Category: Uncategorized

Going on a walk about to go look at stuff, so I’ll keep this short. Had a nice visit with extended family, which resulted in a wonderful dinner, and watching the first few innings of the Jays Game from the comfort of their living room. Not as fabulous as the first game, but that Yamamoto fella had our number. Dust it off and get back at it on Monday night! Short memories!

Wow what a game that was to watch. I saw the first five innings with friends and then returned home to watch the single greatest sixth inning 8 can remember. Nine runs in during that whale of a sixth. Plus a Barger Grand Slam, a few singles, a walk brought in during loaded bases. It had everything, including Addison Barger’s first ever recorded pinch hitter world series grand slam in baseball history.

With any luck they will continue to perform admirably throughout the entire series. Win or lose that was a hell of a return to world series baseball. No clean sweep for us! Dodgers might be the best on paper, but the Toronto Blue Jays have heart, passion, and know how to dig deep to eek out a win. I do not know how this tale ends, but if they can stay in the fight without deflating, then we are all in for a wild ride. Go Jays!

A solid mix of small ball base grinding, followed up with long bombs, and a bullpen that kept us in the game by limiting runs by the Dodgers. Trey Yesavage did a commendable job even if he was unable to bring his 100% to the mound. He is young, full of fire, and I think he’ll do wonders for the organization over the next couple of years. Worth keeping an eye on I think.

Geménez, Springer, Kirk, and Bobichette,Varsho, Straw, and a whole mess of others played like a well oiled machine. Team work made that dream of a game work. No slackers present. I do love to see them gel like this, feed off of one another, and bring something special to the table. I like how egalitarian the team feels right now. Oh what a feelin’.

I enjoyed two Twisted Teas with the game for a change instead of my usual zero sugar Gatorade. Still had a great deal of fun. Extra bathroom breaks required though, once the seal was broken. Ha.

Have a terrific Saturday, as the lads will be back at it again tonight. Same Bat time, same Bat channel. Ciao Bella!

I have only a couple of things loosely planned for today, so it may not be the smoothest ride ever. Extended family at the farm in the early afternoon. Oldest daughter doing a group costume building session at a friend’s house for eleven. A family dog walk this morning. Very loose, very informal, very much a patch work of half heard suggestions, requests, and answers. I get it. Not my best work, of that I am aware.

To the best of my knowledge I do not know what I did with myself when we had PA Days back when I was a Child. I have no recollection of doing anything out of the ordinary. No additional programming. No babysitters turning up. Must have been like an extra Saturday, so no cause for celebration, or alarm. In my teen years I would have gone to work for extra hours. That I do know. But childhood me? You could say that anybody’s guess is as good as mine. I genuinely have no idea. We certainly didn’t do day trips as a family, or go to do some out of home programming with the library, or town, or some other educational institution.

It’s funny because I have been watching these two guys on Facebook reels that talk about retro gaming, clothes, and music from the late 80’s, and the 90’s, and they were waxing poetic about shoes (most recently). And I honest to goodness could not tell you what brand of shoes I had ever worn, until I met my wife (back in 2002) because I only now remember the White & Green Adidas she bought me, and prior to that I don’t know what I would have had on my feet. I remember a reddish brown pair of faux leather New Balance shoes with a squared off toe, but again I think I got those after 2002. So for my first 22 years of life I do not know what brands of shoes I owned or wore. Desiring foot ware was not one of my concerns as an adolescent.

I don’t really remember my coats all that much either. I do recall a UNLV red and black hooded sweater, button up jersey thing I used to love back in grades 7 & 8. I remember the half zip pull over mostly black ski jacket I had. I’ve never been much for fashion. I do remember certain t-shirts that had patterns on them, or Bart Simpson apparel. Clothes just weren’t that big a deal to me. I remember getting overalls, which were “cool” at the time, and immediately hating them. I know I wore track pants for far too long before ever wearing jeans. I had a couple cable knit sweaters I loved in high school (the purple one was the shit). So that era is not totally lost to me, but I have some significant gaps in my day to day memory.  Weird how that works huh? Crazy.

I do still have most of the video games, and systems I’ve ever owned. My Sega Master System & games, my PS 1, and games, and my Xbox, and Xbox 360. Problem is with those 2000’s gaming consoles I would have bought & traded in games to get new ones all the time, so the full roster of games I’ve ever owned is unknown to me. I didn’t keep a master list of owned titles. Now that would be interesting to see and know. I just never thought of it at the time. Shame. I did try out some dog shit games back in the day. Would be funny to know exactly what they were, so I could mock them mercilessly with confidence & as authority. Oh well, what could have been.

