Category: Uncategorized

Once upon a time my writing streak was up to 831 consecutive days, when I attempted to fix a post that wasn’t uploading properly due to a higher than usual number of photos, and my streak was cut down to 130 days because that was how long I had left the post to languish before attempting to fix it, thus cutting my streak down to nothing. I was pissed. I was fuming. So took my last Florida/Disney trip off from writing as a vacation and came back and picked it up again. Now here i am a year later and my streak is going strong once more. Not that a year is anything to smirk at, but my last big stretch covered the May 2-4 Jericho storm & resulting 26 hour power outage, also having COVID, and various other difficult situations. I was trying to reach three years, and missed it by that much! Oh well. It honestly only really kicked off because COVID was here, we were all isolated, lonely, and scared and I started to write really short micro sized semi-fictional short stories. I had THE best year for readership and views during that time. I have not managed to come within 2/3rds of those numbers since. Mainly because I write drivel like this, and about the weather, instead of making new creative stories. I had one about some killers that I thought was interesting, but I can’t find it, and I think about adding to that story line a fair bit. But I also want to play my guitar more, and spend more time sculpting, and doing paid work, and making wood based projects in my garage shop, and cleaning slash purging junk from the house, and painting miniatures or building war gaming terrain from scratch. Instead I putter about on my phone while I wait for work emails, or I spend my time doing Domestic Duties around the house. I’m my own worst enemy.

So here we are 365 days completed once again. It feels good. Sun is out, and I think we have seen the very last of the snow and flurries for the season. Pretty soon I will have to break out the lawn mower, and the hoses, and patio furniture and get to living life outdoors again. I can also pack away the long johns for a few months! Even better.

Thursday before the ultra long weekend. Girls are going to a Frog Symposium tonight so they should really enjoy that. It’s an hour away, and then 90 minutes long, so that should occupy them for nearly four hours this evening. Just me and the dog here tonight then. I foresee more long walks in my near future. Perhaps into the cemetery? Or over to the school? I don’t know, the world is my oyster.

Next week is a short week for the kids too. Here’s hoping we have enough activities available to keep them occupied, and engaged so as to not fight constantly the whole time. I had hoped to take a daddy daughter day and walk them through Square One and have lunch, and maybe catch a movie on Friday, but those plans were squashed in favour of helping the farm clean up after all the maple syruping done earlier this spring. I’m sure my youngest will love that. Washing buckets, spials, lids and hoses for the weekend. Washing, drying, stacking, and putting them up into the rafters on their shelves. It’s a long and tedious process. All hands on deck!

I need to check some emails, so happy Thursday. Ciao Bella!

Welp it looks like I might finally get my Black Spire miniatures ordered in 2020, there’s about 195 of them to arrive by years end, if all goes well. However, I didn’t learn of this until AFTER I had signed onto a different crowd funding project from Archon, for their latest Dungeons & Lazers release of Posthaven. Not a problem. The more the merrier I suppose. Looks like the kids and I will have a fair number of miniature painting sessions to undertake together. I can give them a bunch of fun items to paint up how they see fit, and I can focus on the ones that I am most excited about. Now, some items will need to be assembled, so that work will fall to me, but once glued up, and primed ready for paint, then the kids and I can have at it. Should keep us busy all next winter. I hope! Ha.

When it rains, it pours – no? Five years I’ve waited for the first block of nearly 200 28 mm figures. I have a hard time believing that they might actually show up in 2025. I will not be surprised if it gets pushed to late first quarter of 2026, that’s just how little faith I have in some of these people. But i digress.

It is now Wednesday, with snow accumulation on both the ground, and my car. Man oh man am I sick to death of snow at this point. Double digit dates in April, this shit show should be behind us by now. I don’t mind the April rains, but I could do without the constant temperature drops, flurries, and flat out snow fall we continue to get. I’m over it! G’ah.

The weekend at least looks to be on the northern side of zero degrees Celsius, so that’s a plus. Most likely rain, but a couple of days up into the early teens might turn out moods around. Easter is right here upon us, later than usual. Funny how that is. Anyway, my wife has the kids stuff planned out for this year. I typically handle Christmas, and Valentine’s Day, and at least one of the kids birthdays. Halloween we all go all out, so nobody has to pick up slack for that, and our Thanksgiving is in October and besides the meal, there is no “special extras” to consider. That’s a plus. This year my wife wanted less candy so she sourced some neat little trinket things for the kids. I said have at it. We aren’t particularly churchy people, I mean we go at Christmas, for funerals and weddings, but that’s pretty much it. So I’m not all wrapped up in the lore for this holiday of sorts. I do appreciate the four day weekend though.

