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Whilst I do like this new Google Pixel 9, I do have some qualms about having to upgrade my old phone. Beyond the limits of the memory/space and the battery life I would have kept the phone indefinitely except apps were slowly dropping off, losing functionality, and stopped working completely in some cases. I am now in the lengthy process of becoming accustomed to the new phone, and all of its quirks. Also app placement is different so I have to memorize where I have put everything once again. I feel like Mr Peterman trying to memorize the TV guide after they swapped the channels on the television. First world problems. Am I right?

And it smells absolutely unhinged in here now because of it. Just vile. Been a long while since I last cleaned a dirty diaper, let alone an entire floors worth of loose bowel. Clock has just ticked over 2:00 am, so we are well into the thick of it now. Luckily from our summer run in with the skunk I have some nature cleaning supplies for heavy odors, and faeces smell to clean up in here with so I don’t have to spend the rest of the week sniffing the inside of the dogs colon. That’s a plus!

What else am I to do now. The adrenaline rush of hearing him spray fart in the dark, and the onslaught against my senses has left me wide awake. Dog seems none the worse for wear, at the moment. We will have to see if an angry bottom round two will rear its ugly mug. Best sleep lightly.

I do believe we are pulling a head full steam into Wednesday, hump day! If I can get my work email to synch up with this new phone I’ll be golden, otherwise I can only check emails directly from my computer. You would not believe just how long the process was to get all set up in my new phone. Ridiculous. Main reason why it was nearly eight full years in between physical unit changes. What a day it was, all spend connecting gadgets and accounts, passwords and the like. Endlessly doing two factor verifications, updates, and such. Bah!

The wireless transfer of contacts & such was pretty primo though, not going to lie about that. Last phone change over I had to go into my contacts and name them, and enter all details one by one. It was exhausting. Not the way it is now. No sir. All whizzing gadgetry now. The times we live in.

I wonder if I will see three am or if my body will slowly succumb to sleep. My acid reflux has made a cone back tonight, so I need to find my Tums before I burn a hole in my oesophagus. That shit burns and sucks the life out of a good night’s sleep that’s for sure.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to talk about today, but the dog messing in my room wasn’t a part of the top twenty five guesses that I would have put forth. Fun times. Floor got a good scrub down though, so that’s a plus, I suppose. Where are my Tums.

I have held off because I find doing this sort of tech swap over so damn tedious. Life moves on, and I hold on to a phone for nearly eight years. Golly-gosh!

It finally happened, we took the kids kitchen play set up north to the cottage on Saturday, and I put the last load of burnable wood cut-off down in the burn barrel at the farm. Phew! Glad all of that mess is finally out of my way. Only took, what? Six or seven months to get rid of. But, it is done, and now that I have the space to maneuver my jointer, planer, and table saw I can make more dust, chips and cut offs. I have two small projects in mind to complete first. One is a 4″ stand to get my APC up off the basement floor in case of a flood, I’d like atleast some room/margin for minor errors, instead of a total catastrophic loss. Get the electrical up off the floor, and save my computer, printer, router if i can. The second is a kitchen counter top organizer for ladles, spatulas, and the like. We currently use a big beer Stein, but it’s crowded, and difficult to pull smaller items out of. I think a three chambered counter top unit would be better suited to the space. Look nicer too. So once it warms up a bit more, I will build both of those items. I also need to make a slim profile book shelf for my youngest daughter’s bedroom. One that’ll fit behind a door.

I’m so over the moon with how empty the garage shop space feels now.  More open I guess would be better terminology, as it certainly isn’t empty. I’ve been trying to declutter, clean, and organize the space for a very long time. Nice to see it come to fruition finally. Must resist the urge to fill it up with new tools! Ha. I have had my eye on a full size bandsaw for a while, but I think I missed the boat on that purchase. Too bad. Maybe another time it’ll come up on sale – again. Fingers crossed. Though, factually speaking, I am more likely to get more, and better use out of an upgraded mitre saw station. A 12″, double compound, sliding mitre saw to be exact. I have the make and model on my wishlist from Home Depot, and other big box stores. I would also benefit from a higher capacity air compressor, one that is big enough to run a hvlp sprayer. That way I could complete my furniture projects with a higher quality sprayed on finish, versus a rattle can application or wipe on poly like I would be doing now. The hope would be for a more uniform, and higher gloss final piece. But finishing is it’s own challenge, and requires a skill set all it’s own. My dusty garage is not the ideal setting. But! A thorough cleaning in between sanding, and the finishing stage my temper some of that settling dust which I struggle with. But a boy can dream can’t he?

