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While at the farm splitting wood my heel came apart almost instantly, so that put a damper on both my mobility, and my mood. But fear not intrepid user, I do some modest leather working (yet another hobby) so I have Barge contact cement on hand, and at the ready. Luckily I had some old screws laying around to keep the two faces apart while the glue sets up. I don’t have a form to hammer on, so once the glue sets up and I apply the pieces together I will just have to stand still with the one boot on, to get it to adhere properly. I only need to do this for a minute or two, then I will take it off and allow the glue to continue curing over night. Otherwise I might have to resort to finishing nails, and duct tape! How fine!

I will be pleased as punch if this works. Besides how scuffed they are, the boots are in terrific condition as far as I’m concerned. I’m on my second set of laces, but the steel toes are great, the soles are intact, even if the one side came apart like the glue just fainted and evaporated this morning. “Oh dear, I have the vapours!” Poof! …and gone.

Well it’s Wednesday, hump day. I have some paid work to go take care of, and some volunteer artwork to submit for the fair APPR department, so I best get on it. Random hobbies are cool. Otherwise I would not have the best in class industrial contact cement on hand. Lucky me!

Not the best full figure, free standing sculpt I have ever done, but I’m happy enough with it to A.) paint it fully, and B.) display it in public for all to see. I have a few back up pieces I could have submitted if this one fell completely flat, but I think it has some redeeming qualities at least. If I had to do it over again, I would definitely make some adjustments, and different choices, but here we are. Beside my photography entries I am just about done. I might have some brownies to enter too, but we’ll see just how busy the lead up to the fair actually is.

As far as my usual sculpting goes this turtle is fairly plain. No major embellishments like detailed armor, or knick-knacks and pouches on the belt. No weapons even. I’m not totally comfortable working in epoxy, so I put it to rest once I’d had enough of working on it to make it at least feel somewhat complete as a thing. My paint job leaves much to be desired, but whatever. I don’t flog myself off in public as a painter. I like to paint, same as I like to sing, doesn’t make me much of either in the public eye.

It is Tuesday. I am moving ahead at a decent pace on my report, so that’s great. I had a heck of a day yesterday, getting through twenty of the thirty five pages I have left. Still a long row to hoe today, but at least I can see the end in sight! That’s gotta be worth something. Small early wins makes it easier to focus and stay on task. If it fights me every step of the way I am more likely to drag my feet and slow walk the entire project out of frustration. I could still need tomorrow morning, but that remains to be seen.

Tonight is climbing with my youngest, so I have until about 6:20 pm to work on it this afternoon. A long day, but potentially worth it to finish a first draft early in the week.

That’s a great way to start the week off feeling tired, drained, and under rested. It was a poor life choice, but I did get out and swim, walk the dog around the farm, do some paid work, and take my older daughter to the driving range yesterday. I did sit down to read at one point but had to stop just as it was getting really interesting, so picking up where I left off was top of mind all last evening. I had meant to just finish the chapter I was on, but ultimately I got carried away and read for a few extra hours beyond my bedtime. Rookie mistake. Poor choice for a Sunday night. You can get away with that on a Thursday through Saturday, but to be so early in the week and all ready tired is dumb. I regret it immensely.

So here we are back to Monday. I completed maybe just less than half of my report. Enough to feel like I got something done, but not enough to breeze through today, that’s for certain. Good news is no wood splitting until Wednesday (weather permitting). I can split in a drizzle, but not a down pour or electrical storm. So I will have to take a wait and see approach to my exercise plans, above & beyond the indoor rock climbing.

Luckily we did all of our laundry on Sunday afternoon, so I can finish my breakfast and drop full force into my latest report. It’s a little different from other ones we’ve done, so it’s taking a little longer to pull itself together, but I’ll get there. Slowly but surely it will start to coalesce into a cohesive document.

In other news I have confirmation that my passport documents made it to their destination late last week. I am hoping that five/six weeks lead time is enough for it to get produced without going over the expiry date. I’m under the gun if we want to do anything in late October this year.

Downloads of the book are leveling off, which is fine. I have no grand vision of being a late in life best selling author. The fact that more than one hundred and twenty plus people have downloaded both the first or second book is pretty awesome in my esteem. I hope they enjoyed parts, if not the entire thing. It was a labour of love over a few hard Covid years getting it all out together.

The kids are getting their 2025 Markham Fair entries out together. Those have to go in on Saturday or next Tuesday. The photos should be made ready in the next twenty four hours. I need to complete my painting project, otherwise all I will have this year are my photography pieces. I’d like to get my Ninja Turtle sculpt into the mix if I could.

