Category: Uncategorized

Though it does kind of cannibalize its own subscription model, and that one singular solution tends towards dead. Anxious? Dead. Hungry? Dead. Have any kind of needs to be taken care of, yup you guessed it — dead. The dead don’t feel hunger, pain, sadness, remorse, anxiety, or anything else for that matter. I’ve seen enough news clips, and articles about how people who turn to Chat gpt for a personal assistant, or a virtual friend, or even just chat with it a lot, all get the same treatment where they are corralled towards killing themselves. It’s the single best solution that a LLM can come up with to solve all of our individual issues. Food scarcity? Kill yourself. Miss your wife & kids? Kill yourself. Have a tax bill you can’t possibly make? Kill yourself. Worried about cancer, finances, your love life, a broke down car? It all leads to the same answer. I for one am not ok with that. Not cool.

Not to mention the wildly out of pocket hallucinations these LLM’s report back with as undisputed answers to seemingly simple questions. We are, in fact, all dumber for having heard your response. Precious time we will never get back. This isn’t autocorrect, or a grammar checker, this is wholesale outsourcing of thinking to an online dictionary that mimics speech. Truly ridiculous.

Maybe it’s because my day job revolves around art, and things of that nature that I have not embraced AI. I spent years learning to draw, paint, sculpt, build scale models, realistic terrain, and play musical instruments that I feel those turning to a prompt, aren’t really doing “the thing”. It’s a novelty — for sure. I won’t deny that. But to claim skill or mastery akin to that of Michelangelo, Money, Picasso, Frida or any other higher order artist is nonsense. I can order food from a tablet, doesn’t make me a Michelin starred chef.

I get that you might be envious of others talent, sacrifice, dedication, discipline and skill, but to try to position yourself amongst them via a prompt is absurd. Don’t make me laugh. It’s a party trick. It’s slight of hand. It’s hand wavy nonsense where something else external to you does 99.999% of the work (theft at that!) to feel like you’ve really done something. You did not cook. There was no dedication to master it. You did not give yourself over to the learning curve, suffering through skill plateaus, enjoying growth, building off of personal experience, or first hand knowledge. It’s a sham.

Not only that, but the end game for this product is that it will lead you to your own death. Silly people. We should all pull away from social media and get back to living our lives, in person. Walking through our neighbourhoods, talking to one another, building relationships, building up our communities. We’ve lost ourselves. It is disheartening to see.

Alas, we have made it to another Friday. One more week out of the year 2025 nearly completed. Only a few brief moments left before the dial ticks over into 2026. More snow is on the horizon. More cold. More wind. More ice. Who knows what work will bring come the new year. Best of luck to you all out there. Ciao Bella!

After revelations that our neighbour had passed from home cancer in his femur, we’ve just had need that another (much younger) friend has a similar diagnosis of bone cancer in his thigh and is set to begin chemo at Mount Sinai on Monday. After eight weeks they will decide if he needs to amputate the leg. But only if it has not spread to his lungs, lymph nodes, brain, and other organs first. That’s a terrible bit of news for a Thursday morning.  With any luck they can cut him free of his cancerous source, and he is able to live a long, and fulfilling life afterwards.

I for one would much rather do three rounds of a wet four inches of snow removal, than tackle a single round of a wet twelve. Wet heavy snow is so defeating when you want it over and done with but you can only make slow headway on it with a smaller shovel. I do not own a snowblower. It’s a fight I have with myself every year. I want one, then we go a couple of years with just bitter cold temperatures and not a lot of snow. Then we get a season like this, where it has snowed enough to warrant shoveling four of five times and we aren’t even into winter officially yet. Not for another ten or eleven days I think. But this show removal strategy that 8 have is based off of me having to shovel by myself, or having the help of my wife and children for small parts of it. But don’t count on the help at this point. This tends towards it being a solo endeavour.

So to save myself any back or arm strain 8 will venture out into the falling snow to do multiple smaller clean ups, instead of just one heart attack inducing massive round of snow clearing. Either way, I hate it. One or two snowfalls can make it feel like “Oh we’ll have a white Christmas this year, how picturesque” more than that will make me curse the skies loudly, and often. I shake my fist at thee. Why yes I do bite my thumb at thee also! Fuck-wad!

