Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

I have sculpts I’d like to finish, and a new one to begin for the fall fair (which will need to be painted aswell). I have a table to refinish, and four Walnut legs to build for said table. I need to purge a couple of years worth of junk from the house once the kids are back at school. Closets to thin out due to over stocking sweaters and pants. Shoes and boots to donate. Coats to sort out, and donate that which won’t fit my kids. And I have my eyes turned towards building more war gaming terrain.

Last year I ordered some texture rollers from Green Stuff world, and I intend to use them to help me build a ruined castle on a hill, with a river cut through it all. Only a 2ft by 2ft board to add to my other four. But this should offer me some new challenges. Grass, rocks, river bed, water, stone, mortar, and trees etc… I can make it playable levels, with a basement, main floor(s), and tower. I do need to start sketching up ideas, rather than fly blind. It could be a difficult build if I go at it half cocked. May have to order some supplies I’ve wanted from War Gaming Scenics , or whomever is still in business these days. Maybe some rock moulds. A grass applicator. New grasses, trees and flowers too. Could be another pipe dream.

I do have my eye on a new to me, but used Bandsaw still. If work picks up a little more deeper into summer, and throughout the fall & winter I can probably swing one or the other. New terrain build of top notch quality, or a newer, larger bandsaw for my wood shop hobby. Either way it’s going to be the tits!

I have home DIY projects to do, like power wash the back deck, and all of our exterior windows. Need to get the nozzle off the hose to be able to do that, or buy yet another new length of hose, just for my pressure washer. Since my current hand gun nozzle has seized onto the end of my only remaining water hose. I might just have to cut it off, the nozzle that is. The springs are shot, and the trigger is nolonger responsive. It has significant lag to it. Joy’s of home ownership, and property maintenance.

I really should spend a day to finish my childrens book. Get that put up on here, along with my two other books, though those two books are collected short stories. But they are books I’ve written. This third one is illustrated though. And meant for kids. My shorts are definitely not aimed at the youths. Oh no. Not at all. I can only imagine now just how long this children’s book has been in my thoughts. Five or six years by now. I’m slow rolling it for sure. I’m no GRRM, but I am taking my sweet ass time with it. Ha.

Half way into summer break now, how are you all coping with your kids, and spouses? Especially if you are married to a teacher, how you holding up? Are they starting to gear up for back to school shenanigans? Have a great Saturday, and long weekend. Ciao Bella.

And I’m happy as punch about it to! It’s also a long weekend, with a civic holiday on Monday. Means we are into the final weeks of summer break, and back to school commercials are about to flood the airwaves. See you in September! See you when the sun is through. I both love & hate this time of year. I wish for it all winter long, and then despise the sweltering heat when I’m ten days into a twenty one day heat wave / drought combo. I’m hard to please.

I did manage to get a hefty project off before the month of July concluded. Which is a big deal when you get rusty during lull periods. We still knocked it out of the park though! Score. Potentially winning more business in the process. Love to hear it! Also my other clients are bringing in some more work too, which is more than welcome. French language versions of projects we built in English. I’ll take that work! Is usually a bit tougher as the french language is a bit wordier than English. So Tetris skills are a must, to pack it all in there!

My kids are doing swimming lessons once more, so they are physically exhausted after class. A good thing! My oldest now has to do 3 x 100m laps using three different stroke techniques. Plus a full minute of hands out of the water, for treading water. She is usually rather emotional after all that exercise. Can’t say that I blame her really. I’d want to cry too.

I think today might be a quieter one with the holiday weekend and all. But I can’t make any definite calls one way or the other. If I’m needed, I’m around today anyway. All bets are off on Monday of the holiday.

Have a great last long weekend during the summer, until Labour Day that is! Ciao Bella.

Putting the water trampoline together myself in the scorching mid morning sun was a testament to how much fluid a body can sweat out in a short period of time. But we got it all set, and floated out into the lake without issue. I wonder if the spring guard got put on though? I didn’t check. Could need another few mi utes of work to officially call it done.

You know what that means! Sending out invoices, booyah! Yeah-buddy. Turning all of those clickity- hours on the keyboard into a living wage, or at least a supplement to one. As I have previously mentioned Earnings are WAY down compared to last year. Which I think makes that year a fluke. Shame. I could have gotten used to having some disposable income just lying around. A fair dinkum bit of belt tightening going around this year, believe you, me.

