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Even if you charge them up to 100% battery capacity, if you let them sit unused for ten or more days, even while the unit is powered off the batteries will drain down to zero. That irks me. I get if they lose 25-30% of battery over an extended period of no use, that’s to be expected, but a full null battery is kind of ridiculous. They fit great, look great, have just enough weight to feel premium but not hurt your neck or head, and the ear cushioning is soft & supple, and the sound quality is pretty good, but that power drain is a mess. A big fat red X on the sell sheet if you compare them to other battery operated items. Besides leaving them on a charger when not in use (I don’t have enough outlets and plugs/chargers for that) I don’t see how you get around it. Like today, I wanted to listen to music while I did some weed eating for the inlaws (with their weed eater since Markham Mower has had my Echo SRM-230 since May 21st for an hour long repair) and was hoping to listen to music while I worked, but no! Battery dead. So dead it takes upwards of 5 minutes on the charger before the red light charging indicator light comes on. So no music for me while I trimmed around the house, trees, and deck rocks.

I might be intermingling my disdain for Markham Mowers lacklustre service schedule with my JBL battery’s lack of holding a charge when powered off and in stasis mode. Either way I am annoyed about it, or both things at once. No matter. It is Friday, and I got some Fair signage done yesterday, with more on the way by the sounds of it. We are looking at a wet & rainy weekend yet again. I’m ok with that, although let us hope we don’t get another 2.5 – 6 inches in a day like last Sunday, because that was intense. A solid inch will feed the corn and beans, and not to forget my baby fruit trees as well, just fine & dandy. I don’t want to flood them or drown them!

The offending headphones pictured below.

They are comfortable, and I like how they swivel and fold to collapse into a smaller block to fit into a bag for traveling. That’s a super duper handy feature, and one I would likely require of a future purchase if these ever breakdown beyond repair. Not that I know of anywhere that would even fix a pair of headphones.

Off topic here for a sec: I have done 15 to 20 push ups every day except one in the last two weeks, and added in some air squats and sit ups to which I have noticed nothing. Ha! Muscle soreness for sure but little else. So I think that means I need to add a bit more into the mix. Nothing much for now, as I’d like to scout out an inexpensive gym once the kids go back to school in September. I prefer free weights to cardio, but I need a little of both because I am more pear shaped than ever now. Also our climbing schedule will get back on track in the fall so I should wait to see how that works into the mix. The climbing gym requires a 25 minute drive, whereas I’d like a local gym that’s 5-10 minutes to get into tops. I don’t want to be there for hours and hours each visit, but to do 15-20 minutes with weights would help out my bones and muscles quite a bit. CrossFit is out because it’s too expensive and I don’t want to compete, I just want to exercise more. Let’s see if we can make that happen for ourselves.

I’ve shifted over to more vegetables and fiber in my day to day meals, but that has caused me an increase in gas & bloating, which feels counter productive, but we’ll just continue on because that’s good for us regardless of the brass section following us to the bathroom throughout the day. Oh TMI WARNING, got there a little late with that one, just squeaked past. My bad. The snacking is on again, off again with success so that’s something I can work on before the fall. I’m not going to go in on any type of diet, but I will try to moderate portion sizes, and substitute fries for a salad far more often. Diets only work if that’s how you intend to live from here on out, so I’m better off making smarter food choices, and looking for slightly smaller amounts over time. I once wanted to get back down to 165 lbs, but I think that 180 lbs would be more suited to my current lifestyle and not all that different. Basically I want my pants and t-shirts to fit less snuggly, and not have such a pronounced mid section. Tell me these things the next time I see a donut or a bag of Doritos!

Shopping smarter helps too. If you don’t buy it, you can’t indulge in it! I guess that’s why they have cheat days because those cravings can really weigh you down otherwise. But enough about me.

Happy Friday. May you experience a glorious weekend ahead. Ciao Bella. Take care out there.

