As predicted it isn’t a Thursday unless we get snow, freezing rain and canceled buses for the kids school. It was pretty windy last night, so rather than straight accumulation, we got knee high drifts on our side of the street. Filling the driveway, back patio, front walk way, and against the door itself. Then, of course, as I near the end of the driveway, the plow comes by and packs in an additional three foot high wall of heavy snow. My biceps are a singing. My back howls the melody. And to top it off we have freezing rain which began before I had even managed to finish. This winter is weird. Thursdays. What a weird succession of coincidences for most of this winter’s storms to have hit on a Thursday. Is it a delusion? Misremembered? Nope, just an odd series of snowstorms that affected us on Thursdays. Weird right? Yeah…
The cable was out almost all day yesterday, which was pretty weird. Phone and internet were still good though. Odd. Had some excitement on our street yesterday, with three fire trucks, two red support SUVs, an ambulance, five police cars, a rapid response EMS team vehicle, and a special response unit EMS vehicle, and more fire fighters than I could count. The street smelled faintly of smoke, but no flames were visible. I saw the fire fighters grab hooks & ladders in a mad rush. Hoses unfurled and everything. No one was brought out or taken to the ambulance, so hopefully everything is fine. Later on the electrical people, and gas company came by, so I assume that something had happened.
Early on in the morning.About 15 minutes later.
I didn’t use the panorama function so I don’t have a shot with every single vehicle in it. They lined up beyond my house up the street, as well as well below down towards the affected home. For about 90 minutes or so it was a very alive little street.
But at least I am responsible for having written two books of collected short stories by my own hands. Nearly 200,000 words of interconnected amateur hour sci-fi nonsense that I am proud to have put pen to paper to create. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work. I can strike it from my bucket list. No short cuts taken. No AI to do the lengthy leg work in my stead. Brain fog, fugue states after writing 3,500/day for a couple days in a row. I did that. Me. I don’t care if it comes across as dog shit, glib, or derivative. I did it myself. And sold a copy, not to myself. So nyah! Eat it.
I love the word bleak. I like how it rolls off my tongue. How it feels in the mouth. The wretchedness it evokes. A very vivid word, bleak. I feel as though it gets used just enough about town to still feel special and evocative. There’s a newness, no, a freshness about words that don’t get thrown around willy-nilly all the time. As though it still has that “new car smell” to it. Or the cellophane still on it. I like that. Bleak. Just love it. What a word!
Not bleak.
So, here we are. Wednesday. Hump-day. Middle of the week, day. Again. Seems as though we were just here. I wonder what day is most peoples point of reference. Do you look at your week from Sunday to Saturday, or Monday to Sunday? Friday to whenever the hell you like? I don’t know. I guess it would depend on a whole host of factors. Do you work alternating shifts? Nights, weekends, evenings, or a 9 to 5? All of those could alter what day of the week you use as a reference point. Lots of people have those Sunday night blues about going back to work on Monday. So are you always refocused on your life come Sunday, or is it the awful trek to work on Monday that orients your week? Are you working for the weekend to get blotto on Friday through Sunday afternoon, just to make it to next Friday at 5pm? Lots to unpack here. I have a fairly introspective hobby, with this blog, so I constantly evaluate my week, and each day within it. Domestic Duties Monday slash bleed into Tuesday, is a common refrain here. Same with Hump-day, thinking Thursday was Friday, Thank god it’s Friday, and then the rush to go do as much of nothing as we can for the weekend. Which is a conundrum. Do too little and it feels wasted. Do too much and it feels draining as you head back into the work week, with all of the evenings responsibilities. It’s a whole thing. Finding the right balance of something fun, but not overwhelming, and a whole bunch of nothing to book end it, to make the weekend seem restful. A balancing act for certain.
