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Did a number of hours worth of driving yesterday, between Bancroft, Apsley, the cottage by the lake, and home. My hip is pretty stiff, and I feel very tired. Good to be home though. I am happy we drove in the evening instead of during the day today. Not much traffic, and all the bridge construction was pretty quiet, and easy going after eight pm last evening. Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed for a change. I currently have two, count them, two dehumidifiers going downstairs now that we are back. They fill up really quickly in all this soupy humidity, so they don’t run long when gone. I don’t keep one going positioned in or near a sink, because I fear it shifting, or the lines popping off spontaneously and flooding the entire lower floor. I’d rather just run two once home, then cut it down to one once the levels are under control, and it feels more manageable. A quirk of mine.

There must have been rain here while we were driving, but we missed every single drop of rain while driving. The storm clouds must have been pushing south west, because I could see clouds glowing in the western distances, but it was at no point directly overhead of us. We followed in its wake once we got as far south as highway seven. We totally forgot that the eastern stretch of the 407 was free now, and didn’t come as far down the 115 to get on it and haul ass home yesterday. Never even crossed my mind as an option. Even though we took it up (I wasn’t driving at that point, my wife was). I just feel like the time saved on the lateral travel across the highway is eaten up by having to go so much lower south to get on it from here, and the added trek back north to get to the junction we normally would use. We never really time things, and if you add in food stops or toilet breaks for the kids the whole timing issue dissolves anyway. We aren’t very scientific about it. Just vibes, and gut feelings at this point.

So what is next? Home now, so lawn care is a must, check the mail box, look around for any damage or build up from storms,and hazardous weather patterns the house encountered while we were away. There will be farm walks, and garlic bulbs to harvest, sort, and dry for sale at the inlaws to deal with if I’m not mistaken. I still have work on the books coming my way – eventually.

I feel tired, and groggy. I should go get some groceries before we get too far into our day. Hope you are all having a wonderfully adequate Thursday in July of the year 2025. I’m still seeing higher than average numbers from our of Germany, that’s four or five days in a row. You lot have really made my week! Thank you very much (danke shcön) . Much appreciated.

The Sodalite mine to be exact. Looking for quality specimens this go round, instead of the usual quantity. Our rooms are full of poor quality gem stones, and fancy rock samples. I think we should get just the best of what we find this time. The bugs out here are less than ideal. I hate mosquitoes.

Uncle Fred and Great Grandma have both passed fairly recently. Fred in 2024, and Great Grandma only a few weeks ago, but now we need to turn our attention towards the state of what was left behind. Their homes, belongings, cottages, and all of their hoarded waste. It is a non trivial matter just how much cardboard, and empty containers they both kept for no apparent reason. It is going to be a slow moving, and concerted effort to get the farm house, stone house, and middle cottage into a place where they are either usable, or need to have their interiors taken back to the studs, and exposed sub floor. Because, I mean, Yikes! Moulds, mildew, and musty odours abound. Going to need a respirator, goggles, gloves, boots, and a shower afterwards to tackle some of these issues. I think carpets, drywall, and ceilings as being unpleasant jobs, once you get the furniture, and general junk out of the living spaces. Yellow pages? Trash. Empty boxes, fire pit, clothes, donation boxes, busted tech, to the dump. It’ll be a long, protracted, and expensive exercise with not much upside. A dedicated week at each site might get you something you can then begin to clean for use. The cleaning step alone will be back breaking. So much bleach, and soapy water. Rinse & repeat. Walls, floors, tubs, toilets… Might be easier to yank those items, and replace them. Ugh.

Tuesday is here, so the kids have summer programming at the Library, and tomorrow they go back to flag football. A couple weeks later they start up swimming lessons again. Looking like a full, and busy summer ahead.

Three days in and I am still seeing a heightened response to my archives coming out of Germany. Which is cool. Problem with that initial jolt is that these newer sustained numbers seem weak, even though just four days ago they would have constituted the single best days this blog had even seen. The meteoric rise and fall sort of dampens the joy from the sustainable level where you end up afterwards. Glad it was just the one day, as that kind of attention could easily go to your head, and make you nutty! The glimpse was enough to make that readily apparent. Chasing the high of increasing numbers would taint your experience of anything that doesn’t meet or exceed those high water marks. Guess we know where all that depression comes from (or a portion of it at least). But what do I know, one day a fairly mid sized school’s worth of people checked out my blog, and now a fully rostered football team comes by. I hardly know if that which I speak (fame, or anything adjacent to it for that matter). Just an observation given how I have reacted internally given one sudden jump in numbers, followed by a level I would have previously jumped for joy at, now feels blasé. Didn’t take long. So I’m going to be very grateful for whatever numbers I get, as I have had many zeros, and ones, and will do my best to feel like normal once we get back to that level of anonymity again. I am more than the yearly viewership of my blog posts!

