Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

It’s promotion day, which means testing in patterns, one step sparring, combat, and board breaking exercises. Lots of fun to be had. I’m here to be a cheerleader, and not a critic. Smiles, clapping and a big ole thumbs up from me this morning.

Main street was a mess due to all the kiddie trick or treaters walking around town. Could have done without that on my way to the belt test. We made it on time with just a few minutes to spare. The group ahead of us was moving slowly when it came time to do the board breaking portion. No matter.

My eldest did her thing, with confidence and some SNAP to it. Very proud of herself for doing the things. And for doing them well.

New client with all new designs needed, and a new format for how the project will come together. Once the leg work is done, any other comparative year report will go faster because I’ll have everything I need to build it out already on the pages. Assuming, that is, that they ask the same, or similar questions year over year. They don’t always do that. Covid was a big hiccup and it made some serious changes to questions being asked to respondents attending video/on line events, versus their in person counter parts from years previous. But I digress.

This client has fabulous photography, and an interesting colour palette/scheme that I have not used before. To the best of my knowledge anyway. Makes for a fun, but fraught building experience. I’m a bit rusty (once again) so it can take a day or two to hit my stride. Add in each individual page build up from my standard template and that is more hours spent than usual. No biggie. Of the four reports I knew were coming, this was out of the blue. I like additional work, especially here deep into the year in the fourth quarter. Now I don’t expect to make up the short fall gap between the quiet first 3 quarters compared to last year, but to decrease that gap in the closing months would be of great help to me.

I’m going to finish these three pages I’m on, then eat, and come back to it. I still need to wrap a present for a child’s birthday party this afternoon, so I have to make time for that too. Get along little Friday!

I have 100 small-ish craft pumpkins for my kids school to use for a fundraiser during their Fall Fair on Friday. I did not have the time to wash all one hundred, so I will need to knock some mud off as the SJC students take them inside for me. I moved all one hundred myself – twice. I don’t fancy doing so a third time. Once for gathering them up into a pile when out in the patch. Twice to get from the patch into my vehicle stationed some twenty feet away. I don’t care to move them through the whole school to a holding spot before use. Call me lazy if you wish, but I don’t care. You want them for free, you bring the labour to move them to their final destination. That’s how I feel.

I do have some running around to do today. Namely the pumpkin drop, grocery shop, gift pick up, dog cone purchase, or a surgery onesie for our puppy whom will travel to Vaughan on Monday to lose the change in his coin purse. Neutering. That’s what I’m driving at. Hopefully he takes it well, and isn’t too distraught by the time I go get him later that day.

My latest large project is in! I can pick up on that today once all my running around is done. More invoices to go out, the better chance I have for money to come in! Yeah buddy. It’s not ALL about the Benjamins as they say, but dollar dollar bills y’all, they help a lot. Food, gas, furnace filters, oil changes, everything takes more and more money.

In a moment I will call the school, then pull up and drop these orange fools off. Take a bunch of weight out of the car, and get my shopping bag space back so I can get groceries for this nearly completed week. Short week is all out of sorts!

It looks like my last hour plus of leaf bagging never happened. This! This is why I wait until November once all the leaves have come down. I hate not being able to see my progress. Waste of time, even though it isn’t,  not really. They have to come up at some point, but I’d like a clear lawn for at least a day to prove to my neighbours that I have in fact cleared out lot. C’est la vie.

In other news I have all 100 mini pumpkins in hand for my daughters school fall fair this Friday. Those are currently waiting patiently in the back row of the van. Once I get those out of the way then I can go grocery shopping, and pick up birthday presents for all the parties we have coming up this weekend. Weekend is going to be chock a block full of activities. Birthday bash Friday night, then on Saturday we have belt testing for taekwondo, trick or treating session in the town square, a late afternoon birthday party to finish it all off.

Can’t seem to tell if a component has a signal or not when it most definitely does. The only item that consistently works is the LG bluray player. I did get the Xbox to come on for a short time until I had to go and do something else, but the cable box has been unreliable so far today. It did for a brief spell come on, and I thought the issue was fixed, but once I put the laundry in, and came back to turn on the tv to eat lunch it has been unable to read both visual & audio feeds. Fun times. Maybe it’s almost time for a new family tv. This one is pretty old by technology standards. Nearly 12-14 years old at best guess, and it was second hand to us in the first place. Add it to the list. Happy tuesday.

Things were looking pretty drab around here with the leaves going brown and falling off the trees with no pleasant colour shifts. But that all changed once we had our first frost, and then a warm and sunny day combination event, so now we have colours y’all! Vibrant yellows, oranges, reds, and greens, brown, purples and such. Beautiful again.

It’s Monday, and a PA Day, so I have the kids at home for the next roughly eight hours by myself! Yeah! Should I have them scrub toilets, wash the bathtub, sweep, vacuum & mop the floors, do a load of their own laundry, sort a bag of socks, clean their rooms (again). Pull weeds out of the front garden as none of the gardening has gotten done recently with all of the activity we’ve seen in the last three weeks or more. Cleaning out the front yard beds would be good for us. A little sun shine. Some helping hands. A bonding experience that also helps out the household. I could start on some leaves too. Tie the dog up out front with us, and everybody’s happy(ish), right?.

Spent six hours at Wonderland yesterday, when we only meant to do about three. Oops. I tried out two rides that I would have previously skipped due to heavy focus on simply rotating around a central column. Something which typically triggers my motion sickness. But I have gotten away with a few spinning rides as of late, and came away no worse for wear. I dare not try some of the three axis spon rides I did in my youth as motion sickness tends to stick around for six or more hours now that I’m in my forties. I can do without that.

I think we will pick some pumpkins later today at the farm, and keep it all low key. Perhaps some homework, reading and writing too? Who knows. All I know is that our street is multicoloured again, and the sky is blue, the sun is out, and the crispy fallen leaves need to get mulched up for the season! Ciao Bella.

Sunny Sunday spent at the park enjoying never before ridden amusement rides, Windseeker, and Thunder Hawk. Two spin rides I have previously ignored due to motion sickness concerns. Added to the repertoire as of today. W00t-W00t!

Haven’t hit a since Halloween Haunt event yet this season, so we’ll be back before the switch over to Winterfest. Get our money’s worth on food, drinks, parking.

The kids randomly have another PA Day on this coming Monday, so it’s another short week at school for them. And I am left to think of something to do. There is paid programming available at $70.00 a pop, but is it worth $140.00 plus tax to keep the kids occupied during regular work hours? Or should I use a quarter of that on a great lunch for us, and keep them occupied myself using dog walks, the pumpkin patch, the pumpkin stand, the park, and their devices?. Probably the better bet. I had notice of a new large project coming my way that I was not previously aware of. Cool beans! Mo money, mo money, mo money!

I wish they still did week day matinees, or had adventure parks nearby. One of my vehicle bearings, rotors, or some such sounds “grindy”, so I don’t really want to go anywhere out of town incase it gives out and we have to walk home, get towed across town to the mechanic’s shop. The presence of the dog adds a complication.

I wanted to dig up our Dahlias today before we head over to the show this afternoon, but with extended family coming, and a previously unplanned visit to the LTC added into the mix, I might have to wait until Sunday afternoon, or Monday to get it done.

What’s funny is the kids will have yet another PA Day in the middle of November too. Really front end loading the school year with days off. Seems like they would be better having those days in may & June when it gets really stinking hot, and the final report cards need to be written up. But that’s just my opinion.

Have a great Saturday full of sunshine, and just a touch of autumn warmth. May the brilliantly coloured leaves be crispy, and the spiced drinks be the perfect temperature. Ciao Bella!

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!