. We are, in fact, all dumber for having heard your response. Precious time we will never get back. This isn’t autocorrect, or a grammar checker, this is wholesale outsourcing of thinking to an online dictionary that mimics speech. Truly ridiculous.

Maybe it’s because my day job revolves around art, and things of that nature that I have not embraced AI. I spent years learning to draw, paint, sculpt, build scale models, realistic terrain, and play musical instruments that I feel those turning to a prompt, aren’t really doing “the thing”. It’s a novelty — for sure. I won’t deny that. But to claim skill or mastery akin to that of Michelangelo, Money, Picasso, Frida or any other higher order artist is nonsense. I can order food from a tablet, doesn’t make me a Michelin starred chef.

I get that you might be envious of others talent, sacrifice, dedication, discipline and skill, but to try to position yourself amongst them via a prompt is absurd. Don’t make me laugh. It’s a party trick. It’s slight of hand. It’s hand wavy nonsense where something else external to you does 99.999% of the work (theft at that!) to feel like you’ve really done something. You did not cook. There was no dedication to master it. You did not give yourself over to the learning curve, suffering through skill plateaus, enjoying growth, building off of personal experience, or first hand knowledge. It’s a sham.

Not only that, but the end game for this product is that it will lead you to your own death. Silly people. We should all pull away from social media and get back to living our lives, in person. Walking through our neighbourhoods, talking to one another, building relationships, building up our communities. We’ve lost ourselves. It is disheartening to see.

Alas, we have made it to another Friday. One more week out of the year 2025 nearly completed. Only a few brief moments left before the dial ticks over into 2026. More snow is on the horizon. More cold. More wind. More ice. Who knows what work will bring come the new year. Best of luck to you all out there. Ciao Bella!