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Seems like every time my wife drives the new van the AEB sensor goes off from snow accumulation, road dirt, or whatever else you can think of. I wipe off the windshield and the sensors on the front bumper and usually it turns itself off after a few minutes of driving with them freshly cleaned. Not so today. I even took the car to the drive through car wash, and that didn’t reset it. Maybe by this afternoon it’ll sort itself out now that the whole shebang is clean as a whistle. Who knows crazier things have happened.

Bit of a cold one this morning for a walk about, and stop off to get gas, and a car wash. Dog didn’t seem to mind being inside the vehicle with me as the wipers, and spray nozzles went to work on all of that accumulated salt, ice, and snow. Probably because it wasn’t that loud, and he didn’t get wet.

Here we are on Wednesday. Last nights Leaf’s game was a late one. Didn’t start until 9:00pm. I made it until three minutes into the third period when we were up 4-2, and went to bed. Woke up to a 6-3 win over Calgary. I’ll take it! A two game heater is better than the five game losing streak! By a country mile. That was exciting. A near miss on an early goal by Tavares that was called back from him using a high stick. Can’t have them all boys!

I have a new propane heater coming later today that “should” make it so that I can work in the garage on off days during the winter. I’m excited. I can’t really use it any time soon, but I will be able to do so in March, and early April so that’s awesome. I might take some time to tear down the shoddily erected shelves in the garage, and put up some higher quality metal racking. Will feel alot safer, and could potentially net me a few more useable square feet of floor & wall space. I will definitely need to get out the measuring tape, and review all of what I have on there, to see if it’s actually doable. I think added shelves, and more open space would be beneficial. But I may just be hyper fixated on it, and not thinking clearly.

I got fixated on the propane heater, but given power outages in our area, both the generator, and the heater are solid investments for the house, and our safety. Those jericho storms came out of nowhere and left us without power for a couple of days that one spring a few years ago. Not doing that again. And incase of a no heat event, now along with the fireplace we can keep one bedroom liveable. I would love to get an Ecoflow Delta 2, battery bank and solar panels to have for emergencies around here too. Bit pricey at $1,300.00 plus tax, but it’s on my list of preparedness items to have should we ever be required to self rescue during a crisis. The Ecoflow would be enormous help from spring through early fall as a power source, and the generator & propane heater for winters. Water & food we have, but my own prescriptions would be my major sticking point. Let us hope it never comes to that.

On to something else. What more can I say about Hump Day. The weekend is nearly here. Valentine’s Day is next friday coming. The Superbowl is this sunday evening. I do believe we have a sitter lined up to watch the kids so that we can go a few houses over to watch the game with friends — sans children. My kids don’t particularly like football so no hard feelings there. Looking forward to it.

I’ve heard rumors that the wife’s car might cost $2,700.00 to fix for the time being. Not great if true. But not entirely horrendous. Might have to set aside some money to look into a new car after that though, because if anything else goes on it, it’ll become a trade in for sure. It’s not as new as it feels like it is. Ugh.

A rear panel on the engine has blown out due to too much pressure build up from faulty sensors, and janky parts. So I have no wheels today. Oh well. The oil change that took place on Jan 4th had entirely leaked out of my wife’s car. We ran 5 litres of new oil into it yesterday morning, but that has since leaked out too. So now we wait to hear if it can be fixed, and for how much. Depending on the answer we might just have to buy a new car. If the fix is more than $2,500.00 at this point, a second new vehicle may very well be on the books for 2025. Yikes. Dropping more than $3K on a single vehicles repairs in just a handful of weeks is ridiculous. Probably still needs a new exhaust too, as that’s far too loud, and makes the car smell like a machine shop when idling in traffic. Ugh.

I think we will need to find a smaller second vehicle though. Either a reduced sized SUB, or a 4 door sedan with all wheel drive atleast. A Subaru of some sort, or something of that nature. We don’t need a massive second vehicle now that we have the new van for cottage/Ottawa runs. Something great on gas mileage, but road worthy for rural roads, and longer daily commuter distances. Remote start, heated seats, and bluetooth radio would be great too. Oh, and a functional AC unit! Can’t forget about the AC here in Ontario.

Valentine’s day is quickly approaching. Hell spring is coming on quickly too. Before you know it we’ll have Taekwondo belt testing, then the live Newsies shows, dance recitals, track & field days, and then end of school year birthdays. The final five months of the school term come at you quickly around here. Especially once spring kicks off and the weather improves a great deal.

