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Having an aimless wander along the beach in search of sea glass, fossils, or sea creature teeth is a big thrill for us. Cheap, and easy to do as long as you can find somewhere to park, and have the time to devote to wandering around whilst staring at the ground looking for minute pops of colour that’s faintly different from all the rocks, sand, and water borne debris. Helps if it’s cool and rainy, because then the beaches are deserted, and we don’t have to worry about bothering other people, or having our treasures found before we get to them ourselves!

Hard to believe it is Friday all ready. We are gearing up for the England versus Norway game tomorrow afternoon. Should be a fun watch!

My wife found us a river bed fossil tour to go to yesterday just off of the highway on the outskirts of town and it was a shake busting blast! Started off with a short guided tour through the museum then a short drive to the fire, and a quick walk down to the river. We took my niece along for the ride, she seemed to enjoy it. My knees weren’t so fond of the two straight hours of either kneeling or squatting, but they’ll get over it.

I’m in that kind of mood, and you can’t stop me, so nah-nah-nah! Might just be the fatigue talking, but there’s a kernel of truth to the sentiment as well. I’m exhausted, and too tired to string more than one coherent thought together at the moment. I’m going to eat and then rest a little more before I drive anywhere today. Onwards and upwards.

And it is now 12:37 Wednesday and I have not yet fallen asleep. I feel like ass. Let me turn these lights out and drift off to sleep. Oh boy my back & right shoulders hurt. These kids are an over tired mess! Ha. Speak to me again in the morning.

Just adding some fuel to the fire here to keep things going! Writing at three am this morning might not have connected due to where this site logs the time stamps from. Might be California or overseas I’m not sure where. Also I’m tired, hungry and feeling a little cranky.

Making my way downtown…good lord it’s early in the morning. Wish I’d been able to fall asleep earlier than eleven pm!

A much shorter novel by Martha Wells, the latest entry in her Murderbot Diaries series. I am excited to dig in to this! Have had it since early May, but I was slow rolling book eight because I do not have books nine or ten (not yet written) and I was sad to see the streak end. Matt Dinniman’s books were pretty much all I’ve read since March, and going right deep in one go has left me wanting more. Sadly I will have forgotten much about the characters, the plot, and the action by the time the next book launches. Makes me sad to think about. I thought it was an eight book series and ran through them all excitedly, until I heard him say it’s a ten book series. Oh well. Now I can dig through my TBR for gems like Platform Decay, or an Aliens omnibus, or any other books I have piled up on the dresser ready to go. Wish me luck!

With it being so hot, and my body wanting to sweat so heavily I have had to resort to adding just the littlest pinch of salt to my beverages so that when I drink it is to hydrate, and not to just immediately have to go pee. This comes up a lot when discussing the benefits of straight water versus Gatorade versus whatever else people use to stay hydrated. Water is great, but you need electrolytes to function, not just water. I’m not trying to flush out my kidneys or liver, but add vital fluids back that have come out involuntarily due to the weather, and my activity level in the heat. All I know is, is that as I age up I have started to sweat far more than ever, and I need to be a little more discerning about how I treat my own body if I’m hoping for any sort of longevity upon this earth. So where as I avoid adding extra salt to my food, a tiny pinch in my water seems to be the better option.

I’m fairly certain that today is Sunday July 5th, which means there are those waking up this morning with fewer fingers or toes than on the 3rd of the month. Big holiday weekends usually involve injuries, or sadly enough, some fatalities. Boating, drinking, and fireworks make for strange bedfellows. Hope all of you made it to the end of the weekend whole.

The humidity looks to be hanging around for another week or more so it’s going to be slow moving outdoors, except when swimming at the inlaws. Means waking up early to cut the grass or starting it after 7:00 pm in the evening trying to catch a break in the overbearing heat and full sun. Still better than winter though! I prefer spring, summer and fall over the winter months.

Now I’m just rambling on about nothing. This blog is about 400 or so views away from doubling the best numbers this blog has ever done in a calendar year, so that is kind of exciting. The visitors number has exceeded all previous high scores and is still climbing. My book downloads is not moving along (both books are free) as well as last year, but the number is slowly creeping upwards. Nobody ever write back to tell me if they hated them, or liked any part of the collected short stories, so that’s a conundrum.

