Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Category: With Thoughts Like These

What is there to say…

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We’re here, the flotilla has jumped in to battle. I can’t hide from it, nor steer into a detour any longer. Well, I think I have one last point of view to check in on before the big to-do of it all. Plus having written another 3,000 words of short stories yesterday, i may not write again today. “Can’t brain today, has the dumb.” Is a quote that oft comes to mind. The second installment yesterday garnered almost zero response, and it took some doing on my part to get it written. But I did it, I like it, and I feel it’s a worthy entry in the series. One of the longer ones too, clocking in at just under 2,000 words itself. Plus the somewhat related prior entry that was around 1,200, I think it fills an interesting space with more POV’s.

Have been running full steam in the garage shop. Managed to completed the following: wheeled cart, tool cubby, router table for table saw gap, built a peg board panel, a router bit display block, a T handle hex key stand for my Imperial & Metric Hex Keys. That makes for a pretty good build week.

If I get the rigid router sled made, and two adjustable saw horses, and the oversized 12×12″ router cover panel made from clear acrylic, I’ll be finished with all shop centered projects and can begin a real wood working project again. Like the nagging screen door, or a new coffee table build.

Work is going ok, some previously quiet clients (due to Covid) have started to make their way back into spending marketing budgets again. Happy to be thought of for stuff like that. There was some potential for new clients on the horizon, but I’ll have to wait and see. I gave my presentation, and now I have to wait and see. The Joys of freelancing solo.

101 Dastmalchian’s.

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Polka dots, polka dots every where on this rainy drizzly Friday in March. And not a single dog in sight. Puddles of cats up to your ankles. This coat itches and the collar has hairs embedded in it. My vest made from donkey chest is a tad ill fitting through the middle, must be a little saddle worn. I should put another feather in my cap as I stir the macaroni pot with my shoes. Do you hold your drinks with your fingers in the liquid? I held my wine glass by the stem as though writing with a pencil. 101 ways to wash cars in your Jeans. Acid wash Vs. Pre ruined garbage bags for sale only seventy dollars a pop. But for you, my friend, I’ll do seventy five.

I would classify my interior design aesthetic as plastic caught in trees, and other helpful euphemisms. Like an oil slick on your morning coffee that shouts “Don’t stray too far from a toilet.” A juxtaposition of jumbled malaphors, and too much grey on grey on grey, with cappuccino browns and textured caramel ceilings, with black toilets, sinks and tubs, using gold filigree inlays. A real what’s what of whatever you can throw in the sink to stick. Popped nails and prematurely cracked dry wall speckled with toothpaste. Minty fresh! Damn near useful.

Morning comes too early, and the night disappears too quickly. Thank Fuck It’s Gone or (TGIF) to my friends out there in radio land. I have a voice for print, and the face of radio. But I have a mean limp when I walk this way. Bawk bawk ba-gawk!

Let me tell you what kind of person I am.

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I’m the kind of person who hates having an appointment in the middle of my day, because I can feel it looming over me. So I don’t like to start anything prior to the appointment in case I forget about it, or turn up late. So in most instances I sit and wait, minute by minute until the appointment arrives. I hate that. So today I forced myself to run some errands, which took 45 minutes, possibly 50 to complete, that on any other day, I would have had to rush to complete after my appointment was done. But now those three things are done, and I have a full hour left to sit and wait. The waiting always makes things worse. I wasn’t nervous about it all week, or last night, or this morning when I woke up, but now it’s filling me with anxiety and bubble guts. Argh! Hate that. Oh well c’est la vie.

So day 100! Woohoo! Milestone for sure. Did you catch yesterday’s back to back chapter entries for the interconnected series Ghost of the Dirty Starling? Fun stuff. Those Bison drones sound gnarly, and a tad volatile. Hmmm… foreshadowing perhaps? Or just another side trip I can make later on if need be? Good to give yourself off ramps occasionally, I believe. I was going to do something funny with Norman and Gerty, but changed my mind. I like the self serving killer for hire in a tutu. I also liked the fact she knew enough about murder to do her gloating afterwards too. None of this providing your captive with extra precious seconds or minutes to formulate a plan or escape out of sheer luck. No sir! Gun’em and then gloat. Like a good little hitman – hired gun, contract killer etc etc..

