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

Welcome to week three.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Welcome to week three.

Had a miserable nights sleep in an uncomfortable bed, as my wife was away doing her sleep apnea testing atca facility in Scraborough. Kids are out of sorts this morning, and I’m tired as all get out. Kids have a play date scheduled out in the full sun this morning, so I intend to find shade, and then spend the armrest of my day working on some packaging that came in after hours on Friday evening.

We all worked on some laundry and cleaning yesterday, so Domrstic Duties Monday will be a little half hearted today. Also I think the fridge is on the blink due to the humidity. Excess water is freezing on the vents again. Oh joy.

Finally went to see it.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Finally went to see it.

Took my oldest to go see across the Spider-Verse. Thought it was pretty good, glad I finally went to see it on the big screen. Could have done without the four heavily armed police officers turning on all the house lights, and stopping the movie with 8 minutes left to go to apprehend somebody, but otherwise it was rich in emotional energy, and had a lot of heart. Looking forward to seeing the third one in a few years time. How was your Sunday afternoon?

Oh! It really sticks to your teeth huh? Oh boy.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Oh! It really sticks to your teeth huh? Oh boy.

Speaking of which, I’m currently eating a bowl of mouth slicing Captain Crunch. Those sticky yellow hay bales of corn puffed shrapnel. Problem is there were three varieties on sale, as in buy 3 pay $10, which is an ok price for cereal around these parts, but was only available with the Captain. So I had the Crunch Berry, Original, and a Peanut Butter version to naw my way through this summer. Berries went first. Tasted like the flat dried red ‘fruits’ from those adult Special K mixed boxes. Not sure if it is meant to be a strawberry, Cherry, Raspberry, or Cranberry flavour. A mishmash generic red berry flavour is as best as I can describe it. Then I moved on to the Original. Bland, tooth sticking to, soft palate thagomizer of a cereal. I’m not entirely sure if kids would even really enjoy this cereal. I dread the Peanut Butter one. That may go to feed the birds and squirrels if it is truly vile. We’ll see.

Welcome to Saturday! Week two mostly completed. I have a good idea of what projects I’ll be undertaking next week. I have a retail tray I’m waiting to hear back on. Potential minor tweaks to be made. I’ll have to make sure all of the logos are actually one colour, so that means cut outs, and not using white to make it look that way. Depending on the complexity of the logo that can take some doing. Have to order the operations correctly to get the correct reversals of one colour art, and white substrate negative space. Thumbnails and a paint by numbers scheme helps alot. Nothing like getting 90% done and realizing you’ve missed some intricate detail. But I digress.

Off to plant some bulbs at the farm to keep them alive until next year.

And coming in straight out of left field is…

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on And coming in straight out of left field is…

A ruptured right ear drum, complete with a bloody, oozing mass from deep inside the ear. Wonderful way to wake up before 6:00am today. So far looks like no associated pain. Waiting for a potential fever, or any other signs of illness. Whee!

Today is Friday, of all days, so here’s hoping you all get those weekend plans you wanted. Whether that means they are cancelled, or actually moving ahead this time, is up to you. Your fantasy, your choice. Stay bundled up in bed in a blanket watching whatever you like with a cup of something in your hand, or out crushing it in a bar with bottle service, you enjoy yourselves.

This week has been a pretty good one as far as Summer Break 2023 is concerned. Visited a mine where we found all sorts of Amethyst crystals, went to the lake for a brief 3 day stay, swam in the lake, hot tubbed, went tubing with the kids on what ended up being the windiest and roughest day on the lake. Shipped off the wooden moose on Monday, and got that out of my shop after months of looking at it every time I went in there. Kids even went to the zoo twice this week. We need to pace ourselves a little better. Or else we will be run ragged by the end of week nine. Will need to nap all day the first week the kids go back to school if we keep this up!

In other news, I have started book #15 on my 12 book a year challenge. I was disappointed- again, by Mo Hayder. **SPOILERS AHEAD** The Treatment was well written, well paced, but the ending contradicts the first pages of chapter one, so I don’t know if she had written herself into a corner, or used the wrong name/character in the end to be the big bad, but it was a let down. I don’t understand why said big bad would go about trying to expose their own misdeeds. As it made no sense for the early iteration of the character, nor for the big bad version of that character at the end of the book. I don’t think that a very late stage admission of schizophrenia solves the problem either. And a split personality was not mentioned, nor played upon as a theme either. Sad. The Ritual was a bit anti climactic in the end also, so 0 for 2. Shame she’s dead, the author that is. There were loose ends I’d want to see tied off, but no such luck now.