Tomorrow is the kids last day of school this week. I had planned to take them to Square One for a full day outing, but now it seems I need to go vote early on the Friday, and trek back and forth from the farm to retrieve my in-laws patio & pool things from the farm, as well as clean up after the syrup operation, and stack all of the fire wood they cut last week. So a weekend of manual labour it will be then. Plus Ham! And onion heavy Hash Browns. Such fun.

Had an impromptu call from the school yesterday as my youngest randomly had a pretty righteous ear ache that left her in tears, and a good deal of pain. So I rushed over to the school to grab her. Fed her some kids Motrin for the pain, and administered over the counter ear drops, 2 sets over a couple of hours. It did not seem to help, so I called the doctor’s office and they had one last appointment for the day so we zipped over there, and as soon as we stepped foot inside the office either the pain meds kicked in, or the drops did because she was mostly fine by that point. A touch of redness in the ear, but that was either the start or the end of whatever her issue was. I gave her more Motrin to get to sleep with, and some to last the day at school, and we will see what is what then. Fingers crossed it was just a last push from the cough & cold working its way out of her system! One can hope

Looks both windy, and rainy outside now. Glad we do our daily walk when we did as it would be most unpleasant to be out there in the thick of it now. Tomorrow is to be a waste of a day with both rain, and snow on the forecast. Fun times. I just hope my youngest is well enough to go climbing this afternoon. I really did miss it last week when both kids stayed home sick on Tuesday. This constant up and down with the weather is not playing very nice with our bodies. I could do with no more snow, and a gentle rise in temperatures to about 10°C or more for the next couple weeks, instead of the sudden May jump from cold in the morning to nearly 30°C in the afternoons. That’s not spring, that’s a dirty, dirty trick.

Tax bill is soon going to come along and hurl insults at me. So that’s fun. Plus this month’s credit card bill will come at virtually the same time. Always a painful time of year. At least this go around I have my HST paid upfront, and might even get some of it back. That would be a nice little treat. Eh? I think so.

Is it only Tuesday? Feels later on in the week than that. I need a nap. And my nose to stop running. I haven’t sneezed this much in the whole of the last year. Craziness.

The kids illnesses have caught up to me over the weekend. I lasted eight days without getting sick, and then woke up with a sore throat on Saturday, then a runny nose on Sunday, and that’s where I’m at on Monday morning. If I’m not blocked up at the nasal passage I’m runny like a faucet. Just lovely. Not really, but you get the gist of how I feel. I think that my youngest coughing in my face on Thursday night most likely sealed the deal, but I’ll never really know. Could be from picking up dirty Kleenex all over the house and not adequately washing my hands after doing so. Or myriad other things that contributed to it. Best to just roll with it now.

This weekend was very nice, at least Sunday was a beautiful day. Got lots done, and the weather was fabulous. I had been waiting for such a nice day to go take the lights down. No breeze to pull me off the ladder until well into the evening when I had been done for several hours by that point.

Let me answer some work emails and have breakfast. Have a nice day.

Hung the kids tire swing using a length of chain that’ll hold 1,300 lbs, and used a padded tree wrap to protect the tree for a change. It’s now a tad higher than usual but the kids are bigger, and it’ll allow the grass underneath to see sunlight, and rain fall. So a win all around I think.

Next up was the slack line with all of the monkey knots, trapeze bars, and rings for dangling on. That was no problem to put up. I was smart enough to grease the ratchet portion in the fall when I put it away, so no problems here.

I have not put up the spalted maple swing I made as the rope is too badly damaged from UV rays, and stretching over a few years of use. I left it up for a fairly long time. Like, think of several years of hot-hot summers, and ice cold winters doing a number on some cheap nylon rope. It was ugly. It cracked into pieces in my hands.

Then the coup de grace was taking down the exterior Christmas lights from up on the house. It wasn’t so bad. Gave me a chance to triple check the gutters, and the downspouts too. I fixed a squashed gutter in just a few moments worth of work. Glad to get that done. All completed and squared away. Nice.

I haven’t been this excited for a tv show since Reacher Season One. I missed the medical drama type shows more than I guessed. And not the soap opera “Grey’s Anatomy” type either. This seems somewhat more grounded. Like welcome to the worst day of somebody’s life, and it’s not even ten am yet sort of thing. The chaos is almost unbearable. Yet gripping! I binged the first nine episodes. I was up until 2:00 am. I am exhausted. Worth it!

