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Category: With Thoughts Like These

256 Mb of RAM. How did we live like this.

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I remember one winter holiday inbetween Christmas and New Year’s where my whole family went out to buy computers. I was soon to go off to University, and my parents needed one for the house. And the one I bought was refurbished (less expensive) and was rocking out with 256 mb of RAM. It came with a tower, various cords and a keyboard. I had a monitor at home, a hold over from an even older computer I’d inherited from my oldest brother. We all thought it was the bees knees but by today’s standards I think my smart phone could outpace it consistently in just about every task. And that’s just in my pocket. All I did was use word, ms paint and run the Encarta encyclopedia on it. It didn’t have any games, other than a brick breaker that I was ever so slightly addicted to. I didn’t even have a desk for it. I sat on the floor and kept the unit up on a coffee table. Just the thought of writing term papers and essays while sitting cross legged on the floor for a year or more makes my hips go numb now. Times have changed. Life was kinda ghetto in my late teens and early twenties. When I took over the financial responsibility for myself that level of comfort and expectations fell through the floor rapidly. Reality was not kind. Mattress on the floor, no bed frame. Getting a job after university was when I bought a bed frame, and that was a futon, with an “extra firm” futon mattress which I paid extra for, because it was thicker and offered more resistance than a regular futon mattress, which is like a slightly overstuffed duvet. Not much to write home about. But I was off the floor. Still have that futon frame in my garage, all these decades later. If my kids go off to post secondary education, I’ll buy them a bed frame and a mattress and a desk. Don’t start off like a near homeless bum like I did. Or I’ll make them desks, who knows. Got a while to go yet before either one is in a position to leave the nest briefly for school, trades or an apprenticeship.

One fine Saturday morning round these parts today. Sun is shining, and the air is fresh and warm. We were lucky enough that my eldest was able to pick up wake boarding this summer. Did us all proud. Gets up no problem from water starts, carves about in the wake when she wants to, and can run for several minutes before the old forearms and quads start to give out. Very impressed! Next year she can start to learn tricks and stunts! Or even tackle wake surfing behind her uncles faster boat. The youngest was too intimidated to really give it a go. Cried and let go of the tow rope immediately. Maybe next year.

Engineered Hardwood: or plywood as I like to call it.

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Plywood tongue and groove boards with a one ply hardwood face that is slightly thicker and can have that “hand scraped” texture. Not really hardwood, more of a fancy veneer on your laminate board flooring. People look down on laminate floors in favour of the exact same thing, but with a slightly nicer (and a whole lot more expensive) veneered top face. Ludicrous. Pure malarkey. The best con perpetrated by the flooring industry upon us all. Here have the same thing, but more expensive, just use a nicer more posh sounding moniker for it. Insanity. You want to know how I know that engineered hardwood isn’t real, nobody reclaims it to build furniture with it. We’ll scavenge pallet wood, boxes, other old furniture, rotten trees and old building materials like barn boards. But there’s no craze for building furniture with engineered hardwood, and that should tell you something. As us cheap wood workers will build out of just about anything we can get our hands on. Even 2×4’s. So, yeah. Think on that for a second or two.

So Friday, yeah? Yes it is. Week eight closing out with some loud cracks of thunder in the early a.m. Summer is most definitely drawing to a close. Sad to see it go, but bring on autumn and Halloween ! Decorations, costume building, lights, smoke machines, music and scary movies! It really is a whole thing if you lean into it hard enough, and have the funds to do so. I see how privileged it is to be able to go all out during any season or holiday that you really love. I hope to one day help my kids make elaborate costumes, like ring wraiths, or Master Chief, or Ironman or something like a Transformer or Gundam Robot. A chance to build all summer long, paint and fabricate parts in foam, cloth and cardboard. It could be awesome! I choose to believe it would be awesome.

Still a few weeks away from pumpkin carving. Can’t start too early or else they rot before the big night! Gotta time it just right, so you’re not rushed, but it doesn’t turn to mush with rounded soggy edges! Carving shows will be on tv very soon! I for one am very excited. Ciao Bella!