Happy Tuesday. Yesterday was Domestic Duties Monday wherein I cleaned, and did laundry for the family. It was not very satisfying. Life moves forward. Which reminds me, I have a bunch of paint, and old broken tech in the basement which I need to take to their appropriate dump sites. I need to look up the times, locations, and costs associated with both. I might get to know by way of cleaning up after Uncle Fred and Great Grandma anyway. We will see.

Ciao Bella!

In regards to both visitors, and viewership. Yesterday was an unparalleled day with nearly 1,586* total views, and 830* (*edited for accuracy) unique visitors. 99.9% of which came from Germany. I still have zero idea of what they were all looking at, or reading, or how it got noticed by so many on the same day. Numbers are up today too (awesome!) but more in line with just a really, really good day here for readership versus yesterday’s insanity. I’m well chuffed to know what a meteoric rise in attention feels like, at least for the one day. That’ll keep me sustained for ages. Core memory unlocked! And it’s a yellow one! Nice.

Back to Monday morning again, so I need to keep an eye on my e-mails, and be ready to send out work stuff as the day progresses. Still riding high on yesterday’s signal boost from Germany. I hope it was for something good, or positive in some regard.

With that one day of higher than usual through put we have jumped into second place for yearly total numbers on every facet of this blog. Also, and here’s a fun one, downloads of both books are doing really well this year too. Can’t blame them when it is free. Still, very happy to see that my writing could potentially be enjoyed by others out in the wider world. Fills me with joy.

So yeah, thank you to everybody whom turned up to look at something here. I hope you found writing, or artwork that you liked, or that resonates with you. Perhaps I’ll see or hear from you again at some point. Thanks for stopping by, however briefly. Also — massive shout out to whomever called my work to attention for others in Germany. I do hope it was a good thing, and not anything untoward. No comments or hate mail (thus far) so I’m going with the possibility of it being a net positive.

If you don’t trust the PDF download here you can find my first book on Amazon Kindle Unlimited across the globe. I made it available in a number of markets. My free PDF copies have no preferred device other than a suitable PDF reader to open, and view it. In case folks didn’t have a Kindle or ebook reader but wanted to use a phone or computer instead. Have at it.

Take care out there you crazy kids.

I do not know what’s going on there but my view numbers have just shot through the roof due to a visitor explosion out of Germany. All I know is that the “Archives” has something they’ve come out to see. Is it good, is it bad, is it the funeral notices from two years ago? I do not know. What I do know is that it isn’t my book, that has zero downloads today, unless they are reading individual chapters separately (which could very well be true). Any which way you look at it, both my visitor count, and my views have doubled as of today. Cool. Awesome. Thanks. Danke.

It’s very exhilarating to actually sit by and watch the visitor count, and views go up right before my eyes. What a rush. I’ll be saddened once it comes to an end, but boy oh boy it’s nice to ride the wave, even briefly. Ha. I’ll remember this long after the day is done. Making myself eggs Benedict to celebrate! Mm-mm delicious.

Before today, my best viewership day ever was 43. Now it’s up over 1,000. Going to be hard to beat that at any point in the future, believe you me. Wow, what a feeling. Nice.

I’m going to take this personal high for a walk, and move some patio furniture around in the sunshine. Would be great to have some place comfy to sit when enjoying the water. Also to dry out the towels without using the dryer.

Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Eldest daughter was up & at’em real early this morning to go register for the fishing Derby. Fishing pole, grampa’s boat, and a bucket full of worms, and off she went. Has until twelve noon to catch a fish, and get it weighed by the town’s folk running the Derby. I wish her well.

I didn’t bring my fishing gear, I thought the Derby was in August. But I brought my baseball glove, and we have played catch for thirty minutes a day every day since Wednesday, and a few days prior to that. It’s a lot of fun to do in the shade. Had a few really hot days so we didn’t play catch then. We are still using a soft sponge ball rather than a tennis ball or baseball, but I think we will get there eventually. The sponge ball is very forgiving if you take it off the head or face. No injuries, I like that. Plus it makes it more likely that my youngest will join us too, to work on her eye-hand coordination. Being able to catch, and throw are good life skills to have. Same with swimming, and riding a bike.

