Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

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Sunday is here already. I feel as though I didn’t see much of Saturday. Could be the three hour long movie I chose to watch, or the six hours I spent working. I saw the sunshine though, so that’s got to count for something these days. I need to sort the kids laundry and put that away. Proof my work again, and send that off for review. Finish watching The Return of the King. Make myself some breakfast. Actually get out of bed (mm, so comfy). I could play my guitar, or crank up the tunes for a loud, long, sing along session at a decibel of my own choosing. So many options. I could continue to watch The Bear (so good), of which I am like the last person to actually watch it. Or I can scroll through YouTube watching tool restorations, engine fixes, wood working project builds, or endless shorts about anything, and nothing in particular. Not doom scrolling, but watching other people make stuff can almost, kinda, sorta scratch an itch about making things myself.

I got into the garage shop to tear down the old change table. I reclaimed the actual wood portions, and have use of the flat boards, and other bits. I feel like I want to pull all of my chisels down off the walls to put them in drawers. I want to reorganize some more. I just can’t seem to figure out where I want everything. Also we have lots of household junk in there I want to throw away, but can’t. I’ll have to take the bulk of it to the dump. Old blow moulded tool cases, very old car seats, old strollers, tote boxes of inflatable water park parts. We stole the blower unit to run our other indoor inflatable park set at the cottage. It was so big it needed a second 600CFM blower to keep it upright with children on it. More doors, an old dining room table, old light box for tube lights, and an old bed frame from my college days of using a futon. If I had a giant bin I could fill it pretty easily. Especially if it would take old paints too. This house gifted us ten to twenty mostly empty paint cans, full of old oil paint. The kind you have to pay to dispose of. Very nicely done. Hidden under the basement stairs for us to find.

I’ve been looking for an inexpensive tool cabinet to put my chisels in for a while now. I don’t honestly know if that change would be an improvement or not. Not having to reach over other items to grab them would be handy. Protection from dust would be a plus. But is that enough to warrant $200.00 on storage? I still have things to figure out in there. Like as I get older, do I want to make it a more versatile space? Do I want to try my hand at welding small things like legs for desks, and tables. Do I want to keep it as 80% wood shop? To resaw wood do I want the 1.75Hp bandsaw, or to do it via chainsaw, or with a hand saw, and several hours of labour per cut, per board. I maintain my mower in there, so I need to be able to manoeuvre & lift machinery that feels heavier every year that I touch it. The deck on my mower has a sizable hole, I’d love to patch that with a welded on bit of sheet metal. Do I upgrade the lathe, and drill presses, or let metal machining go as a fantasy dream that i have. Flights of fancy. To have either in here I’d need a shop crane to be able to move items like that around. But you have to be able to store said shop crane too. And eat the cost of buying one. All to move two specific items once or twice over the lifespan of having the machines. Wouldn’t exhaust fans, and climate control inside the shop be a better investment? Wouldn’t a flat roller friendly floor be money better spent? Wouldn’t insulated walls, and boards on the walls make it feel like a real shop? You know, or you can spend $1,500.00 on a bench top mill, and $2,500.00 on a Southbend lathe.

For now it’s just a time consuming day dream. Hunting for bits on-line while never really taking the leap towards buying any of it. I’ve been looking at/for a snowblower the same way for four years. I have a moment of pause when an item costs upwards of a thousand dollars. That’s always been a real tough threshold for me, money wise. I can’t spend that kinda money without thinking about it really hard. In the back of my mind I always think “You know these good times don’t last forever, you need to have some sort of buffer that can last you months incase all the work dries up, and you still have these bills to pay, food to buy, and responsibilities to keep”. Plus I don’t want to incur any debts. I’ve been there, under the mountain, clawing to get out from under it. That’s a horrible way to live. So once I got out from under it, I’ve stayed away from debt owing. I have monthly subscriptions for my business, but I don’t let debts languish on my credit card. If I did then I’d have to go work for someone else full time, and go back to commuting every week, and see my family far less than I am currently able. If I live modestly and within my means, then I can avoid all that. Seems very worthwhile to me to stay out of debt, and have a less constrained life because of it.