Isn’t life grand, isn’t life glorious? Doesn’t all this chaos make you just want to stand up, stretch, touch grass, and smell some pretty flowers. It’s currently snowing and zero degrees Celsius here, but you catch my drift. There is no order in the chaos, it is a bitter illusion. So you might as well fail fast doing things exactly how you want them, so that you can live with the aftermath, rather than dying on the vine because a committee diluted your idea down to completely transparent, and killed the project anyway. Even with all of their “helpful notes” incorporated. Pssh. Forget that. Flame out on your own merits, or lack thereof. Die trying. It’s a way of life.

I’m not sure how many cliches I hit back there, but it felt like at least a few. Possibly a handful. Would you say it was a plethora? No? Then there’s no need to rape ze horses. That’s a tiny little Three Amigos reference for you. Clutch, or Fetch as they say.

So here it is — Friday. The big day. The big deal. The one last bastion left holding the door closed on the weekend. At least until five pm hits and then the flood gates open and the beers begin to flow like the salmon of Capistrano. I like it. I like it a lot!

It has been a trying week with both kids sick with a matching set of coughs, and colds. It’s a bit gooey around here. I should have invested in Kleenex before I had kids, would have made 3%. Oh well, it was the friends we made along the way the whole time. The whole time!?! Oh! I’m melting like a snow cone in Phoenix. It was a drive by fruiting. Stew? Sounds more like a thick soup.

I could go on. I spent the vast majority of my youth communicating in movie references, and silly quotes. I have them all neatly stacked away ready to pull at a moment’s notice. But being in my mid forties my references go over the heads of many. Too bad. It was a riot when I was eighteen.

I have found out that I missed the season to offload all of our winter sports gear, and now need to stow it until October when the Care & Share groups would gladly take it in and resell it. Almost made it! I don’t need items that my kids have both grown out of, and that my youngest niece has no interest in. The Purge almost got underway. So close! I snatched defeat out of the hands of victory once again. Go team!

Have a lovely weekend all. Ciao Bella!

If you’re wondering where all those coughing, and phlegm removal noises are emanating from, it’s my house. It’s all from within these four walls apparently. That and many small mounds of dirty tissues, and sneeze spray “cones of goo” all over every surface. My house is a breeding ground for nasal bacteria, and lung buttery wakefulness at night. If you hate sleep, and love children’s tears, then you need a helpful scoopful of this grotesque misery. I’m sure it’ll get inside to infect me at some point in the next week or two. I have that to look forward to.

So now it’s Thursday and all of my plans are in a blender while I watch my youngest at home – again. This week has seen both kids home at least once, and the youngest home again with a fever, headache, cough and a runny gooey nose. She seems fine-(ish) to me now. More lovely than I would have thought given her appearance first thing this morning. Live and learn. I would prefer to not have post nasal drip make this last for the better part of three months.

I had intentions of returning some skates to a friend, then dropping off our now too small snowboards, with boots & helmets to the care and share, as well as donating a number of pairs of girls figure skates, the white leather ones with toe picks, if that gives you a clearer visual. Then I was going to take a rain jacket over to my nephew, then walk at the farm. Now I’ll just need to do it tomorrow, provided both children go to school, and don’t stay home where I have to stay to watch them the entire time. Can’t just head out and leave my seven year old unattended for hours on end. Being in the garage or basement office is one thing, hopping in my car and driving all over town is another.

The way things are going it doesn’t look like tomorrow’s Girl Guide camp is going to have too many kids at it, as all the grade two kids I know all have this same snotty cough. Not only that but they are sleeping terribly, so the leaders are in terrible shape too. Should make for an unpleasant experience. No thank you!

I started to look through my kids closets yesterday to begin the Spring Cleaning Purge, but I had to halt that today as the little one is around. Removing stuff from the kids closets is best done in stealth mode I have found. The fewer eyes that notice items disappearing the better off we’ll all be. So that’s on hold until tomorrow now too. I almost have the garage entirely junk free. I need to throw away a few items from a storage bin, one floor mat for office chairs, and our last remaining car seat that a rodent has all ready chewed into and ruined. I’m keeping one umbrella stroller in case I should ever need one for any reason. Otherwise, I have an old cctv monitor that could go, and an ancient computer tower that could go out too. But besides that the space is as optimized as I can get it without getting rid of tool boxes, or tearing down one of the few remaining work benches. Which I don’t fancy doing right now.