Going away for 41 days over three separate months didn’t help, so no surprise there. I had saved for the trip, but failed to account for clients going a bit cool on the idea of my absences. Live and learn. My computer is now more than 10 years old, so I must purchase a more portable laptop work station, which will mean the option to work when traveling, if I must.

Now if everyone paid me during the same week for June/July work I’d be able to get a machine without too much worry, but that never happens. So I’ll need to think of a good way to do it, or scale back a couple spec’s on my desired new computer. A balancing act, if you will.

Wednesday,  hump day, middle of the week day! It’s here, and the weather has turned out better than first expected. It was absolutely pouring down at 5:00am when I took the dog out for a pee. He didn’t care much for the rain, and neither did I. Can’t blame him.

So, new news… weight loss plan is taking effect. I’m currently down from 213lbs at Christmas, to 203lbs by end of June, and 198lbs as of today. Slow going for sure. I’d like to end up around 165/170 lbs, but that is going to require my actually being active, and not just focused on what, when, and how I eat. More bike riding, skate boarding, dog walking, swimming, and hitting up a gym for weights if I can manage it. That was the part of Crossfit I really liked, all of the olympic style lifting. Good for the bones, if you do it properly, and not for vanity. I did my lower back in being an idiot, so we’ll not try to do any of that nonsense again.

I’d take up running again, except I hate it, and my knees and ankles beg me not to harm them any further. Running on a padded track is one thing, running on uneven roads is another. Whatever, I need to find something besides “wishing” that can make it happen. Let me sleep on it. Ha.

Chloe Daniel’s of Sutton is part of the women’s team canada in the rugby sevens category. They just beat out France & Australia to move against New Zealand for the Gold Medal, or potentially a Silver. Great work ladies. Very proud!

**1:45pm – Gold Medal match for women’s rugby sevens is about to begin, team canada is present! Best of luck ladies!**

Canada ahead 12-7 late in the first half. Very intense 7 minutes of play so far.

They lose it 19-12. Silver medal awarded! Still a great showing.

Anti climactic finish to a gold medal bout. I don’t know the first thing about judo, it’s scoring, or the rules, so the golden time means nothing to me. Same with the three yellow card / penalties, and the red card disqualification. Seems a shame to be awarded the win off of a random penalty, but whatever.

Back to Monday, and into the fray once more.

Usually the Olympics would be on our tv all day long, but I missed 99% of the opening ceremonies, and have only sat down to watch the ladies 4 x 100m relay, and a men’s race. No heats, no nothing. I have caught a few seconds of Judo, beach volleyball, and basketball, but nothing from start to finish.

I’ve just turned on the tv this morning to catch the closing seconds of a women’s cycling race, looks like mountain biking. The french are certainly doing fairly well this year. I saw the french men’s rugby sevens team beat Fiji to a pulp 26 to 7 in their gold medal match. Oof. Big win/loss there, depending on whom you were cheering for.

My oldest daughter has renewed her vigor for track and field, so we took an hour to hop on down to the area track to do some warm up laps, stretch, and do a timed 200m dash. She clocked in at 40.97, down from the 41.87 zhe did just before her big race day back in May. Today was a cold start, and she took off a bit slow due to my hand signals being obscured by a rep soccer team playing on the field in view between us. I think she might have cracked 39 sec if she’d had the better start. I told her that if she wanted to run more to practice, I would help. I’ll drive, time keep, encourage, and get beverages, but I can’t run the race, or make you want to do it. So as long as it’s something she leads, I’ll help. But I’ll not be taking the lead like some back seat stage mom. No living vicariously through others achievements!  Don’t expect me to drag YOU there, but if you ask to go, I’m here to help. Comprende?

I always felt like getting back into wrestling whenever I saw the winter olympics, or a UFC fight. I enjoyed it a great deal in both junior high, and high school. Now it’s all MMA, BJJ or some form of combat karate. Not my jam. I do want to get into better shape to stay healthy, but combats not my path. No punches or kicks to the head for me, thanks. I liked the running, and mat work. The bout after bout of trying new techniques, and dry run of move sets. Didn’t care for the testicle squashing singlet, but otherwise I had a good deal of fun. I’m very fortunate, no injuries, and no coaching shower shenanigans.