I need to get working if I want the time to paint this week. Best of luck to you all.

Our main weekend plans were cancelled, so we kept our climbing session as scheduled, and my eldest had her pre-planned play date with friends that went forward, so we still did some things, just not a cottage run, and no Wonderland today. My body is tired from both climbing, and splitting wood for four or five hours this past week. My feet hurt and walking on concrete all day can be a bit much. Plus next week the Halloween Haunt begins so we will go enjoy that for some themed fun.

I have a large project on the books as of Friday afternoon, so that is my main focus for now. I also had some work come in via my second largest client which was a rush, so I needed to rearrange my day, to push their project up to the top of my priority list. Luckily I have seventeen pages of the report done as of last night, plus five or six pages of comments too, so now I can drill down into the body of the data sheets and plug along nicely. I’m trying to get myself to complete even more today so I’m not under the gun come Monday morning. Whatever I get done now, is something I don’t have to do during the week. I should put the fact we aren’t at Wonderland to good use by actually working. I’m just working up the drive to go and do it. Ha.

I saw a bunch of new furniture build videos dropped on YouTube so perhaps I’ll eat lunch, watch a video or two then work for a few hours this afternoon. Seems like a fair trade to me! Relaxing morning, with a family dog walk, and then a few dedicated hours of work to utilize my day properly now that nobody else wanted to go ride coasters in the sunshine.

Maybe we will hit the driving range later this evening as a reward for working so diligently! Best be kind to ourselves! Have a Funday Sunday.

Whether it’s your fingernails or toenails it doesn’t much matter. If you want a comfortable climbing experience, trim down your nails. Your fingers need to be done so that if you are pressing down really hard while you dangle from an extremely narrow ledge you don’t pull your finger nails off under the pressure of your body pressing down on the cuticle. It hurts. Don’t do that.

Also if you would like your soul crushingly tight climbing shoes to not leave you hobbling around, you need to cut your toenails otherwise the pressure of the near constant squeezing will make the inner most portion of your cuticle separate from the toe nail bed, and you’ll end up with bloody socks, and red blood filled lines across your toes.

Just a handy-dandy guide to having a much better time up on the walls, or while bouldering. You’ll know super duper fast if you have forgotten this rule of thumb. So, now I’m going to go inspect my fingers and toes, and get those lined up nice and tidy. Then it’ll water bottle filling time, and eating a halfway decent breakfast.

Have a great Saturday!

My right elbow is not very happy with me right as of this second, but I just about finished all I can do here at pile one. Next week we move on to pile two, the “we” being the dog and myself. Though next week we’ll be out in the open and not shielded from the sun by a gigantic walnut tree. Let us hope the temperature drops just a little. Not too much, but to hover between 18°C and 23°C is perfect for physical exercise outdoors. Perhaps a slight cross breeze might be of service. A boy can dream, can’t he?

My chopped pile doesn’t seem to grow much at all. I guess it’s spilling over to be a wider, but lower pile. I have to throw the pieces somewhere and lobbing them up over a taller pile seems like a waste of arm strength. I’m here building up shoulder, arm and grip strength, not trying to improve my shit out skills.

I’m starting to figure out what I need in order to continue on. More drinks was a big one, not just for me, but for the dog too. A plastic bowl for his water was a must. I did it out of a bark boat, but that seemed unnecessarily cruel. And at least one snack since I haven’t been having breakfast until 11:00 am. Or maybe the snack itself is breakfast. Either way — definitely need some food stuffs on hand to keep my attention on wood splitting, and not a growling stomach. The dog has his treats from our walk so he’s all sorted.

Now I’m going to stop until Monday because rushing through all of this wood isn’t going to do me any good. Then I’ll just have to sort out another physical chore to keep me occupied until work picks up in the fall. I’d turn my eyes back towards golf, but that requires spending money on tee times, golf carts, balls, tees, and beverages on the courses. Not that I’d turn down an offer to go whack a few for a morning, but it’s belt cinching time.

I’m going to go ice my elbow and have a shower. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

And boy are my arms tired.

Took a moment to stage a tidy little photo sesh right by the pile there, looking sharp. Found a number of rounds that 8 just could not crack at all. My pile for the hydraulic splitting is growing rather fast. Or, now hear me out here, I might just be tired, and weak in the shoulders and back, and thus — cannot split some of the tougher, wetter rounds that haven’t developed much by way of internal cracks I could exploit for splitting. I do not doubt for a second that a stronger person wielding a heavier and sharper maul could waltz on by and split these without a second thought. I’m not there yet, so my take on it is, yeah! Ok, fine I’ll set you aside for now. Maybe by October I will have the power, or desire to split them myself in a second attempt.