Good gracious, I’m a bloviating blatherer of platitudes today. I must be hungry. It’s ten thirty, and I still have things to do today! Thanks for reading along. Ciao Bella.

A Lord of the Rings rewatch.

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Started off last evening with The Fellowship of the Ring, and now watching The Two Towers. And tomorrow after I finish putting all of the kids laundry away I will watch The Return of the King. I do enjoy watching these three films every few years. I take long enough inbetween viewings to forget all the finer points, so that I can enjoy it in full when I do sit down to watch all nine hours of the three movies. I don’t have it in me to watch them all in a row in one day. That’s too much for me. But one a day over three days (technically), now that’s a doable feat for me. I have just enough attention span for that.

I spent four or five hours last night working, and another six today, getting my edits done for the report I have on the books. A little more fine tuning tomorrow and I’ll be all caught up. I did spend a little while today taking apart the door knobs of the main floor bathroom, and my eldest daughters bedroom . Had to adjust the spring/reset tension on the door latches. They stick in, and the knobs spin when they shouldn’t. The set screws aren’t keeping the knobs immobilized to work the mechanisms. I cleaned them off a bit, and took some pressure off so I hope to have fixed the issue. Though weak set screws is beyond me. I don’t have the skills, know-how, nor machinery to make deeper, and stronger biting set screws. I’d love a machine lathe, and a milling machine, but both are out of reach to me at this precise moment in time. I could tear down my wood lathe and swap it for a Southbend metal lathe, because I can do wood turning on a metal lathe. A tad unconventional, but workable. I can not however turn metal on my wood lathe. I also need to readjust my work space to accommodate a mill/drill to replace my bench top drill press. Space and power needs limit me considerably. But I digress. I was talking about rewatching movies.

After I completed a read through of the entire Harry Potter series, speaking it aloud to my daughter at bed time, I had hoped to eventually follow it up with The Lord of the Rings. But we read four of the five Percy Jackson & the Olympians books and then my daughter was able to read by herself and she found her own books to get caught up in. Although, truth be told, the elvish names gave me pause when thinking about reading all three books out loud. In my head I shortened them for ease of reading, and that doesn’t work aswell when reciting long written works. I hope that ship hasn’t sailed, but we could potentially watch the movies together atleast.

Costumes, mugs of “ale”, bread and meats to snack on. Make a real meal of it. Could be a fun way to share it with my oldest.

In other news we shall have one funeral to attend in the next week or two. Things progressed slightly quicker towards the end there, than we were expecting. Sad. But expected. Still caught me off guard when I heard. Hug your loved ones, nothing is guaranteed. Ciao Bella.

Used the PA Day to

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Play with the kids while they were home and wanting to be outdoors and active. I took them skating to a friends backyard rink for an hour, and then had a park play date later on in the afternoon. It was cool, breezy, and very wet. Kids loved it. Now I need to work over the weekend to complete the last (but significant) edits to my report, which affects the tables. It’ll be a long repetitive process with lots of fiddly bits to keep track of. I’ve had a brief lie in. I will eat breakfast, and then I’ll get stuck in I suppose.

I get a second try at a Saturday today, which is kind of nice. Best spend it working! I have no wheels as the van is sitting idle. It needs a new radiator part, about $350.00 worth roughly. So as to not further injure the vehicle it shall sit unused until such time as I can get my mechanic to repair it. So no road trips to the store for me this weekend. I can attempt to fix (again) the bathroom door handles, and hinges. Best finish my paid work first though, before I tackle any DIY home repairs.

I feel bad I didn’t go to the cottage but I really do have a lot to get done to reorganize these tables. This is when I wish I had an assistant I could delegate work to. But just me, so I need to remedy the issue. No risk no reward!

From the looks of it we’ll have a sunny Saturday morning atleast. Pretty bright out through the curtains. Take it easy. Hug your loved ones. Ciao Bella!

Yet Another Friday PA Day.

