So how things are going. The butterball 3lb turkey breast ball was rinsed, debagged, basted with oil and set in a Corning wear pan. The oven preheated to 325°, and the turkey roll placed in the centre of the lower rack. This is where it will stay for 3.5-4 hours. Once the turkey comes out to rest, I’ll turn the oven up to 450°, and will pop in the pre cooked baby potatoes on a cooking pan, brushed with oil & dusted with vegetable salt for flavour. Canned potatoes are not known for being particularly flavorful. They should take anywhere from 15 – 30 minutes, all going well. On top of the stove I have four pans. One is corn, one green beans, one is straight up peas, and the last is for Stove Top Stuffing. I have cranberry sauce ready to go, and rolls for the table. I didn’t go ahead and make any kind of homemade desserts, because why would I. I’m inept, not a masochist. We have ice cream if the kids actually eat their dinner this time around. I like carrots but opted to keep them off the menu.
Any left overs can get eaten tomorrow or go to my inlaws who currently have Covid.
Vegetables separated & ready for their turn to boil. Plus an empty pot for Stove Top stuffing.Potatoes waiting to get brushed with oil and dusted with vegetable salt.
Early hours yet. But thus far no major errors in judgement. Still have more than 3.5 hrs to go! Fingers crossed for us all. Ciao Bella!
I am going to attempt to cook a Thankgiving meal myself. I may Chronicle it as it could be a humorous failure in the extreme. Title, “An Attempt at Dinner by the Criminally Inept Cook”. Laughs, tears and possibly a burn will ensue. Stay tuned. I’m no stranger to cooking, the oven & chopping board. But I am usually the one who peels potatoes & carrots, or plunges corn on the cob in boiling water, or whom lifts the finished Turkey out of the oven ever so gently to carve up a breast. I have never been without extended family that would take on the roll of cooking in my forty plus years. Thank you Covid for this new experience. Kinda? I guess? Better late than never, I suppose.
Anyway, I’m off outdoors to finish pruning all of the dead flowers and tidy up the ole homestead exterior. Ciao Bella!
Have you ever felt like you used up one of your best ideas too early, for something or someone you later felt didn’t warrant such an epic idea? And as a result feel as though the idea you used didn’t get to reach its potential, and was otherwise stifled? Yeah – I feel that way an awful lot, and it’s most likely not really what’s going on. An idea in your noggin’ is one thing, the execution of said idea to bring it to life in the real world is another. If you don’t execute it with any kind of precision or skill it will feel wasted. But you have to know where that failure lies. Most likely it is with yourself. Rushing to meet a deadline, or procrastination about starting because you later realize the scope of the idea at 100% is well beyond you. That’s your fault. Gotta figure that kind of stuff out with pen & paper before you end up cutting corners, or justifying major changes to suit your available time & skill.
I don’t want to say that I’ve Dunning Kroeger’ed myself in the past, but I surely have. Thinking I’m better than how I actually accomplished a story arc, or character driven story vehicle. Frustrating. Although sometimes I’m in such a rush (read that as panic) to create content to accomplish my writing every day challenge I’ll write whatever is in my head that second, only to realize afterwards, I should have held that thought back to explore it in greater depth. But two or more posts back to back on the same thing seems… lack luster.
But then the Fair comes to town and I write about that four plus days in a row, so maybe I’m just over thinking things again. This isn’t a nationally syndicated column with gravitas and cultural weight attached to it. I’m just some schmoe who tried to write anything he could once a day, for a whole 365 days. That hardly makes me the pinnacle of anything, so the feelings of wasted ideas are silly. Foolish even. Get a god damn grip my boy!
So that is how I woke up feeling at 6:54 am today. Also, had an upset stomach, so that is what really woke me up, and as I laid back down in my toasty bed, I thought about what I wrote late last night, and how I should have saved that post for today. Not to get out of needing to write even more today, but so i could go over it, and expand on points i now feel i should talk about in more depth. But does it need it? Most likely no. It was just a feeling i had. Humans are weird.
I wonder if we’ve secretly had Covid in the last three years, because i feel, ever so slightly, around the edges that I’m getting dumber. Or something akin to that effect. I can’t quite pin point it, but there’s some obscured thing there. Like the boundaries of what i used to know a lot about are fuzzy now, like has my knowledge turned from things i know, into things i ‘think’ that I know? My memory of some things has gotten fuzzy, in the softest sense. Very strange. Forgetful. Losing a word in the middle of a sentence. Or no clue why I came into a room. Misremembered events from a book or movie. It’s not major, but it’s a softly misting haze at the outer edges. Weird. Could it be that I am merely experiencing the regular effects of aging like every body else? Or is it more. Don’t know.