I might be fortunate enough to pick up some bakery bagel display unit design work today or in the near future. Which is great. I kept in touch, once every six months since Jan 2020, with all of the folks I freelance for, and recently those connections have become active again, as people feel as though the pandemic is coming to an end. I have thoughts on that, but I am also a huge fan of the work coming in as well. Work in, and invoices out, this is good for business.

Had my oldest child help me with some cleaning in the garage. I had to tear down some tables and stands I had for equipment. I have a larger table saw now, so I need to recover some space by placing my jointer and my planer together on a low lying wheeled cart, so it can be tucked under the rails of my hybrid saw. I can’t have that space go to waste anymore. I have completed projects eating up space, which I need people to collect, or accept delivery of. It’s all bought and paid for, and I knew I would have to hold on to it all, but now it’s getting on a bit, four plus months later, and I would like to not have to maneuver around it any more. It’s not a huge deal, but it aggravates me. I’m not working with 40,000 square feet here people. Think, tall single car garage stuffed to the gills with house hold stuff, Christmas  lights, bikes and wood working tools. Not a pretty sight to behold.

If I had the money, and paid work, I would use a dedicated dust collection system, and air cleaner, rather than my ShopVac. But it’s nice and compact, and I can store it under tables and shelves with ease. But the dust means you have to work in a mask at all times. Not a real problem,  since I use a fair bit of Walnut, and you want a mask for that stuff anyway. I have my eye on a hickory slab waterfall coffee table I want to make later this Spring/Summer/Fall. Could be a real looker if I take my time with it. I have the angle iron I need for a rigid router sled to flatten the slabs. I am looking forward to it a lot! I will also venture to build adjustable leveling saw horses to hold said router sled. So those will be fun to build too.

99 Days : The Story of the Day Before the Day Of The BIG DAY.

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Also known as Thursday March 24th, when I will hit the 100th day of writing every single day without fail. Some entries were short, some sweet and most are nonsense. But the trick of it is, I did it regardless. On the brighter side during those one hundred days I have created thirty two new chapters to my short story series. Filling in some gaps while propelling the story forward.

I think I was rather sad when I finished book one, if you can believe it. Happy I had achieved nearly 60,000 words of coherent melodrama, struck something from my bucket list, but felt also like I had lost something too. Took me just about nine months later to get out of my funk and commit to writing anything again.

Today is an inclement weather day, due to freezing rain, so the whole family is home along with me today.

I don’t have any big plans for tomorrow. In topic or otherwise. My milestones seem to just pass by lately. Talk of new cars or family vehicle, needing to buy the eldest child a new and larger bicycle, talking about the build process for the screen door? Who knows. I sure don’t.

First day back after the break…

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And I’m seeing an awful lot of maskless people and children. This is so not going to be a good couple of weeks. Unless a miracle happens some classes are definitely going to shut down, and people are going to get violently ill. But what do I know, I’m just a dude who has watched things open, and cases spike, and things all clamor to shut down, every sixteen weeks for the last two years or so. Same as you. An announcer at a fireworks event in town was talking about how glad he was that the pandemic is over! – over? Over, he says confidently. Oh buddy, this isn’t over, it’s ramping up to hit an all time high.

To everyone else who wore a mask when out and about today, a big thank you goes out to you.

Should potentially be a quieter week on the work front. I have two of the three large reports out the door. The last, and probably the largest or more cumbersome will come in next month, most likely. So now I can focus on the house for a change. Get to that Spring cleaning, tidying up, and possibly purge broken toys, and collected junk from the winter. I’m going to wait another few weeks before I wash, mend and store away all of our winter gear. This is southern Ontario, and could get a snow storm in mid April from out of the blue. But I love it when we get to open window weather! Birds are more active around here again too.

Maybe I’ll skip the infrastructure stuff for my garage and get right back on the screen door for the back of the house. I found some weather striping too, so I don’t have to be crazily precise about my first ever door build. Well, not exactly. I have put doors and lids on custom boxes, but never a full sized door to go on a house. Built from scratch. Have hung a few doors, repaired one or two aswell. But this is new, and kind of intimidating, if I’m being totally honest. Worst comes to worst I’ll just paint it white, if the Ash doesn’t look as nice as I have hoped once situated on the house itself.

The grass needs some work this year. I don’t see myself as the ultimate green lawn kind of guy. The kids burn patches down to the mud where they play in the same spots constantly, so I’m not willing to spend a lot of money to just have that happen to an expensive green lawn. I like that they play outside a bunch, so why introduce some aggravation to it on my end. But we have the supplies on hand to properly wash out vehicles now, and exterior windows/brick/drive way too. Should keep the kids busy on a Saturday or Sunday once the weather turns for good.

