Category: Uncategorized

Just when you thought you had become cold to the missing friend in your group good old Facebook is there to promptly remind you of their impending birthday. It’s a shame you didn’t make it to your next birthday, especially after your daughter died not 10 days after hers. A jumble of things to feel and think. Five months on and the untimely deaths still come to mind. I did not, until recently realize just how popular your hair cut was, and that style of glasses.  I seem to see them everywhere. Funny how that is. Reminds me of college where I died my hair this deep burgundy colour, and then everywhere I went I saw others with the same colour. Haven’t noticed it before or since. It’s like realizing your hands are expressive only once your kids put nail polish on during a “spa” day. They just be out there flipping and flapping and churning about as I talk. Distracting.

Five says in and I have the exterior lights off the eaves, the two wreaths off the garage, and various cords rolled up & off the ground. I took the tree down this morning with my oldest helping me. Went as smoothly as I expected. The tree is packed away safely for another year. Ornaments went into clear totes so I can see what’s inside. Floor has been swept and vacuumed up. The room feels ever so slightly bigger. More natural light now that the 7.5ft tree doesn’t block the window. Now to get rid off all the “saved” paper for crafting, and get the presents shipped off to the appropriate bedroom. I’m going to try and stop the migration of junk into the basement where it has to sit for 12-18 months before I can toss it, or sell it, or donate it to someone else for safe keeping.

Speaking of the basement, our house feels bigger now that we use the additional space more wisely. It’s bright, clean and somewhat organized now. It could always be refined more, but I’m happy to be able to be in the space and not feel anxious about the mess/clutter/dirt that had previously built up down here. Though winter is here, it hasn’t fallen upon us yet so the basement isn’t freezing cold yet. Still manageable. Nice!

I scratched a bad itch by cleaning up at the cottage with the use of fire. Got some much needed work done removing old junk, and freeing up space by the shop, and down around the firepit. I picked up seventy pounds worth of hangers, truss pin boards, nails, screws, and lag bolts with nuts and washers still attached. If all the lifting hadn’t aggravated my back I could have run that bon fire for seven days straight to clean up all the wood cut offs, mouldy trim, and whatever else is still hiding under the cover of brush & overgrowth. My farming extended family don’t work that way. They keep things long after needed, until it becomes a different kind of problem. Ha. Hoarders essentially. As a pack-rat myself I understand the reason and the desire to keep stuff “just in case”, but up to a point. And my point is miles, and miles behind where my wife’s families is. I urge to purge in order to clean up. The property is beautiful until you start to look too closely, and then you start to see all the things being kept, and you think, oh this would be really great if all that were gone. But I digress. I’m no farmer. I’m no conservative. I don’t believe in the bootstraps myth. Those physics don’t physics, know what I mean?

Anyway, happy Friday, much goes back to status quo on Monday at 9:00am, so breathe a sigh of relief, and welcome to 2024. Ciao Bella!

I did have the chance to look over my year in review thanks to WordPress. I wrote 390 posts over the last year, and didn’t do too shabby in the word count either. Not the 200,000 of my most successful year ever, but not a sorry state of affairs either. Nice!

Now we look forward into the new year, and I still have to take down the tree, and potentially the outside lights too. Though, January can be pretty blah, so maybe a few lights would be welcome? Depends on the weather and my coming schedule.

All the best.

I know I’ve written more than 1,000 posts here on this blog in the last several years, 750 of them in one long block in fact. But, I am always amazed at what a random selection get traction way after the fact. I don’t know if there are bot swarms that get flagged to certain posts once it reaches a certain threshold for likes or views, but every so often a couple will take off and those counters wind up by a hundred or so over night. Rather odd if you ask me. I can’t control it, nor harness it to wield ad dollars so I typically don’t much care about it.

I also don’t recognize some posts because I have written so many, I can’t keep track. Not saying I’m bipolar or schizophrenic but… I don’t recall putting pen to paper for some of these posts from years ago. Even once I read them they don’t ring any bells. I write posts like I write tests & exams I guess, get it all out and then promptly forget all about it.

Today is my dad’s 75th birthday. It is Wednesday January 3rd, 2024. Yesterday was my wife’s grandmother’s birthday and she turned 96. Wow. What an age to reach. It’s a terrible shame that the Covid she caught accelerated her dementia to the point of requiring round the clock care at an LTC. Fire cracker of a woman.

The winter break is winding down, and soon I’ll need to take the tree down, and also take down some of the exterior lights too. Oh that’s going to be cold! Yuck. Have a great day. Ciao Bella!

Though she waits inside the Parkview LTC in Whitchurch-Stouffville slowly succumbing to dementia, some days when she is lucid and pain free you can tell what an extraordinary life she has led. From pet bears, bookie murder/suicides, forest fires up in the Sault Ste. Marie where they paddled their belonging out on a canoe into the centre of the lake to weather the fire storm as a family, and an education in a train car, to nursing at U of T, and farming as a part of the Reesor clan in Markham. The woman has done lots and deserves a well cared for rest. Happy 96th Birthday.