Sucks about my wife’s car though. It used to be the “fancy” car, but it has gone through hell since the Covid induced hiatus on travel. Could always be worse. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Buy a new car and the old one decides to shit the bed. Not until after we put seven hundred dollars worth of parts on it though, brakes, brake pads, calipers, rotors, parking break cable, and then an oil change, cabin filters, oil filters, and oil stabilizer. Just to find the oil empty, and a puddle under the car, and a frame just laden down by brand new engine oil. So I don’t know if the oil plug worked itself out, or if a gasket has blown, or if there is an oil pan puncture. I need a lift. My jack is great for changing a tire, but I don’t trust it enough to climb underneath a three tonne SUV out in the snow to look for myself. Also — I’m no mechanic, im6pretty much useless unless it’s swapping bulbs, or topping up fluids. To “fix” anything is beyond me. I can do an oil change (though I did not do the latest one on this vehicle on January 4th, 2025). Plus my youngest child is now sicker than before with a wet cough, and runny nose. That means tears & crying at night, and likely a fever to follow on at some point soon. Poor schmoo.

I did some grocery shopping this morning after drop off for the older child. Bought some additional provisions incase this tariff thing kicks off as something ugly. My new indoor safe propane heater is due to arrive this week, so I picked up propane canisters for that, and a whole bunch of extra batteries, and leaned in pretty heavily on pasta noodles, and minute rice.

Who knows maybe Trump is doing the tariff this as a distraction from emptying out the FBI, and handing the keys to the treasury office over to Musk over the weekend. Make a billion dollar bungle to abscond with trillions!?! Makes sense to me. They voted for it, willingly. But what do I know, who knows what you can trust when reading the news these days. Fun times.

Kicked off sunday evening by doing the kids laundry. Set the Romba off to tackle the dog hair while we were out having dinner at the inlaws last evening. And cleaned the kitchen this morning, so I think the bulk of my Domestic Duties Monday is completed. Got our weekly shop done, as mention above, so I don’t see too much else needing to get done around here, besides keeping the youngest in bed & resting up for school tomorrow.

Started to watch Severance yesterday, and I completed the first two episodes. Thus far I like it, don’t think my wife is sold on it yet though. Seems like an odd commentary on corporate America, or some type of social experiment. I dig it, even if it does cone across as bleak. The 50’s styling of the severed basement floor is kinda neat. I’ll give it a few more episodes. From what I understand there are only two seasons so far, so not a massive commitment if I go for the whole lot. I got three episodes into Chernobyl too, which I liked, but was a slow burn. I might go back to that at some point provided I still have access, and it doesn’t disappear off the streaming sites I use/pay for.

Sat down to watch the Leafs game last night and they beat the Oilers 4-3. But man was it a close game once the Oilers started to score their own goals. Out of the first the Leafs were up  three nothing, which is a curse for the Leafs. They always take their foot off the fas and the lead withers out from under them. And in true fashion that is exactly what happened. Luckily there was an offside goal called back, and the boys in blue were able to hold on by the skin of their teeth, that and Brick Woll doing a stand up job as tendy! He deserves all the accolades for his performance in net last night. Better than the Wednesday night game we went to see down town in person, I’ll tell you that much.

These PA Day long weekends always get me feeling mixed up. What day is it. Felt like Saturday two days in a row, and I was fully prepared for Monday, but my alarm(s) plural! Didn’t go off so it must be Sunday. So weird to lose track of the days of the week. Almost feels like winter break all over again. Two whole weeks of lost aimless living, eating far too much. Ha.

Not too sure what is on the docket for today, so I’m going to cut this one finer than normal. Ciao Bella.

I am excited to see what else AppleTv+ has hidden up its sleeve regarding video content, and perhaps movies too. I doubt they have anything else Ted Lasso like, so I will be switching gears to go mystery thriller, or sci-fi apocalypse aftermath akin to Fallout. A show on Amazon which I got two or three episodes in before moving on. I own the third game, but never opened it, nor played it. Got it as a birthday present to myself many years ago. Looked fun, but complicated. Skill trees only ever make sense once you’ve committed to doing them wrong I find. And by then, whom would ever want to start over again to correct it? Not me.

Saturday means climbing sessions with the kids. I’m excited! Could do without the extreme cold temperature warning though. Yeesh. It’s going to be a tad nippy outdoors today. Not a fun walk from the parking lot to the gym locale. Will need to trot at a good clip to not suffer the worst of it. Fun fun.

Yesterday’s PA Day was mostly uneventful, thankfully. I worked during the day, on & off while I sorted out the girl’s needs. A short lunch with grandpa, then back home for more work, then 2 hours on the back hill tobogganing with friends to wipe them all out. Of course they were both up until nearly 10:00pm waiting on their mum, but that’s par for the course around here. We have a process, but not neccesarily a schedule if you know what I mean. The girls get their particularness from me. Borderline tunnel vision for how their nightly routine ticks off boxes. I apologized all ready. Ha.