Welp… I’m pretty sure it’s Friday. I need to get up and go walk the mutt. Have a day to remember. Ciao Bella!

Need to make another run to the post office later on today because more passport documents have arrived, which I need to sign for. Since I was out yesterday morning splitting wood I missed the at home delivery, so now I have to go there — again. This time I hope it is a completed, newly updated passport and not a return of my application with details circled that I have missed. My deadline is fast approaching, and I don’t want to have to do a brand new passport application from step one, as the renewal is so much easier to do. Maybe six weeks out wasn’t early enough on my part. Fingers crossed for a passport in this package I am receiving. Let us hope!

But not unlike any other day of the week where it wasn’t pouring with rain, I was in fact back at the farm walking the dog, and splitting more rounds for firewood. Mostly for exercise, but helping keep us all heated for the winter months is a bonus too. I am down to the point where I am picking and choosing my rounds to split. Some have sat face up for too long and are now water logged. Which makes them spongy, and unlikely to split without a Herculean effort on my part. I skip those whenever possible. But I’ve turned them on their sides, so I hope that they now drain, and dry out for next year. I am also moving undesirable logs into neater piles that can be dumped in the woods, or bucked into useable slices for me to split. I could take my chainsaw down, it’s a tiny little one. I think I might have pooched it using premixed gas out of a store bought canister. More like lighter fluid than gasoline. I don’t think my Stihl liked it much. I will need to drain it, and put proper hand mixed fuel in it, and see if I can get it going again. I could likely then buck a few rounds myself with my teenie tiny chainsaw. I’m not there yet.

If I examine the absolutely massive Pile Three and find nothing ready to go, then I might reconsider my chainsaw situation. Unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

In other news the Grade Six Trip downtown was a resounding success, they had sunshine (if slightly below seasonal temperatures) and a good time on the observation deck of the CN Tower, they got to pet a Sting Ray at Ripley’s Aquarium, and the food was ok at the Spaghetti place, except that all the boys sat in her table group tried to finish the table Parmesan cheese which lead to terrible flatulence on the bus ride home. Also, the bus ride downtown was more pleasant this go round than the ride to the Cross Country Meet a few weeks ago. She brought gum to help with ears popping on the ride up & down the CN Tower, so that was a win. And she bought herself an axolotl stuffy at Ripley’s so she was pleased as punch about that. Did my daughter go to bed any earlier because of her busy day, you might ask? No. No she did not. And this morning she was all the more grumpy because of it. At least tomorrow is a PA Day. Sleep in for the three of us! Wife still has to work though. Then she’s off for nine days, so I don’t feel too bad.

Tomorrow night is game one of the Blue Jays vs. Dodgers World Series, so that should be a hoot! I have my fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed for a positive first outing for the Jays! Let us pray.

**Editor’s Note: It came, it finally came! My brand spanking new updated passport has arrived. Too late for any kind of overseas trip any time soon, but the point is I now have it in hand, and I don’t have to think about mine again until the mid 2030’s. Which, if I do say so myself, is pretty fucking great news. I’m so glad. Although with Las Vegas and Florida potentially off the table for the foreseeable future I’m guessing we travel to Europe or the Caribbean if we go anywhere noteworthy.  Shame, I really wanted to visit Universal Studios to ride their giant roller coasters. We will have to see how the trade deal shakes out of the next few months/years. Either way, I now have my deets ready for dooting.

Ask me how I know. I’d be willing to wager if every middle school, and high school teacher turned up for class dressed as a sick Seven for the next week they could pretty much suck all of the cool out of the “6-7” rallying cries that echo through the halls & classrooms each and every day. Make it lame, and something is adults do, and the kids will lose interest as fast as you can say demure, lit, fam, slay, bodied, pwned, noob, and as many other rizz type things as you can muster. You aura points farming mother fucker you! Giv’er!

Wish I’d have thought enough about it to take a photo. But I’m so not a morning person, I wasn’t thinking much beyond packing the kids lunches into their bags, and returning the borrowed cables back to the principal. I’m kicking myself now, but I did see it on an Instagram reel, so it’s not like we came up with it. Just thought it was funny, and easy to accomplish with stuff we had on hand.

It’s Wednesday today which means Grade Six Class Trip downtown for ten hours today. My eldest is not due to return until 8:30 pm tonight. If I recall they are going up the top of the CN Tower, visiting Ripley’s Aquarium, and having dinner at an Italian place for spaghetti. I don’t know in what order, or when they move from one site to another. My wife read, and signed that particular permission slip. I’ve heard all about it for the last month straight, but that’s pretty standard with anything mildly exciting goes on involving my children.