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Have to keep something in your pocket for just such an occasion. I think ours is going skating with friends this morning, to run the kids ragged out on the ice. Helmets and sticks, chasing pucks around for an hour should do the kids some good. I’m in the midst of a debate about whether or not to spend time today with the kids, or if I need to knuckle under for all the edits I have for both of my concurrent reports. I could be at them for a few days, so maybe a morning with the girls would be ok. Hard to say, I’m torn between wanting to get this big job off my desk, but I also know the girls are only little once, and missing out on making memories really sucks. Responsibility to my business & clients versus the responsibility of being a present and involved parent. Hard balance to strike on some days, especially PA Days when they’re off for the whole day, and here with us (me). But then tomorrow is the weekend and I’ll see them for 48 hrs unhindered (possibly, lots of one type of style choice to enact across all tables).

Dentist visit yesterday was not much fun. My back left molar and gum is sore from them patching an old filling of theirs that fell out. They really had to pull on my cheek, and jaw to get back there. Muscles are sore, and even with Tylenol it was a challenge to sleep. I don’t particularly care for a frozen mouth. The numbing agent lasted about five hours or more. Luckily I did not chew on my cheeks, lips, or tongue. That’s a small blessing atleast. But they did poke and touch my gum line while working at the back of my mouth and that is not feeling so nice today.

Lunch yesterday was a mess. Soup and a bagel were less than ideal choices for eating with a numb mouth. I should have eaten more before my appointment, but I was a bit nervous about those mouth numbing needles that go way up into the gum down to the nerves. Good grief those are not fun to endure. Lasts just a hair too long for my liking.

We gotta get out of here for an hour soon, and then I’ll tear into my report edits. Have a restful Friday PA Day, and Ground Hogs Day. The movie should play on an uninterrupted loop on every channel for 24 hours today. I think that would be hilarious. Ciao Bella!

Off To The Dentist.

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I have a mid morning appointment to fix an old filling today, so I’m not going to be much good. I hate having to wait for appointments. I feel paralyzed by the looming target time to get somewhere, park, and do the “thing“. I can’t get stuck in on any projects prior to the appointment because I might whiff on the appointment itself by being preoccupied, missing my alarms and warnings. I hate it so much, thanks. I hate knowing I can’t get in to, or stay in the groove if I start something because the appointment is there, waiting, to ruin my finely aligned firing synapses. Such a strange space. Way better to schedule appointments for first thing in the morning, then I end up with no lost time waiting for the thing to happen. Gladly I’m no longer scared of going to a dentist. I found one that is very accommodating.

It is now February! February first to be exact. One month down, and eleven left in the basket. Did I hit my weight loss, slash exercise goals? No. No I did not. But I was active, just not as much as I should have been. 90 minutes of dancing at a house party was the height of my activies. Lots of fun. I also never bothered with pre destined blog posts, as it seems I had enough to say otherwise. So no 52 weeks of predetermined essays or ruminations on a theme. I’m ok with that. Also, am reading for fun, though no longer attempting a 12 for 12 challenge. I don’t want the added pressure for a fun pass time. However, I still want to read as the mood takes me.

Lots going on with extended family and illnesses. Hard to plan when various family members are caught up in deteriorating cancer journeys. Whether it’s dementia or multi organ terminal cancer, our future looks to hold at least two funerals, and possibly a third. Not a pleasant thought to plan family vacations around.

My wife’s year off is quickly counting down, and all these extended family emergencies has sucked much of the fun out of it for my wife. Covid has put limits on our children’s school for field trips and such. Which I know my wife had hoped to participate in all this school year. In a few years time she will be able to do so again, and I hope everything is more cheerful by then.

On the other hand the van engine temperature gauge is all over the show. So either the thermostat is gone, or the head gasket has gone, or the hoses are leaking badly as the overflow reservoir was nearly empty. Luckily I had coolant on hand to refill it. The true sign is that the vents were blowing only cold air even after driving for twenty plus minutes in above freezing temps. Fingers crossed for the thermostat, and maybe one easy to reach hose, or fitting/clamp. Otherwise – yikes. I mean it could also be the fan, or a belt issue, or so I have read. I’m not a mechanic and these new fangle modern engines confound me. I’m not exactly tech savvy, nor mechanically inclined. Those diagnostic machines aren’t cheap!

