Category: Uncategorized

Summer sun, having a blast. Now back to our regularly scheduled work block of the week. It’s great to be able to get out and about with the kids, and then settle in to work for a few days every so often each week. Even better are the paid invoices that have come in recently. Which means it’s just about time to do more work, so I can send out new invoices to be paid. Could be a busy end to the month of August, and lead into September as well.

We saw some opal in real life the other week while visiting the Bancroft Rockhound Gemboree. Flashy stuff. Bit pricey if you ask me, but I don’t mine the stuff, nor buy it, so no skin off my nose. We went to a Sodalite mine and found a whole lot of amethyst chunks, which we were all super happy about. Fun times. I’m going to eat some breakfast then tuck into my latest project.

If I had my way, this would be the only way I would make bacon moving forward. So crispy and evenly cooked. The house doesn’t stink, and it just tastes pretty great this way. I need to buy a platen, so that I can do eggs, bacon and pancakes or sausages all at the same time on the bbq. Doesn’t that all sound delicious! Mm mm. Good.

And other fun stories I tell my kids when they get way out into the weeds asking multiple questions on a subject I once thought I knew anything about. Ask enough ultra fine pointed questions about something and you start to butt up against the end of what you know about just about anything. So i have that going for me. No need to lie, or make up any grand statements. Just offer to go look it up with them and find out together. Depending on how left field their questions actually are, you could actually learn something new and interesting, if not useful in any way, shape or form. Good times.

Now we are in week six of nine for the summer holidays. The last couple of weeks have been both fast and incredibly long. It all changes hourly. I’m sure if we varied up our days activities it would feel different, but for right now we are reliving the same days over and over again. I can sense a good deal of work coming at any time, soonish. So we’re doing a lot of family time while I am not logged in and building projects for clients. I think it will last through until late October. Which is ok by me. Once the kids go off to school I’m going to go buy some hard woods and try at least one more furniture project in the fall. Possibly more depending on what I try. A table I could do, as I’ve made a few already. If I attempt a chair, that could take longer, as it’s far more intricate, and needs to be repeatable. I hope to find a decent slab to build a live edge coffee table as well. So we’ll see what becomes of anything when it comes time to a actually spend any money. Always hard to part with those precious dollar bills y’all.

Last nights storm didn’t do much to alleviate the humidity that is hanging around here today. We could hear lots of rumbling, but I never saw any flashes of light, nor any major window rattling booms of thunder. More rain is on the way, so let us hope the grass goes green once again, and that my tomatoes and pumpkins live to tell the tale of how dry this summer has been in random places.

That shit likes to spread when you live and/or work in close proximity with people whom refuse to mask or social distance in any way, shape or form. C’EST la vie! This is life. If you want to live that way, you get all that freedom as well as its attendant fallout from the living on the edge of danger lifestyle. Unfortunately it tends to also collect housebound invalids with a myriad of medical conditions who didn’t ask for you to bring that shit into their homes. Critical but stable is still the call of the day. Angry? Yeah, certainly. Tense and anxious that a few others selfishness could end in calamity? Yes that too. Three of the four have it now. Two are suffering terribly, with the third only just testing positive, so it’s still too early to comment much. Let us hope they all make it out alive and well, with no new maladies to work through.

In other news, it’s hot. God Damn! Yesterday was an absolute humid roaster. The sun hurt to sit in. It reminded me of the time my wife and I went to Nevada in August and it was 106°F most of the time. Did not enjoy that much. That desert dryness is unbelievable. Gotta love Vegas though. I always get my steps in when wandering around looking at stuff. Few things I enjoy more than a good wander around looking at stuff. The interior themes of the casinos are as interesting as they are varied. Even old Freemont Street is a kick and a half. I can’t recall how many shows I’ve been to in all of my trips there in the last decade or so. Eaten some pretty great food there too. Steaks, french toast at any point in the day. It’s fabulous. I like that i can wander around with a chilled Twisted Tea can in my hand, and go look at stuff. I have even gone to the movies in Vegas. I think i saw Justice League with one of my brothers there. Couldn’t exactly tell you which theater it was. The movie didn’t leave much of an impression, beyond the fact i had wanted to go see Thor Ragnarok, but my brother had seen it already, and didn’t care for it. Whereas afterwards, I saw Thor and preferred it greatly over JL. Weird what we remember and why.

I think today is Sunday, if I had to venture a guess. This could potentially be the end of week six? I think. I need to look at a calendar to be certain. Nope, I was wrong, end of week five. Phew! Thought I’d missed a week somewhere in the mix. We did have a stretch of cooler, dreary days, but not enough to have lost a whole week of summer holidays.