But what do I know about writing eh? Not much. She made a living at it, had the book made in to what I can only assume was either a sterilized white wash, or a horrendous book accurate car crash of SA trauma by child predators of both sexes. Either way, no thanks. Not watching that.

Haven’t picked up my children’s book to finalize my last handful of drawings yet. I can feel the weight of the languishing project on the back of my shoulders. I fear it will take another 8 full hours or more to complete those last few pages. I need to break that into smaller chunks and try thinking of it as just a page at a time. Story is written, edited and finalized. Just being a slow hand with the artwork. I’ll post the pdf here once it’s done for all six of you to see. Ha. Or maybe I will add it, and Book 2 to my amazon kindle unlimited library, and see if I can sell one copy of each book to be consistent. Though I did scratch that itch when I wrote and published the first book of collected short stories. Far more people followed along and read them here for free than have done so on Kindle Unlimited. Go figure.

Nearing the end of week two.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Nearing the end of week two.

Summer break is off to a fine start. Lots of adventures to be had. Certainly a fair amount of driving going on. I can only imagine what our total spending on gas will be if we keep up this pace all summer long. Going to cool things off for week three and try to remain a wee bit more local. Though I won’t lie, I’d like to slip a fourth Wonderland trip in next week because we have the passes and parking taken care of all ready. So a twenty minute drive isn’t out of the question. Same with the Zoo, we’re all paid up there too, for a whole other year. Gotta make the best of it while we can. I do worry that now we are fully into summer time the parks will all be lined up like crazy by the time the doors open. Such is life during summer break. If I’m being truthful, I’d prefer to avoid large crowds at all costs, even outdoors. I may be the only one in my family still concerned about this, at this point. We haven’t tried day glow mini putt, or rock climbing, or laser tag yet either. But that’s all indoors, and with other gooey, gross, snotty, sniffly, sore throated children. Give that a pass! Next!

What’s the plan action man?

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on What’s the plan action man?

Good morning, it’s Wednesday,  Hump-Day, Middle of the Week Day, the sun is shining, the birds are loud, and there’s nary a cloud in the sky. The wind is still, the air crisp, and I’ve got a fist full of dollars and a hankerin’ to smash rocks! So what’s the plan Action Man!

First, breakfast. Perhaps an untoasted everything bagel. Followed by watered down juice. Living on the edge here folks. Wild man! Perhaps a high fiber brownie aswell to round off the meal. Nothing too crazy.

Quiet day ahead as far as I am concerned. Let us see if the universe brings us anything different. Ciao Bella!

Keeping the minions occupied…

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Keeping the minions occupied…

Is always a far more challenging task than anybody thinks it will be. You have to keep a balance in mind. If you go and do too many wild, crazy, zany expensive things up front the kids’ll expect that to continue through all nine weeks. So you gotta give them a lull, some down time in order to be feet in the air up a wall off their beds bored, and then pepper in a swim, a farm visit, a zoo trip, Wonderland visit, a movie in a proper theater, a play date with friends. Sounds mean, but if you do it all up front you get nothing but grief for the rest of the summer break. Eek out the extraordinary fun at a manageable pace. Keep the expectations for a typical day on a level you can handle. Will we go wake boarding, yes. But not so much that it becomes blasé. Just like cottage visits, beach visits, going to the gemstone mine, or visiting a national park. Go do it, but not with the expectation that this is an everyday occurence. That’s the gist of it.

Plus, he says, go read a book. Play with your toys, draw something, paint a picture, play in the back yard, ride your bikes, bounce a basketball, practice your serve and volley technique with a volley ball. Run some soccer drills, play catch, use your scooters, play a video game, watch one of the thousand movies we own. There is no shortage of things to do here at the house without also needing to drop serious coin on extraordinary outings. Go read!, especially go read. Between the four of us we own a libraries worth of texts. Fiction, science fiction, historical, romance, fantasy, horror, suspense, thriller, crime, sports related, space exploration, theocracy, communism, business admin, weather and geology, geography. Our interests are wide and varied. Humour, illustrated, technical manuals, wood working, you name it we have it or something adjacent to it by one or two steps.

Also, I think today is Tuesday. Only the second week in and losing track of time. Very peculiar sense to not know where you are in a given week. Calendars are your friends! Sleep in, stay up late, forget what day it is. What am I, fourteen again?

Fairly easy to forget, I know I’ve done it.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Fairly easy to forget, I know I’ve done it.

Whenever engagement drops way down I forget to check and see if my posts are going out to all of the available social sites, as usually a link has dropped, and that’s my root cause. Take, for instance that my JetPack/Wordpress blog seems to cut off LinkedIn every six to eight weeks for one reason or another and I overlook that as my views and engagements plummet. So back in I go to reset the link, and Poof, views immediately go up. I should put it on a post it note, or set a google alert for it. Easy enough to fix. Bothersome that it happens so frequently throughout the year. It also sucks that I have to manually copy over the post link to Twitter now too. But I don’t know whether or not I’ll bother to migrate elsewhere. I could do with being less terminally online. I don’t want to actively shut down, but if sites pass by then it’s out of my hands. A passive good bye.