Like the Halloween costumes. Oh boy. First they were acolytes from 99 Nights in the Forest, so I had to buy plastic weapons, namely an axe, and a crossbow. No crossbows available, so a bow & arrow was a suitable replacement. Then my youngest wanted to be Kraken Kid because they can’t have weapons (fake ones) at school, but she can be a squid headed child in light blue pants, and a white T-shirt. But then they wanted to be T-Rexes with inflatable costumes, and it took a few days to come to a consensus on colours. So once they choose Orange of all things, it was a non stop litany of “won’t it be cool when…” Statements about the T-Rex outfits for a week straight.

I’m back from splitting more wood, and I’m tired, and achy. New Estwing 4 lbs mini sledge hammer is working a real treat. No vibration dampening on it, so tough on the wrist, but offers a substantial impact, which is what I need it for. Cool beans. Two thumbs up. I might even spring for the Estwing nine inch wedge that they make to go along with it. I’m running low on viable wood to split easily in Pile One, so either I move on to Pile Three soon, or I slow the pace down to a crawl and tackle the excruciatingly hard to split stuff with the wedge and mallet. I don’t know if I’m there yet. If Pile Three proves futile with wood that is too new, and too wet, I just might have to consider it. This sort of thing makes me wish I had a portable saw mill too. I’d love to process some wood to make furniture with in the future. Oh to dream!

Spent an hour or so last night at the inlaws covering the pool for the winter. Always proves to be a challenge because we never remember to mark the tarp properly to a point on the stones so that we can lay it in once, and have it exactly where it needs to be. There are few things more maddening that realizing all the liners have to come back out so that you can shift the cover 2-3 inches one way or another because you were ever so slightly off, but don’t know until the last section of the liner goes in. And it either fits or you realize you are off one side or the other. So hard on the back, knees, and shoulders. We never seem to start early enough and wind up finishing in the pitch black of night, with bugs in your ears, eyes, and mouth. It’s a treat. Gotta be done though, if you want to access the pool during late Spring, summer, and early fall.

Have a lovely Wednesday in late October of 2025.

What a nail biter of a game, a single run lead into the last two innings, but they pulled it off with a 50th come from behind win for this season. The Springer Dinger 3 run homer catapulted them into the lead, when they were down 3-1. It was a game where the bats felt a bit cold. It felt like all was lost. The desperation on the bats as they forgot their whole seasons ethos, and were swinging for the fences was maddening. But they calmed down, went back to grinding it out in small ball. Then Springer launches a three run homer and the bull pen managed to keep the Mariners at Bay. It was a tense late night of Canadian October baseball in the Skydome! Love it.

Get some rest lads, as a hard uphill battle begins on Friday night here at home. I can only imagine the atmosphere inside the Dome these last two nights. If I had a spare couple of grand lying around I’d get us tickets to go see history get made.

Let’s go Blue Jays! #WantItAll #WeTheNorth #BringItOnHome

Didn’t realize there were multiple Markham locations, so I obviously drove to the wrong one first, and then panicked when the shelves were bare. It dawned on me at the guest services desk that there could be other stores in town. Quick search pulled up one across town from where I was. After a second twenty plus minutes drive in commuter traffic, I found it. Making the left across Major Mac was no joke. Ugly. And infuriating. Made it here, and found what I needed on the seasonal wall shelf. Let us pray it actually lights up. What are the odds I find two that go bust!?! I’ll test it in a wall socket before I put it in the display out front of the house. Things we do for our kids.

**Editor’s Note: It works, the new snake lights up, and has all of its parts in the box. Yay! I have now placed it back out front with the other Halloween decorations to surprise my youngest when she gets home from school today.bi had to drive to two other stores all across Markham to do it, but we got it done! And had time to do a farm walk before the rain set in. Nice. A solid win in the dad column.

My wife’s vehicle has one tire that keeps going flat, so in the spirit of the season I’ve decided to put her winter tires on, about two weeks early, so that I can get a clearer look at the tire, and see if I can patch it.

After removal I see it has a screw lodged inside the tire between the treads. I pulled it free and then the air started to blast out in my face. Lovely. I used the rasp to clean up the hole, and hopefully size it to take the ultra sticky fibrous plug. Rasp moves in and out with ease after a few several reams of the hole.

Whoo boy getting the plug in the needle is a struggle all on its own. That was a process. I don’t hold out much hope that this plug will sink into the hole all nice like, and be an easy fix. I must prepare my wrists for maximum efforts.