I recall more than one winter where the AC would turn on and not shut off from January to April for whatever reason. I would drive the 410, 403, and 407 with it being colder inside the can than it was outside. Thank the lords above for cloth seats, snow pants and neck rings otherwise I would have frozen solid during my commute. That and loud music and boisterous singing at the top of my lungs. The passenger side door latch didn’t work, and the tailgate latch stopped working within a year or two of my paying it off. I ran that truck until it was at best scrap. The break lines blew out on the 427 on ramp at least twice and I drove to work with no breaks in morning rush hour traffic. That was fun. The transmission was fubar’d and once it got hot and we crawled along in bump to bumper traffic it would catch and jump like I’d been rear ended, which was good for a laugh once you knew you hadn’t been hit. It was a giant pile of shit, but it was the first vehicle I ever went to a lot to pick out myself and purchase. My first actual car was a Suzuki Swift that was my dad’s, which my older brothers had used too. But they bought the Volkswagen bugg off my parents, and I bought the Swift. The firewall rotted out, same with the floorboards and I eventually drove it to the local scrap yard and left it behind. Cars — what a pocket cleaning, money vampire enterprise they are.

Makes me wish we lived in Europe with the walkable lifestyle, and more temperate weather. I could do with a milder winter! Although not having snakes and bitey bugs is a solid trade off. I will grant you that.

If my calculations are correct it is now Thursday. I have been tasked with fixing some exterior deck steps, so before it rains and/or the bugs get worse I will go attend to that. Cheers!

Kids need to be kept busy, so what better time than now to start putting those crafty little minions on task with some Markham Fair entries. We’ve got glue guns, glue sticks, sparkles, glitter, construction paper, string, threat, plastic beads of all shapes and colours, rocks, paints and just about every colour marker under the sun. The only question we have is, will they stick with it long enough to complete anything, or have we just unleashed an eight hour day of nothing but crafting in place on the dining room table? Only time will tell.

Hump day is here! It’s Wednesday today the first Wednesday of the month. Is that special in any kind of way? No not really, but it does mean we are onto the back half of the year and running headlong into the fall. That means school starts, the Markham Fair, Thanksgiving, Halloween Haunt at Canada’s Wonderland, my wife’s break week, Halloween itself, all the way on through Christmas and New Years. It’s a straight shot to snow! Ha. Don’t wish it away, but the leaves are drying on the trees, and pretty soon the rains will come back just in time to make school runs a wet endeavour.

I came upstairs randomly singing a Christmas Carol yesterday morning, and I don’t know why. My eldest will turn twelve before the holidays and I wonder how much longer she will continue to have the child like wonder for the holiday season. Will it dissipate the closer she gets to being an actual teenager? Will it fizzle under the pressure of people a pre-teen? Will other kids in her peer group have “that” conversation about Santa and those kids talk about it with the rest of the class!?! I don’t know. I’m sad thinking about it. I personally enjoy their childlike delight in the holidays and don’t ever wish to see it diminished.

Well that turned dreary didn’t it? It’s sunny out. Early August. The kids are home for the last five weeks of summer vacation and are currently still crafting away at the table. I’ll enjoy what I’ve got while it lasts.

Talk about losing your train of thought on the holiday Monday. I was expecting to see/do Monday morning things today and it’s actually Tuesday which runs on a separate schedule from the whole rest of the week, and I missed it. Damn. It’ll be two weeks before I can get the recycling out again because they came and went at 7:05 am by the looks of it. Oh well. My bad. I will just go back into the recycling bin and make certain I have broken every single box down to the thinnest it can be to make room for the next fourteen days worth of cardboard and packaging waste. Not my finest work. But forgivable given the circumstances I think. It’s rare that I miss an alarm to get our junk to the curb on time. Also, it helps if you turn the actual alarm on the night before instead of leaving it in the OFF position on your phone. Nice.

Anyway, here’s a photo of my eldest riding a single tube from yesterday.

All of our rock climbing has made it so that both of my kids can wakeboard and go tubing for longer periods of time without their hands and forearms going numb. I knew that climbing would be good for more than banged elbows and scraped shins!

Luckily the steady rain I stood in was not as bad as the rain that I walked through to fetch the car once we were ready to leave because that short cloud burst was enough to soak me to my skin over a 600m walk, versus the thirty five minutes I spent standing in line for French fries and drinks that merely wetted my hair through my hat and sweater hood, but didn’t make it all the way down my back to my undies. I was not as chipper as I usually am during this rainy exchange with the outdoors. No indoor food options at the venue without driving out of town. Or more so from out of town and back in to town for food options that were inside brick & mortar buildings and in our of the rain. I drove to the Canadian Tire, and then to the Shell gas station in almost entirely wet clothes. It did not reach to my phone or wallet, a small blessing given we had 100 mm of rain before four pm, and another 100 mm from five o’clock until one in the morning. The rivers, ponds, lakes and tree stands are all full today! Cold water puddles up to your ankles. No need to water today. Possibly not tomorrow either. I did not take any photos of my cheery disposition. We are all glad that I chose not to do so.

