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6,300 plus photos to be exact. Which I desperately need to organize and eliminate repeats, blurred images, or subject matter which I don’t care for all that much. Why so many sunsets? Empty lake photos? Pictures of my old dog asleep? WTF? But the idea of reviewing all 6,300 images in sequence to delete a thousand or more depressed me deeply. Every few weeks I try to slim the horde down, but I’m constantly taking more, and more. I can’t attack the videos, so it has to be the photos. There is nothing else stored on my phone that takes up so much internal storage space, by a very wide margin. Ugh. Fine, I’ll do it. See you in about 10 hours time.

**After 2 rounds of whittling I’m down to 5,034 photos, from the 6,300 or more that I had to begin with. I realize now that I have spent countless hours over the years pruning these photo sets, so I don’t have much wiggle room in which to manoeuvre. If I want to save space, then I have to be ruthless. I’m not there yet. Cutting 1,000 images out of my collection is a good start, but I am not convinced I need to pare it down much more for the sake of an 8 year old phone. Could be time to upgrade after all this time!**

It only took a month but my youngest is finally ready to tackle the third, largest, and final set. So obviously after step eighteen she is taking a break, and we will lose a piece if she wait too long to put it together. Fun times.

My wife’s year off draws to a close in one month so she has chosen to lose her mind over it. So that’s a tonne of fun. Usually it’s a sadness over summer co.ing to an end, but this is fourteen months of sabbatical ending, so the “big feelings” are compounded (x7). Whee!

In all seriousness I know she didn’t get the year she wanted. There was a family death, farm obligations, trip delays, health issues, and a lack of field trips which she had hoped to attend, but there were few to none offered to either child’s class. I know she read voraciously, which I’d put in the win column. We had a vast number of lunch dates. We even recently picked up a new puppy which my wife chose. No we didn’t purge the house like I’d hoped. No we didn’t deep clean the house like I’d thought we would, but you know what, it’s easier done by one person, and I’ll do those things in September, and no harm done.

My busy period is about to kick in, more so than the last two weeks, which hits right at the peak of summer fun times (which annoys my wife to no end) but it would be the same if I worked in an office, and couldn’t work remotely when I felt like it. Yes I miss boat rides, and mid day play time, but I manage to make short appearances to see the kids have fun throughout the day.

I have forgone working on my table refinishing project during my lull period so that I could do more with the kids, and at the farm for the in-laws. If I get a chance to, I will pick that project back up in September too. I’d like to get the table into the basement and ready for use by November of this year. I think that’s doable. Fingers crossed.

This is the last Friday in July, and next week is the Gemboree, so that should be a fun time. All sorts of sparkling things, and fossils, and rock hound tools to gawk at. Expensive as zhit, but a nice time to go hang out with the family on the long weekend, and mooch about looking at stuff, all without a care in the world. Bliss.

I cut my grass again, it is still lush & green, in late July! This is so weird. Normally it’s a fire hazard. Just tinder waiting for an errant cigarette butt to ignite it. No so again this year. Four inches tall, thick, green, and damp as a moist oyster. Chef’s kiss! Muah!

Getting back deep into my excel spreadsheet groove takes quite some doing. Not really there yet. Still slow going at this stage. However, I am happy to announce, I am drawing ever closer to being three quarters of the way through this document. I’m on to page 70, so that is a ein, even if it doesn’t exactly feel like one.

Long reports feel like you are making no progress at all until you can suddenly see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s all a mind game. I can see the lines of the spreadsheet disappearing under my hours of work, but it all looks so similar it feels like going nowhere. Early visual wins are key here, otherwise it can be very easy to feel defeated, and slow right down, which adds to the feeling of never getting ahead.

Frequent rest breaks, a walk about, and snacks go a long way to brighten my mood too. So snack on that! Bam!

Another eight hour day should put this mostly to bed. Followed by tweaks, soft proofing, and a review of my own. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Boy is it a hot one today, even at 9:00am the fields were heating up under the July sun. What was a sloppy soupy mess of mud on Friday is now rock hard, dried out concrete. Neither is really great for pulling up whole bulbs of garlic with their necks attached. I knew I should have stick to my guns and continue used on Saturday. Now it’s really slow going, hotter, and the ground has pulled my forks apart.

I’m going to have to wear steel toed boots with sole protectors in order to be able to put an appropriate amount of force on my forks to drive them into the ground. As my ceoc’s weren’t cutting it today. Great for easy clean up, terrible for stamping force on a localized spot. No wonder my soles hurt late yesterday, now I understand why.