My current pile is getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger still. If I make the effort tomorrow I might just exhaust the supply around pile one. Which isn’t really a problem per se. I had hoped that more of it was ready to go, but half of it is too long. I can’t be arsed to split logs that are over thirty inches long. I can barely roll them, and have zero chance to get them up on the block myself. Then the chopping angle is way off, practically cutting off my entire swing. So those will get left to be cut down further for another day. There are full four or five foot limbs in the pile, I’m not touching those, and the rest is too new. Very wet, and has no signs of checking or cracking that I need to map out my plan of attack on each round encountered.

At 60-90 minutes a session I don’t really need to go all that hard each time I stop by to split wood.  I’m trying desperately to do two things at once, be helpful, not get hurt, and exercise so I can be proactive with my weight loss. If I can inhibit my evening snacking, and stop pounding multiple cans of pop every single day, I should slowly start to come out on top of this thing. I’m still walking the dog, and working my day job. We’re back into the swing of climbing twice a week, so with any luck, and common sense, I should start to see the numbers on the scale drop slightly over the next few weeks. I do not know if I plan to keep splitting into November. Depends on the piles, and how slow I move through the rest of September and all of October.

I recently had John Scalzi’s new book delivered by Amazon (forgot I saw it and ordered it months ago) as a very pleasant surprise. I have given it a few minutes even though I am technically reading a Jason Pargin book right now (I’m beginning to worry about this black box of doom), but this is thinner, with larger text, and is pretty snappy. I can interrupt one book to read another. I’m doing that with Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, with the Jason Pargin book as we speak. Triple split, it’s like book inception over here. The sooner I finish one, I can finish the other and get back to Mistborn and it’s deeper world building. Which sometimes I love, and other times I just want a story to get rolling without pages upon pages explaining a new world or magic system to me. But I digress.

So that’s my Thursday as of eleven am. Take care out there. Enjoy yourselves. Ciao Bella!

I started with about an hour on Friday morning, and I did get a number of rounds split, so I felt that was a success. I said I was going to start, and I made a pile large enough to be seen from the lane. Then my bicep began to ache and I had climbing 24 hours later so I stopped.

Today I managed a full 90 minutes of splitting, and my bicep is once again singing in pain for my troubles. But less so. I thought after climbing last night without it hurting I was going to be able to get through today’s chunk of splitting without any problems. Not so! But I gave it a rest before I aggravated it too much, so let us hope that when I go back tomorrow (weather/work permitting) I can keep my arm from wanting to fall off.

I think I tore some of my bicep a few summers ago when I pruned the top 8 feet off of the back hedge row. I did two inch plus main trunks with a cheap pair of loppers meant to do inch, inch and a half limbs. My god did my one arm hurt for weeks after that. Now with vigorous exercise that bicep gives me a wee bit of trouble. I just didn’t want to have to hold two different cutters, and a hand saw, and my hedge trimmers while balancing on a 2ft by 2ft platform. Now my arm aches after I use my bicep muscle too hard. Gotta love aging!

I do not believe that I will get through all of the wood, but it gives me something to aim towards, and I’m getting exercise, and the dog is having the time of his life chasing whatever he can find. Plus this stuff will get burned at the cottage for maple syruping, so it’s a win for everybody. I have encountered a handful of rounds that I just couldn’t split by hand. So those I am setting aside in case a hydraulic splitter ever makes an appearance at the farm. There aren’t many, but after 8-10 whacks with no split, or dents or nothing I am not too proud to just set it aside. They win this round! But I’ll best you yet believe you me. Ha! Fuckers.

The next step will be retrieving bins to load all of this into so that it can be transported north to the woodshed for further drying. Once I move to the next pile over in front of the barn I’ll need to be more strategic because stuff needs to be able to come & go from the ground floor of the barn without being impeded by myself or the split wood. I might just work partially out on the grass to make way for vehicles and the like. I have a few days before I need to worry about that anyway. I’ll give it some thought closer to then. For now I’m shaded under a gigantic walnut tree, and out on open grass. With room to park and work without restriction. It’s quite lovely really. Doing it for free means I can come & go as I please and move at my own pace. Love it!

Finishing up my renewal has taken longer than I’d care to admit. I started writing it out at the beginning of the month, and then sat on it for two weeks because I just couldn’t be arsed to request two long standing family friends to sign off on it for me. But now that I have a mere six weeks until my current documentation runs out, I jumped on it on Sunday morning, and got one sign off last night, and a second done early this morning. Took a break to walk the dog, and then triple checked that I had signed, added payment details, and had my photos and supplementary documentation in order and priority mailed it off at the post office. Now I wait, and hope it goes through without any missed portions on the forms, and then I’ll not have to worry about it again until ten years from now. I’ve known it was expiring for a very long time, and should have done this back in March when it was top of mind. But I had other pressing matters to attend to, so I let it slide. And here we are.

