Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Best to keep it short and sweet as I have a lot of work to do building my report templates from s ratchet, which includes my colour palettes for charts, graphs, and pies. Setting up my working pages, and finding the correct logo option for the report so I don’t have to make any after the fact edits or corrections. If I’m lucky this will be a 45 pager, and not nearly 100 pages in length. Weirder things have happened.

Had to take some time off the morning to run my youngest to the doctors, and possibly to urgent care, or emerge later next week if her issue doesn’t resolve itself after today’s prodding from the pediatrician. Fingers crossed. Warm compresses at the ready. Antibacterial soaps & creams are at hand. Wish us luck.

Happy Friday.

Compulsion? A better outlet than drinking, or a wake n’ bake session. A sense of accomplishment after I have completed at least one task in a day. It’s not a literary or academic practice. Just something to do. Hell I’ve made, an as of yet unpaid $.14 cents USD on ads served over the last ten years so there is that building ever so slowly in the back ground. I got my two short story collections off my chest, out of my head, and on to paper, so that satiated my desire for a novel’s worth of material. All together both books approach 200,000 words, so I’m cool with that. I have my children’s book underway. It’s all written, and put on the pages, ready for my illustrations to capture the vibe of the moment. I did go back and look at it recently, and I need to do 90% of the illustrations again, as they don’t feel right – yet. I do like three of them for sure, a potential fourth is ok, but all the rest should be scrapped and started from scratch. I’m under no deadline, so that works for me.

I’m also on a 151 day streak with Reddit, and I do weekly gaming points gathering, so the gamification of compulsion keeps me doing stuff besides going back to bed, or shopping and building consumer debt. Diablo 4 is helping to keep me entertained as of late. I try to keep that to 60 – 90 minutes a day, or else my eyes hurt, and my neck gets sore.

I have household duties to eat up my downtime in between paid jobs too. Lots of cleaning, laundry, shopping, dishes, floors, and bathroom tasks to keep a guy from going stir crazy. Leaves and grass, and the garden when it’s warm, and snow & ice control when it gets cold. Decorating for Halloween, Christmas and St Valentine’s Day to occupy the cold weather season with a touch of colour.

And of course the purging of textiles, goods, and “stuff”. With Christmas coming, and yet another birthday just around the corner the kids should clear out more toys to make way for new stuff. Same with their closets, and clothing. It’s a never ending cycle of rinse and repeat. I suppose if I get bored of all that I can just take a nap, or go back to bed. I could try a part time job if need be too. I just don’t know doing what exactly? Or where? I get this urge every couple of months when I have a longer than usual slow period. Then work picks up by 1000% and I think to myself, boy am I glad I don’t have to factor in a part time job schedule into all of this. Endlessly on repeat.

However, should I lose any more clients, or have them bought out and the work brought in house under their own umbrella, I will definitely have to find a part time solution. Just not yet. Or a full time solution, if I had to. It just has to pay more after all the additional child care costs get factored in. Before, and after school care, babysitting until 8pm when I get home. Also a maid service to clean the house, and a dog walker/day care for the puppy. It all adds up. The cost of commuting (gas, parking, transit, wear & tear on a vehicle). The required salary would be prohibitive to all but the most demanding of high end clients. I save all those costs by working at home, and watching the kids/dog/house hold myself.

If I could find a mid sized brewery near by that needed my expertise I’d jump on it, but it would need to be 10-15 mins away max, and not need me on site every single day, or for more than a few hours at a time. Hard wish to fulfill these days.

Yeah, so writing a bunch. I think it comes mostly from getting carried away, writing rants, and diatribes about the weather or things that upset me. Not so much a compulsion after all then is it. I could stop, but that former 800 plus day streak calls out to me, mocking me. You got so close to 1,000 and fixing a day upload cost you the high score! BAH!

Thanks to a few very helpful people out there in the real world I was able to solve an issue quickly, and to everyone’s satisfaction. I am well pleased with the result. Thanks for playing the hone game. Happy Hump day to you all.

Puppy says hello from his spot on the couch where he is currently having a snooze. Though once I make the bacon to go in my sandwich he will perk right up, believe you me. We had a good fast paced walk at the farm that took a lot of the fight out of him. Great day!