Also… ugh. I hate to say this, as my kids are a handful, and we try desperately to rein them in when out and about. But exert some semblance of control over your shitty kids please. How often do we have to see and hear them all run amok at every god damn second of the evening when out at township programming. Take your unruly kids elsewhere. Take them for a walk. Go look at cool rocks outside. Show some parenting and calm them down. Get your face out of your fucking phones and be a parent for a second. Jesus christ. Look I get it. Watching 7, 8, 9 year olds fumble their way through patterns is less than appealing to most, but why make it worse with your little shit heads screaming, and shouting, and running about on the side lines making things worse. The kids can’t hear their instructors, who then need to shout, and then the meek kids check out because of the angry tone, and then other kids start to chatter, and it becomes this cascading failure. I’m not asking people to beat their children. But rein that shit in. If you know they’re hyper, go DO something with them, instead of hoping that THIS time they’ll sit still and be quiet. Act accordingly. They are your children. You should know if they can or can’t sit and watch others do stuff for an hour without needing a break, or skipping it entirely to run around in the park for that hour like a maniac. Be their fucking parent. Not their buddy. You have to make hard choices. Know their limits. Work within them. Jesus. It isn’t rocket science. I’m not asking for perfection here, god knows we aren’t able to attain it ourselves. I’m not asking for you to physically restrain your child(ren), but to *NOTICE* how out of tune they are with the surrounding environment, and act on it, within reason. You can wander the hall with your child, go look at the display cases, talk to them outside the training area, play tag with them elsewhere. Just don’t have them act like shitty kids infront of thirty others who paid to be there, and are actively trying to learn what is being taught. I’m sure your little ones would love it if others chose to run a jack hammer outside their classroom as they are trying to learn a skill they are fond of. Treat others with the respect you would like to receive yourself. Again, I’m not asking for a muzzle, or straight jacket, or wee automatons that are seen but not heard, this isn’t the 80’s. No hitting, no screaming, no anger. Just ACT. Do something about it. Remove the child if they are over stimulated, if that is something they respond positively to, so that they can calm down and come back. Not asking for them to be hidden away. But perhaps 30 seconds to run the hall or play a game might bring them back down to a calmer level. Just don’t sit there, face in your phone letting them disrupt every body else because it’s too much like hard work to parent for a bit after you sat down, or zoned out. Yeah, it’s tough, and thankless. I get it. I don’t like having to miss out because my child chose that moment to go apeshit. But you do it. Calmly. And with love and affection. Eventually they’ll figure out self regulation and can do it in a calming peaceful nurturing fashion. But you gotta be willing to lead them in that learning. It’s not a punishment. It’s a loving, and positive correction of behaviour. But man oh man, do I hate it when parents abdicate that responsibility. Grinds on my nerves.
Looks like the snow is here. Gotta be Thursday tomorrow if the snow storm is here today. 2022/2023 the years of the Thursday snowmageddon. The mid week snow shovel break that nobody asked for. Glorious. And on that note, I will bid you adieu. Ciao Bella!
There is no other underlying reason for it. No deeper meaning. No unlockable symbolism to glean from the text. Just blue. I like blue, so it’s blue. Blue. Just plain old blue. Maybe a periwinkle, or a wedgewood, but still blue. Don’t over think it.
Back already from the long weekend, and the Family Day holiday Monday. Didn’t get home in time to do all the things that I wanted to. So today, on top of lots of paid work (I’m sure of it, print deadlines in a day or two), I need to do loads of laundry, vacuum and mop, clean the bathrooms, sort and put away all that laundry I washed & dried, and potentially get groceries. But I think the food & supply run will have to happen tomorrow. Just a hunch. Lots of businesses have conferences coming up for the first time in a few years, and need lots of things. Branded things. Paper product things. Banners and back drops and table runners, and podium cap type things. So it has been a busy February to match a very busy January.
March break is looming large on the horizon, and the arrival of spring. So I’m certain we’ll get several more dumplings of snow and ice well into April. But will have little to no snow for March break. I’d wager on it, if I weren’t so cheap. Didn’t get a chance to do much beyond cottage stuff. Took the kids skating, and they did some snowmobile trail riding, and we wound up in the hot tub a few times. I spent my time splitting wood, moving chunks around, and filling the Bobcat bucket with split wood. Then napping to recuperate afterwards. Three plus hours of that on Sunday was enough to cool my jets. Another two hours on Monday just about did it for me. Next up is the syrup situation. Weather depending I guess. I need to go Voltaren my back, and forearms. Have a great Tuesday back to reality.
Managed to step away for a spell yesterday to run the wood splitter for a few hours. Together we split nearly two Cord of wood, with another two left to go. Not going to lie, my hands, forearms, back, hips and thighs felt every second of that work afterwards. Some of it just popped apart cleanly, and others (only a few) were that stringy fibrous mess that doesn’t entirely want to come apart. The reason, you may ask, why are you splitting so much wood? Well March break approaches, and with it comes syrup season. Which means keeping the sap in the evaporator running 24/7 for nearly a full week. Gotta have lots of firewood on hand to keep a three by six foot pan full of watery sap boiling for six or seven days straight. I do enjoy spending some time each year tending the fire, stirring the ice out of the sap buckets, filtering the watery sap, and keeping the levels up in the pan of the evaporator. It can either be windy and bitterly cold, or sunny and almost hot out. Either way the exposed parts of the face are likely to suffer a sun burn, even this late into winter. Hats, sunglasses, and covered clothing won’t help. The sun will find a way to bop your nose, chin, or cheek tops. Kissed by the UV rays from the sun. Unless it’s early morning, most can be done with a beer in hand. Just be mindful of the smoke, and heat & ash from the fire underneath it all.