We are back to Monday, how is everyone feeling today? Are you all back onsite for work? Seems our politicians should have to be, and maskless too, if that’s what they are going to do to our public school kids. But I digress.

Can I just say, I’ve only just realized I surpassed the 40,000 word mark for new short story / creative writing material this year! (2022). That puts me over the 100,000 word milestone I was looking towards! Passed it without even realizing it too. Isn’t it amazing how some of the hardest goals we put up, can be surpassed with almost no fanfare whatsoever. Some wins feel a little hollow huh? No matter, on-wards until the story is done!

Day 95!

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I realize as I write this that we are NOT 95 days into the new year (2022). As I started the writing streak early on in the winter break as I was getting antsy with how few posts I had made in 2021, compared to 2020. And I thought I could goose the numbers with a slew of posts late in the year. A real procrastinators move. Not that I thought I could publish a years worth of content, stories and nonsense in two weeks, but I gave it the old college try anyway. And then I just kept on going. At first I was thinking that if I hit a twenty one day streak, I’d be happy, then it was fifty days, then seventy five, and now that I’m close to one hundred, I think I’ll keep going regardless. I like the habit of taking a break in the day, or morning to write a quick post. Sometimes funny, sometimes absurd, and sometimes I will touch off on a rant, or explore my options on the creative writing front. I enjoy it. Getting the short daily post out tends to prime my brain for more complex thinking, and I can hone in on a new chapter. I am sure the streak will end on an innocuous note, as I just forget to post on a busy day, and go back to day one. I’ll either be kicking myself, or I will not give a shit. 50/50 it goes either way. In the meantime, I’m a few days from hitting one hundred. This is the best year my blog has ever had for views, eyeballs and traffic in general. I tried to turn off ads, but I have to upgrade beyond my current upgrade for the option, and I’m not interested in more money leaving my account. But you with the Ad Blockers, you do you. I don’t care. In the near decade I’ve run this site I’ve made 5 cents off of ads, so it’s not exactly taking food out of my kids mouths, so – yeah.

On the story front – What have we learned so far? The Company has seemingly cured 4000 troops via a Nanotech software upgrade. UB313 and the evil Doctor have several weapons and hidden tricks ready and waiting for the approaching company fleet. The somewhat Alien ship ‘K’, and its ambulatory spokesperson Katayna have come out of their data processing hang up, but can’t view their sensor data logs in chronological order. Have found several items of note, some are random, others are just plain strange like the discovery of plans and out going messages regarding a trans-dimensional For E’s engine. Racquelle is alive and well, though she ate desiccated human remains she found, unknowingly, and was not aware a war had started between her evil doctor boss and The Company as a whole. Learning out of the blue that a flotilla of large ships were a few weeks away from Pluto/Charon’s orbit, with vengeance on their minds.

So all out war is coming, and things are looking perilous for all involved. Stay tuned and follow along, as we finish the last chunk of Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Everybody loves you when you’re 93.

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It’s all sit down, don’t lift that, enjoy a toffy, don’t get up, I’ll fetch you some tea, why are you doing that, go sit down! Ah, life is pretty mellow when you reach the nineties. Scratching names off of lists, because you’ve outlived yet another person you know. Marvelling at the next big craze going around in fashion, dance and entertainment. Feeling lost in the transition between VHS, DVD, BLURAY, and now cloud media, you don’t actually own, but rent access to. A shame to have spent the last two years plus in lock down and isolation, but the current illness of our times has not been kind to your peer group. If you are lucky enough to get visitors, it’s been waves through a window, and pantomimed questions from behind doors, and shouted answers through glass. If you are one of the more technically inclined ninety year old, perhaps you did more face time this year than your whole life before it. Strange times indeed.

My John Scalzi book arrived, and my Expanse series of collected short works/novellas are arriving later today! Reading is back on the menu boys and girls! I for one am pumped.

Here’s one of the bigger trees we had to take down the other day.

Took a few hours to clear up.

Do you celebrate this, the holiest of days? It’s tree chopping day here at the ranch!