No, not horse races, or dogs either. This time I’m off to Newmarket to watch my eldest run her 1,500 meter Cross Country race at a park a few towns over. I think she has a group of about 200+ kids in her category so I have high hopes that she will run an earnest race. Nothing too crazy, but a strong effort is worth being proud of.

Have a lovely Tuesday.

Among other gross things, such as; pulling long strands of grass out of your dogs but when they can’t eliminate it all themselves, dido for long hair strands if they chew socks, or lick things around the house. Picking up poop. Searching for ticks. Pulling ticks. Brushing out burs, fox tails, and other such sticky foliage that clings to their fur. Cleaning up puke. Cleaning up urine. Washing pus filled boils, Bd cleaning dirty teeth. It’s all so much fun. Being present for rancid dog farts/burps is a speciality my last dog excelled at. He could clear a room. Talk about a green cloud! Ugh.

Happy Holiday Monday! I’m outside still doing more and more laborious, (read tedious) chores for the extended family. I’m essentially free labour at this point. My back aches, and my thighs feel as though they have bricks on them, and I’m dehydrated quite a bit. I drink a lot of water at home, which I’m just not able to do out here working manual labour tasks.

School starts up again tomorrow so perhaps I can rest then. Which reminds me I need to sort out my Ticketmaster account before the show on Saturday. Hopefully that’s not an all day ordeal.

Yo, I don’t drive anywhere, how you gonna text me about a fake parking ticket, or unpaid highway tolls? I ain’t gone no where. Fool. Places I’ve been to recently, my bedroom, my kitchen, the curb, my basement, my living room, the kitchen (again – man’s gotta eat), and on some occasions the garage. I did catch a ride into Vaughan in somebody else’s car, so that wouldn’t be my ticket bruh! Also the 407ETR texts from a six digit code, not your random ass number. I haven’t been downtown since April, so no parking tickets from July my guy. Nice try though. Send it as registered mail, and I might pay attention then bud. Skeeew!

Long day ahead doing outside chores. Thanksgiving is still up in the air as far as planning and/or execution, so I’m keeping busy as I want no part of the discussion. I’m a 90% homebody, and am more than happy to remain home, and continue to clean up around the house.

I have a painting I’d like to start. I can finish a Ninja Turtle sculpt. I have my resin model kit stowed away for a quiet day. Plus there are only so many warm days left where I can comfortably work in the garage shop. If I could just get the burnable pile out of my way, and the kids kitchen sent north, I’d have room in there for the winter, as that is where my wife’s blue patio bench goes from November until April. If I keep the garage clean then I have room to walk around the upended bench. Just not with a massive box of cut offs, and a children’s kitchen play set there too.

A constant game of Tetris is being played with our belongings inside our home. Unless we buy a bigger house, build an addition, or purge a whole lot of “stuff”, the house will always be small. I don’t see us having the art station, and multiple doll houses in the living room for too many more years. Space will eventually open up. Just after the kids have grown out of all this cutsie kids stuff. Boo! Boo-urns! I want the space, but don’t want my kids to grow up too fast.

Likely all of the baskets of glitter, stamps, stickers and paints will go by way of the dodo at roughly the same time. They will want tech items like a Switch, tablet, or smart phone. Maybe make-up and even more clothes, shoes, and hair products. That’s future me’s problem.

Happy Saturday of the long Thanksgiving weekend. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts. Ciao Bella.

As we travel farther from the sun in our elliptical orbit these mornings are going to get down right cold in a hurry. Oh we may have a warm spell that keeps things toasty between 11:00am and 3:00pm, but don’t you doubt for a second that WINTER IS COMING! I have to adjust my schedule to include defrosting the vehicle windows, soon to add scrapping off ice, and clearing snow from the driveway too. Yikes. It’s all downhill from here until we finish out the year. Not to mention the kids now need sweaters, long pants, socks, oh my the socks! Jackets, hats, and mittens. Soon to be boots, full on winter coats, snow pants, neck ring scarves, gloves of all shapes and sizes, toques and more. Once winter really hits, the mornings fill up fast with so many additional details, tasks, and moments of panic. Sounds like fun to me.

Friday is here. The long weekend is here too. My nephew, whom is two years of age, broke his foot the day before yesterday, so I don’t think they are heading north for Thanksgiving. And the weather is to be cold, rainy, and unpleasant so I don’t think my inlaws are going either. So we may have a very rare Thanksgiving weekend not closing up the cottage and winterizing all of the motorized things. Next weekend we are off to Rama for a show, so that’s out too. Might have to go up mid week to do any of those tasks if we catch a dry & warm patch some time soonish.