Today, as far as I can tell is a holiday Monday in August. This is the middle of summer break 2026. The children get 10 weeks off this year, and do not start up again until September 8th. That’s one whole additional week in September off before the school year starts. Ask me if either of my kids has done any reading whatsoever in the preceding five weeks? Nope. Not a page. Oh mylanta! Could you imagine going that long without reading? I have read more accidental reading without my glasses in five blurry summer weeks by, than they have done purposefully.

Don’t even ask about bed times, sleep schedules and any other things of that nature. We do have a regular time table for swim lessons which we use to anchor the kids to a semi coherent day/week. Otherwise it would just be chaos. I know these kids, they would tend towards staying up later and later, and then trying to sleep through the day. That would be a huge mess to try and fix come the start of school. Praise be to small courtesies.

I put together a deck chair yesterday, and it still looks over cast outside my window, so I don’t really know what is on the books for this holiday Monday. I choose a lie in, and maybe a family movie. Or better yet pick up a book and do some quiet reading for an hour or two! That sounds divine. Cuddle blankets, a beverage and a book! Sign me up.

It’s not anything truly outstanding, or revolutionary, but with the right kind of spicy pepper jack cheese, and Bourbon BBQ sauce it’s a zinger of a lunch sandwich. I had two of them in British Columbia early on in July when we went west for a visit, and I’ve had two, possibly three more over the last three weeks since we’ve been back in Ontario. Now I realize a six inch, or a twelve inch sandwich isn’t entirely more healthy than a burger, but I’ve gotten kind of tired of McDonald’s, and Wendy’s. We don’t have a Burger King in town, nor an Arby’s so I can’t rotate those in or out to broaden the available options. If I had my choice I might still hope to put a Taco Bell somewhere nearby, but the likelihood of that happening are next to zero. But! We do have a Subway in town and I might just stop in there more frequently because using Doordash is way too expensive. I could have had two Subway subs for what I paid for one delivered. Mind you I was watching He-Man Masters of the Universe on Amazon Prime and didn’t want to drive across town to crush the craving I was having. I paid the idiot tax instead. It happens. Not often mind you, so I don’t beat myself up over it.

I say all this because I stopped in for a six inch Steak & Bacon Subway sandwich today and with lettuce, tomato, onions, and green peppers on a toasted Italian garlic cheese and herb bun , drizzled in their Bourbon BBQ sauce it was definitely the late lunch meal I was after. Shredded steak and bacon strips were ripe for the munching!

**Not a paid ad.

The tennis is on and it is pouring with rain outside. We are trying to decide if we are going to venture out into the weather to enjoy the Gem-boree.  It is taking more time than anticipated to sort out who is driving in which vehicle. The young children are boisterous, and the thought of riding with multiple squealing kids is unappealing. Welcome to a not so lazy Sunday.

I woke up very early in the evening after the tubes were implanted in my ears to the racket that was birds squawking outside my window. I cried because I could hear it, and also because it was now so loud it broke me out of my anesthetic enhanced sleep. God’s be damned those birds were loud. Which reminds me, I need to see the hearing doctor to find out about a hearing aid or something because I know my hearing is getting worse and worse with each passing year. I hate the telephone, and by God if I interact with any one with any sort of accent I’m left completely in the dark. Don’t get upset if I ask you to repeat yourself three or four times each time you speak. I prefer written instructions with a potential spoken follow-up.  Speech to text on zoom calls or Google meets has been pretty awesome. Same with closed captioning, I have that shit on on just about every single streaming service I run. Thank you very much.

That just randomly popped into my head. Hope you have a restful long weekend. Welcome to Saturday. Also hearing loss sucks, get checked. I am increasingly finding I have auditory hallucinations of beeping phones, footsteps, and all manner of things. Not a fan. Take care of yourselves.

