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Tis the season for outdoor Saturday morning private birthday parties in public spaces. At least it’s not the Rolling Thunder baloney in Ottawa this week(end). Could be worse. Going to venture out for some Tree Top Trekking with both kiddies. Should be a fun time for all involved. Looking forward to having to squeeze myself through the course to rescue a terrified or stuck child forty feet up in the air in a nylon netting prison. Should play out a few times over the course of two plus hours.

I don’t plan to work on my children’s book this weekend. Too frantic with the whole family home. Especially since it doesn’t have a due date, or any kind of financial backing behind it, or infront of it for that matter. A passion project, just because. Just wait until I record an instrumental guitar album, Woah Nelly! Will that suck! But it’ll be a whole lotta fun to do it though! Spend a weekend pretending to be a rock star while playing and recording just for shits & giggles. A great mini vacation from reality. Like space camp, and baseball camp is for “those” adults right. But done at home, and you can laugh at the end product.

Except without destroying a hotel room, or doing a bunch of coke. Dress like a schmuck and play various instruments loudly for two days straight. Would make a fantastic weekend. I think so.

Something short and catchy. That John Malecki guy has “Let us spray” & “Get squirrely”, and many other Youtubers and tv personalities have theirs. I need one of my own. Like “Here’s looking at you kid” or “Cowabunga!” Or maybe something a little more niche like “Nice grin shit teeth”, you know. Something universal. That everyone can get behind. I am however, at a loss for words.

I have been prepping book two to go up on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. Which involves copying it all over to a Word doc. Formatting for a smaller page size, adding a table of contents for all of the chapter headings, and making it bookmark able/ready/enabled. Something like that. I have the series cover artwork done up, to be in line with the first book. So that’s all well and good.

I have at least eight backgrounds illustrated for my childrens book. Some of which I really like, and others I will need to redo. Tried my hand a designing my lead characters, and not getting very far with that still. Oh well, not a big deal. There are far worse problems to have in life beyond not having a grasp on your two lead characters design.

It is at times like this where I feel as though I should never have stopped drawing with pen and paper. I enjoyed that so much as a kid, teen and early adult. It wasn’t until a couple of years into doing graphic design full time that I stopped. I gave up on drawing and painting too. I kept wanting my design work to feel like pen & paint, which wasn’t what I was paid to do, so I dropped it to get better with doing art with a mouse. I have stacks of canvas from paintings I’ve done over the years. So good, some bad, mostly derivative of other better artists. Had fun doing them though, which was what mattered to me. Now I kinda kick myself for letting “the touch” go. Add another daily thing to the list. Writing, exercising, and a daily doodle. Add in some guitar/piano/sculpting/wood working, and I have a pretty full day before I’ve even done any paid work! Ha. To think I’d like to do some leather working and sewing too, if I can swing it. Building model kits too. Playing with my kids is a big one. Teaching them sports and dance and music. I’m all over the place. I get that, I really do.

So here we are, on a Friday morning. The sun is shining, and we have a few days of nicer weather to look forward to. Glad to have it.

Is this the last dying breaths of winter, or is there still more to come as we crawl out of April and into May? Who knows at this point. I wish I kept better notes in years passed because I can’t recall if we’ve had such inconsistent weather in previous late April before this year. Early April is up for grabs, no contest, that’s fairly well understood, but minus six degrees with mere days to go before May? I don’t know. In university I wore shorts to my exams, and had sun burns from lounging outdoors in mid April, going back to 2002 through 2005. This feels new, and off, to me.

Gotta make a run through Ottawa at some point before June to see of my parents and one brother. They are moving back to B.C. from Ontario. Can’t stand the heat of summer here, and my brother’s allergies are awful when away from the coast. I can’t blame them for leaving, just a shame that the entirety of their stay was during Covid Times and we couldn’t get out to see each other at all. No Sens games, no Red Black games, no Athletico games, no go carting, not much of anything. We played one round of golf, on the hottest day of summer last year, but otherwise didn’t get up to any mischief at all. Boo-Urns I say, Boo-Urns.

End of the school year will be here before you know it, along with a myriad of birthdays, events and humidity and heat. I forsee a lot of bike riding, farm walks, beach time, swimming at Grandma’s pool, and possibly a day spent at Canada’s Wonderland with my eldest child, for some quality time out of school together. I can’t remember the last time I went there. It must have been just before or just after the birth of our first child. I know I went to Disney in 2004, but for the life of me I can’t remember going to Wonderland. Weird.

So What’s the plan for today? I did some illustration work for an Ottawa Rugby Team, but I won’t hear back about that for 48 hours or so. Should I bite the bullet and just set up my childrens book in illustrator, and tear through it all as fast as I can manage? Perhaps I will.

Macron did it, beat out the alt-right lady Putin la Pen. Good for him. Nicely done. Though that ten point lead, bit of a squeaker in this point in time. Could have done with a twenty to thirty point lead, but those Alties aren’t going anywhere, am I right? Yeah – I’m right.

Back to Monday! Busy weekend that felt both too long and too short, especially after the four day Easter weekend we had previously. Our newest nephew was born yesterday afternoon at some point. He went a full seven days late. Little shit. Ha. Glad he’s here with us, and welcome to the land of the living, nearer to the close of Covid times than at any point in the last two plus years. It’s not totally done with us, but here we are. Glad to have you on board. Ok? Great.

I have my fourth jab booked for a week thursday, glad to have it. Us immune suppressed types gotta take all the help we can get! Get it in me! I want to be able to take the kids bowling, and to indoor parks, and movies and such. Get back to the full spectrum of living. Carefully, and masked, but doing fun stuff again. Going places and having experiences out of the ordinary. Summer helps with that, immensely. Lots to go and do outdoors, and away from crowds.