Soon I will get rid of the wood cut offs in my garage. Soon the childrens kitchen will head up north. Soon, if I haven’t bought anything else to use the funds, I will buy a propane heater for the garage so that I can in fact work out there if I so choose. But, and here’s the big ole butt! I can’t just be out & about shopping for other things like a dedicated climbing bag, or fitted apparel from the climbing gym, nor books off of Amazon, or any sort of tool that strikes my fancy between now and late February. And here’s why; the heater will be $200.00 plus dollars, and I will need to buy several 1lb propane tanks for fuel, and will need many D batteries or an expensive 6 volt adapter for the wall to run it. That’s a sizable purchase for myself, so if I go picking up bits here, there, and everywhere then I’ll have spent the few bucks I’ve saved to cover it already. Tightening the belt is a state of mind. I still have to get gas for the vehicles, and buy groceries, but the extra spending has to slow to a trickle, if not completely stop. Takes concentration, and dedication. I don’t like debt, nor being broke. So cutting out the frivolous holiday spending attitude, and trimming around where applicable on the “must do” spending. Going off brand for toilet paper, paper towels, or disinfectant wipes is one thing. But staying true to brand names on items we all love is another. Finding coupons, and sale deals, or bulk sales will help too.

I’ve bored you enough this morning. Happy Saturday. Hope your elementary PA Days are getting somewhat easier as the days go by. Ciao Bella.

It took 90 minutes for my trusty late 2014 iMac to start up, and load the Adobe creative suite, and actually open each of the three programs that I use daily. After many aborts, false starts, and force quits to programs not responding it did manage to losd them up, and work. But if I were in a rush, or traveling I can’t be doing a 90 mi ute boot up, and restart. And that’s no guarantee that they would actually do more than just bounce their icons, and stall out. It’s positively nerve wracking. Makes my insides roil with turmoil. Thanks — I hate it.

All joking aside I am glad that it turned back on. It has taken quite some doing to get all of my up to date files shared across two computers. I thought that the iCloud folder was larger than just 5Gb, but that’s a paid monthly subscription to get more. Handy for passing pdfs between machines. I haven’t had much luck in the past from airdrops, so I tend to use flash drives, or an external hard drive, or microsoft one drive to transfer large volumes between machines. It’s clunky to use so many different options, but I’m no IT guy, so I do my best. I’m just glad I didn’t have to do it all 32Gb at a time with a thumb drive. Which reminds me, I need to update my 8Tb tower with all of the new files I’ve made since early January. The work of organizing never ends!

We are back at it again, with yet another PA Day. I spent much of the morning doing my computer stuff, luckily I was able to send a few invoices, and other various emails once I got the old iMac to boot up successfully.  Well, I didn’t do much of anything but hope & pray, and give it time to do something, anything at all. Turns out that 75 – 90 minutes, along with some relaunches, and repaired files saved the day. Much appreciated.

Kids are on their tablets either playing games or watching videos side by side. Now that they are getting older they require less constant monitoring, and can be trusted to ask me for items that they can’t do themselves. Frees up time to actually work, if only a little interrupted by meals, snacks, questions, laundry, and beverage requests, turning on/off gaming consoles, tech questions about the dvd/bluray player, the radio, or to play in the yard. You know, the usual. Kids. A full time commitment. I work from home, so that’s my jam!

I do believe it is Friday today, so all the best. Let us hope that climbing tomorrow is just as much fun as it normally is. Tried to get out on Tuesday night to go again, but the idea was snubbed. I was a little saddened by that. February is almost here. Go get your Valentine’s Day affairs in order. A card, a gift, a dinner reservation or delivery order. Whatever it is, get on it.

The last game my daughter attended with me was a real dud, a nonstarter, very lacklustre, a no show, a whiff, a swing & a miss. It was like they were holding in commercial break mode whilst the game was going on around them. Very strange. But an experience nonetheless. The three previous games she gone to had all been wins for the Leafs, so we were hoping they could pull one out late in the third period, but with only six minutes to go they finally showed up to play, but were ultimately unsuccessful. On the bright side we caught an earlier train, and got home before eleven pm. A notable improvement! Would have been happy to atleast make it into overtime, but I digress.

We left a bit earlier than usual in order to eat at the far cheaper food court at Union Station. Had some tacos for our troubles. Train ride was smooth, food was good. There was a group there with a megaphone chanting about Palestine, which raised some smart questions from my daughter. We talked about it for a little bit, but that’s a long conversation to have with lots of nuances, and political wrangling that I wasn’t up to the task to delve into in a Leafs Jersey in a food court, eating Taco Bell. Food was good, drinks were cold, icy, and rather tasty. Fries were better than normal for a change.