Oh well. I have not committed to any purchases as of yet, so I’ll get back to building soon enough, and then I can figure out what item(s) is the most pressing to either upgrade, or introduce into the work shop. I have dreamt of a full sized bandsaw for so long, and I desperately want to resaw a bunch of Ash, but after that, then what? I can buy 4s dressed boards to work off of, and don’t really have to mill my own lumber if I don’t want to. It is cheaper to buy the rough sawn wood. But then there is considerable time, and effort to bring it around to a useable state. I’m a noob so my time is next to worthless as far as wood working is concerned, but my day job hourly rate is much, much higher. So if I can complete my hobby projects quickly, and do more working hours, that would be beneficial to me too. I’ll need to mull it over some more.

The garage doesn’t look too shabby now that all the major messes are gone, and the new rack is up, and my furniture grade wood is sorted, and I have removed a large excess of crap from the space. I should go at it with a leaf blower, and then the shop vac to get it as clean as possible some time soon. Just need to make sure the neighbours cars are gone, as I don’t want to make them look like powdered donuts. That’s not neighborly behaviour.

I recently went back into my file folder of dream items for the garage to revise the list a bit. I now have a propane fueled heater, so that’s pretty awesome. I run a good fan in the summer time to keep a steady breeze in there while I work, so I don’t think I’d worry about climate control all that much anymore. If we won THAT much money I think we’d go buy a house with a proper shop, or an insulated 3 car garage elsewhere. I’m also not convinced I would bother with the tongue and groove walls anymore. I do still think about the bandsaw, as mentioned above. And if I could replace my tiny drill press with a mill/drill so that I could tap & drill holes in metal too, I’d  do that in a snap. But it would be cool to be able to mill slots, and mortises, and work in metal too. So while a mortising machine would be on point for my furniture building, it can’t do anything in metal, and only does the one thing, albeit, realy-really well. I would upgrade the small air compressor I have to a 30 gallon tank, so not quite industrial, but large for home/garage purposes. That would allow me to add a water trap, and get into the hvlp spraying of certain finishes. Also a mitre saw upgrade is a must have. My decade old, and then some, Skil chop saw has seen better days. Has worked pretty good thus far, but I could do with being able to make wider cuts in my furniture grade wood selection. I think the threads on the locking nut are wearing, as I constantly have to tighten it down or else the blade spins freely for a long time after the breaks were supposed to have kicked in. It has to be going on fifteen years old, and I gave build a lot of stuff with it. I also use it to cut down waste bits so I can toss it in the trash, or fit it in a cardboard box. So of all my “power” tools, it has seen the most wear, other than my drills, drivers, and impacts.

So that’s monday morning day dreaming for you. I hope you also had a productive weekend, if that was your desire anyway. I tended to the evaporator, and kept the fires raging for a few hours. Moved many a bucket full of sap all around the property, and had a hot tub session while I was at it. Even watched the Leafs lose to the third worst team in the league, after nearly going up 3-0 in the first period. It was disheartening to say the least. Opened so strong, and then fizzled out so weakly. Yikes! But I digress. Ciao Bella!

Spot welds would have been bad enough, but glue? I guess $100,000.00 doesn’t buy the kind of quality it used to. I just cannot fathom what kind of engineer figured that a flat metal panel under constant wind resistance would stay put during highway travel, or would remain in place during extreme temperature shifts, or the added weight of ice, or any number of other issues. Boggles the mind. Hell a few flush headed driven rivets would have been preferable to just glue/adhesive. More and more these things start to feel like bespoke jury rigged contraptions where folks paid a $60,000 premium for the name, and early 90’s polygonal design quirk. Heavy, limited range, and more delicate than expected. What they wanted was the Halo universe Warthog, and what they got was a papier mache golf cart. Reminiscent of the early years Jaguars, where all the wood trim, and body panels were individual to the car, and not 100% in any instance. So this isn’t a localized phenomenon with just the ugly truck, it happens all across the automobile industry. QC just isn’t really a thing nowadays.

Sunday is here, and my god is it ever cold. Woke up to a minus thirteen degrees Celcius. I’m tired of these lows, I want my sunshine and above zero temps! Damn it! We are currently trying to finish up the sap we have on the evaporator to make some more maple syrup. It’s a slow process, even with the added bonus of freezing off a lot of water, and doing reverse osmosis to filter out even more water, to start with a more concentrated sap in the boiling pan. Hours upon hours of rolling boil to make any headway whatsoever. Fun.