It’s getting real close to 300 days of writing something, no matter how ludicrous, each day. I think I have it in me to make it to a year if I keep on it like I have been. Not going to lie, it has been a challenge, especially over the last three or four weeks where I have been consistently busy with paid work. Easy to commit to the ideal when your days are wide open. Felt the panic settle in during those longer than average (for me) work days, that bleed into weeks. Still came around and found the time. In some instances merely enough to write a partial paragraph. And, I’m ok with that. Also I’ve not done much of any creative writing in a fair few months. I think it was June the last time I did anything more than just a blog post/daily update. I have had a couple of ideas floating around, but just didn’t commit to putting a pen to paper, as it were. I typically write all my short fiction on my phone via thumbs. So – there we are.
This weekend will be the first time ever, in forty some odd years, that I will purchase, prepare, cook & eat my very own Thanksgiving dinner. Call me lucky! I’ve had family, inlaws & siblings do it every other year. But Covid came calling, so we’ll be a little isolated, and I’ll fire up the oven & stove top to prepare a Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, peas & green beans, plus corn for our family dinner. No hand made pies, or anything too niche this time around. If it’s edible, I’ll call it a win.
Other things that I have tried to be more aware of over the length of my writing every day challenge, are the reading one book a month, which I am 9 for 10, so far. Hoping to catch up, or over take the 12 books this calendar year. Could do it, we’ll see how it pans out. Also trying to exercise a little every day. Mainly free weights, plus sit ups, push up, air squats and the like. Less successful here, but any movement on that front is better than none. Might have to accelerate the plan, and actually go to a gym with more olympic weights, but that costs money & even more time to do. Quickly running out of suitable weather for bike rides, and use of my long board. Things that I can work on this year, and possibly every other year coming! Hurray for small but incremental behavioral change for the better! Go team!
Have done lots of wood working. Built some furniture (which has been a dream of mine for a while). Would love for that to culminate in a sizable gaming table & custom chairs. A few years yet for that to happen. Will need to build desks for my kids as they progress in grade school, and the demands on their time increases. A.k.a. Home work! Also I’m finding a groove with sculpting again. Which is very therapeutic, and gets the hands moving. Get a sense of the delicate touch back in ye olde finger tips. Also finding time to play my guitar more often is a lovely way to spend an hour. When that’s too much I pop over to the keyboard to tickle dome ivories of a sort. Feels more like plastic or nylon, but the sentiment stands. Ciao Bella!
Now two members of the extended family have Covid, so the long weekend festivities are on hold indefinitely. Which sucks, but, but he says, after the extremely busy fair weekend we just had some downtime around the house would be most welcome. No rushing off in holiday traffic, and late night drive home through even more nightmare traffic. That’s gotta be a blessing, anyway you slice it. So instead I’ll have the kids help me with the leaves, I’ll cut the grass, and then we can decorate for Halloween. That should be good for 2-3 hours of work tomorrow. We’ll dig out the two inflatables, caution tape, cob webs and such. Make a garbage bag man corpse to hang from a tree. You know – fun stuff. I’ll get my leaf mulcher up and running if it doesn’t rain, and the yard will be clean once more – momentarily.
The youngest is home sick with her long lasting cough that’s she’s had for five plus weeks now. It was getting better, but all that outdoor time & dust at the fair has set it off – again. It never really goes away. It dies down but never leaves. You can hear her hack & cough from the lingering post nasal drip. Then it gets irritated and ramps up to what we have now. A semi constant stream of sputtering coughs. It’s a whole thing. Horrendous.
So October 7th eh? Friday of the long weekend. Thankfully I have managed to knuckle down and complete a hefty chunk of work these last 3-4 weeks, and I don’t have anything major hanging over my head for the holiday. New things can, and will certainly pop up, but for this particular moment in time I am not under a crunch. Which is very pleasant. Busy, busy, rest period. It’s good to have time to think & rest. I had some new books delivered so now I can read those. I started a new bust sculpt out of Super Sculpey yesterday, of yet another monster. So that should be a fun way to relax. My air brush paint arrived, a black & grey surface primer. Nothing too crazy. I’m going to complete my latest sculpt and then see how I fare with my old air brush on painting up those busts. Could be a nightmare, could open up new exciting challenges, and thus new rewards. Wee! Or it’ll help me prime things quickly and I’ll end up hand brushing everything anyway. Hard to tell at this point.