With 18 rows, and nearly 300 bulbs per row we will likely be at this for quite some time if we can’t get the Plough figured out for this tightly spaced harvesting job. I need to repair my forks now too. They’ve pulled put of the handle. So a drill, and a bolt, and maybe some epoxy might be in order. I say that but I’ve just had a major project in, and I need to go start that after lunch is over. I could be at it for 3 or more days just to get my first rough pass at it completed. So I’ll need to pause my farm help to complete my paid day job.

Today is Tuesday July 23rd, 2024. A year ago today my friend and her daughter died in a tragic atv accident. It feels both very recent, and like it happened a life time ago. We celebrated what would have been a sixth birthday surreptitiously, so as to not draw too much attention to it with the kids in attendance. Striking the right balance between remembered and not dwelling in the past is rather more difficult than I care to elucidate right now. Grief is a terrible, all consuming thing. Survivors guilt is its own beast, and I would not wish that upon any nine year old child, ever.

But onwards and upwards. Lunch is done, time to get down to work. Ciao Bella!

Spent the weekend mostly alone with our new puppy, and you know what? I’m exhausted. No word of a lie. I must be sleeping like shit to feel this way. I think I can sense the puppy moving about in my room at night, and I’m not falling entirely to sleep. Looking forward to a time when he can be left unattended to sleep on the main floor, rather than at the foot of my bed where I can hear every yawn, stretch, scratch, harrumph, and puppy fart. The jingle jangle of the collar cuts right into my ears at night. Good thing he’s cute, because he is a whole lot of incidental bother.

In other news I got to watch a whole lot of The Grand Tour uninterrupted. Which was very pleasant. Seasons four got fewer episodes, but each one feels like a 90 minute movie. I had given some though to immediately rewatching Clarkson’s Farm, but I can give that a few weeks or a month.

I took my oldest daughter to a birthday party filled with her ten year old Male classmates and they were absolute savages. My kids are no angels, but this was madness. No wonder her former grade four teacher never took those boys on field trips. They were a menace. Scaling walls, jumping from balconies, fighting, screaming, disappearing out onto the grounds, putting their meals into their faces on a dare. It was bizzare. Gentle parenting gone awry, or is it so passive now that it’s borderline neglect? I was ready to burst at the seams. BUT, I remembered it’s not my circus, not my monkeys, and I could walk away and sit down in the shade, as I was there just to make my daughter feel safe, and not to police twelve ten year old boys. Went a lot smoother after that. For me at least. Ha.

Stay healthy out there.

My wife went north for the weekend with our children so that they could go to a paleontologist symposium at a library near the cottage. It’s the dream job my oldest is fixated on, digging up dinosaur bones, that is. The fellow from Drumheller out of Alberta brought physical samples which they could look at, examine & touch. My eldest daughter was thrilled, the youngest was bored about 30 minutes in. No surprise there. I hope it gave her some meaningful insights into the job, and the educational requirements needed to pursue that line of work. Scouting for bones out in the badlands sounds like fun, atleast initially. Perhaps not long term, atleast to me. But if she can forge her own happy path, do be it.

She has a sharp eye for finding pottery shards in the fields at the farm. Has a fairly large collection from just this summer alone. Still early weeks yet. We collect metal bits, like bolts, springs, ruined horse shoes, broken cultivator tines, tractor parts, you name it. Plus we are constantly pulling out fist sized rocks, and stones, and the occasional forearm length mini boulder. I don’t know how to classify the size of rocks/stones. That space above pebble/stone, but not quite into the 20lb rock/boulder(?) Category. Heavy enough but not yet back breaking, if that makes any kind of sense. But I digress.

I did not dig up any garlic yesterday, and no real plans for it today either. I might get a jump on some projects that came in during the early evening on Friday. I said I’d start Monday morning, but I could get two of the three out of the way if I do an hour or two today. Why place all that strain on Monday morning, if I have the time now. It is, after all, just the pup and me at home. He’s a layabout, so it shouldn’t bother him if I work early today on a print ad for a client. He’s been a bit mopey since the kids went north. We still had two decent walks, and a lot of cuddle/vegetable/couch time while I watched The Grand Tour season 4 on tv yesterday evening. Graham, the puppy, will well know Jeremy Clarkson’s voice by now. He’s been present while I sat through all three seasons of Clarkson’s Farm, and now getting around to the last season and a bit of GT.

