Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

I wanted a removable tray for my new air brush paints, so I measured, and cut the bottom plate to spec. Proceeded to cut out the sides and glue them in place, along the OUTSIDE edges. Now I am 3/8ths or more too long to fit inside the caddy. I’m an idiot. But! All my new paints fit in the tray, so I’m less upset about it? I need to find a spot for this tray, but the fact that all my new stuff fits in it with room for one or two more colours is kinda wild. Cool – I guess. I wanted the cardboard boxes gone, and the paints visible, so check on both of those. Would have been better if it had fit on the caddy itself, but I can try again by building a new larger caddy, and adding extra room for more paint pots, instead stopping capacity at what I currently have on hand. Baby fat, as Adam Savage refers to it. Got to remember to add baby fat into the mix, for growth.

So that was kind of an idiot move on my part, but also worked out (for now) so that’s cool. I set up my new corded microphone yesterday for a good old fashioned karaoke session in the basement. My old wireless mic/receiver combo was louder, it had a preamp boaster build into it, but I can live with what I’ve got going on here. Might buy myself a mic stand to help me not have to clutch the mic in a grip of death when crooning to myself. Free up my hands to read lyrics, change songs & volume from my phone and what not. I’m happy. Since my old set up died back in the summer time, it has been a long while since I’ve enjoyed some home bound sing along time. No audience, just me – vibing. Feels good.

If the spring weather keeps up I can think about taking all my old burnable wood down to the farm. That will make me feel a bit better. Keep the garage shop as clean as possible. Makes it safer to work in there, and more pleasant to be inside of. I have three doors (of which I need to remove the hinges, and handles, and hardware) to go down to the farm. Along with bird houses, old tool boxes, a tray extension for my drill press, our old garbage bin box, and the kids train table, plus various wood cut offs. All ready for flames! Have to be mindful of the rusty pin nails, and cut off screws, and fasteners that wouldn’t come out of the sun stained wood pieces. Don’t want Tetanus!

No climbing today as the kids have maker space 3D printing course to go to today, then a Mani/pedi with Grandma to celebrate her birthday. I think I might paint my 40K Space Wolves, see if I can’t get them finished up this weekend.

Busy three weeks is a good thing, money being made, invoices in & out, payments made, all good. But it does mean that my zest for Domestic Duties Monday has flagged recently while I toil. So while I have a second (having lunch!) I’m gathering up the kids laundry to run some through the washer/dryer so they don’t run out of underwear, or clean t-shirts. I had to skip eating lunch a few times which is why I hadn’t done it earlier in the week either. The weekend is upon us shortly, and I’d rather not spend hours over the weekend trying to catch up on household chores, of which the children have done none in almost a month! Craziness.

I’m going to eat my reheated McDonald’s, do some writing, and listen for the bell to swap out loads between the dryer and washer, and hopefully enjoy some family down time this weekend rather than work through it — again.

Morning has been a bit jumbled because we had an oil change scheduled for my wife’s car, and mine was to go out for detailing. With the freezing rain, ice sheet this morning that was a lot of fun! Whee! All done, back in time to get some new projects completed, and make edits to another. It’s all good. Relative to other parts of the world we are doing just fine.

If it stay warm over the weekend I wouldn’t mind getting into the garage shop to make some extra trays for my paint caddy, now that I’ve ordered, and received my new air brush paint sets. I’d like to make that as seedless as I can utilizing my current caddy, rather than build an all new one. I now have 2x or even 3x the amount of paint I did when I built it in the first place. It’s handy, and I’d like to keep it that way. It won’t be a fancy build. Butt joints, glue, and pin nails. But I could document it if that’s something anybody else would care to see. Who knows?

Happy Friday, may you live to see another year, or ten, or forty.

Had an inkling about a project that came through my studio recently, and my initial feelings about it are looking as though they are going to pay off. I’m not mad, I just knew something was going to require tweaking, but didn’t know what, exactly, until after I had gone through the whole thing at least once. And it may just come down to the client wanting to add or subtract materials now that they’ve had some time to think about it, now that it’s out of their hands. Like realizing a statement you triple checked was off, but only after you’ve hit send. Nothing to be mad at. It happens to the best of us. With any luck it’ll be simple changes that make the item better as a whole. That’s worth it, on my end.

I haven’t lived, and breathed this event for a year. It graces my desk for a week to ten days, and then POOF! gone. So I welcome edits that make it a stronger document. Also since the client knows the audience better than I do (for this sort of study) I won’t knock them for having strategic image replacements needed, in order to thread the needle to achieve better, or more funding in the future. If you know who you’re playing to, you know how & when to pander just enough to elicit a positive emotional response. You’re the expect, I’ll follow your lead. I’m at your disposal.

I felt that type of interaction coming when I looked deeper into the study because it does NOT follow many of the structures of projects I have done which came before. When there’s an outlier like this you have to know going in, that it WILL require additional massaging to make every one happy. That’s ok. You do this stuff long enough and you get a sense of when that’s going to happen. I sensed it. It happened. All good. That’s learned in place, on the job type knowledge. Institutional knowledge that you would be hard pressed to write down in a manual.