What else is there to say? Might actually have some new packaging that isn’t alcoholic beverage related, or cigarettes out in the market come early 2023. That’s always fun to see. Cartons, trays, cans, bottle labels, glass wear and custom bottles are one thing, but getting to see a product outside of the beer store is pretty rad too. Even had a brief return to conference roll banners this week, which reminded me of my Moosehead Brewery days, and my time with PBC ( Premium Beer Company) and all of their partner brands doing stuff like that. A nice little stroll down memory lane.
The wind is kicking up today, so these trees should be bare in another three weeks. Seeing night time temperatures down to almost zero degrees Celsius. Winter will be here before we know it. Wash those jackets, and dirt out the snow pants before you get caught out! Heed my warning! Muah ah ah ah! Ciao Bella!
With random rain clouds, odd spot of occasional sunshine, blowing leaves and patches of blue sky. Welcome to fall in southern Ontario where you never know what you are going to get, from hour to hour on any given day. Hard to dress for success when the day starts at 2°, and climbs to 23°, but has rain, wind, harsh sunshine, and a cold bitter chill thrown into the mix. So we wear layers and pray the kids don’t forget their shit throughout the day. Clear as mud, right?
Spooky season is upon us. Just gotta creep on by Thanksgiving first! Might have a bit of a jumbled holiday this weekend, as Covid has come to town in the immediate family. No chance the afflicted is safe to be around in just two more days. So perhaps next weekend we’ll celebrate together. Fingers crossed for no major lasting effects. Ciao Bella!
If I had the money and ample storage space I would spend so much time building war gaming terrain, that it isn’t funny. There is just something about it that is very therapeutic, and satisfying. Turning blocks of foam, paper and paint into a vivid playable landscape is really a tonne of fun. I’d make waterfalls, river beds, canyons, open plains, castles and mountains, as well as dungeons. Hand built houses, and guard shacks, sheds and windmills, the types and styles of out building to create is nearly infinite. Oh the possibilities are endless. Alas, the flocking, static grass, miniature trees and supplies are neither free to a good home nor cheap. Those awesome tufts, and miniature flowers all come from Europe with a hearty shipping cost per item. A static grass applicator or any provenance will set you back nearly $200 bones after shipping and import fees. Plaster of paris, rock moulds, sculpt a mould, paper mache, glue, it all costs money to keep, and space to store it all. I do love it though. And therein lies the rub. I do love to build things, of all sorts, but our house is small, so where on earth do you keep it all? Plus all of the additional tools of the trade for scratch builds, and modifications to store bought materials. Paints enough to fill racks, boxes of moulds, and cartons of flocking. No wonder the Youtubers work out of warehouse spaces. Not to mention the fumes from cutting styrofoam with a hot knife. Phew! Stinky. Not good for you either. But still, isn’t building terrain awesome!
Keep in mind that I am no expert, I turn to Youtubers like Geek Gaming Scenics and Real Terrain Hobbies, or Squidmar Miniatures for all sorts of helpful insights. Those folks all get paid to build amazing terrain, dioramas and such. I have to imagine, that just like any hobby, once you start to get paid for it and have client demands it loses some luster and gains added layers of stress. Things I don’t want. I just want to build it. Loud music, imagination, and testing the boundaries of what I am capable of bringing to life. I hope my kids need to build dioramas for school someday, so that we can kick ass and go for broke!
I haven’t made anything new, terrain wise in more than a year, perhaps more. I moved into furniture to satisfy that bug. But here’s a gallery of some miniatures, pre built purchased sets that I painted, and my hand crafted terrain tiles, that are a uniform 2ft by 2ft square.
1. Painted minis. 2.painted market square. 3. Gallows & rock walls. 4. Spaceship terrain one. 5. Spaceship terrain two. 6. Mysterious cavern. 7. CMON ASOIAF Painted soldiers. 8. Hand built Taverns & shops. 9. Hand made dungeon. 10. 4 2ftx2ft terrain sections.
Now I do apologize if the following video I took makes anyone **motion sick. You’ve been warned.
Strike while the iron is hot, and work, work, work, work, work.
Not going to say much, as I’m on a pee break, with twenty plus 3D renders to do today, make final edits to one report, and work through the last chapter of a second report. If I can do all of that, then I need to prep a third report that is hot on my heels.