What a funny little book.

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A mixture of Lord of the Flies, Swiss Family Robinson, and a pulp romance novel. Very of it’s time (1964). Though far less xenophobic/racist/classist than one might expect. Nice and short too. Action packed in a believable way. Sad. Touching. Moving even.

I do not remember buying this book, and the mech like machine on the front is very misleading, but still a solid read. I also loved that it came in under 300 pages.

I’m about to jump into book #3, called ‘Star Dragon’ by Mike Brotherton. It’s a little longer at 352 pages but I hope not to get bogged down by it, and that it reads easily, and is enjoyable. It came from my TBR pile, of which I still have many others if this one doesn’t grab me in the first 40-100 pages, or if it goes hard in the paint for either physics or math jargon. Both bore me, and will end up killing my enthusiasm for the book.

That’s all for today. I need to complete my first draft of my latest report today, and it looks like it’ll be close to 100 pages. So I need to knuckle down and get it done. Ciao Bella!

Shockingly Click Baity Gasp! And other such fun adventures.

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I’m in the midst of it now. One of the longest reports of the year is well underway. I figure with two more well paced, but urgent days I can have the first draft off my desk by late in the evening on Wednesday, assuming all goes to plan. I have a dentist appointment of my own on Thursday mid day, so I can’t really spend that day on it either. So it must get done! Had a very active friday with 32 pages, and a solid monday with 26 pages completed, and let us all pray I can keep up that pace. I’m looking at near, or around 100 pages total this go round. These winter reports are always the longest, and some of the most challenging projects I’ll undertake all year. I need the December lull to rest up my wrists for this shock & awe extravaganza of data, pies, charts, and tables. A real wrist burner of a document!

In other news, today is Tuesday. The last Tuesday of January. Almost one whole month of the new year down and in the books. Weird weather and all! Which reminds me, I need to grab some small Valentine’s Day gifts for my girls. When I next go grocery shopping I’ll find something to get them. Just to say I’m thinking about you. Nothing huge like a Nintendo Switch, or a new car. Think more along the lines of a new book, or a small Lego Set, a single chocolate egg, or a small stuffie with a heart on it. I mean sweet cheese Easter will be here before you know it, and that’s in March! Then tax time, then the May 2-4. Time keeps on coming.

A bit grey and gloomy today. I think we might get some flurries at some point. Hard to predict given how uneven our weather patterns have been the last several years. All those smoke filled orange forest fire hazes must have contributed a fair bit to these wild swings. I remember being at Wonderland with my oldest when the upper Canada fire smoke drifted southward to cover all of Vaughan. Hurt my eyes and throat. Not cool.

Cleaning house – On My Phone Edition. The “Do I care about this THAT much” episode #117

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My phone is fairly old by current technology standards and I have several thousand photos and videos of my immediate family. I constantly go through my 6,000 plus photos to whittle away all of the unnecessary triples, quadruples of shots that I have taken. But still I have gigabytes worth saved. I just went through my videos, and axed a bunch of them to free up some space. Random gift openings, dancing to the tv, back of the head type videos that I have not gone back to watch even once, beyond my fact finding mission to delete stuff and shore up some memory space. I feel bad pushing memories off into the ether like that, but it wasn’t wedding reception quality montage material we are talking about here. As I said, this phone is five or so years old by now, and showing the wear and tear. The worst looking phone I’ve ever owned. Dented, scratched, and for the first time ever, a cracked screen. I was aghast! Never have I ever cracked a screen before. Not until my youngest dropped it from her seat in a Longos grocery cart, on the frame three feet below. Perfect shot. Huge cracks right down the centre of my screen. D’oh!