I played my guitar for about three hours the other night (before my wife and kids came home from the cottage) it was the first time I’d played in a couple of months, maybe seven or eight weeks? I still have a painting that I started laying on the table gathering dust, and a busy armature waiting for clay, not to mention my Warhammer 40K Ork Boyz that I primed are waiting for their cohesive paint job. I’m in a funk. Well, sort of but not really. I spent March and April reading the first seven Dungeon Crawler Carl books, then whilst waiting on the eighth read another authors latest release and then went back for book eight once it released. And because I don’t yet have book 9 or 10, I’m slow rolling it because I don’t want it to end. Though I did just buy some new books by different authors I have never read, so I might be about to read even more neglecting my hobbies, or crash out because the all consuming franchise will hit a wall as I await the final two books to complete the series. Argh!

I nearly bought myself a 42 inch barrel fan to keep my woodshop cool, but it’s four hundred bucks, and that seems a little large to me now that I think about it. Hard to store a nearly four foot tall and wide bright orange fan on wheels. Move a whole lot of air though, like 16,000 CFM! Crazy.

Got off on a tangent there. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

My sister in law’s place saw the most out of the tornado experience, what with the downed trees, severed limbs, tipped over flower planter, and some shingle damage to their garage roof. Nothing a chainsaw and some roofing nails couldn’t fix in an afternoon.

They do back onto a farm so they can dump the brush & debris from the trees over the back of their yard, so it isn’t a big ordeal to clean up after the storm. A few hours buzzing with a saw, maybe some time spent with loppers and it’ll be all squared away without too much fuss. Maybe they bring home a few shingles from the cottage at some point to patch the garage roof, but otherwise it’s small potatoes.

Luckily I did get the lawn cut yesterday before the heavens opened up and we had all three heavy downpours, plus the tornado that luckily skirted us by about 5 Km. There are now standing pools of water in the corn fields, so that should technically soak into the ground over a period of time and not just evaporate away. Seems like cloud burst activity because these downpours don’t last very long, but having at least three successive bouts should allow for some of it to penetrate the ground. One would hope. I know the sun came out immediately afterward each time yesterday and the roads dried out extremely quickly. Only the shaded parts of the road, or the potholes would hint that we’d had any rain.

The storms did nothing for the humidity though. Woah baby, it’s still nasty outside. Like breathing soup. The air has a thickness to it out here right now. Not ideal. It was unpleasant trying to cut the grass while sunny, hot and humid yesterday. I was going to wait, but realized that wasn’t really going to work. I had to drink some fluids then head outside into the swampy air and just get it done. 75 minutes later I was indoors squinting through sweat stained eyes as I washed my head off in the sink just so that I could see. Not long after the rains came. And the tornado that didn’t even trigger a siren, or a cell phone alert. Nothing. Just POW! Here, and gone in a few heartbeats. Glad nothing major happened this go around.

I’ve got a work project I need to square away today. I’m trying to hear myself up to start it now, instead of tomorrow, or Monday morning for that matter. I feel tired. This humidity is sucking all the fun out of being outside.

It’s been scorching hot out there these last few days, and the heavy rains we got did not extend down to the farm, so that’s not cool. But still the local flora persists. At least for now. It was slightly over 100°F yesterday, and is building towards it again today. Actually it has been pretty damn near 38°C/100°F for the last four or five days straight, and the ground is drying up soon to be taking whatever is planted in it with it. So looks like we will be moving hoses, springers, and jets of water all over the farm until we get a full inch or more of rain every seven days until it’s time to harvest stuff for the Markham Fair. The rains in September/October are too late to be of much help. We need it to come in July & August. Just one good long 24 hour downpour every seven to ten days would be fantastic.

There really wasn’t much of a reprieve from the heat even as the sun was setting. I think it was only two or three degrees cooler by eight o’clock than it had been at mid day which is wild. I know intellectually that the dog needed the run, and a chance to be out in the open chasing squirrels and such, but it was so hot, so humid that it feels dangerous to go exert ourselves when it’s this warm. Summer only just started a week ago, pretty much, and we are in the danger zone for temperatures, and dryness all ready. Going to be a long dry, dusty summer me thinks.

If it rains up north then the rivers and creeks will remain open which is good, but soon the north will be ablaze in forest fires, and that awful orange day glow will come back, along with the stench of acetone from the BOC’s degrading in the UV light of our atmosphere. It’s not a good thing for our eyes or lungs, or nature as a whole. Scary times.

It’s Friday July 3rd, so you should all try to make it to Monday with all ten fingers & toes if you can. We all know the southern neighbours go apeshit for the fourth of July.