Is an interesting musical turn of phrase. I caught it in some song I heard playing on the radio yesterday evening, when I was taking the kids to the fair tear down so that we could pick up our award winning entries. Oh – ah. Yes, we placed! In a number of categories. We have the whole spectrum of ribbons. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and even a 6th place ribbon. The kids even managed a purple participation ribbon in the Christmas decoration section, which is hilarious. Super proud of both kids for putting in the effort to finish their entries, and do it with enough care to place in several categories. Nicely done. My sculpture ended up in a catch all group with other random unspecified articles of artwork. For techniques not listed in the prize book. So fair enough. Hard to judge apples to tank engines if you catch my drift. But my work stands out, and is easy to find on the display table. Which is what I care about most, getting them seen by as many people as possible. My bookcase at home doesn’t get the kind of foot traffic the Markham FairHome Craft section does.
We ate dome Tiny Tom’s mini donuts yesterday. Nearly forgot to! How can it be the fair if I don’t eat at least one dozen tiny cinnamon dusted donuts! Luckily my wife remembered and brought some home after her shift in the Photography booth. Yeah! Delicious as always. Again, speaking of food, I have to tell you that the SuperSmash BurgsDK burger was incredible. So very tasty. Especially compared to the McDonalds McChicken Deluxe I ate late last night at about 9pm or so. No comparison, the DK burger from SuperSmash Burgs blows it out of the water. Not even close. And yes, I understand I am comparing a chicken sandwich to a double cheeseburger, but come on. SuperSmash takes the win hands down. I need to find out if they are local or not. See if they have a brick & mortar store nearby. Or a traveling food truck that can be easily found. I’ll get back to you if I manage to discover anything useful.
Yeah – so I did about 13.5 hrs of fair time on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The least of my immediate family. My youngest got 2 more hours on me. Our eldest got 5 extra hours on me, and my wife did about another 9 hours more. But she had Photography hours Sat/Sun, and Flower dept hours on Saturday evening too. But we got our fill. Sad it’s over, but glad it’s done for another year, you know? Yeah – you know.
I did a bunch of Domestic Duties Monday stuff yesterday, so I’m a little more laid back right now. Got a whole slew of projects out the door on Friday, so maybe, maybe? I’ll be a little more chill this week? Will need to prep for changing over the tires soon. That’s always a fun, finger tip numbing job. But I have my impact wrench, and torque wrench ready to go. Forgot about a jack, but we have those at the farm, so pretty much all set for the end of the month.
What else is new? I have my Hellboy armature ready to go, I’m just not convinced that I want to do that figure any more. I have eyes on some other character now. I have some air brush paint coming, so I’ll find out my old air brush and try to paint my new busts with it. I remember it gets really hot fairly quickly, which was why I stopped using it. Not yet convinced I’ll use one enough to warrant the expense of buying a better make/model. I like the idea of using an airbrush to paint my sculptures, and minis, and model kits. But I also would rather put that money towards wood working projects, tools and materials. At least for right now. Ask me again in January. Ciao Bella!
I’m going to need a vacation from the weekend. In total over the last three days I’ve spent more than thirteen (13) hours wandering the fair grounds, and riding the midway. It’s been really fun but my feet and hips beg to differ. My eldest and wife clocked in an additional five hours yesterday over top of what I did. How did they manage such a feat you ask? Well, by splitting into groups of course, so when I took a thoroughly exhausted youngest child home the rest kept on going. We left at four pm, and the rest sauntered home around nine thirty pm. I laid down on the couch and watched tv with the youngest for a while as she ate and calmed down. Then extended family came by and took her back to the fair two hours later.
I have to tell you that I ate a fantastic burger at the fair yesterday. A place called “SuperSmash Burgs“, and the double DK burger combo was my jam. It was absolutely fantastic. Five stars, do highly reccomend. Caramelized onions, deliciously cooked patties, a very zesty aioli sauce, and fresh lettuce & pickles. A thick slab of cheese, ooh wee it was great.
Tonight sometime after dark we will all flock back to the Markham Fair with our tags in order to pick up all of our entries. That is always a bit of a mess as a thousand people go wandering about trying to all do the same thing at once.
We were all pleasantly surprised that the TSSA strike only interfered with article drop off day on Tuesday, and didn’t affect the other official four days of the event. So all in all a great time was had by all. All eyes turn to next year!
But first we have Thanksgiving next weekend, and then Fall Break, and then the second biggest day of them all – Halloween!
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