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It does what it says on the tin. All hands on deck for chopping down three large problematic trees here on the grounds. They are dying, dead or dangerous to be under. Safety gear abounds. Chainsaws have had blades sharpened. Axes at the ready. Ropes and pulleys and come alongs are at hand. It’s a great day of the year. I will pray for you and your kin. Take the utmost care. Peace be with ye. And also with you.

Update: the fourth man is an hour late in getting here so much of the work has ground to a halt. A more involved breakfast was proposed, and we are following through with that course of action.

Work notification is turned on for the tree work, and the rest period required afterward. I will be back to paid work tomorrow. If my hands aren’t too tired perhaps I will tackle a new chapter today aswell. Possible. Potentially. Maybe.

Monday’s back, back again, look who’s back, it’s chicka chicka chicka Slim-Monday.

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The sun is shiny, and the ice is icy, and the kids are off school and in need of something to keep them occupied. The time change meant they slept in for a change, but only just. This is the time of year where I wish we had more disposable income, to take the kids skiing down hill and cross country, go play tennis some place, or soccer, go to a movie, or indoor play ground, or go to a beach somewhere. But, Covid is still a bigger issue than earnings being down for the second year in a row, you know, because Covid, once again.

Finally managed to write some new chapters. Mostly because I have a large project on the go, and wanted to rest my wrists, and I had a flash of inspiration that hit. I can see the end drawing near, which is nice. I have some thoughts on how to pull everything together. The direction had eluded me, but I think I see a way to do it sensibly. Yay! I have a little ways to go in order to get the pieces where I need them, but it shouldn’t be a slog to do so. I think that after I finish writing book two, and then complete editing, I may pull book one from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, in favour of just having it sit on my site in pieces. I would gladly send anyone both completed pdf’s, but I don’t believe anyone will buy either book. I have a year of sales data to prove my thinking. It was a goal to write a book, publish it, and sell at least one copy, all of which I have done. So bully for me.

How are your 2022 projects coming along? Did you keep up with your resolutions or wishes for the year? I don’t know for how long I will continue my writing streak, but I’m glad I’ve gone as long as I have. I started a sculpting project recently, so I’m happy about that.

I don’t know about that.

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I try not to get too invested in the statistics associated with either my blog posts or my creative writing series, but it really is a crap shoot for what will get any attention, and what will flounder with one single, individual view. I can not find a rhyme nor reason as to what draws people’s attention and what doesn’t. I have had to make a concerted effort to not pander to topics that catch on (in regards to what I would consider to be a good viewing day) vs. Stuff I enjoy writing, or feel like blathering on about daily. In all honesty I don’t write for the views, I’m writing because I made a decision to do a little of it every single day, regardless of quality nor the contents of each post.

I like to discuss family, working as a freelance graphic designer, home DIY projects, sculpting, woodworking and being a stay at home, part time working dad. Followed up by chaotic absurdism, or achingly real melancholy. With no real content strategy. Would I enjoy tens of thousands of views and a potential short story writing career? Yeah sure, awesome. But I’m not currently building towards more work in my life, rather having a fun and fulfilling creative outlet. My goal was the try to reach a cumulative 100,000 words, using the 59,000 word head start from 2020/2021. That feels like an obtainable goal for me.

I also want to sculpt more this year, and do more furniture restoration, or building. I have my eye on some shop infrastructure projects to better utilize the space, and to make setting up for milling my own lumber just a bit easier. Wheeled cart, wall hanging cubby for nail guns and pin nailers and charging hand tools, as well as a peg board for exposed tool. Mixed in there will be a live edge water fall coffee table, and any dressers or tables I tackle refinishing this year.

Our farm has a smallish metal trailer that needs tending too, as once we have to start watering crops by hand, a wheeled trailer i can put a rain barrel with hose in would help immensely. I need to strip off the rust, bang out some dents and twists, reform the tongue portion on the trailer, sand and paint it all. Will be a loud project with all the hammering needed, but could be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, the front door needs to come off again, get sanded once more, primed this time around, then repainted properly. Took me half a day last time I did it, several years ago.

One of the next steps for exterior house work is adding a rain barrel under one down spout, with a hose attachment point, and a shut off valve for that hose. Then, in the near future, I want to add some solar panels to the roof, so that we have energy saved up when we get those summer time rolling black outs, due to aging infrastructure, and our local population being too dense and heavy for the amount of power our town has available. I think a portable generator would not go amiss either. Losing the contents of our fridge over the summer power outages is getting to be a real threat.