So here I am at eight o’clock in the morning, sweaty and agitated about the knowledge I have multiple shoveling sessions left, not only for today, but for the foreseeable future. I am going to run out of places to put the snow if it keeps up at this pace. Wouldn’t be as terrible if all 8 had to do was the driveway, but the front walk needs done too, the side of the house to access the shed, and the back patio (to mitigate any potential flooding of our basement via the back wall, and window.) it’s like doing two full driveways each time. Makes the sixteen inch single dumping of snow a day long task to clear. Not only that but my heart started to race, and would not stop doing so for about an hour afterwards, even once I sat down, then laid down. It was unpleasant.

All the more reason to give up on the log splitter day dream, and focus on a snowblower as a reality for myself as I get older. I will soon be closer to fifty than forty, so… Heart health is more important than ever! Also taking it slow, with frequent rest stops is the smart play here too. If we get a lot more wet snow I think I will start to see some broken tree limbs that I will need to break down. This is also why 8 prune our trees every single year, because if one goes I would like very much for it to not be able to reach the house, and damage our roof, or windows, or wall integrity.

I don’t see myself walking the dog at the farm today. Likely just around the block. His toe still looks kinda nasty, so I do not believe that he will want to go and place an exposed wound into snow, and road salt mixed together. That sounds deeply unpleasant to me. He has the run of the yard if he wants to have zoomies undisturbed by salt and brine. I think that’s a suitable compromise. I’d prefer the wide open spaces of the farm where he can run, and run unimpeded, but the roads look ugly, and the farm lane may very well trap my vehicle in its wind blown snow drifted grasp. Not cool. I should probably put a small shovel in the car for just such an occasion. I used to have one, but it shattered one icy day. C’est la vie!

***My plan to clear up sequentially rather than in one go has proven itself to be a good strategy. However, after the third round I am exhausted, and very sweaty. The plows have gone by twice filling in the end of my drive with heavy, wet, packed down snow, and grey slush. It’s extraordinarily tiring to move. I pray for a break for a few hours before the snow returns, but that seems unlikely. As soon as I finish there is a layer of snow covering all that I have completed. It beckons for another round! I’m going to sleep like the dead if my back and shoulders don’t ache so bad it keeps me up tonight. I thought this might be a threepeater and done, but could go as high as five or six before the night has come.

In other news our very helpful elderly neighbour affectionately known as Sarge has succumbed to his bone cancer. He completed one round of chemo in the fall, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. Poor guy. He was a trusted friend with that snowblower of his during the deep dark months of winter. A wonderful sight to behold when you were trying to dig out from under the road plow man’s bounty laid on your door step. Always quick with a conversation, and a smile/chuckle. I suppose his house will go up for sale in the coming months. A local celebrity gone with the wind. Salut.

I have a real bad habit of missing milestones on the day, but I remembered afterward! Ha. Plus it was the puppy’s second birthday yesterday, and he cracked a toenail the night before which led to us having to chase him to clean the wound, and cover it so he didn’t continue to bleed on every single surface in the house he can get to unaided. It was a thing. I spent a bit of time on my hands and knees scrubbing blood out of carpets, off bed sheets, and off of the tile floor, grout and hard wood slats. Fun times. It could have gone better as a whole I’d say. No matter. We new skinned the wound, he has a bootie on to protect from salt & snow on the exposed quick. And that’s about all we can do for it now.

But here we are day 601 now, once more. This is the second or third time I’ve been here. I’ve had some strange luck with the continuous writing streak, so I’m not mad anymore. I have been furious on two occasions prior, but that’s because the issues were so fresh, so new, so raw. I’m more blasé about it all now. I’ve gotten this far twice before so, you know, whatev’s. Do I think I can get a streak up over 831 again? Possibly. Maybe. I don’t know. When I focus on the streak count instead of the content of my writing in each post the quality dips considerably.

I look back at pre Covid infection pieces and think, I don’t remember writing this at all. It’s rather well put together. Oh my, is my brain shrinking? Am I getting dumber? Or am I now more easily distracted, and less inclined to follow a thought until it reaches a reasonable conclusion? Not sure. I did recently have a dream I was back in university trying to put together a research paper on a famous scientist’s research methods, to see if they were as meticulous as they should be. It was weird. Since it was a dream I could not read any text, and I couldn’t seem to commit any thoughts to the written word. I was very frustrated and starting to panic. It woke me up, and I had to think about it while awake (sort of, it was three in the morning) until 8 had put some actual thoughts in order out loud, and then I could fall asleep knowing full well I’m not THAT dimwitted.