Did a pretty good chunk of wood working last week. Easy simple stuff. Nothing to bask in the glory of. I feel as though I need to start something a little more substantial, and that I don’t have to rush to complete in one day. Almost into open door weather. But building a table is lots of fun. Especially a small coffee table, that doesn’t have a trestle, or four legs. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

There is the matter of the gazebo too. Lots of calls for rain this week. Might need to postpone that project again. I am very excited to see it go up though. That’ll be a massive item ticked off of the to-do list from several years ago. If I recall, we got it in late October or November of the year it arrived, so that meant not building it right away. Then life gets in the way of doing builds like that. Meant to do it last summer, but Covid meant no summer camps, thus no alone time to build outside with minions running around needing to be entertained and watched over constantly. Ugh. I cannot abide by helicopter parenting. What a waste of resources. Kids need some happy, healthy time to work out play time by themselves, safely ensconced in a locked & private yard, in a quiet suburb. But I digress.

Needed to purchase some fonts for a project this morning, but otherwise I’m all caught up. Have a great week.

I have to admit that it’s nice to get out and see people and have my kids run free again. We’re masked up, and having a blast. Laugh Out Loud was a tonne of fun for both kiddies. It has recently been redone on the inside. New equipment, and a whole new layout. Both kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Pink flushed cheeks and sweat soaked brows. I give that an A+.

Now for me to eat lunch, and tackle some lawn work. Ciao.

Did one drawing in the morning for the book, and then went into the wood shop to build the kids a bigger toy box.

This time out of pine, with a plywood base – for stability, and to try to not warp over time. I made it 36 inches long, 16 inches high, and 11 and 7/8ths wide internally. Turns out my 12 inch board was not actually 12 inches wide, so accommodations were made in the cut. I added hand holds in the sides with a 1.5″ hole saw, then rounded over every edges with my palm router. Glued and Brad nailed it all together. Except the base, which I used inch long pin nails. Brad nails were wandering in the thinner plywood base. It isn’t for carrying, but to sit and hold stuff, so no fancy joinery this time either. I’m in a soft gap between projects, so I don’t know how much, or little, time I have to work on household stuff, so I tend to start and finish projects quickly, if I am able too.

I need to get these drawings done. I just don’t want them to suck. But I should aim for finished instead of some whacked out idea of my ideal art style. I haven’t drawn in years. So not a surprise that I’ve lost the feel for it in my fingers, wrist and arm. I’m too tight. Too stiff. Too rigid. Maybe a couple pages of circles and lines will loosen me up a bit.

Any way. How are you all doing as we get ready to finish with April, and head into May. Which reminds me, I need to give the lawn mower a once over. Sharpen the blades, clean the air filter, change the oil, and buy new gas. Check out the springs on the air intake. Too floppy and it sputters, to tight and it roars like a jet engine. Wash it, oil it up and give it some grease for good measure. I’ve had the same Briggs & Stratton lawn mower for 16 years or more now. One of the best purchases I ever made.

If the weather will cooperate in the new few weeks I want to get our gazebo built too. Get that done, several long years in the doing.

Just had to tweak my lower back while fiddling with that damn wheel barrow tire a few days ago. Tried treating it with rest, heat and cold but it’s not really getting any better. Kept me awake last night too. Will have to turn to Tylenol for a spell to get over this initial hump of soreness. Here I thought working out with weights would help me not do my lower back in by simply leaning over to work on a project for an hour, but here we are. I’m pretty sure this all stems from a previous injury I suffered doing too much weight at a Cross-Fit event prior to my wedding. Feels like I compressed a disc or something along those lines, and it just goes off if I compress it at an odd angle for prolonged periods of time.

It’s the sort of thing that hurts if you lean over, but also hurts if you lie flat on your back. And doesn’t like it when laying on your belly either. Sideways it is then.

This too shall pass.

Things are shaping up to be busy again this week. Which isn’t a bad thing, that’s terrific. Received word of a few new reports coming later this year, all good news to me! Love to hear it. The reward for good work is more of it. Which is nice.

Just stopping briefly for lunch, and then I’ll get right back to it. Projects await!

Sell sheets, 3D renders of retail displays, and final edits for the report. Swallowed up a good chunk of the day. It’s funny, I had originally planned to build our metal gazebo today, or at least this week, but then it snowed – again. Plus it’s cold and also kinda rainy. So now building to be done today.

I also seem to have put my back out fixing my wheel narrow wheel that wouldn’t seal along the bead. I tried a ratchet strap, heat, exploding fumes with a torch. And the only thing that worked was a rope, a long piece of wood, and punching the tire in frustration as I juiced it up with compressed air. Leaning over the tire for an hour has done a number on my lower back. Argh. I’m sure shoveling out my compost pile, and putting three wheel barrows full of earth in the front beds by shovel didn’t help much either. Silly what can bring us low. Guess my work out regimen hasn’t been doing as much for me as I had planned.

Day four of lousy weather while we are all off. Gotta love it. As soon as we all go back to work the temp will rise, the sun will shine, and we’ll not have the time nor inclination to enjoy it. Ain’t that a bitch. On a high note for today we didn’t wake up to snow. That’s gotta count for something!

I have some cold weather gardening to do today, so I best be getting a move on. I keep waiting for the sun to get warmer, but I’ll not finish if I wait for too long. Time to move the good soil out of the compost pile and spread it in the flower beds. Time to dig out my wheel barrow and spade. Possibly my forks too. We’ll see. I don’t make a habit of filling our permanent flower beds. I could edge them up, I suppose. I was going to trim the hedgerow at the back of the house, but I might have left it too late. As I understand it, that’s a late winter project.

Enough procrastination, time to get to it. Enjoy your last day of the extended long weekend, if you get the day off that is.