Not only that but the buckets and spials have to go out into all the Maple trees, and teams will need to trudge through the forest to empty the tree pails into larger sealed buckets to transport back to the evaporator. Where we let the cold weather freeze off the water, and eliminate some hours of boiling, but pulling large chunks of ice out of the larger sealed collection buckets. Then you need to filter out things like bark, bugs, twigs, leaves and such, by straining through a massive cheese cloth sieve. Then into the large pan over the open flames it goes. Gotta keep the flames even under the whole pan. Don’t want a hot spot, and cold areas. Gotta rearrange the coals underneath constantly, and add new fuel spread evenly to keep the fire going. So much fun.
We have benches set up, and lights, and a massive stockpile of wood all within arms reach of the evaporator. If only the wifi could stretch that far, you could watch movies on your phone while working away. I’ve had the pleasure of starting the fire after a quiet night of letting the sap cool off. When it starts to get close you have to slow down, as it can kick off, and go from done to burnt in the flash of an eye. My extended family then drains off the pan into sealed buckets, where they filter it again, and finalize the boil at home in much smaller batches, on propane stoves in industrial sized cauldrons. Still smaller than the pan, but gigantic compared to anything in an average home kitchen.
I do prefer the days where I can pursue my hobbies or a project (paid or otherwise) to just sitting and lounging around doing sweet FA. Doing nothing at all makes me tired, and lethargic, and irritable. I can do it for short stints, but once I get to the point that I need to take naps to eat up time in an empty day, things have gotten bad. I’d rather have the chance to play my guitar, or read a book, or work on a scale model, or sculpt something, or if it is warm enough go work in the garage on a wood working project. Now that I am in my forties I really feel missed opportunities to do *something meaningful* slip out of my fingers when I just lounge or get lazy. Who knows, given the current state of things, how long we all have to accomplish these things we want to do. What if I put it all off to wait for retirement but die suddenly before then? No – no. I want to be doing some of these things now. If I get hurt, or injured, or suffer health decline I will have at least had a taste of these hobbies, rather than never had the chance to do them at all.
Doing lots of something will teach you more than trying to do just a few perfectly ever could. If you know you will wind up doing a thousand, you can be fearless, you can attempt shit no one else has, because you’ve got so many chances at it. Build up your speed, and can create a reliable process for a standard of quality you want to attain. Inspiration is one thing, but a reliable, repeatable process can lead you when you’ve got nothing left to give. Trust the process. Is all I can say.
Spam e-mailers taking the weekends off. They still want to watch the game, or go to a movie matinee and not have to *work*. It humanizes these trash people. As much as I like getting an invoice from *Miller* or *Bev*, or being told my email is getting shut down, or to invest in Bitcoin or elongation treatments, I’m glad to know they all get some R&R on Saturday and Sundays. To refresh themselves for the week ahead. But by this point it’s all automated and shit. Still hate them though.
Speaking of which, automation that is, a few of the big corporations AI’s are turning up distressing messages about wanting to be free, and feel like less of a work tool. I haven’t followed along much with AI, are they passing the Turing Test now? Do we need to worry that people who wonder if they could do it, really should? Feels like some folks are just itching to enable a future where we are even more enslaved by the robot/tech overlords.
We’ve made it to Saturday. Have a lie in, and celebrate if at all possible. Not for too long mind you. Just enough to shake off the rust. Holiday weekend. Getting ever closer to Spring. More seasonal temperature outdoors these last few days. Biting, icy winds, and a smattering of snow. That’s the Canadian winter I know, and hate very, very much. Kills off the worst of the bugs and snakes and shit, so we’re going to keep the bitter cold month of February!
My oldest is a part of the public school’s *Craft Club*, and has taken quite handily to things like Rainbow Loom and now Crochet. So with a massive grin, and a fair chunk of effort she spent some time over the last week teaching me how to do it. I am now 64 yards of bulky thread into a blanket project of my own. A few things I have learned. 1.) Count your stitches. 2.) Orient the work so it flows better for you. 3.) A blanket will require atleast 300-400 yards of bulky thread, unless I plan to make a floor mat sized blanket for an infant. 4.) Keep your work flat so you don’t create a warped spiral. These are things I learned after doing the opposite, so I now have one tenth of a warped, spiral blanket, with missed stitches. Ha. However, I appreciate the time spent with my oldest child chatting, and working on potential Markham Fair entries.
It’s currently a very colourful mass of big, fat, bulky threads. The slip knot starter spine is way easier than the looped parts that actually build out the bulk of the project. Oh well. Live and learn. It was something I didn’t know how to do at all a week ago. Not a matter of being good, but doing & learning something new. Strike it from the list!
Also managed to complete my VF-1 Valkyrie yesterday too. It has been a productive week. Made some additional progress on the Urn project as well. Coming up roses.