Reading old American Classics…

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And I could tell within a sentence or two that the me in my youth made the correct call in high school to read the Ancient Classics like Homer, the Iliad and The Oddessy, and 1984, and Animal Farm, plus a few others, rather than tackle the American Classics in Lit. That’s not to say that I’m not enjoying it now, but sixteen, seventeen year old me would have HATED every single apostrophied guttural spliced second word in The Grapes of Wrath, and it’s timely ilk. I hated eubonics, pigeon english, and phonetically written spoken dialogue (that was a mouthful). I know it adds authenticity to the speaker, and the times, but what a puddle mouthed bunch of folks they were huh, makes for disjointed reading. Doesn’t bother me much now, I get where Boomhauer was coming from, but as a hearing impaired youth, it had to come to my head clear as a bell or else I would just nod and smile and carry on regardless of what was said. Probably why people thought I was aloof, and kind of an asshole. Sorry love, just couldn’t hear you or make heads nor tails of what you were jabbering on about. Thank god for texting and e-mail. What a godsend that all is. Woah! Yeah buddy.

Once I make it through GoW, I think I’ll give Moby Dick or War & Peace a try. I don’t typically read anything that depressing, but I’ve written a number of sad, depressed short stories in my time. Maybe now I will have the life experiences to be able to appreciate the depth of the work. Or I’ll hate it, and that’s $30 in the toilet. Oh well. Not every piece of literature is for everyone. Know what I mean. Given the times, maybe I should read A Hand Maids Tale. Seems to be on point for the state of the US currently. Or I could try Gone With The Wind? I’m sure there are plenty of semi current literary classics that I’ve missed to choose from.

Today is Tuesday, if I have any sense of time left. Next week we really need to shift our sleeping patterns back to the day shift so we can all wake up and eat before school starts. These first two weeks of school are bad for early mornings. We either have happy kids, or get to school on time. Rarely do I get both in early September. Dressed, eaten, hair done, and teeth brushed. Tall order after nine weeks of zero expectations of that happening before 8:00am. I guess if the kids did day camp the whole summer then they’d maintain that schedule and wouldn’t (potentially) fight it come the first days of the new school year.

Tomorrow is Day 250.

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How do you describe to someone what it feels like to have fundamentally changed a behaviour of your own. Nothing as monumental as say, quiting smoking, or getting sober. But, rather adding one tiny element into every single day, rain or shine, power or no, connection notwithstanding.  Feels a little self indulgent. Sounds a tad self righteous. Kinda seems more like a small shadowy facet of OCD. But no!, we call it discipline, and over the long run you get better at the thing you do a little of every single day, regardless of quality. Or not. I don’t think I have it in me to read all of the posts from Day 1 through Day 250, to see if I formulate better sentences, or have become more concise. Or even if my vocabulary has shrunk or grown during the process. A word art map would likely tell me which words I use most often. That would be funny to see. May show some insight into the inner working, bias of my mind. I’m sure that I write too passively. That I switch from first, to third person constantly. That all of my characters sound like me, saying the things that I woukd say in every single interaction. Snark, nonsense and all. I still find it fun though, so there is that.

In other news, I managed to bulk out my Ninja Turtle and add the shell to the main body. It is giving me some grief. But I don’t do free standing full figures any more. I have been focused on chest and head busts for the last few years. Also Apoxy Sculpt is really different from the clay, or sculpey that I’m used to working in. Hell of a learning curve with this stuff. However, forward progress is being made! Yahoo! When I get the shell covered, and the face put together on the skull I will show pictures of it. The WIP is just a bit too rough, if you know what I mean. Next time, perhaps.

The OG NFT, the Nutritional Facts Table.

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That’s the only NFT that has any rules and regulations that I understand, all other NFT’s are pretenders to the throne. The nutritional facts table has been around for some time now, it has guidelines, rules and regulations you need to follow. It is clear and concise. Easy to read, in some cases, Bilingual too. Prominently displayed on the package and everything. Usually accompanied by the ingredients list. It has friends out in these street bruv! Don’t go dragging its name through the mud with your web sales of silly jpegs. The OG NFT will never die, long live the NFT!