I still have random dreams that I’ve somehow missed every class for a required course, but still have to attend an exam I’m not prepared for. With cold sweats as I try to cram in the early morning hours on the day of the test. Hate those dreams. Not cool!

You ever have a partial memory of a room you’ve been in, but for the life of you cannot recall where that particular room is located? Like was it one of the two colleges I attended, the university, an old high school, a school trip to some place else? Like I have a vivid recollection of a room, but no idea how old I was when I went, or why I was there in the first place. Very odd feeling.

In an addition 130 days or so we will hit two years on this writing streak, and that will be cool. I have fewer than forty days left to hit a 600 day streak on Reddit. I’ve game-ified all these different tangential obligations just to keep them going day in, and day out. Like watching the view count for this blog each day, week, month, and year. Must be a dopamine hit. At least I am aware I am playing myself to achieve some sort of results. Ha! What simple people are we.

Tuesday December 9th, of the year 2025. We are eleven days from the real start of winter and we have had a few days down to minus fifteen degrees Celsius all ready! Going to be a snow filled, and bitterly cold winter this year I think. A long, cold. And drab winter is laid out before us. Hold on tight!

And… The night before he splits open a toenail on the ice and proceeds to bleed on every flat surface in the house that he is able to scramble to before we catch him to see what’s wrong. Daughter’s shag rug, wife’s bed, hallway,  kitchen floor, and front foyer, plus back door mat. I for a second thought he’d gotten a bunny and had brought some of the remains inside with him, but once we got him to sit down and settle, 8 could see he had a front paw raised, and that’s when we saw the blood from his smashed toenail. Yikes. Poor pup. We put a fitted sock on it to stop him from licking it all night. But he’s still distressed by it. Silly boy that he is.

Happy second birthday Graham Cracker! Not the way we’d have wanted to spend it, but it could have been a whole lot worse, I suppose. He got a fancy new big dog food dish for his birthday. I’m certain the girls will make him a birthday card. He got three strips of bacon for breakfast to celebrate the day. You’re a mess, but we love you Grimbo!

In other news it is Monday once again. I spent much of last evening cleaning up, after my daughter unwrapped all of her birthday gifts from the party. A party that went off without a hitch I might add. No fights. No wounds. Everybody left with those that they were supposed to. A grand time was had by all involved. Lots of food and beverages for the kiddies. It was very pleasant. The glow in the dark mini putt was pure chaos, but from all the laughter I know they all enjoyed themselves. A few holes in one from multiple kids on different courses too. Nice!

Now we turn our full attention to Christmas. I spent more than three hours wrapping gifts, and stocking stuffers for the whole family, myself included. I paused a few times to stretch out my back, and to actively watch my favourite parts of Elf, so it wasn’t a constant nose to the grind stone three hours, but enough that my neck, and upper back ached a good deal yesterday because of it.

It’s the holiday season so of course my kids have gotten into the scotch tape to use it all on Halloween, and Thanksgiving decorations, and to build crafts and so much more over the last two months. Instead of relying on them to not waste it all, leaving me with none for Christmas gift wrapping, I keep a secret stash of my own supplies hidden away, deep in the bowels of the house. This year I used up only one whole tape dispenser, and part of a second. We have scaled back. I still bought the essentials from Santa to us all for the stockings. Everybody needs a tooth brush, tooth paste, soaps and shampoos etc… but we focused one one bigger gift for each child, and few additional items. No mounds of filler toys that get forgotten about the moment they open yet another present from under the tree. Those days are done! Economy isn’t what it used to be. Can’t be wasting cash on filler anymore. Quality over quantity.

Happy 14th birthday in dog years to our new sullen teen Graham Cracker! He’s officially a two-nager!