With any luck the further we get away from the first official day of spring, the better off we’ll be. Fingers crossed for no late in the year dumpings of snow. I would like to avoid any heavy accumulations of snow over an inch in depth. As that would put the roads, parks, and driveways right back to square one — again. Bah!

If the dog whinging and whining all night wasn’t bad enough, tripping over him at four in the morning while bringing him back inside from a pee break certainly takes the cake. Luckily it is not broken. The toe I injured in September by dropping a solid wood table on it just hasn’t been the same since, and falling over and bend/cracking it on a combination of hardwood and tile floor was not going to make it any better. Doesn’t look swollen or discoloured, so I may still be able to climb later today. Fingers crossed. Not my strongest move to fall over our black dog while walking through our pitch black house when I wasn’t entirely awake. It was my fault , not his so I remained cooler than I otherwise might have given the hour.

That’s how I started off my Saturday, how has your day been? Mine is going swimmingly. Perfetto!

Has been a few moons since I went out to be sociable twice in the same week, let alone back-to-back. Feels good. A nice change up from the ordinary. Didn’t hurt that I was able to watch the Leafs game during both outings. Not only that, but I was home before ten on both nights, that’s perfectly cromulent in my book! Thank you, and good day sir.

If I recall I had some plans to try to complete my children’s book this winter. I have failed miserably in this regard. I have not opened it, nor thought much about it since making that post around Christmas. My bad. Not that it’s a Pulitzer prize winner, or going to begin a second life as a monster hit, by any means. To date I have sold exactly one (1) copy of my collected work of short fiction, available on Kindle Unlimited via Amazon, so I have no illusions that this would fare any better, either free here as a pdf, or on the Kindle once more. I had hoped that it might get read by a handful of people at some point, or that somebody would like it enough to download & read book two aswell. But I shan’t hold my breath. One nicely starred review would blow my mind, but with so much available out there, my take on things, is just one of a hundred million. Not AI generated though. I typed all that shit out on my phone, then transferred it to Word, and edited it over a period of a few weeks. It took effort, and time. Brain power too.

But, yeah the children’s book has stalled out. I think my desire for better than average art has killed it, since I don’t draw or paint much at all anymore. I can go several years in between projects like that. So… that’s where it’s at. In a folder on my computer waiting for me to finish it. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

In other news it is Friday today. Yahoo. We had some flurries last night, and bitterly cold temperatures this morning, but now that we are into the spring season we can trend towards warmer days, if slowly. That’s gotta be a plus for most of us. The tiny taste of decent weather reminds us all of just how much we are sick of the cold, and the snow. Bring on the warmth, and the outdoors!

It’s official, today is in fact the first day of spring around these parts, and what better way to celebrate that than with gingerbread tulips, and a warm gentle rain. It’s not spring without puddles or mud. Though I don’t have high Hope’s that this warm spell will last, I do expect at least one more dumping of snow about 3-4 inches worth before we are actually done with the stuff for good this year. It’s way too early to have this much (dry-ish) grass shown all over the place. You can’t have April ice puddles and slushy snow banks in the park if the snow melts by the third week of march. That’s just crazy talk. No-no, to be consistent we need long submerged icy patches in the grass surrounded by meters wide 1/8 inch deep puddles absolutely everywhere, as far as the dye can see. Clogged sewer drains full of backed up ice and grit with no flow. That’s April in Ontario, not dry grass, open roads, and above zero temperatures. April is when we DREAM of patio drinks, not when you can actually do it without a parka, toque, and an insane denial of the actual outside temperature. Come on, get with it man!

Thursday is here. Father in law is on his way back to Florida, hope he doesn’t get nabbed by ICE to make a statement about the US/Canada relations gap. Passport or not, he might potentially have some trouble. He does have a resident drivers license for his place in the Keys though, so maybe that will be ok? I don’t really know. Hope it all works out smoothly for him, and any other Canadian travellers to the US over the next four or so years.

The Leafs won their second game in a row, managing to beat Colorado whom only recently demolished the Leafs 7-3 a few nights ago. Good to see the Leafs hold things together, largely in part because Woll had a hot glove, and was making many much needed saves. The offensive portion of the team needs to step up and put more pucks in nets to help the poor guy out a little. The last few minutes of the third period were a real pressure cooker. Not to mention how many empty better chances the Leafs bungled by shooting wide right, and wide left. Those should be gimmies at this level of play. But, they won, so the criticisms calm down a smidge.

