Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Here we are back at it again, with another cold. Or I should say, the same cold just shuffled about within the body. Far less sneezing, not as much of a runny schnoz, but more of a chest cough that activates once I lay down, or recline. Still better than the flu like illness I had back in January. I’m actually functional, and my head doesn’t hurt, and my body doesn’t ache, and, and, and. While this second round cold is not exactly fun, it’s better than what came before it. Call it a win if you must!

Hard to believe that it’s Wednesday already, but here we are! Heading into the long weekend rather quickly. I’m hoping to get the kids to want to go climbing on Saturday, and maybe hit up the mall for more Sephora items, because the gift cards they have from Christmas will get forgotten about otherwise. Not that they need make up, they’re only little, but it gives us a reason to leave the house, and grant my wife some much needed alone time to read comfortably, or watch a show she has wanted to catch up on without interruptions. Something I can do quite easily. Plus I like wandering various malls having a look around while it’s miserable outside. Grab some snacks or food while we are there, and make a real meal out of the outing. Every extra fifteen minutes I can keep them occupied, and out of the house, is another fifteen minutes of quality quiet time for my spouse. She deserves it. Plus I know she hates going to the mall, or anywhere there may be lots of other people, so I take them for stuff like that because I know deep down my wife hates it.

When my kids were really little I would take them to all of the different malls around here for several hours, so that they could waddle about in the dry warmth, and we could walk as slowly as those chubby baby legs would allow. Covid interfered with that for my youngest, but it worked wonders for my first. Pile all our stuff into the stroller, and just follow along wherever she waddled, while babbling and shrieking “DADDA!”. It was a blast. A real hoot. I don’t want any additional kids, but I miss those times a great deal. Hopefully I can do so again with grand kids.

We still have not managed to venture over to Square One, so at some point I’d like to take them there because it’s humongous, and has a massive food court, not to mention a Games Workshop store!?! Not sure if that’s still there or not, but it also had a big comic book store with Bandai model kits too. I wouldn’t say no to perusing the stock they have on their shelves. Just to have a look see. If they have a movie theater there I could waste a whole day just looking, eating, and watching a movie. Just like those good old teenage years from the times before time began.

As I cough all over my phone, I realize I should go back to work now that I’ve finished my breakfast. Take care out there. Ciao Bella.

Welcome to Tuesday morning, wherein I have gone out and procured all of the necessary items for Valentine’s Day. Spouse and both kids are covered, so I am in a good spot. I also used this outing to obtain a micro cutting shredder for my office/business, because I don’t trust people not to steal out financials, or other such details, so it’s best we guard against such things on our own. Ripping, and tearing up papers, and putting them out over different weeks in a number of locations has worked so far, but I’d be happier with confetti sized chaff if it makes any difference to you at all. Far less effort involved with a micro cut shredder. It’s a good minor investment.

We had another 4-5 cm of snow last night, with more on the way since we are drifting into a slight warming spell. That means more shoveling, not only that but as it warms up I will need to manage the piles, and chop them back further, and further to open up the entire width of the driveway. I will need to go find the two storm drains again. The plows have covered them over yet again. If for some reason we get rain, I really do not want a rink at the end of my drive, nor waiting for me at the stop sign on the far edge of my property. That’s how plows skid up off the road, and onto my lawn gouging out huge divots that I then have to mend in the spring. It’s happened before, and I’d rather not have a repeat.

Took the doggo for his walk, but it was a short one with just us. His girlfriend was busy today, so just us boys having a wander around the grounds, checking on the barn, outbuildings, and equipment, and house/shop. No unnecessary foot steps, no extraneous people attempting to take up residence in the hay barn along with the squirrels, and the raccoons, and at least one fat ground hog. Gotta keep an eye out because the conservation park does run through the back of the farm, and weird people walk around, park by the houses, and try to get inside. It is by all means a working farm. Not the place for strange townies to try and come to get something for nothing. Both farm hands are nearly eighty years old, and neither have good vision, nor any peripheral vision left. Nor do they ever look behind them when they back up, so don’t play on the grounds unless you are very aware of what they are doing at all times!

We’re used to it, so I stand near trees or utility poles to save myself, and the dog knows to run for his life in the opposite direction. While the recall training does work, it’s only about 65% effective right this moment. I could do a better job of that. Something to work towards.

Take care out there, some roads are worse than others. Be weary of those driving too fast, or that are distracted.

Just when you felt the winter couldn’t get a whole lot worse we have to run to the airport in a panic in minus thirty five temperatures, and dab at a runny nose, accompanied by lots of sneezing. Perfection! I’m not a morning person so that early wake up which I hadn’t planned on was both unexpected, and unpleasant. Luckily I do not feel as bad as I did with the previous illness/flu like thing I battled for eleven straight days. No aches, no pains, no chills or fever, and no two day long unending headache to keep me occupied. So a runny nose and some sneezing is simple to deal with.