I for one am fine with it. I like being home. This is where my stuff is. This is where I am most comfortable. We still have the farm, and grandma’s house, and the nephew/niece we can visit with (although the boy is down with a singular broken bone in his foot). Tough luck from a random tumble he took with his tiny two year old wobbly legs. He’ll bounce back, at that age the bones are soft, plyable, and easily mended.

If we are home then we can dig up and dry off the Dahlias that are all over the property. I can do one morning of leaves with the mulcher back pack bagger. If we’re all home anyway, then that might make sense to do. I could find a matinee for the kids to go see. Or walk the dog someplace we’ve never gone to spice things up. I don’t know, it’s all up in the air right now. No firm plans have been decided yet.

We could, as a family clean this house back to how nice it looked prior to the Markham Fair entry creation bonanza. Get all the paper, popsicle sticks, glue sticks, glitter, rocks, glue guns, foam pieces, and whatever else organized and put away back where they belong. Make it so we can see/use the island counter top, and dining room table top for eating on once again. I don’t know, that could be fun? Right? Yeah – right. No chance.

I’m still riding the high from garbage day where I managed to get 200lbs worth of scrap metal taken away. It had been stored, and taking up space in the garage for years. Doors, light fixtures, rusted tool box, planer stand, old lawn mower handle bits, broken lawn wind ornament, busted stroller, old engine from another lawn mower, aluminum wheel braces, and whatever else I could manage to move by myself on short notice. All gone. I have regained all of that space on my shelves. It’s wonderful. I wish I could have gotten the old water softener, and brine tank out too, but it’s all plastic, resin, fiberglass and not really metal, so no chance the scrap folks would have taken it. Plus it’s super heavy, and my inlaws have my dolly (still). I don’t fancy putting my back out to lift both of those items out of my basement by myself. I have straps and ratchets so it wouldn’t come off the dolly, but not a task I can just walk away from once I get it onto the staircase. Stairs are too narrow, and too often used to abandon a heavy object on to rest up and try again later. This is a time when a straight walk out basement would have been very, very handy. No such luck here I’m afraid.

On the other hand I did clear a bunch of crap out from the garage! Yeah buddy! Got some old bags removed from a closet in the basement too. It’s all coming up aces (eventually). Now if I could get the two boxes full of burnable cut off scraps up to the cottage, and the children’s play kitchen taken up there too, I’d be jumping for joy. There’s always something that needs doing, so my celebration period is rather short after each task completes successfully. Sorting and organizing. Throwing away broken, dried up, ruined crafting materials. Recycling papers, and emptying drawers. These are the things I both love to do (reclaim the storage space) but hate to do (so tedious, and why am I the only one who cares about us keeping all this crap anyway?) But I digress.

Since it’s such a chilly morning, I’m going to wait until closer to eleven to walk the dog at the farm. Either that, or I need to find long johns and a scarf. I don’t fancy a cold blast to the mouth. Twenty plus years of Crohn’s has not done my teeth any favours. Can you say “sensitivity aversion”. Because I can. Five months out of the year I speak it’s vile name whilst in despicable nerve pain. Fun times.

And on that bomb shell, I bid you adieu. Ciao Bella!

So many awful things happening in the state of Florida. Not just hurricane Milton but off shoot tornadoes as well, how very unlucky. Tidal surges of up to fifteen feet in additional height, wind gusts up to 180 MPH, and everything associated with flooding, and high winds damage. It does feel a bit like voyeurism sitting in our comfy, dry home a thousand miles away watching this stuff unfold on CNN. I think my wife just gets a kick out of seeing Anderson Cooper suffer out in the elements every so often when she knows he’s worth 50 million easy, and his family had a couple hundred billion back in their heyday.

We had like three inches of snow melt flood our basement nearly a decade ago, and all the flooring, about 2 ft of drywall on every wall had to come out. Rugs, books, clothes that went mouldy all had to get tossed. Furniture was warped and ruined. It happened while we were away in Florida of all things. Small world. So I can’t imagine the ruin of 15 feet worth of sewage, salt water, dead bodies, and general sludge would do to your average home. Storm shutters, stilts, and cinderblocks be damned I guess.