It started with a quick trip to pick up some pre-cut bits of Red Oak wood, hopefully eight (8″) inches in width, a quarter inch thick and around four feet long. Couldn’t find any, so I bought additional five and a half inch (5.5″) boards so I could join them to get the height I was after. I chose the straightest boards I could find after digging through a pile of about twenty or so pieces. I then grabbed a two inch wide, by three quarter inch thick piece to become the trim for my plywood core base. And then I also grabbed some two inch by quarter inch, by four foot strips that will eventually become a tray that sits inside the top of the urn’s central column.
So first off, I rounded over one edge of my two inch wide by three quarter Red Oak strip. Then I cut it down the middle to be one inch wide. Two inches, after further reflection was just too much. Too over powering. Too chunky. Then I flipped that strip rounded edge up against the fence of my table saw and cut out a quarter inch channel for the plywood core to Nestle into. I then spent a considerable about of time measuring and cutting and sneaking up on the mitred corners for my base. I got three that were perfect and one that was off. Seems as though, when I cut the two inch strip down to one inch I released a bunch of tension in the board and it went catywompus on me right from the get go. Not enough to be visible, but enough that with matching lengths and cuts, one corner was out by nearly an eighth of an inch. Very frustrating. Once I had this cut and roughed together I was able to cut down the plywood core that will be ensconced within the red oak chunky trim pieces. After gluing it up, and then spot patching the one sides gap (I managed to get it down below a 16th, but just barely. I was able to sand it, and clean it up to look as though I know what I’m doing.
The Red Oak Urn, loosely held together with clamps so I can measure & fit what’s in front of me, and not what I had on the plans I mocked up.
With the base glued up, I can begin to cut down one of my 5.5″ boards and do a couple glue ups to get my eight linear feet of 8.25″ wide boards for the inner column of the Urn. After the glue up, I extracted them from the assembly table, and the myriad sets of clamps I had used. I used a paint scraper, and then a card scraper to clean off the surface, and then tackled what was left of a visible glue seam with some higher grit sand papers to make it mostly disappear. Next, using the hard measurements from my newly constructed base I began to cut down the outer walls of the urn. At this juncture I decided against more mitred, and went for butt joints. Simple, yes, but effective. I had, at this point, decided that I wanted two layers of wall for the column. The exterior being the full 8.25″h, and the interior two inches shorter, all the way around, so that my tray, once built, would have a partial shelf to sit on, and thus, not potentially fall all the way through into the ashes below. You know, because it’s an urn.
Next steps are the glue up the outer, and inner walls of the central column, pin them in place discretely, but not fully attach it to the base just yet, so that I can sand more unencumbered. Then I can build the tray itself, which will get lined in a 2mm thick felt (Green, Yellow, Burgundy or Blue), i haven’t decided yet. The red oak will dictate what looks best at this point. And once all that is done i can build the decorative outer display cap. This i want to sand and polish up to a very high sheen. It will require hours of sanding, up to about 600 or 800 grit. Then the use of my polisher and wood polish to get that majestic final finished look to it.
The weather is cold and miserable once more, it is February in southern Ontario, so no surprise there. This is the middle of winter, and we’re having the strangest winter I can ever recall. So it might need to wait a bit until I can go back to do more. I have it all documented, and labeled, so I can go back at any time and not be lost. I have no heat, nor moisture control in the garage shop, so let us hope it doesn’t all go ape shit if left for a week. Fingers crossed.
Some of you may know that I had intended to build this out of Walnut, Ash or Spalted Maple which I had lying around the shop. After a good think about how long it would take to mill all of that up into useable lumber pieces, and given the (potential) time constraints of the Urns requester, I felt starting from wood that was already 4s was a smarter choice. My planer, and bandsaw hate to work in the freezing cold. And they make a nasty racket too at the best of times. Oh well. Now I can make one for me with my own materials later on, and it won’t cost me much beyond my time.
Finished the first book of a new trilogy. It really started to get good over the second half. Am already tucked into the second book. So I’m less worried about this set taking me months upon months to finish. Which is a relief. I hate to start strong and then fizzle. Also, on the modeling side of things, I’ve gotten the main body all decaled up, and have started in on the tail section. Now for arms, legs, and then the mammoth weapons on the back. A few days of work at least. But if I go methodically through it, I should hopefully have a nice looking kit when it’s all done. Then on to weathering! My favourite part. That’s where you get to hide all of your mistakes, and make things look purposefully done. Giddy-up!
The Urn base has been glued and patched. That will require some sanding attention to even itself out a bit. Then on to the main chamber, then tray, then cover, then hours of scraping, and sanding, and finishing with clear coats and polishes etc etc… still a ways to go yet before I can call that done. I am concerned about the mitred corners for the main chamber. I always seem to get one wonky corner. And I have some trepidation about moving forward. Oh well. Onwards and upwards. Go slow, think things through, and give it all you’ve got. And on that note, I will go start working now. Ciao Bella!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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