But I do wish this winter would end quickly, and allow for some higher temperatures to make themselves known. I can be outside without wanting to die if it gets up around zero for a few weeks before we venture off into positive numbers. I’d be ok with that. That would allow me to shovel, chip away ice, and prepare the property by opening the second storm drain, and tossing the back patio snow off onto the grass to keep it from winding up on my basement floor.

I’d prefer to much about outdoors without a runny nose, and sneezing, but if the sun is going to stay out, and the temperatures are going to rise out of the horrific zone (below minus twenty five) and become a bit more tame, then I can sort myself out, cold or no cold, enough to reclaim our driveway end, and get the drive right down to the asphalt, or cobble stones. It’s a physically intensive job, but one that’s more fun when your fingers, nose, and eyeballs don’t want to freeze solid due to the cold. Life in Canada, can you dig it?

With any luck this prolonged cold snap will limit the ticks, and other such stinging bugs for the spring, summer, and fall. I could do without more tick bites when I get back into the wood piles at the farm. I have a hankering to swing my axes a little before we start to trend upwards too far. I’m a simple man. I have simple pleasures.

With any luck I can shake this cold before the Family Day/Valentine’s Day mix n’ match long weekend that’s coming up soon. Reminds me that I need to grab a gift for both kids. And my wife too. I should get on that! Oh oh, it’s Friday the 13th this week!!! Could be a fun evening of scary movies, popcorn, and petrified children. Ha!

The inlaws are off to warmer climes on this frigid morning. The early morning temps with the wind chill was minus thirty five, so it may require some driving of the plane, a small delay, but one that happens after it has been boarded, not before. I thought they wanted to be at the airport at least two hours before take off, but they didn’t turn up here to collect me until that time had come & gone. Wasn’t expecting the medical emergency on the departures on ramp either, so with any luck they can check their bags, get through security, and find their gates in time to not get left behind! I was up, dressed and ready to leave before seven am, so I could have slept for another forty minutes if I’d known they were going to leave it so late to head out this morning.

I am however tired, and am deciding on whether or not I should go back to bed. Or perhaps I’ll have a nap before the Super Bowl festivities start. I thought we were going to stay home to watch it, quietly, by ourselves, but it sounds as though we are expected to swing by the inlaws house to watch some of it there. I don’t know if my sister in law was hoping to get all the kids together to play this afternoon, because it’s so cold outside there’s no point in trying to do a park/farm run in these unforgiving temperatures. I don’t know. I’m more than happy to park my butt on my couch and not move much this evening.

The youngest had a sleep over with her best friend (which is still ongoing) so the kids are entertaining themselves this morning. It’s nice when they get a little more independent and no longer rely on us to entertain them full time. Not that I never want to play with them, as I’m usually fine for some video games, board games, or a fun wrestle in the living room as a tag team pair against both kids. I’m solid for a tussle if they need to learn to fight, or escape capture! But I don’t need to host every single thing like I did when they were newborns up until the age of five or six. I love Bluey, but it can be a bit much.

I need to eat, and maybe get back to my book. I’m 1/4 of the way through it, hasn’t bested me yet!

Nothing kills the mood more than toe nail bed pain from climbing shoes pushing your nails in, or shattering a brittle finger nail up on the wall and having the jagged crack stretch down into the quick. Ouch. Oof. Not my idea of a fun morning spent in a harness on the walls at The Hub. So a good dose of flexibility will get those pesky nails taken care of, and making my climbing session that much more fun.

A sunny, but cold Saturday morning has arrived! Praise the Lord we made it through yet another week of mayhem. Luckily the snowfall we did get yesterday was light. I do not know what it will hold for today, that still remains to be seen. Hopefully it doesn’t come down as a horrific two foot blanket of snow while we are all the way across Markham later on this morning. If it’s going to storm I hope it can wait until we get home, safe & sound before the shit hits the proverbial fan. Am I right?

In other news I put the gesso I bought to good use, I now have seven prepped canvases ready to rock and roll, with at least three more that I am ok with priming over, and reusing for something new. I’m very happy that I can reuse some old items from around my office. Fifteen dollars worth of gesso has saved me multiple hundreds of dollars worth of new canvas purchases. That’s good quality thinking right there. Now I just have to find some subjects to commit to canvas over the coming year(s).

Here comes the hard part, what am I interested in enough to spend hours painting – for fun? The good thing is, I have the time to choose, and I can pick just about anything under the sun. Wish me luck!

Looking to have a second straight banger of a month on the ole blog site here with having 60% of January’s numbers by day six of February is pretty nuts. Something went off yesterday because there was a significant jump of 300 or more views yesterday, and 200 more by the time I woke up this morning at 7:00 am. Once again the views come down squarely in the archives with no other descriptors available, so I don’t know what all of y’all are looking at. Never any comments about it, so I assume it’s not a bad thing, not a particularly good thing either. One way or the other I would expect somebody to comment at least once, even in a language other than English. I could figure out how to translate it if that were the case, but with no interaction whatsoever I have no clue what’s getting all the eyeballs, for better or for worse.