Somehow it is Wednesday already. Week seven of summer holidays is rushing by at a break neck speed. Funny how nine weeks seems so long at the start, and then the final weeks close out in the blink of an eye. Not only that, but we had rain. Wet, splashy, glorious rain. My parched brown crispy lawn and trees thank you. I’m not going to get much Fall colour out of my trees this year. By mid September they’ll have emptied themselves all over the lawn in a brown shriveled mess of crunchy detritus. June was so rainy, but July and most of August were bone dry. A shame too.

Oh well. Up and at’em! Breakfast awaits. Ciao Bella!

Chomping at the bit to go sleep in my own bed…

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For the first time in nearly a months time. Summer break is beautiful up at the cottage, but being at home, in my full time bed, with my own pillows is where it’s at. I’m certain there will be several days of outdoor maintenance to do once we get home. No rain has fallen so my pumpkins and tomatoes are likely hanging by a thread, and my grass will most definitely be dead, and some trees will have dropped leaves on the scrub brush lawn. Weeds in the interlocking will be knee high by now. The beds with all have thistles and creeping weeds embedded in them. Oh lord. It’ll look horrendous regardless of how much work I had put in pre-vacation time. I swapped out home maintenance for cottage chores instead. And boat rides, tubing and day trips out and about.

I am looking forward to eating and sleeping on a normalized schedule at home. I have more projects likely to come in for edits this week, or to start new stuff.

Soon the pivotal tetris game to load the vehicle will commence. Plus the massive clean up effort here. Laundry & toy search for missing items. Today will have all the emotions from the kids to look forward to.

Playing Thunderbird golf with about a thousand gnats.

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Was one stroke off the lead, managed to shoot par twice, 1st hole & 9th. Was happy about that. Two & three putt some holes because I’m an idiot, and duffed it way too hard. But it was tonnes of fun if a tad buggy, with about a 100,000 gnats. Fun times were had by all. Smooth and easy play through. Lots of laughs, some cursing and hollering too, if we’re being totally honest. My take away is, don’t build a golf course in a swamp. Otherwise it’s a great time. Would definitely play again.

Don’t we all just take code word classified documents home from work for no reason? No? Oh well, just your pal then.

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One can only imagine how much information could be contained within twenty seven (27) bankers boxes of paper work, file folders and manilla envelopes. That’s too much cheese for one Cheddar coloured man to horde. Going to attract rats, and moles, and all manner of other pests into their midst. Not worth the effort. Should have left it all alone.

Had a few work related e-mails and some personal text messages come in before 8:00am so now I’m wide awake watching CNN discuss DJT and the subpoenaed classified boxes. Oh lordy. Can we get a break from TFG. All I want to see of him is an arrest, a over arching criminal trial series that covers many of his criminal activities, and finally a sentencing. That’s it.

Did a tiny amount of wood working yesterday, nothing major. Refinishing an old bench that has sat in the elements for several years. If I could have taken it back to my shop I could have done more to it, but sanding it in place wasn’t too bad.

You know what I’m really starting to miss, playing my guitar. I’m looking forward to having a lengthy jam session with my trusty Gibson Studio and my portable speaker. That and tapping out some tunes on my electric keyboard. Music really is a vital part of what relaxes and recharges me. Back before I had kids I used to cart all of my gear up north and play on the dock. It wasn’t much but it was a whole lot of fun.

Looking forward to playing some golf on Sunday with one of my brothers and his eldest son. I have to imagine that his daughter doesn’t care much for golf, she’s into ballet, and quite talented from what I’ve seen. (Which isn’t much unfortunately, given Covid). I’d have to ask. Wish I had brought my own clubs with me. But I left them elsewhere. That’ll be the fourth round in twelve years, woow! Look at me, developing a golf habit. Ha. I had hoped to go to the driving range, and play several rounds of golf this summer, but I’ll take two rounds of nine (9) holes. Better than zero rounds of eighteen! I’m more of a nine iron, pitching wedge and putter type of golfer. I’m either right down the middle, or twenty seven strokes to the hole. Not much inbetween. I tend towards mini putt and the driving range more so than actual golf. Probably why my game is so streaky. I can get a good run of long straight balls, then fall apart. So we’ll see how Sunday morning turns out.