Happy Saturday morning to you all.

Woke up this morning to both of my kids crying, and my wife very upset. Seems the dog got under the neighbours deck, and rolled in animal pooh. So I had to carry him bodily (he is a 65 lb German Shephard mix) into the shower stall, climb in behind him, and bathe the wee bastard. I needed a shower anyway, but I don’t typically have an audience. Washed him down real good, and then had to spend an even longer amount of time cleaning the shower/tub combo from all of his hair, and puppy grime. Not the most fun start to a fourth of July ever. But for now both he, and myself are sparkling clean. He could do with a brush though, if I’m being honest.

So it is Friday and I have managed to finish a particularly large report ahead of schedule, and gathered the assets for two more reports, and now I intend to do very little for a good portion of my day. I expect July to be a good month for outgoing invoices. And August to be a good month for getting paid. Very thankful for the work. Gainful employment is key these days.

I had best go out and check on my family now. I hear them shouting the puppy’s name. That’s rarely a good sign. My hair is still damp from the shower. I’ll not go in again willingly, and I’d bet, neither will the dog.

Happy Friday. Happy holiday to the US contingent out there that reads my blog, and reads my books too. Thanks! Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

I think we have hit double digit downloads for both books so far this year, which is awesome. Now, I have no idea if people like them, or hate them, or if they even bother to read them all the way through, but thanks for taking a chance on me, and trying it out anyway. Makes me happy to know these stories didn’t just disappear into the ether. Maybe somebody other than me also enjoyed them. That’s cool to know.

Yeah, so it’s raining real hard right now, which means we are all going to be trapped indoors until it lets up, or stops completely. A bit late for the rain, we could have done with this days ago. Much of it is going to run off the hard baked earth, and not soak in to do any good. The grass around here is pretty cooked all ready. More tinder than grass at this point. We need a long steady, but slow drizzle. Something that can soften up the earth, and then penetrate the hard packed upper most surface. These cloud bursts only work for flash flooding, and over powering drainage ditches, and filling underpasses. Not cool.

I think it’s Thursday today, if I’m not mistaken. Tomorrow is the fourth of July. For some today is the last day they will wake up with all of their fingers. Fire work mishaps happen every single year. Lost digits, busted hands, fires etc… it’s a real problem. Sounds like an out of control party to me. No thanks.

I have some work to attend to after I eat breakfast, so I’ll keep this short. Have a good day. To the US citizens reading this, have a good long weekend full of cheer! May you keep all of your digits, and express yourselves as you see fit. Ciao Bella!

Butter Scotch was laid to rest along the same tree line as Rocky, Alfie, and several other farm pets. It was a brief affair during the heat of the day, followed by a smattering of rain. The entire extended family came, children and all to pay our respects to the what I know know, was a three year old bunny. Born just a week after my nephew Zack. Butter Scotch was a grey Rex rabbit with extremely soft fur, much like that of a chinchilla. She was grunt, thump the floor, jump about all nimbly-bimbly and spent more than a few minutes licking my ankles, and my wrists. Besides the scars she gave me that first day or two, she was usually fairly pleasant — to me. My kids liked her a great deal. She did eat a rather large hole out of the back of the inlaws leather couch, ruin the living room trim, and destroy more cushions than I can recall. Indoor, outdoor, couch, decorative, you name it, she munched on them all. Dangling cords got got as well. By all measure she was a menace. A fluffy, soft, grey, cuddle puddle menace.

It’s rather sad to walk through the house and see her litter box, carrier, and hutch empty. Bags of bunny treats left unopened. Her Christmas chews still in their cardboard packaging. The smell of the rabbit is starting to recede as well. Soon the floors, towels, trays, and cages will get a last wash for storage and all her summer time shed fur will get vacuumed up, leaving only the physical damage she caused behind in her wake. She was a bright light, burned hard & fast. Rest easy little bunny.

I used to call her Scutter Botch. She was a three year old Rex rabbit. She died after a brief battle with an abscess, and the after affects of the anesthesia used to calm her for its removal. Did not suffer long. Made it through surgery, and the travel home, and quickly succumbed in her own home peacefully.  May 3rd, 2022 – July 1st, 2025.