We wandered over to the arena and then poked around inside Real Sports looking at cups, gloves, jerseys, coats and more. If I had an extra three hundred bucks burning a hole in my pocket you could do some real damage in there. The professional level jerseys start at $616.99, so yeah. Nearly a grand for an “exact copy of what the pros wear on ice” is cool, I suppose. Too rich for my blood, but good to know you can get that kind of quality if you wanted it.

We settled on a new TML scarf for my daughter, and a toque for myself. That killed the last of her TML spending money for souvenirs, but I think she’s happy. In all she got a named/numbered Matthew’s jersey (from her uncle & grandpa) a puck, a mini puck, a toque, another plain jersey (this was a birthday present, actually), a metal coffee mug with lid, a t-shirt, and the brand new scarf. So she’s all set for the years to come of watching the Leafs play.

I wanted to get a sweater to wear under my jersey, and over my Matthew’s t-shirt, but the one I liked was $300.00 plus, and the reasonably priced ones were too thin, and not my cup of tea. No worries, I’ll live.  We were looking for gloves, or mitts for my daughter but the ones she was after were sold out, or not visible on the shop floor. Plus it was real crowded in there, and loud, and far too busy to shop in any semblance of peace. Not my bag y’all.

Then we made our way up to the seats, and cheered all game long. Heard some good razzies from the crowd. A couple of good natured pokes at the team. A sad loss, but we still had fun.

The worst part was the train ride home where the toilets onboard were out of service, or had homeless people hunkered down in them, smelling of faeces, vomit, and other unpleasantries. My daughters back teeth were floating she had to pee so bad, we walked through nearly half the train to find a serviceable, and open toilet. Found one though! Phew! Could have been a real issue if we hadn’t.  Gotta love the TO homeless crowd. Can’t we get these folks some help, and a place to stay, some food, and a chance to bathe? Really. I’d gladly go back to paying for license plate stickers if it would help, schools, hospitals, and the homeless population.

Man, I live this Ted Lasso show, but boy does it make me sad. Sign of good writing, and acting I suppose. If I cared to check I’d wager it won a few awards for both of those things. Starting season three at some point today if I can.

Also started book #5 a day or two ago, it’s the first Mistborn book by Brandon Sanderson, someone I haven’t read yet. I started Elantris at some point last year, or in 2023, I don’t recall which, but only got forty or so pages in when an Amazon delivery arrived and I read the newest item I had in hand. Didn’t look back, so now I can try again, and see if I’ve been missing out. He, the author that is, comes up on my YouTube shorts feed quite a bit talking about the act of writing, so my interest is renewed. For now. I’ll give the book atleast forty or so pages to draw me in before I bounce to something else.

Though, truth be told reading four books in January was pretty decent (for me), and my eyes are giving me a little trouble. Not sure if it’s eye strain, dry eyes, aging blue eyes, or terrible lighting in my house. An eye twitch has made reading progressively more difficult as the month wears on. I’ve made an appointment for the end of next month. See if we can’t learn something about myself then.

Oh what a feelin’. Off to a slower than normal start today. School and chores still come a calling at the same time, but after a bitterly cold walk where we saw a coyote on our way into the darm, we’ve been a bit subdued. I got paid work off for review, and I hot the dog tags taken care of for 2025, so not a total loss of a morning, but not a particularly auspicious one. Could be a moody blues settling in now that winter is well underway. I do so hate the cold. Wind, snow, freezing rain, I hate all of it. Lack of colour, and feeling penned indoors, are not conducive to a vibrant “vibe”. If you know what I mean. Nothing so much is wrong, but it feels a little off. A bit of seasonal depression to keep the back straightened. No matter, with time the sun will come out, same with the grass & leaves, not to mentioned fun outdoor activities like biking, long boarding, swimming, and road hockey.

Otherwise not much else going on at the moment. I have fewer than 100 pages left of my current book, a Leafs game to look forward to, and climbing on the weekend. It’s all good.

It really is a feel good charmer of a series. It’s a shame I had to wait until I was given three months Apple TV+ for free to be able to watch it. I intend to binge Ted Lasso, Severance, and potentially Silo too if I can manage it. I think there are a few movies on there too that I could not watch anywhere else otherwise.

I got through just four episodes last night before I realized it was midnight and had to shut it down, as school comes early in the morning. But here we are! I have three seasons of this show to enjoy. I’m excited!

Got through the rest of season one, and it made me tear up once or twice. Bravo — well done Ted Lasso. It’s looking good for seasons two & three if you ask me. Onwards and upwards.