As an aside: That’s the type of on the job learning that gets raises, and then gets you let go once your salary is too high and the C Suite wants to cut costs. But with it goes the unwritten in situ learning you carried, and then folks don’t plan for these additional steps, deadlines get missed, clients become angered, and jobs get sent away to other places. But I digress. That’s just an anecdote. See how easy a cost cutting measure can have wider, and farther reaching knock on effects!?! Do you see it now? Ha! Again, I digress.

So Thursday is here, and freezing rain is on the way. Might have to put tomorrow’s dog walk on hold. No biggie. Better safe than sorry. In other news a good portion of the middle east is trading missiles and destruction with one another. That’s not good. We celebrated a birthday recently which is nice. Closer to 50 than 40 now, which is frightening to think about. Both kids will be full blown teenagers by the time I turn fifty. Yikes!

Who doesn’t want to begin their day with tantrums, tears, crying, and endless delays from their child(ren). It’s a week day that ends in Y, so of course the morning is going to be a battle. It is however far better now than years prior, but I do hope that eventually the youngest will grow out of these “Big Feelings” regarding school, so I don’t have to drag her kicking, and screaming to the school doors to drop her off. I will say it has happened far less this year than any year before, so maybe it can continue that trend until it stops happening. I know the younger one isn’t as happy with school like my older child is, but I’m not smart enough for homeschooling, and I still need to work a good portion of my days. She can’t stay home and just play VR, or on her tablet watching YouTube shorts on make-up or among Us reactions. That’s just lunacy. I won’t stand for it.

Welcome to Wednesday! Hump Day, middle of the week day. I need to eat, and get right back into my work. This is but a brief stop while I do some things around the kitchen.

Happy March 4th, 2026!

From all of yesterday’s running around, jumping my wife’s dying car battery, racing home before it died a second time, going hunting for battery’s, getting it tested, working, cleaning, and then doing the kids extracurriculars, I thought it was Wednesday or Thursday all ready, and it was just Monday evening. Oh my! But I still got the dog walk in, still did my days work, still had a hot lunch. It was a ram packed day, one which I could have fewer of if I had my way. Turns out the battery in my wife’s car had gone bad, and the ABS, Power Steering, and a bunch of other functionality in the car are electronically controlled. Odd. But ok.

Let us hope we can get another several months out of the vehicle now that we have updated a few less expensive items. Only time will tell. I miss the time period when you could buy a reasonable car for $22,500.00 and it wasn’t a lemon, nor did it require yearly subscriptions to pertinent abilities that are integrated into the vehicle. What a racket this stuff has turned into. Moreso now than ever before.

I’m on the hook for some render updates, and a new big project came in last night, so I best be about my business. Take care out there!

We just had it back from the shop for a wheel bearing issue, and then it died on her way to work this morning. I had missed nine calls under my jacket while dropping the kids off at school. My FIL and I were able to jump the battery so I could coast home with it. The electronics died about halfway home, and I just had to leave room to roll it keeping the engine going. The ABS, TIRE SERVICE, SWERVE PROTECTION, POWER STEERING lights all came on then the dash died, and nothing much worked. It was a harrowing wait at a couple of intersections believe you me. Hopefully it’s a bum battery and not a costly wiring issue. Batteries are plentiful and relatively cheap. Who knows, car is on its last legs at this point. Just trying to get more miles out of it without too much additional cash put in. The ever present struggle. Fun morning. I need to eat, and work.

Come on sunshine and warmer weather, I can feel you in my bones drawing ever closer! Soon the clocks will push forward an hour, then the sap will begin to run, we will have March Break, St Patty’s Day, and hit the first official day of spring by the 20th. I feel like we can make it. I see the light at the end of this snow covered tunnel! I can feel the return of vitamin D to our lives with each day making the sun’s rays just that much stronger. Oh it’s a wonderful time to be alive. Soon the grass will be green, there’ll be buds on the trees, and most importantly, soon the ice and snow will be gone! I love to see it leave for the year.

Wow the third month of the year is here. I’ll need to gather my tax stuff together and get that stuff in order. That’s always no fun whatsoever. Gotta love data entry.

That’s right, we lose an hour on March 8th, so the evenings will be brighter moving forward, which means spring will soon be here, and we can rid ourselves of all this snow, grey gloom, and brown bare trees. As the weather turns we can get outdoors more without the temperature hurting our faces, and outer extremities. That’s a good thing. I for one am here for it.

I’m still busy, but that’s cool. Hours worked mean invoices coming my way, and that’s fantastic. Excellent even. I forgot to send out some invoices last night because I was working until ten trying to get some high priority stuff off for a client. Then I started in on some promotional materials, and that was cool, but I was getting tired, so I stopped. I need to go back to it today to finish up though. Glad for the work.

I need to build a rig for my computer so I’m not hunched over so much when I sit down to do my paid day job. My floors are rock hard so I don’t want a standing desk either. Maybe a better chair would help? I don’t know.