Dig dig dig dig dig dig, in the mines the whole day through! Off on a day trip to gather amethysts and other fancy looking minerals and gemstones if at all possible.

Trying to find ways to stay busy while family are in the ICU in stable but critical condition with Covid. Not doing my stomach any favors waiting for potentially calamitous news. On to the next thing I guess.

Slept like shit, and have an anxious upset stomach. Waiting to hear how a family member is faring in the ICU with Covid. Prognosis is bad, O2 levels dropped precipitously mid day yesterday. Age and other health factors at play. Not a candidate for ventilation or other extreme measures. Tough spot to be in.

The kids have finally succumbed to the plethora of on-line content surrounding Shark Week, Megalodon and underwater attack videos. Although they find the brief interludes where the great white sharks breach the oceans surface a tad boring. I can forsee hours of YouTube videos in my near future. That, and possibly screams of terror in the night from nightmares. Soon to follow, a fear of sharks in any pool anywhere world wide, and fear of ever going into the lake when at the cottage. Good lord save us if a piece of sea weed touches their feet when in the lake! The hysterics, I can hear it now.

What day is it today? I whole heartedly believe it is Thursday, but don’t quote me on that, I’ll actually need to check to make sure. The air outside feels thick, so I guess we are going to have a bit of a humid stretch coming our way. Crossed a couple paid projects off my list, and am waiting on some others that I know are coming. The free fall life of uncertainty that comes with freelancing.

No, I do not do much of any development of new business. I like to have five to seven constant clients all year round. Preferably with different peaks and valleys for work load and high priority project deadlines. I used to advertise and spend hours a week on quotes, phone calls, inquiry e-mails and RFP’s, but I am a small, very small, niche freelance graphic designer, and all that writing & development takes precious time away from the actual paid work. I like doing the work itself, not networking, not schmoosing, not chasing clients and having to put on a song and dance for others. I suppose when my kids get older and are more self sufficient I’ll need to suck it up and do some networking to capture a few more clients, or sub contract out to a larger agency, or become more available to a larger local business that doesn’t have an in-house designer on tap, but would like one, several days out of every month all year long. But we’re not there yet, so I’ll stick with what works for now. I also have enough down time that I can pick up and learn new programs without that training cutting into paid work schedules. Which is really handy, and a privilege that I hold onto dearly. So no major paycheque chasing for me just yet. Thanks.

Albeit the second day of the month, but still it is here! A refreshing long weekend has just passed us by, complete with wind and rain, and a slight break in the humidity! What fun fresh things will happen in this, the eighth month of the calendar year. I know one thing for certain the Back To School commercials are about to kick up a notch, and it’s going to drive my wife nuts. Soon we will be regaled with exhortations of wasted days, lost weeks of the summer holidays. Screams of “I’ve accomplished nothing!”, and a general sense of panic regarding a return to the classroom. I get it. Now with two pandemics the prospect of being around anyone makes my skin crawl. Corona and Monkeypox sitting in a tree, causing death and destruction for you and me, first comes a cough, then comes an itch, if you don’t catch either, you one lucky bitch! *ironic applause break* thank you, thank you. It’s all very real, and upsetting. If you can’t laugh then you’ll only cry about it. Find the funny, like that comedienne says.

Not sure why but everywhere we go we seem to accumulate children’s colouring pages in order to get entered for free stuff. It’s madness. At one event we came home with no fewer than nine! Nine (9) that’s pure insanity. And let me tell you, the quality of drawing and/or paper was at best lackluster. Shoddy drawings on garbage paper. Fit for the pit! In some cases we used the ugliest, cheapo pampered ones to start a bon fire in a friends back yard. If you want to make an impression, buy a good drawing, or pay a talented artist to provide you with an original for you to use. And don’t skimp on the paper. Bleed through of markers, pencil crayons or crayons will mar your final product if you intend to display the ones you get back at your place of business. If 80% of your returned works have bunched holes in them from markers soaking through and ruining the paper, that makes you look bad, not the children. If you’ve never watched kids colour with markers before you should know they wield them like daggers stabbing at the paper, blunting the ends, and scraping the nub over the paper as if they were trying to skin a rhino. It’s all madness and chaos and mayhem. Act accordingly.

Holiday Monday today. Having pancakes with hand made maple syrup. Living the dream, of sorts. Also we are now officially into August with only five weeks of summer holidays left to go. Trying my best not to count down the days, but I am keeping track of them, that’s like, totally different. Not even in the same vicinity, really.