Hard to beat last year’s 2,010 views in the month of July, because one single day did 1,500 views worth of activity out of Germany and I still have no idea why. But this July has done 1,030 views or more just from a steady stream of people dropping by to poke around and read new posts, old posts, download my books or portfolio pdf, and to peruse the archival stuff. It’s pretty cool. I do not know if I’m building my own audience or if it’s due to my posting every day and getting some kind of algorithmic help on the WordPress reader. Like I said, I don’t know, but it’s still pretty neat! I’ll take all the help I can, because in an offhand way it adds a tiny bit of Umph! to my day.  Who wouldn’t want a free helping hand and a slight boost to their morale each week? By now those whole writing schtick is an actual ingrained habit. I make time for it, the same as I would for eating, sleeping, and using the facilities.

I hope I’m not too dull? I am no extreme games adrenalin junkie. I discuss my Domestic Duties Mondays as a regular topic. Where we clean my house, and do loads of laundry, and tackle the dishes all during the regular school year. Or we discuss the weather at length and my philosophy regarding lawn care. As long as it’s evenly cut, I don’t much care after that! Ha! I do photo editorials about hand splitting wood in the fall with my two axes and a hookaroon, not to mention I discuss the Markham Fair quite a bit too.

You can go through my posts from previous years and watch me cycle through the seasons and topics fairly regularly. When it’s cold out, I talk more about sculpting, and miniatures painting, playing the guitar and/or bass and I might even throw in some creative writing. I hate the cold. Where we live in southern Ontario we can enter winter on November first and not leave it behind until May first. So I have lots of time for indoor hobbies, like my resin model kit build. I have far too many hobbies.

Some times during the winter I break out my illustrated children’s book and work on that for a little bit. I started that when my eldest was three or four, so that’s been going on for nearly eight years now. I have no urgency with it it seems. In milder temperatures I find my way into my wood shop and I make furniture building posts on this blog too. Some episodes are a real hoot. I cover a lot of ground by being both scatterbrained and methodically boring and process driven. Perhaps I’m bipolar? Who knows at this point.

Sometimes I stumble across a situation that causes me to become deeply introspective, where I try to piece together elements from my past that enlighten me as to why I react the way I do to certain external stimuli. Or I try to write out the longest train of thought absurdities that I can in an effort to mock those in power around me, and have a good chuckle about it all. Beats crying.

Anyway, it is now the Friday of a long weekend and the weekend itself calls for heavy rain and thunderstorms. Such luck! Always on the weekends, am I right? Glad for the rain though. We all need some rain.

Oh yeah, and if my kids do something goofy enough I might even write a whole rant about parenting while working from home. That’s always good for a relatable laugh or two. This year the best thing I did was write about my trying to achieve weight loss. That resonated quite well. I am still a rotund pear shaped middle aged man, but it’s on my mind, and I am trying to add healthy habits to my day that mirrors all this writing. Mostly by way of push ups, squats, drinking more water, dog walks, and far fewer snacks. The scale has not changed as of yet. But bear with me!

Fin.

My spouse and children love the cottage with all their hearts, it is their happy place. For me, I just feel like a guest and I don’t ultimately feel that relaxed up there. I’d much rather be home with my hobbies and tools, and my friends. But, I can get a pretty good night’s sleep at the cottage, not only that I can take a mean nap in the back of the pontoon boat if everybody else is swimming in the lake after the kids do some water sports. So that’s pretty great. I like that the kids love the cottage, it’s something special that they’ve grown up with that I didn’t have. To them it’s normal, and pretty great. I love that for them. It’s not my personal favourite but I can get along and find the charm in it. I can see why they love it so much.

It is Thursday now, with the long weekend looming. That means fireworks out with all the mosquitoes at dusk, which as of late runs about nine, nine thirty or so. Best find the bug zappers, Off! Bug spray, long pants and long sleeved shirts to minimize the bites, welts, and itching that lasts for weeks afterward. Love me some fireworks, hate the bug bites that follow from being outdoors during the summer season.

As we move into August summer break 2026 is officially half way done, well sort of but not quite. The kids don’t go back to school until September 8th this year, so we still have a full five weeks left of the nine available. Those dog days of summer are encroaching on us all! The hottest, most humid section of the summer is always hidden within August. The driest portion of the year is about to happen to us — again. Pray for my wee little fruit trees. It won’t be long before they’ve shed their leaves and turned down for the fall.

Well I have paid work to get to, I best be on my way. May the cottage visits be safe & fun this year for everybody. Remember if you take friends out, you’re responsibly to bring them back in with you, no exceptions.