I’m closing in on 250 days soon. I may even take this to a whole year if I can! I wonder if I should dig up my children’s book this fall and try to finish that up. Would be great to get such a big project finally finished. I started it when my eldest was like three years old, and now we’re getting close to eight, so, you know. Get on that shit my man! Then I’ll post the pdf’s for all three books on here and see if anyone at all reads them. Not that that really matters to me, I’ll just be happy that I had an idea and brought it to life, story and artwork and all. Nice!

When Covid comes to town, round seven.

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Earlier this week we learned that my wife’s great grandmother, who is 94 years old, has Covid for the first time in the nearly three years it’s been around. Not only that but at least one farm hand in his seventies has it too. We suspect the second farm hand, also in his seventies has it as well, but is such a heavy smoker with heart issues and a permanent cough/wheeze , that he just hasn’t noticed it yet. How could he, inbetween smokes all he does is cough and wheeze and shake like a leaf in the wind. He’d never know anything was wrong until he woke up dead one morning. He’d shrug and say “Could have been anything?” And float off on his merry way, oblivious to actually being dead. What a guy! But in all seriousness we are concerned for the 94 year old former nurse who grew up with a pet bear, and worked in a mining town for ages before getting married and going to med school. Lots of interesting stories wrapped up in that one believe you me.

Years ago, before I got married, I used to cut grass on the side of my full time job, and one of my clients was in Locust Hill. A brash and harsh old lady, I was told by everyone who knew her. A widower, her former husband had struck it rich by being the guy who built a machine, or series of which, that could consistently dye wool in any colour you like. Their house was huge, set back on an acre or so of lawn, with massive old growth trees. A shed full of relics, and a house stuffed to the tits with art and sculpture. When i met Barb, she was the cold and scathing witch i had been warned of, but as i kept coming back week after week, she started to open the door to chat, then poke a head out of a window, then settle on the porch, and after a month or two she’d invite me in for a meal and we’d talk at length about medicine (i have Crohn’s disease after all) so i don’t shy away from over sharing, or gruesome details. Anyway, in Barb’s youth she worked as a nurse in the sexual reassignment wing of a Toronto Hospital. Went in to great lengths and detail on how they could turn a penis into a vagina, and collect the meaty parts of a vagina and reconstruct a working penis. It was all very interesting and shocking. This was stuff they were doing in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, and into the 90’s after all. I don’t recall when she retired, or under what circumstances, but she was a hoot, a real riot. Couldn’t cook for shit, but was generous with what she made me, and as a side note she didn’t know how her kids would survive after both of them attended Harvard and now ONLY earn $700k a year as of 2006. Ha. I fucking wish to be a $700k pauper. Her husband was a good looking dude. I saw many black and white photos of him in Jeans riding a motorcycle like a stud. Classic striped down low riding bike too. Old style seat with the coiled springs at the back two corners.

Barb died a while back, and I didn’t attend the funeral. I felt bad about that, but I spent a long time thinking about her that weekend. Had a drink in her honour as well, as I recall.

Really makes me sad that neither of my grandpas are around anymore. I really could have picked their brains on my furniture building projects. They both worked making furniture as a skilled profession for decades in Britain. I remember our house used to be stuffed with things they had made. Chairs and tables alike. Shame I can’t get access to all that experience now that I enjoy doing it myself. Details lost to the wind, like the sands of time passing between our finger tips. Books and YouTube will have to suffice for the moment.

230 days of writing just a little bit.

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I’m fairly certain that if you were to analyze the content, style, structure and execution of my writing over the previous two hundred and thirty days, I don’t believe you would find much improvement at all. My writing is choppy, sloppy and at times semi incoherent. But on the plus side, I have stuck with it for nearly eight full months! Wow! Look at me, just going for it. Had a few scares here and there. Forgot about writing once or twice, had a fair few power outages, plus a complete nation wide communications service provider outage that nearly cost me my streak. But Bell was there to see me through at my in-laws place. It has been a ride, I’ll tell you that much. I don’t recall a lot of what I’ve written, stream of consciousness and all. Only a handful of posts have been pre-planned and those would have been a part of my collected works of short fiction/science fiction. Which reminds me, I never did post the finalized book two to Kindle Unlimited. Oh well. I may just revisit both books for a style check, and print them out myself at home, just to have a paper copy. A good enough reason to buy a new working printer. Or so I think.