What else is new? Oh yeah my eldest daughter got her glasses yesterday, that didn’t take long at all. She seems pleased as punch to have the helping hand with reading the smart board in class. Let us hope that it does something positive so she is less stressed about school. Also we’re all paid up until the end of June for Taekwondo, so she should be able to take her red stripe belt test before we pause for the summer break. That would be a welcome break, to have the new belt in hand prior to going off for two months. That way when we head back at the end of August she won’t have forgotten any of the new red stripe patterns, because she won’t have been able to learn them yet. A fresh start at a new level come September.  That’s a nice way to head into the fall. Love it. From here she has another couple of belts left to go. Red stripe, red belt, black stripe, and then a massive commitment to move ahead with black belt training. But I figure that both the red belt, and black stripe belts are 6 months or longer to achieve, so she’ll be heading into grade seven or eight before needing to decide about the much more expensive, and difficult testing for a black belt. Still have time to gut check that in a few years time. We’ve come an awful long way from white belt training, let me tell you.

Finally picked up Space Marine 2 the other day because it was 31% off, and I can get away with $60.00 for a single player campaign game. Thus far I am still in the tutorial stage. Not as nimble with the fingers and buttons as I used to be. It plays well different to Diablo 4. I enjoy fps games, but i really like the top down button masher, melee combat style games now. Adjusting tastes. The first Space Marine was one of the rare games i actually completed on the 360. Besides the Gears of War games, and a bunch of Halo stuff. Once the price came down from nearly $100.00 i jumped on it. Bam! Mine now.

Looking at a busy Wednesday today. I’m in the process of building an in store, in situation, retail display render, and it has eaten up a good portion of my day so far. I should be able to send it off in a little bit though, so that’s good.

I recently ordered some grip trainers, and I might have gotten a little ahead of myself, as my grip strength I’d much weaker than anticipated. I struggle with the 100lb. So I have the one set down coming soon, so hopefully I can work up to, and over & beyond the 100lb. I’m well aware that I can not tackle any climbs above a 5.8 until I significantly boost my grip strength, and up my skill level on routes. That takes time, but I can actively strengthen my hands & forearms while I build up the institutional knowledge regarding climbing and/or bouldering.

So that’s what I intend to do. I’m still holding around 195lbs. I didn’t take the time to tun on the elliptical while at the cottage. I forgot my headphones anyway. And there’s no radio that I could commandeer for the task. I would like to get on it a bunch this summer though, if I can. I’d rather ride my bike or skateboard, but it is what it is. I’m trying not to get ahead of the weather right now. Yes it is sunny and warm, but we are weeks out from Easter so I fully expect one more dumping of snow to take us back to square one with the grass, and the overall temperature.  A patio seasoned April is a real boon, but I don’t trust it right this moment. Not when it isn’t even officially spring yet!

My youngest has started to play goat simulator on line with her cousin, so that’s caused a lot of issues in the house the last few days. Fun, fun, fun around here at all times. Yay!

Means a few things at our house. Recycling and garbage goes to the curb for 7:00am in our neck of the woods. We have Girl Guides for nearly three hours in the evening, and I take the youngest rock climbing in Markham for the late afternoon. Poor poochie has to stay home alone to watch over the house, bark & snarl at passers by. This morning was pretty chilly, but I do hope we get that +15°C warmth we’ve been promised, even if it’s just briefly. Hard to estimate just how much I like a good warm sunny blow-up on exposed skin this late in the winter. I realize it will officially be spring come Thursday, but today, today I would like a warm sun on my face at school pick up, because it was frosty AF this morning.

I did manage to run the vacuum around yesterday, and oh my good lord the house was a mess. That’s what happens when you don’t clean before you go away for a few days, the dirt compounds, and settles in the corners. The dog shaking this loose every so often doesn’t help much either. I can begin the next round of purges soon enough, as spring cleaning will be a thing I do shortly.

Boots, coats, snow pants and mitts. Old shoes, rain jackets, splash pants – oh my! Closets to pilfer, and drawers to declutter. Hidden pockets of junk discarded. Old skates, helmets and equipment can be moved on down the line to younger family members. It truly is a wonderful time of year. Does my oldest child really require 32 sweaters??? 50 some odd pairs of pants. Nearly 70 t-shirts. It’s too damn much. Far too much. We could clothe half her class easily, for a couple of days at that. It’s ridiculous. Bedrooms are far too small for this sort of display.

Don’t get me started on the piles of unopened birthday & Christmas gifts. Madness. The whole lot of it. Utter madness. But I digress.