Food ordered for lunch, drinks are cold, of which we have a wide variety. Kids are running through the tub as we speak. Party favours did NOT arrive from the border so those will have to get distributed at school once they arrive, and we have the time to divvy them up among the expected guests. The cake, and the cupcakes were made, and iced last night so I could strike them from our list. We just need to transport the chips, cupcakes, drinks, and children to the venue, and just before one I can mosey on over to the Pizzeria to grab our lunch. Bob’s your uncle.

Party was a success, I think the birthday girl has a good time with fourteen of her school friends, and a sibling, and a couple cousins. A couple of parents hung around to chat, and help out which was nice. The day glow mini putt was fun. I think the arcade portion went over well too. I used my credits on the punching bag machine. I enjoyed myself a good deal.

I am not ready to sleep for a couple hours to recuperate from all those Uber chatty preteen girls yakking it up nonstop for the better part of three hours. I’m exhausted! Signing off for the day. Ciao Bella!

Seems like not that long ago my oldest was an 8 lbs, 3 oz football I could hold with one forearm and hand to bathe in the sink. Now she’s getting older, taller, smarter, and more resourceful and I’m nostalgic for the tiny lump of our first child that she was. Time is not sensitive to my discomfort. How rude.

We went climbing just the two of us today, which was very pleasant. We tackled a bunch of climbs today, but they weren’t too crazy hard. I need to bake cupcakes, and a cake today, plus wrap Christmas gifts, so I need the use of both hands, and super difficult climbs would wreck my dexterity. You gotta save some for the sequel! Don’cha know!?!

It’s a cold, blowy Saturday. I fully intend to stay home, and indoors for as much of the day as possible. Let me enter my hermit era unbothered.

Oh yeah, we sat down to watch the Hannah Waddingham Christmas special and it was lovely. Very theater kid friendly. Holiday spirit rather than holy Spirit of you catch my drift. Not so churchy. Bright, colourful, and high energy. Liked it a good deal. It was maybe 35 minutes long I think? Short and Sweet. No bloat. Also not at all saccharine, or syrupy. Crisp British taste through and through. Nicely executed.

I have some gift certificates to send out to extended family, and then I am done! I put the last physical items on order, all set to show up by Monday-Tuesday of next week at the latest. I feel good about it. My spouse will cover off her niece and nephew, while I figure out mine. And that should be that. Unless I am struck by a last minute excellent idea for my spouse, I can start to focus on wrapping gifts now, instead of lines, full parking lots, and spending more money.

We have opted for one bigger gift per child, something that they really, really wanted, instead of a flood of filler presents. If I had my way both kids would get musical instruments to pull them away from heavy device usage. I’d much rather see them learn to play a guitar, bass, drums, piano, violin, or brass instrument, then go on, and on and nauseum about “brain rot” this, and “brain rot” that. Ugh! Then we could jam together and make some fun musical memories as a family.

Speaking of which, I intend to go to Long and McQuade today to find some new guitar picks with texture on them, as mine are too slippery, and fall out of my hands while playing with any sort of vigour. Either that or I need to find Pine tar, or hair spray to add some tackiness to them, so I don’t drop them mid rhythm. Smooth soft finger tips aren’t all that helpful. I guess climbing hasn’t roughened them up enough yet. We did take a full month off, so some calluses have reverted back to healthy skin again.

I’m also looking for a noise gate pedal to cut down on feedback from my amp while playing. I could do without the run away Eeeéeeeeeeeee that becomes deafening the second I stop playing, and want to tune a string for a different song. We will see what options there are in the price range I’m willing to pay, which is not much. Ha.

The household purge gas moved along smoothly. Each day this week I have scoured a new location, and cleaned up as well as I could. Now if we had a big bin out front I might get a little more adventurous, but the clear out has to conform to our current three bag maximum, so I need to save space for regular day to day garbage that we produce from eating, and living regularly. I can’t use all three bags on purged materials. This is where strategy comes into the mix. Luckily the blue bins can house some of this junk too. A life saver!

I think getting right to ten boxes of crackers, and such out of the pantry was an added bonus. The green bin will be full this next pick-up day. Rancid oil smells so bad. White powdery chocolate is gone. Four year old Smarties — gone too! Cereal that was opened in September has gone as well. The kids opened it, ate it for two breakfasts, then promptly forgot all about it, and have zero interest in eating the remaining 95% of the box. Out it goes then! Bye-bye. See ya!