It gets addictive. Old mouldy floor boards, trim, tongue & groove pine wainscoting, ash logs, bed frames and whatever else needed to go. A couple rotten roof trusses even made it into the mix. Once I got the fire really going, and there was a healthy bed of coals we were able to incinerate just about anything. I had the fire running for two days straight. Several busted up pallets got sent to their doom in the fire pit too. I went scouring through the trees for downed limbs, and brush to clear the ground around the fire pit. It’s a shame the leaves are so water logged as we could have lit up the heavens by burning those too. Whoosh! As it was much of the burnable stuff was wet and/or damp and pretty smoky. Glad we don’t have particularly close neighbours. November and December are great months for long burns as there are no bugs to contend with.

If I had my way we’d have made it a full blaze and cleared up ALL of the cut off wood bits, and building junk on the property, but as it was I cleaned up the burn pit pretty well myself by rolling various logs into the flames and coals for a long slow burn. I should take a shovel over there to flatten out the ash/sand pile so that you can stack piles in the centre once again. Right now the centre is a massive mound of old ash, sand and soil. It stands about four feet high, and probably 10 or twelve feet wide in diameter. Not that I want to shovel all that by hand, but it should get knocked down at some point. Preferably when there are no bugs down in that low rock lined pit by the tree line. Come summer it gets brutal down there for all kinds of creepy crawlers.

It is Sunday December 31st, 2023. Last day of the current year. No big plans to do much of anything today. Except laundry. Always have to do laundry. Can never escape it. I imagine we will find some fireworks to watch on tv from the comfort of our own home. No walking, no driving, or finding parking spots in a crowded lot loaded with children. Tantrums and rain, delays and late starts, aching legs, and sore feet. We’ll give all that a miss this year.

No resolutions for the coming year. Other than I intend to make exercise a stronger personal habit and a part of every week. I haven’t thought much about doing a new reading challenge this coming year. I think I’ll read whatever takes my fancy as I find it. No pressure to read a set number. I’d like to find the time to sculpt more, and/or do some wood working. I was working on a pine bed, so I didn’t totally slack off in the shop this year!

Well, the 24 hour burn, became a 48 hour burn, is now close to a 72 hour burn. Roof trusses, old beds, and all manner of other junk was fed into the belly of the beast. It ain’t pretty, but she sure is a roaster. Burned a hole in my coat while I was at it.

About forgetting where your locker is, what’s the combination to the lock? Where is the classroom for my next class? What course am I taking? Is it a test today? Argh. Twenty years it’s been since i was last in any sort of school and i still have these anxiety dreams. Fun, fun, fun.

Had a slight dusting of snow, and now the temperatures are dropping down to mi us ten. Brr. Chilly.

Happy Saturday.

Wasn’t that a Guns n’ Roses power ballad? Or maybe I have that title wrong. All I do know is, we are mere hours from January, it’s 6°C, and raining with no hint of snow or ice on the ground. It’s weird. It’s not right at all. It used to be we’d hit the Winter Solstice and the cool temperatures would drop to cold, colder, coldest I’d ever felt. Now we’ll get two weeks into a mild hear wave in January before it kicks over with a punch, and nearly 18 inches of snow at once. It’s not right.

Pretty sure today is Friday. The first week of winter holidays is drawing to a close. Most of the family gatherings are done. And now we have one full week to chill out and get the kids school work done. Book reports are a thing once more! I have not yet found the time to watch any of the three films I was gifted for Christmas. Mind you, TMNT Mutant Mayhem is one I saw in theaters, so I’m ok if I wait longer on that particular one. But I would like to see Oppenheimer and The Creator at some point soon-ish. Although I did recently find the time to watch Ricky Gervais’ new offering on Netflix, Armageddon. It was ok. A big like Super Nature, and Humanity. I find him less and less funny, but I did enjoy After Life and Derek quite a bit. Aging, tastes and all that. I’m a complex creature.

Enjoy your weekend, it is fast approaching. Ciao Bella!

Apparently I forgot which direction the winter tires rotate, so had to spend an hour swapping them all left for right. Took me about 55 minutes, so not all bad. Had to torque them all back down again, but luckily in the short time since I put them on, one: we haven’t driven very far, and two: the lug nuts hadn’t had a chance to seize with ice, salt & rust build up on the threads. Lucky me! I’ll need to double check the van too. I thought a tire was a tire, I didn’t pay any attention to the tread pattern. Idiot move apparently. Ha. Live and learn. Atleast it was 6°C, and only drizzling, otherwise it could have been way worse.

Going to start putting the skating rink together tomorrow with my inlaws. It’ll either be 90 minutes, or an all day affair. There is no inbetween. From what I can tell we need to remove all leaves, stake out the boards, and unfurl the plastic tarp. Mind you we’ll need the bobcat to carry down all the boards, stakes and the tarp itself. A 1/3 size hockey rink tarp isn’t all that light. I think it’s a 2mm or 3mm plastic. That adds up over that kind of square footage. I expect a whole lot of leaning over, bending, swinging of hammers, and dragging things around. I also don’t know if the pile of sand has been graded yet in preparation for the winter season. So that could add more time to the project.

I for one will spend several hours soaking in the hot tub to ease my back. Today’s tires shenanigans were poorly timed on my part. But the car needed an oil change, and that’s when it came to my attention. Thank the lord for my 3 ton jack, and axle stands. One more use of my impact wrench. 1150 foot pounds of torque to the rescue! That and a 24 inch breaker bar.

Ciao Bella.