My father inlaws place in the Keys is set to only get 1-3 ft of surge waters, so perhaps the bbq will float away, and the hot tub will shift across the property line, or fill up with crud, but it’s a storm the place should weather. It gets bolted up tight, strapped down, and chained for all it is worth, right down into the coral foundations upon which it is situated. Unlike Irma, this particular storm was bad farther north up the state, towards Tampa Bay. I hope Busch Gardens fares well, and the animals are all ok!

It feels pretty wild to watch houses break up, and float away on live television. Not much you can do when mother nature gets riled up, and wants to unleash hell. Best to not make things worse! Much like Neil Degrasse Tyson, I too am surprised we’ve never found a way to harness the power of major storms like these to produce energy for ourselves. Just think of all the gigawatts left unharnessed when these category 3, 4, 5’s roll by blowing shit up unmolested. Now there’s a humanitarian project. Imagine portable power generators placed in the path of upcoming storms generating energy to be used by clean up crews, towns, cities while they repair themselves, captured from the very storms that ruined the area. Oh to dream.

I still don’t quite understand why they feel the need to place live anchors out into the storms for video coverage. The wind, and rain makes the audio terrible, and the poor people can hardly hear what’s being asked of them, or said during their on air segments. It’s a weird form of torture for on air personalities. Pay back for the cushy desk job? I don’t really know.

I think it was after hurricane Maria that we ventured down to the Keys about four months after the storm passed by, when we saw first hand just how much debris, and damage was caused. Belongings piled up down the roads, trees, leaves, and brush piles forty feet tall on the vacant lots, just endless miles of garbage piles waiting to be trucked out to somewhere else. It was wild. Smelled kinda funky too. My father in law had to pull out the entire kitchen, appliances, flooring, drywall, light fixtures, just about everything and start again. He made the floors vinyl tiles that would weather the salt water, and could be pulled up & washed thoroughly of bacteria etc… then get put back when the sub flooring was replaced. The surge waters wound up pouring in over the top of the door. Otherwise the first nine feet of the surge was unnoticed. Tough luck on that one.

Thursday today. I folded and put away about five loads of the girls laundry yesterday. Didn’t take me the whole 90 minutes like I was expecting, but it did take me 75, so I was pretty, pretty, pretty close in my estimation. The house is getting cooler too. I’m trying to not turn on the furnace yet. I think the next step is to close the windows entirely. All September the windows were wide open. Then I left them all open just a crack. Next is shut them up tight, and then we can think about the furnace. That first burning of dust is so smelly. I swapped out the furnacevfilter last Friday, so that’s still good for another 90 days, or there about. We will have a warmer period coming, there usually is another 10-21 days of 11°C/17°C sunny days coming in late October and early November. That’s when I do the bulk of the leaves. Though, truth be told I did mulch up at least two bagging days worth with the mower because I wasn’t in the mood to start leaves just yet. I have no other choice for the rest of October, as I have all of our Halloween decorations up on the lawn, and wired in. Now I will have to bag up the leaves, as I can’t use the lawn mower with all that fabric lying around, and guide wires stuck out of the ground. The grass atleast isn’t doing too much right now anyway. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

I do not know if it’s a clinical thing or not but when the temperature dips below 11°C my calves, knees, thighs, lower back, and chest itch like a son of a gun. I can do the same walk from May to September with nary an issue, get into October and I’ll wind up having to scratch myself raw from all of the itching. Like a flipped switch, all is good, to every nerve in my lower extremities itches so, so very badly. I kinda hate it. So I either have to wait to walk the fog a bit later in the say down at the farm, only after the sun is fully risen, and warmed up, or I need to bust out the thermal wear, and bundle up from here on out until May 1st. Yay! Fun.

It is Wednesday today, and I have a mound of laundry to sort that’s about four feet tall, and six feet in diameter. The fair really 8nterrupted our household for four days. I was still washing clothes, just not putting them away. The girls were still wearing new clothes (obviously), so the pile just grows and grows. I need my stereo for this job, it’ll likely take about 90 minutes to sort between the three of them, then hang every thing up in the appropriate closets. Whee!

Let us pray the dog got enough exercise to not be a pest while I put all these clothes away. Loud music to the rescue!