Problem is I am fast approaching the limit of what I can get rid of. Not necessarily a bad thing. But the tiny house, she’s a still a very, very tiny you see. No amount of junk clearing can make the walls longer, or the square footage expand. Try as I might, it hasn’t worked yet! Ha! Even if I got rid of the doll houses, art station, toy boxes, and racks of toy filled bins, the house is still small. But then it would be empty. I don’t want an empty minimalist wet dream of a home, I just want it tidy, and not completely cluttered with junk.

Besides a new refrigerator, and probably a new AC unit, we need to think about a new couch / seating situation. I think our current sectional is too large for our home. It takes up a lot of space. It’s faux leather, and both the dogs, and children have torn this thing to shreds. To shreds you say!?! Ripped, and worn through seams, with a couple springs showing. We have the Loud House couch in our home. Busted up heifer of a thing.

I think we need a love seat, and an arm chair because all five of us (including the dog) rarely all sit here together all at one time. Not that we will replace any of those three items any time soon unless forced to do so. It is something to consider. Until next time. Onwards & upwards.

Did not stray too far from the path this morning when walking the dog. That wind kicked up snow, and ice crystals just to ram them straight into my face, and down my neck! Yikes. I can do with only a handful of these sorts of days. Sad part is we are still in late autumn, and winter hasn’t even officially started yet. And won’t start for another two weeks, and a few days extra on top of that.

I think it best we swap out the rain coats for proper full on winter wear at this point. Even with a warm spell the temperature it is unlikely to climb much above 7°C even if we get a weeks worth of extra sun shine. I need to find my regular walking around boots, and my good winter gloves. I have been wearing my cool weather wood splitting jacket this whole time, but I’m going to need to switch to my real winter coat sooner rather than later.

I have to make sure I have my long johns handy because I’m not much for long walks if my legs are numb, or itching like crazy. That’s all I will say about that.

The birthday parties start this weekend, and once those are done I can turn my attention to Christmas as my primary focus. My attention is being pulled in multiple directions right now, what with the birthdays, parties, taekwondo belt promotion & testing, purging the house prior to Christmas, trying to start shopping, cleaning the house regularly, grocery shopping, and life in general. Those two weeks where we have no after school programming, no school, no work. And no major obligations are lovely. Add in the bitter cold outside, and hibernating with a drink in one hand, and snacks in the other while we watch television & movies, sounds incredible.

I totally forgot to ask my spouse about the couch long shelves and table I thought about building. It totally slipped my mind. I could work on the joinery right away, but my uninsulated garage is too cold for a proper glue up at this point. Even with my 18,000 BTU propane heater, I don’t think I could get the glue to set up properly. So I could plane, joint, and hand cut mortise & tenons, but any glue would have to wait until a warm spell in March, or April to attempt. Or… A big “or” here, I bring it all inside the house just to glue it up in situ. Which I’m not a fan of. I want it sanded, and finish applied, and all the smelly bits off gassed for a few weeks before I put it in place. Oils and finishes stink to high heaven, and with this piece going directly behind the couch it will make watching tv kinda stinky for days on end, until we go nose blind to it. I just wish I had thought of it back in September, then I could have gotten it done before the snow set in. Live and learn.

I was on a real cleaning run yesterday, and once it kicks in I find it hard to stop. So I did the next best thing and searched the pantry for crackers, and boxed items that were out of date. Not like Nov 2025 out of date, but stuff from more than six months ago. Found a handful with 2024 best before dates, and several with 2023’s. Good lord does the rancid oil smell bad on those things. Crackers especially! I hate to see food wasted, but it’s inedible. I used to put that sort of thing in our compost heap, but then it attracts raccoons, skunks, and rodents too. Not cool. Going to a landfill sucks, but I can’t donate it. The rancid oil would put people in the hospital. No thanks.

Which reminds me, I was going to pull a lower cabinet apart to see what else was hidden back there that could get thrown away. I’ve seen these Millenial Inheritance videos on IG or YouTube, and all it makes me think about is clearing out our own house of junk so that my children aren’t stuck having to do it after I pass. Not that we collect glass, or ceramic figurines, or wicker baskets etc… but do we need to keep ten or more novelty drink containers from Busch Gardens, SeaWorld Orlando, Disney World, and the Metro Toronto Zoo, and Canada’s Wonderland? No I think not. One from each place seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Keep some memorable items, but we don’t need double digit multiples. That’s insane.