You know I thought I was going to end up doing more wood turning on my lathe than I have done. I’m at a stand still with my four jawed chuck, as it doesn’t close equally on all the jaws, so loads are off centre, and gyrate wildly at high speeds. I don’t fancy taking a log to the head even with a face shield on. I do have one chuck that can be bolted right into the wood, but that leaves pretty lasting damage if I don’t have enough material to use as waste on either end. No matter. I have it on hand for when I get the itch once again. I have a lot of stuff like that. Leather/textile crafting materials. Felt for lining boxes, trunks, and drawers. Arc welding stuff (helmet, gloves, sleeves), along with a grinder, various grinding wheels, and hammers, magnets, and welding sticks. All ready to go once I have another project that requires it. I have a die grinder for holes in metal, deburring and for wood carving. All waiting for another project that requires it after I bought them to complete one, or a series of things with them.

I’m going to be on Kleenex dispensing duty today. That and measuring out Tylenol, naps, snacks and activities. Let us hope this cough & cold goes away fairly quickly. Fingers crossed.

That’s the lowest I’ve seen in quite some time. Of course I had only just filled up the day before when it was still $1.53 per litre, so I didn’t get to reap those particular rewards, but I did get gas today at $1.25 so I’ll take that as a win. I’m sure they will manufacture some off hand reason to take the price back up to where it was, and not drop it down to $.90 cents a litre of course. There’s always a storm, a fire, a plant shut down, or some other reason for the price to not drop out too far. Price of the barrel goes up, price goes up, price of a barrel drops, price goes up as there were extenuating circumstances (obviously! D’uh).

Another cold one today here in southern Ontario. Ground is pretty frozen. Yesterday and today had morning temperatures around minus sixteen or colder. Unpleasant to say the least. We still made the time for our farm dog walk though. Glad I haven’t packed away the long johns or snow pants just yet. I will need to wash all of the gloves, hats, mitts and snow gear for storage purposes in the next couple of weeks though. So I have that to look forward to. Same with purging shoes and other such types of gear. Maybe I’ll take the dog’s crate down since we don’t really ever use it except as a place to store his bones, and toys so I don’t trip on them in the dark at night.

We have a plethora of helmets, skates, and stuff that I need to find a place for since our kids have grown out of much of it. Same with our snowboards, and the associated boots. Not to mention cans of paint from under the basement stairs, and all manner of other crap we somehow continue to accumulate. I could likely fill a small trailer with excess clothing and other such junk.

I did the majority of my Domestic Duties yesterday while the family was home sick with a respiratory illness. Vacuum, mop, dishes, and laundry all had their turn to get done. I made us all lunch, and dinner yesterday too. For two kids whom woke up looking like death, they perked up real quick once they knew they didn’t have to go to school. It’s a miracle. But those jacking coughs made a cone back at bedtime, and all throughout the night, and into this morning. So no such luck that a solid rest day would help them at all.

Today is Wednesday. Hump Day. Middle of the week day. Hope you are having a better week than most. Ciao Bella!

Both children have wet hacking smokers coughs, so that’s cool. Runny noses, and coughs for everyone! Not to mention intermittent bouts of tears from the more sensitive older child whom can’t handle being sick right now, and having to miss classes, and handing in assignments. Very sad. She is very studious. I appreciate the effort. The second child is feral, but also sick with the same illness. She is less concerned with missing school due to her current state. It’s freezing cold, and is actually snowing hard enough to collect on the ground as a solid blanket, so I’m cool with my two sickos staying home in bed, heavily medicated to attempt to alleviate their coughing, and the damage it does to their throats, and appetites. Fluids, rest, and meds.

Holy cow it’s only Tuesday! What a week that Monday was. Felt like a lifetime in just twenty four hours. Work has slowed to a crawl so I was out in my garage making small wooden projects. Now those are done, and I’m thinking of what other smaller items I could produce to scratch that itch.  Low profile book shelves, a Knick-knack cubby, a wheelie cart for my guitar amps & pedals? I don’t know. I do know that once the girls outgrow their massive doll collection I will likely need to make some classier storage for upstairs. We have thought about a whole bank of lower, and upper cabinets along the far wall, with a proper counter top to “extend the kitchen” without interfering with the dining room table. But we have an antique side table that is mostly useless there now, and an equally over sized antique table that eats up all of that floor space. I don’t think we can keep both items, and build those cabinets. Now however, is not that time to worry about that sort of project. I need stuff I can start and finish in two or three days when the weather cooperates. It was a bit too cold so my glue ups set kinda funny on my last two projects, which is a shame. More of an annoyance really.

The Odie’s Oil is a champ though. Solid wipe on, buff off finish. I like the smell of it too. Funny that.