This weekend is still pretty chilly, but I have some more thoughts about items to put in my friends rented dumpster. I have some old doors I can be rid of, which would be cool to remove from the garage. Along with several busted bird houses, and wooden boxes, and other scraps. Like those that came from my garbage bin box that I had to take apart in December/January. I don’t know if my wife still wants to keep the train table, but I’d pitch that too, if I can. I have some log cut offs from the cottage remodel that I can’t really do anything with. I’d like to see my busted up cut off bin thrown out too. I have until Wednesday, so I’ll make a list to get to for tomorrow.

I think the tiny bicycles and snowboards should be donated to charity, and not tossed into a landfill site. I cleaned out the shed before, so I’m stretching for items to throw away at this point. Not looking to make trash just to throw away, but I’ve been purging successfully since my youngest started school five years ago, and I’m down to just the last bits & pieces! That’s terrific, really. I never thought a day would come when we’d have all the really big junk out of the house. I’m pumped!

We will always struggle with clothes, because my wife & kids are clothes horses, that need items in multiple colours, and have far more than they need, or even wear. The laundry baskets versus the closets and drawers don’t lie. 60-70% of the clothes they own, they do not wear. But if I get rid of it everybody freaks out. It sucks that we have to keep every seasons clothes out together. We have no seasonal clothing storage solutions as of yet. If we didn’t have three totes of costumes, we could remove summer/spring gear from their closets, and rotate through, but that takes timing, dedication, and adherence to the rotation. Three things they aren’t known for. For some reason limiting their wardrobes to only the items they actually wear frightens them. They think they’ll be poor if they do that. But why keep sixty pairs of pants when you only wear right of them consistently? Why keep thirty sweaters when you only wear seven of them? Wouldn’t you rather have the room/space back, instead of keeping things, just to have things!?!

I’m getting drawn back into an internal argument I have all the time, so I must digress. Before I work myself into a lather. Have a nice Saturday, the last day of February at that!

In the few times over my limited life span that I have encountered a “Birthday Week” type of individual, why is it that it was a girl, lady, woman, female of 19 years of age to about 30 years old. They must have one hell of a charismatic kick to keep others engaged in celebrations for so long. Not only that but the support team has to be extensive. Kudos to you for being able to pull it off. I personally don’t inspire that sort of outward pouring of emotion from others around me. My fault, I’m not terribly outgoing, nor do I drink much, nor be effusive with my friends. You cannot expect back that which you do not give! Those who can give big love out to the world can get it back in spades, and often do. I’m envious. Not of the giving out of love endlessly — that sounds exhausting, and draining in a way I don’t think I could measure. But to be the cause célèbre that others rally around (just for a little while, only on the day) could be fun. I’d feel self conscious about it, and would likely hate it. Hard to beat British Conditioning of cool reserve, with no outward confidence in one’s abilities.

Needless to say I have a non milestone birthday just around the bend, and it’s a day much like any other. With any luck work will have calmed down so that I can take a moment to read, or play a video game, or continue to paint my Warhammer 40K Space Wolves of which I have forty to complete, with another sixteen Eldar waiting patiently in the wings for a colour scheme, and some paint application.

I bought myself a chainsaw for Christmas that wound up needed additional chains, gloves, helmet with face shield, ear phones, and chaps to keep me from killing myself. Not to mention the bar oil, and different grades of engine oil that differ from the Proyama to the Stihl. It got very expensive, so I bought myself  three small paint sets for my birthday because I really over spent for myself at Christmas. No snowblower, or upright kick boxing punching bag this year. Maybe if work stays hot I can get my daughter the bag for skill building, and my own exercise. We’ll see.

So to those capable of a birthday week, I hope you cherish it, and enjoy every second of the celebrations.

Friends just down the road from us are moving into their new home and have a 20 yard dumpster out front. They have given me permission to add some of my own long standing junk to their pile to be taken away. I of course dropped everything to make the most of the opportunity. I fled down to my basement hall closet and immediately removed old cans, bags, boxes and plastic wrap that had been left under the stairs for fifteen years. When we moved in, I was all “I’ll throw that out next week“, and then promptly forgot all about it. I didn’t even click it last summer when I did our tech recycling run to Aurora. No matter, good things come to those who wait. I then walked outdoors to the side of the garage where our old water softener, and accompanying brine tank have sat idle for the last two years or so. Those are gone now too. Yippy!

I have four bikes in the shed I want to be rid of, but those are being donated, and not throw away. Same with our children’s sized snowboards. Why waste them, let somebody else enjoy them at least for a little bit longer.

If they are desperate to fill the dumpster I do have a bit of wood waste, bird houses, cut offs, and the old train table that can go in there too. Otherwise it’s going to the burn pile at the farm. I’m not too picky. Ha!

What a wonderful start to my Thursday morning. I’m well chuffed! Now I must turn my attention back to paid work for the day job. Enough lollygagging around. Worked up a good sweat getting that softener off the property and into the dumpster, along with the brine tank that had ten inches of fused salt still in it. See ya later!