I had multiple shots of the same events, so I kept the best one, and deleted the rest. At a certain point I won’t be able to thin out my photos any further. And as the kids do more stuff I continue to add new images. Will have to upgrade at some point in 2024, I’m certain of it. Just not right now. I have a very busy week ahead of me. A particularly large report came in on Friday, which I started, but it’ll be most of this week consumed by it before I finish. So I best be at it. Ciao Bella!

Some folks just don’t dance.

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You can have a wide open dance floor, loud music, drinks, food, and lots of good vibes and some folks just don’t dance along with you. Have to admit, it’s been a few years since I last had a good dance party session. I know I’ve danced at weddings over the last decade, but besides cutting a rug in my kitchen along with the kids, I haven’t danced in full view of the public in a very long time. I’m also fifty pounds heavier, and my knees and hips are older than ever before. I’m not a smooth on the dance floor as I once was. Tired, heavy and falling off the beat! Ha. Still had a good time though. The music wasn’t entirely my jam, but I can make do.

I would have to imagine there are a number of hangovers avoided today by those using edibles instead of alcohol. Buzzed with no morning after roughness, what more could you ask for? No dry mouth, or raw throat from smoking. Bladder less stressed because I’m not pounding five or six beers. Less time spent searching for, and using the washroom. I’m still a touch dehydrated, but that’s from dancing in a sweater as a fat-(ish) forty odd year old man, in a small room with ten other people. Drank some Gatorade on the short walk home, and I feel right as rain.

Big plus is that the majority of my friends were there, and we all live stumbling distance from the house we were partying in. Babysitters were in short supply for the evening, I’ll bet, due to how many shin-digs were going on. We’ve had this party on the calendar since early December. It was a shame my spouse couldn’t join me in the end, but for a shining moment I thought we’d actually go to a party together for a change. But her cough, and our lack of babysitters meant she opted to stay home. Her take home prize from the doctors office earlier in the week made her desire to go out wane considerably. Damn you doctors office bug!

On the positive side no hangover means I was up and at’em by 8:00am, and my wife can have a lie in, and chill without the kids being mental, or all up in her space. I don’t need 12-16 hours to get over a hangover. It’s a really great way to party. I endorse it as long as you can walk/taxi where you need to be. Don’t drive under the influence, not worth it. Also no throwing up, no pounding head ache, no gut rot, no need to go pee every half hour, no spins when trying to sleep, no night sweats, no dry mouth, it’s all pretty up & up compared to drinking. I’m a ten milli Tommy. That makes me feel good, but not out of control, or destined for the moon. Feet firmly planted on terrain firma, with my head in the clouds, but not in a totally blacked out menace to society kind of way. It’s nice, don’t have to worry about saying/doing anything stupid. Doesn’t make me aggressive, or melancholy, or feisty. Just a nice warm internal hug that makes me feel alright. The CBD also helps to alleviate those general aches and pains in my knee, hip, wrists, and lower back. That pain relief fuzzy coating makes the THC buzz just that much more like a warm hug. Glorious.

Anyway – Lazy Sunday is here! Shall we watch movies as a family. Play a board game? Or sit listening to the kids lose their minds playing Mine Craft. I’d like to watch more Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings trilogy if I had it my way. But that’s a long slog even for me, and I’m a fan of both series. I don’t watch the SW prequels, and I’m not as enamoured with episodes 7, 8, and 9. Rogue One however, I could watch twice in a row on most days. Far superior to all three prequels, and most of the last trilogy as well. It went off the rails as soon as The Force Awakens tried to rehash A New Hope. Lost cause. Andor was a slow burn, but added more than any of the last movies have done to the world building, and using non-Skywalker era characters. It was far more interesting. But I digress.

Can’t take the kids skiing or tobogganing due to the rain. Might need to find something constructive for them to do before they drive me crazy with Mine Craft tantrums. Where are the head phones! Not dry enough to scooter, or ride our bikes. Too rainy for ball hockey in the driveway. Maybe I should take them somewhere like a mall for an hour long walk about. I wouldn’t mind going to a Chapters/Indigo book store to find more reading material. I do have four books that I found out the other day from my TBR list, so maybe I’ll cool it on the book purchases right now. You know what I’d really like, another book like the New Horizons one, about the Pluto mission. I tried reading about the Mars Rover, but that comes across like a textbook slash technical manual. The Pluto mission was more cinematic and humanized. It was a terrific banger of a read. Makes me think of Apollo 13, and their scramble to fix issues off the cuff.