Sunday is here again. The family birthdays are all done for the moment. We have a children’s party this afternoon to attend over at the local Mini Putt, so that should be fun. Otherwise nothing much on the radar activity wise for another week or so.  This concludes week three of summer vacation. Nearly halfway through. Doesn’t take long to get the ball rolling, and then it barrels full steam ahead! Ciao Bella!

Right on the cusp of feeling as though I could throw up. I think we had a bad bit of rotisserie chicken last night, as my wife feels kinda off too. Not going to lie, I feel this way a lot, so I cannot pin point the chicken sandwich I made as the culprit, but it did sit on the top of my stomach for a long while, which I wasn’t to crazy about.

I think the garlic harvesting has done a number on my back. That or sitting on the curb at the park for nearly two hours to watch the symphony under the stars has done my body no favours. It was pleasant enough. We could pick out one very pitchy trumpet, and a lady singer whom is best served being part of a much larger choir rather than a soloist. Otherwise enjoyable. The alcoholic beverage sales by Muddy York should have been pretty good last night, thanks in part to the LCBO strike. Cornered the market with a captive audience.

I believe it is now Saturday. Yesterday was my sister in laws birthday, but she has Covid, so no celebration. And today is my brother in laws birthday, and he is either off to the cottage, or otherwise engaged downtown, so no celebration there either. Easy-peasy. I do need to take my daughter to a birthday party tomorrow evening, but otherwise we are free from obligation to attend just about anything. Whee!

We took the new puppy out for some people/dog exposure and he performed admirably. I’ll count that as a success. He whined a little as the kids left for the park, but was cool, calm and mostly collected for the 2 hours we were there to listen to orchestral music.

Still looking better than last years crop. Busy & hot in the sun though. Digging up 18 rows of 300 bulbs is tough on the back. Forks to the rescue! Would prefer to have a machine to help, but it’s not a huge patch, so we’ll live.

Doesn’t take long to get a number of days under your heels once summer kicks off. With the new puppy, life has gotten a bit hectic as of late. Getting skunked the other day added a level of panic I could have done without, but in relation to other people’s problems we are doing just fine. More of an inconvenience than anything else. I do have to take him to the vet tomorrow so I’m sure that will lighten my wallet a fair bit. I’m sure they’ll find something he needs, or “should” have beyond flea and tick meds, and a course of heart worm pills. Just you watch.

I think today is Thursday, if I’m not mistaken. Dog wanted out for a pee before six this morning, and it was positively cool outdoors. A sweater was required and everything. Funny as it was in the mid thirties not 12 hours ago when I cut the lawn – again. Having nearly 5 inches of rain in July has kept the grass green, and growing like mad. Usually by July 1st it’s this beige, tan, yellow crispy wispy tangle of crunchy stuff. Not so much these last two years anyway. Doing wonders for the grape vine though, I will say that much. Raspberries seem to like the humidity and rain a whole lot too. Maybe not if it continues, but they’ve soaked in a lot of rain, and hot sun for full effect.

Looking towards going to see Deadpool 3 with my wife at some point in the near future. I hope it is a fun time, and not just cameos and inside jokes. I do need dome kind of a story/plot to keep things moving along. I haven’t been to the movies in quite some time. Was going to take the kids to Inside Out 2, and Kung Fu Panda 4, and something else, but it never panned out. Plus my seven year old still won’t sit for 90-120 minutes to watch something new. So to pay nearly $100.00 for movie tickets and snacks for the four of us seems unreasonable. Not if the youngest will ask to leave 30 minutes in. Fun, fun, fun.

I think there should be a new Alien movie out sometime soon aswell. I have purposefully not followed the production, and trailers so that I can enjoy it as fresh as possible. Usually I follow along too closely, and hear all the inside hot gos, and then have no surprises left to experience. Trying to move away from that sort of thing. I’m also less, and less inclined to follow the Marvel cinematic output machine, in favour of just watching the few I really want to see. I think I have five or six tv series I have yet to look at, and atleast 3 Marvel tent pole movies I have not watched. And weirdly enough, no fomo. Growing up I guess.

I recently ordered a book called “The left hand of darkness” by an author that recently died. Supposed to be her best work, or one of anyway. Looking forward to it. Still dragging my feet on finishing the Don Winslow book. Waiting on another book to come in August or September.