Yeah that was a bitch. I got worried the plug would get stuck only barely into the hole I widened with the rasp. I thought about whacking it with a hammer, but if I break the tool then 8 really can’t fix this tire — at all. So I basically had to sit over the top of the tire and pour my entire body weight into the needle to get the patch to pass through the hole 2/3 rds of the way and then pull only the tool out, leaving the patch behind. Luckily enough it worked out.

I used my Knipex flush cutters to remove the excess patch material, filled the tire up, and then sprayed it with soapy water to watch for bubbles. Looks all good so far. We will know if it took, if come spring time when I go to put it back on the vehicle and the tire is still at 40 lbs. If it’s completely flat I know I failed miserably and we should buy at least two new summer season tires.

Weather was 20°C, a tad windy and the rains have held off. A successful Sunday morning. Only needed one trip to Canadian Tire for parts, and now I’ve washed the tires and can put them away after I finish lunch.

I would wager that a fair percentage of the last fifty posts here had something to do with splitting wood, as it was a pretty major update to my regular daily life in most recent days. That, and discussions of my splitting mauls, work boots, and mini sledge hammer that pairs with my Fiskars wedge. I nearly bought an Estwing nine inch long wedge to go along with the new hammer, but I held off for now. I’m not supposed to sink more money into this endeavor, as it was to keep me busy, get some exercise, and to take my mind OFF of on-line shopping out of boredom. Oh well! Win some, lose some. Ha.

But on the bright side, here we are at day 550 of the writing streak, and I am still going strong. Due to whatever item took off in Germany this July I am having THE best year ever on this blog, both by way of total views, and unique visitors. The likes on posts are way, way down. I’m not really producing any creative short story content so I’m well below the 1,000 plus likes I got when I was posting micro short stories multiple times per week. I have no idea how I will ever be able to top this year’s numbers. I don’t even try to these days, I just write what I want and hope it finds an audience that can relate, or is amused by my mundane musings. Again, I have zero inkling of what caught fire in July, as the only label showing views was Archives. So yeah. I don’t know what you found, or were seeking out, or were drawn to, or repulsed by (but felt you had to check it out for yourselves) I don’t know. It’s a mystery. One that nobody felt compelled enough to comment on, so that I could weigh in myself. So it couldn’t have been that disdainful, since people love to moan about awful things. If it was truly bad I think somebody would have posted to that effect.

We are drawing ever closer to winter. You can feel it in how cold the mornings, and evenings are. I’m sad to see Spring, Summer & Fall go for the year. Though work was quiet for long stretches this year, I got to spend a whole lot of time with my kids, and see them do their thing(s) that they are passionate about. Well, mostly. Of all the days available we still had multiple events on the same day,  several cities apart. So I did not see everything, but I did see a decent chunk!

Not only that but this year I took the kids to Florida by myself (we met up with my inlaws, so not totally by myself I admit) and I took my kids out west to British Columbia to see my brother’s, their kids, and my parents for a four night long visit by myself. My father is in various stages of being unwell. He has vascular dementia, which is slowly taking his short term memory, among other ailments. So we thought it best to head over and see them while his memory isn’t too badly impacted — yet. We had great weather for both trips, and I enjoyed myself a great deal. I believe the kids did too. Five of the six young cousins were there to hang out, and get reacquainted, so my kids had a peer group their own age to play with at times throughout the trip west.

Soon the weather will turn ugly, and I’ll become an indoor hermit, whom stays out of the cold for as much as possible. November is a grey, dreary lonely month around these parts. Fog, freezing rain, flurries, heavy dark clouds, and a severe lack of sunlight are all things we have to look forward to once Halloween is done. If I catch one good day I will erect the Christmas lights, even if it is prior to Rememberable Day. I just won’t turn them on until after the 11th. Our Christmas tree typically goes up late in the day on November 11th out of respect for the soldiers, vets, and those that sacrificed for us.

May you have either a productive Sunday, or a restful one. Whichever you prefer. Ciao Bella!

I’m not going to wait for the head to fall off and whack me in the face/head, so I have replaced it with an Estwing 4 lbs mini sledge, due to arrive at some point later today. I believe it was milled out of one piece so the head shouldn’t ever threaten to fall off. Safety first!

The current one has been in my possession for a fairly long time. I think 8 bought it either when I opened my business in 2006, or when we bought this house in 2009, because we did our own demolition for the renovations. Which was a tonne of fun. The cleaning up afterwards wasn’t a whole lot of fun, as the dust just kept showing up no matter how many times I vacuumed the house, walls, and all the hard surfaces.

Have a Saturday. Ha!