Have a great rainy Sunday January 28th, 2024. Ciao Bella!

Social Posts Going On A Run – Again.

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It’s the weirdest thing, every so often a post, or tweet will catch on and that will gather likes, followers, making the view count numbers all jump up. Over the last week my Twitter count has jumped by seventeen followers. I had had a hard ceiling of 58 followers for a very, very long time, and now I’m up to seventy five. Pitching the same content out into the ether as before, but suddenly gaining a tiny fraction of traction. Same here on my blog. I’ve gone on a follower count bump run over that same seven day period. Curious. I’m up over two hundred and fifty blog post followers here with WordPress/JetPack. I’m not exactly drawing “numbers” in the traditional sense for a celebrity or a brand/product, but for little ole me, it’s a noticeable jump. And I could not tell you what sparked it. I will say this, at least as far as Twitter is concerned. The new adds are mostly bots, and Cam girls, and the like. I don’t for one second believe that they are real people, or that I am getting famous. I play it up, because the idea of being a person whom gets a fat head, and begins to act like an influencer with 75 followers is hilarious to me. I also toy with calling them my henchmen. And using such limited notoriety to run for school parent council, or being an honouree to open a brand new local laundromat. Ribbon cutting for clout. Ha. Makes me giggle.

As far as I can tell it is still raining. I believe that is to continue until tomorrow or Monday. I started book #2 for this year. It is called “Transit” by Edmund Cooper. Written in 1964. It’s not a bad little book. After finishing the nearly 600 pages of the Adrian Tchaikovsky novel, last in the Trilogy, I wanted something self contained, and considerably shorter. Win on both fronts! I also went poking around my book shelves last night and found four books I haven’t read yet, and I will read from that bunch when I have a chance. I’m not doing the 12 for 12 challenge this year. But I do want to keep on reading, if/when possible. My To-Be-Read pile from all of my previous years of book collecting is substantial, and varied. Mind you I did get rid of quite a few from this TBR pile, because I knew I would never read them. I had tried Tad William’s and Erik something or other before, and found it distasteful. I also got ride of books I didn’t like even though I read all three parts of the trilogy. Now, would I like to read all the books in my collection? Yes, sure I would. If I never bought another new book, I could probably do it. But I follow a fair few authors whom are still releasing new works, so the likelihood of not reading anything new in favour of finishing what I already have is slim. Life comes at you fast, so you never do know.

I also got rid of two of the four Mo Hayder books I owned because they were so disappointing compared to the first two that I had read. Plus she, the author, is now dead and no new book was forthcoming to set it all right by course correcting. Can’t blame her because she’s dead.

In other news I took a few minutes to myself yesterday, away from paid work, to go into my garage and break down the change table for parts. Nuts and bolts went into a jar, the mdf went into my wood pile, and the change pad went up into storage. I think certain parts of the change table are real wood, and not particle board with veneer. So I kept those for random projects that sometimes present themselves. I still need to break down the sidewall portions, but I might need to find out a saw to do that as it didn’t just unscrew, or come apart with a few hard whacks with my palm. I still have our backyard bench in there taking up space, but it’s a keeper, and I can’t be busting that up. It was a project from my wife’s students and has sentimental value. Just reminds me they used my expensive stain like paint, and used the entire $40.00 can on one single bench. No wood grain to be seen. Was supposed to be a smokey blue grey wood grain, but now it’s just a solid wedgewood blue. D’oh! I had to laugh, once I stopped being annoyed. I didn’t even get my rollers or brushes back afterwards either. Nor my drop cloths. Donations to the human fund I suppose.

Well travelers, it’s been a morning, and I must be about my Saturday business. Ciao Bella.