That’s my goal, from now until the new year. Search random drawers, closets, cabinets etc… and declutter what ever is held inside. I could do with running the vacuum around again too. I’m seeing lots of crumbs on the floor in this early morning sunlight. Onwards & upwards as they say!

And we are off to a terrific start with one 135L garbage bag full of crap getting tossed to the curb. Plastic wrappers, broken bits, old forms/letters, junk mail, busted up drawings, broken crafting supplies, loads & loads of dried up paints, and cracked paint pots. Scraps of fabric, knotted lengths of string, twine, thread you name it. Gone, gone, gone! I also took this time to organize the bins a little better as I emptied them of junk. I have even tackled two dining room drawers that have been housing junk since 2014! What a find. I guess because I don’t store stuff in there I never felt the need to look. Glad I did, as it was a treasure trove of toss-able items. No 8 don’t need a packing pass from 2016. No I don’t need tickets to a work event from 2015. Bye-bye!

There are only a few select places in the house that I have not yet ventured in order to purge us of hoarded garbage. I am here to manage only my own things, and the common areas of the house. Ever so slowly I am recovering floor space, shelf space, cupboard space, and drawer spaces for new, or less commonly used items. If we have a flat spot you can rest assured it will find itself covered in three layers of clutter and junk before you even know what’s happened.

I love having “living room” children, but it does mean that their belongings migrate out from their bedrooms and into the common areas of the house where it inevitably gets left. My kids love to set up sprawling dioramas and tableau for their toys, right in the middle of the floor of a room, and then walk away. Fully expecting it to remain intact for weeks until they can deign to play with it again. Woe be tide the adult that clears it away before they had their second go at playing with their layout! Namely me. I get the abuse for cleaning up their toy dioramas from the floor. It me!

I have one more bin under the side board in the dining room to search, and tidy up before the whole row is finished. It’s the fullest of the five bins in that location. We have more fabric bins in the basement all loaded up with whatever you can imagine. Plus several in the adjoining living room full of various toys. I sorted the dolls, and associated accessories last year (I think?) so those I’m not going to bother with just yet. I’m not here to throw away toys, just junk, wrappers, bags, flyers, pamphlets, scribbles on pages, and broken bits of whatever I can find.

Both girls are almost to the point where they are growing out of the toys they have. My goal would be to sort them, and store them nearly by brand, or category, and save the good stuff for the future grand kids (should we get any, and be alive still to enjoy watching them). LOL Dolls of varying sizes made a huge splash at this house, so I’m not looking to get rid of them. But I do want them cleaned up, sorted, and kept neatly stored away if they are no longer being played with. Clear storage bins are our friends! Use them to their full extent. It’s glorious.

It’s times like this when I need a paper shredder for old documents. Or an open burn barrel to dispose of sensitive financial materials. That might be an office expense for next year.

Funnily enough once Christmas break is done the house will feel emptier almost immediately once I take down the tree, and put all the decorations away. That makes this place feel less full, cramped, and encroaching in one simple action. I like that. Don’t get me wrong, I love the tree, the lights, and the festive atmosphere, but this wee little house can feel cramped right quick with very little effort.

To ease the congestion at the front door I plan to remove the dog cage, in favour of a raised bed, with a pull out drawer. Maybe a shelf/mock head board at one end so I can still put some items on top. Or better yet, a table that runs the length of the sectional couch, that has at least three shelves for stuff. That would actually help out far more. I should talk to my wife about that option. She might actually take to that because we are always at a loss for storage around here. It’s open concept, so no walks to place an armoire or a group of cupboards. I’ll save that idea for later.

I have some 1 L beer Stein’s in my possession that I’m going to offer to some friends after they move, because I was gifted them from an old job, and I don’t drink beer all that much, and certainly not in 1 litre quantities at a time. My younger friends might actually put them to use, where for myself they are just eating up cupboard space that I could use for our kettle, or coffee maker, or silver bullet. I have items waiting to get put someplace more useful than the counter tops.

Small houses show as cluttered so easily. Lived in is one thing, but cluttered bordering on hoarding is another. Oh well, onwards and upwards.