Well, it’s monday. So that means grocery shopping, errands, and Domestic Duties around the house. Is it laundry, dishes, floors, sinks, bathrooms, the kitchen, or all of the above? Some combination of them for sure. I do have some work that I did before I left to run errands, so I’m not under a time crunch to clean. Kids and wife are out, so I can tidy up by myself, without interruptions. Just taking a break while my moped floors dry.

I finally shipped off the moose topper for my parents today. Not as bad as I thought it might be. Not great either, the price for shipping, but it could have been much, much worse. I had to pack it in foam, extra cardboard, bubble wrap & then a custom outer box. It wound it being fairly large, 23 x 19 x 7 inches, and just over seven pounds. Glad to see the back of it. I can think about other projects for the fall now that that is out of my hair. So in 8 to 10 days it should show up in BC. Fingers crossed!

I have some tidying up left to do once the floors dry. So I’m going to put a game plan together to be more efficient. Maybe start lunch for the kids once they return from their outing with their mum. Take care. Ciao Bella!

Family Photo Day!

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on Family Photo Day!

Time for our annual Family Photo Day. Best to refrain from getting injured or bruised, scratched, and scraped in a very visible location. Hair sessions are set for a few hours each, of dethatching, detangling, and knot cutting so that the hair-dos look appropriate on camera. Sun tans and tan lines abound! Happy lazy Sunday.

At home, the battle for soft water rages on.

greatwallstudiosLeave a Comment on At home, the battle for soft water rages on.

Awoke this fine Saturday morning in early July to the sound of my water softener running a cycle. Not good. It is programmed to run at 2:00am, so it was stuck flushing, or in some other portion of the cycle. From what I learned before, parts 1 through 3 are fine, but returning to home for the final part 4 it hits a snag, and it goes off. First it was Err01, then Err03, and now we have a return to Err01 again. Fun, fun, fun. I have a box from the supplier with some replacement parts, so I hope that sorts things out. I just need to swap out a block of interconnected do-hickies, and hopefully put this thing to rest. Home ownership, this shit never ends. Softener, heaters, furnace, AC unit, fridge, freezer, on and on they cycle. One after the other requiring service, parts, or replacement. Yikes. Makes me want to scream.

Oh! Now I remember what I was going to talk about. Two updates really. One: weight loss – bit of a slow start to be honest. After Covid I put the weight training down for 3 months less a day, to try to avoid causing Long Covid, seems to have worked out. I was able to start lifting and exercising again on the 12th of June. I’m not at my heaviest, which was around 213Lbs, but I’m not far off at 204Lbs. I would like to get myself down to a reasonable 175-180Lbs range, which I think would suit my frame, and not leave me looking unwell, nor “chunked out”. If I had my way I’d be doing olympic style lifting again, but I can’t afford CrossFit gym memberships at this point. That was full time working me, with no kids, and I’m not earning more than half of what I used to. Plus the local gyms here are all machines. I want free weights, and to be able to clank if I need to clank, you know? I tried very hard to always control my weights & bars, but in a pinch, you gotta clank. CLANG-CLANK-CRASH!  So there we are. I need to buy myself a bar, and some smaller plates, and a bench. We have no room for any of it. So there’s that to contend with too. I want, I want, wah-wah-wah. Yes, I hear it. Riding my bike with my oldest isn’t out of the question, but I’d have to take us somewhere remote so we were unaffected by potential traffic, cars or inattentive drivers. I don’t fancy getting my child squashed because I want to loose twenty five pounds.

And two: I’m finally half way through book fourteen, another Mo Hayder book, with eyes on book #15 by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The third installment of a trilogy. Hope it’s a satisfying end! Can’t wait. But in the meantime I’m reading this sad, suspenseful story about distasteful people preying on children and minors, and I’m not thrilled about it. The book is good, but the subject matter is not exactly what I’m craving to read about. I’m not jazzed to read before bed, which is what I would usually do. Now I find the time to read a bit during the day only. So it’s been slow going. Not like “The Grapes of Wrath” slow, but slow enough. I just don’t want to devote hours of my day to read about the SA of small kids. And definitely not about their murders either. Very depressing. Hard on the soul. I know it is fiction, but still. Ugh.

Well this post is all over the place though huh? Malfunctioning household items, weight training and weight loss, and book recco’s. What a Saturday. Ciao Bella!