With all expectations that I should get it back in three weeks or so if all goes well. Everybody else is good through 2027/2028. Which means we will need to sort the kids out in another years time. I don’t know why but filling out forms makes me nervous that I have misread something, or failed to sign the document in an obscure place.

Hey it’s Tuesday! And a sunny lovely day at that. We will all go climbing tonight at The Hub, so that should be a lot of fun. I’m all paid up until early November so that’s cool too. Tomorrow after school drop off the dog & I will stick around at the farm to do some more wood splitting. See if I can’t do a couple of days in a row to get through the first of multiple piles. The stack near the front of the barn looks like smaller, and drier rounds. I hope they split easily enough. Maybe after a few sessions I’ll be able to go for more than 45-60 minutes at a time. Not that I need to be spending six hours doing it, as this is for exercise, and to stop me spending money needlessly, not because I’m getting paid, nor am I expecting to get paid for it either.

See if I can’t shed some extra pounds by swinging a splitting maul, and climbing with the girls each week. If I stop snacking, and eat better that might go a longer way towards not being so round through the middle. Ha.

Side note: dog got skunked right in the mouth yesterday evening while I was taking my eldest to taekwondo. So that wasn’t cool. Luckily we had all the skunk out shampoos, conditioners, hard surface sprays and such to wash the worst of it away. Not a fun way to spend an evening, I’m sure.

So this has been in the works for quite some time now. We saw one similar at the first belt testing operation at our current gym, and I thought that it was a lovely way to display my daughter’s dedication to the sport/martial art. It will have taken her a number of years to move up through all of the belts she chooses to do, so it’s a compact way to symbolize all of those years of effort.

Right now she is a red stripe on a blue belt, and will have a red belt, then a red belt with a black stripe to go before she can make it to black belt territory. Plus you have all of those Dabs levels to progress further up in the black belt tiers. If she sticks with it for several more (expensive) years then she can try to get into teaching/instruction at the gym. Or because she’s a great swimmer maybe she will be a life guard, I don’t know, I couldn’t say which area tickles her fancy more. But the important thing is, she has options!

We have room for all the belts. Well depending on just how many black belts she gets to, it might get over crowded on the top tier, but I’ll worry about that in five or six years time. Too early to be bothered by it now.

I made the whole thing out of walnut, but had some darker poplar dowels for the upper pegs, which seems to work well enough. I have screws on the back so that I can add picture wire and hang it from a stud if it needs to come up off the ground. We are in a bit of a transition period where the kids are moving (ever so slowly) away from toys, into devices, electronic games, and hobbies, and experiences. Also clothes are becoming a bigger deal now, more than ever, as they are growing up, changing shapes and sizes, and building their own tastes in what they like to wear. So their bedrooms might fluctuate as they release toys to the younger cousins, or take them to the cottage, which opens up floor space to keep the display on the ground, or if they start to pull down the kiddie posters, drawings, and wall decals, I can put it up over the bed. It’s all a slow moving jigsaw puzzle at the moment. I can’t pin anything down just yet.

I’m also now aware of how much different the sizes of belts are. I may have mismeasured because I based my overall design on the first three belts I found on the top of my daughters armoire, and now I am concerned it isn’t going to be wide enough for her teen year belts that take much longer to achieve! D’oh! Oh well, I know I made some mistakes building this one so if I did it again 8 would make the vertical supports thicker, so that as I dado cut the horizontal pieces into them I didn’t weaken it so badly. I ended up having to cut, and glue two additional pieces to the back of the struts to strengthen them up considerably. As you could audibly hear it cracking, or creaking as I moved it around, just under its own weight. That was a mood crusher hearing that noise so soon after I had glued it all together — pre added strut support.

I’m happy with the medal hangers, I got her gold and bronze medals from the Taekwondo Black Belt World June 2025 tournament up on there, proudly displayed. I found her first medal for outstanding achievement too. And a medal from this year’s Regatta at the lake. Looks cool up on there too.

I had originally planned to use dark dowels to hold all of the belts on, but I soon realized elastic rope was the way to go. Now if it gets knocked, or tips the belts should stay out no matter what. That’s a nice touch in my mind. I am kind of sad I messed up the top plate as I had hoped to router in some words to make it really feel like it was specific to my daughter you know? But I got carried away, muddled my measurements and fucked it up, good & hard. So I had to cut it down. Oh well! Live and learn.