I’m fairly certain today is Sunday. Beautiful warm sunny day out. Pool is partially shaded this early in the day, so we should be able to avoid sunburns. It’ll be time to eat lunch soon enough. Best be about my day! Ciao Bella.

6,300 plus photos to be exact. Which I desperately need to organize and eliminate repeats, blurred images, or subject matter which I don’t care for all that much. Why so many sunsets? Empty lake photos? Pictures of my old dog asleep? WTF? But the idea of reviewing all 6,300 images in sequence to delete a thousand or more depressed me deeply. Every few weeks I try to slim the horde down, but I’m constantly taking more, and more. I can’t attack the videos, so it has to be the photos. There is nothing else stored on my phone that takes up so much internal storage space, by a very wide margin. Ugh. Fine, I’ll do it. See you in about 10 hours time.

**After 2 rounds of whittling I’m down to 5,034 photos, from the 6,300 or more that I had to begin with. I realize now that I have spent countless hours over the years pruning these photo sets, so I don’t have much wiggle room in which to manoeuvre. If I want to save space, then I have to be ruthless. I’m not there yet. Cutting 1,000 images out of my collection is a good start, but I am not convinced I need to pare it down much more for the sake of an 8 year old phone. Could be time to upgrade after all this time!**

It only took a month but my youngest is finally ready to tackle the third, largest, and final set. So obviously after step eighteen she is taking a break, and we will lose a piece if she wait too long to put it together. Fun times.

My wife’s year off draws to a close in one month so she has chosen to lose her mind over it. So that’s a tonne of fun. Usually it’s a sadness over summer co.ing to an end, but this is fourteen months of sabbatical ending, so the “big feelings” are compounded (x7). Whee!

In all seriousness I know she didn’t get the year she wanted. There was a family death, farm obligations, trip delays, health issues, and a lack of field trips which she had hoped to attend, but there were few to none offered to either child’s class. I know she read voraciously, which I’d put in the win column. We had a vast number of lunch dates. We even recently picked up a new puppy which my wife chose. No we didn’t purge the house like I’d hoped. No we didn’t deep clean the house like I’d thought we would, but you know what, it’s easier done by one person, and I’ll do those things in September, and no harm done.

My busy period is about to kick in, more so than the last two weeks, which hits right at the peak of summer fun times (which annoys my wife to no end) but it would be the same if I worked in an office, and couldn’t work remotely when I felt like it. Yes I miss boat rides, and mid day play time, but I manage to make short appearances to see the kids have fun throughout the day.

I have forgone working on my table refinishing project during my lull period so that I could do more with the kids, and at the farm for the in-laws. If I get a chance to, I will pick that project back up in September too. I’d like to get the table into the basement and ready for use by November of this year. I think that’s doable. Fingers crossed.

This is the last Friday in July, and next week is the Gemboree, so that should be a fun time. All sorts of sparkling things, and fossils, and rock hound tools to gawk at. Expensive as zhit, but a nice time to go hang out with the family on the long weekend, and mooch about looking at stuff, all without a care in the world. Bliss.

I cut my grass again, it is still lush & green, in late July! This is so weird. Normally it’s a fire hazard. Just tinder waiting for an errant cigarette butt to ignite it. No so again this year. Four inches tall, thick, green, and damp as a moist oyster. Chef’s kiss! Muah!

Getting back deep into my excel spreadsheet groove takes quite some doing. Not really there yet. Still slow going at this stage. However, I am happy to announce, I am drawing ever closer to being three quarters of the way through this document. I’m on to page 70, so that is a ein, even if it doesn’t exactly feel like one.

Long reports feel like you are making no progress at all until you can suddenly see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s all a mind game. I can see the lines of the spreadsheet disappearing under my hours of work, but it all looks so similar it feels like going nowhere. Early visual wins are key here, otherwise it can be very easy to feel defeated, and slow right down, which adds to the feeling of never getting ahead.

Frequent rest breaks, a walk about, and snacks go a long way to brighten my mood too. So snack on that! Bam!

Another eight hour day should put this mostly to bed. Followed by tweaks, soft proofing, and a review of my own. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!