Maybe I’ll serve an additional ten cents worth of ads this year and earn an entire quarter! .25¢ worth of “passive income“, though it isn’t all that passive because I do actively write here every single day. I strive for quality but mainly serve up quantity. It’s a personal weakness of mine. I’m well acquainted with it. Ask for one thing, get seven options instead because the iterative process leads me astray, but can also discover some cool details I hadn’t thought of initially. So there’s that.

It’s Friday, with Valentine’s Day coming up next Saturday. So I should get that sorted out for my wife, and girls before the shelves are stripped bare, and I have to hand over all purpose flour, and windshield washer fluid to them all. Just to show I Care. I think if I get out this weekend I shouldn’t have any trouble finding a small suitable gift for them all. I like books because they get the kids off the tablets, and the VR headset, and actively using their brains, and working on their focus, and attention spans. I’m a delight!

Looks like snow is on the menu throughout the day, so we will either have 4 cm of flurries, or 25 cm of full on snow that will require two or three bouts of shoveling, scraping, and chucking to clear all the important surfaces. Oh my god, I’m so tired of the snow. So tired. So very, very tired.

I haven’t been bested by my new book – yet! I’m 1/8th of the way through it, so how long can I keep that up for? I don’t know.

I did spend some time yesterday applying gesso to some old canvases that I didn’t like, so that I can paint over them at my leisure. I have five or six suitable, but different sized canvases to use now. So that means I didn’t have to go buy any. Always a bonus! I went to Michael’s the other day for the gesso, and proper titanium white paint, and a block of super sculpey clay. I grabbed some higher quality pencil crayons, and tubes of acrylic paint whilst I was there. I opted not to try to delve into oil paints. I like the idea of oils, but needing new brushes, thinners, gloss, oil mediums, and not to mention a whole battery of paints looks too rich for my blood, at least right this second. Perhaps if I sell a guitar, or give up some other hobby by selling all the stuff I have for it, I could fund a new venture into oil painting. As it stands I have what I need for acrylics, so I’m going to stay put for a while longer. I’m not a good painter by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy it. Much like sculpting, playing my various guitars, writing, singing, model building (both resin & plastic kits) drawing, assembling & painting miniatures, building war gaming terrain, video games and wood working or DIY repair. I have a lot of hobbies. I’m a mess essentially, is what I’m saying. I think a lot about narrowing down to any one of those, and I could not for the life of me decide which item I would like to devote myself to in its entirety, outside of my day job, and being a WFH parent. Probably trying to run from the fact I’m not really talented enough at any one thing to be devoted to it, and do only that one thing to an incredibly high standard. Right now as I flit between them all, I can just be happy I’m “doing” it, rather than have to show that I can do it well enough to be totally devoted to it. Catch my drift!?! I’m sure there is some underlying personal deficiency that makes me do this stuff this way. Of that I am certain.

We’ll that’s more than enough introspection for me, second day in a row of such thinking, I might add. I’ll catch you all tomorrow when I add indoor climbing to the list of hobby’s, because of course I forgot about another hobby I have. Fun times… Ciao Bella!

I wouldn’t answer yes to that, but then I’d be biased because I believe I am a damn pleasure. Ha. But as I read about perimenopause and middle aged grumpy men more and more I wonder if I too suffer from such an affliction? I feel as though with all of my hobbies, and the freedom that comes with freelance work I am a pretty happy guy. My guts get rankled every now and again by Crohn’s but I don’t think I get ugly about it personality wise. I tend to want to just stay home, nearby an empty bathroom, rather than temp fate to go out with friends and/or family. I like working alone so I don’t feel like being isolated during the day makes me act like a bit of a shit when I do see other people. I’m not as social as I once was, but I don’t think I am cruel, or miserable because of it. I no longer HAVE to interact with numerous strangers every day, since I do not commute anymore, so I just don’t interact with strangers all that much. What you could expect from me; a tight lipped smile, a nod, a half wave that starts with the thumb up close to my body, and ending with the thumb tip facing forward (that’s the full range of a half wave, all one direction, in one fluid motion). Maybe a puffy to the cheeks smile that doesn’t ever reach the eyes, and shows no teeth, and is very brief, with no audible component. All very minor, non threatening, and noncommittal. I don’t think that makes me a grump. Other people might disagree with that. Although, I’m rarely effusive with my greetings and banter, so maybe I come across as aloof, or detached? But not grumpy. Tired? Certainly, but I don’t believe I have a bad outward facing attitude.

A little Thursday morning introspection for you, huh? Take a look in the mirror and take a quick stock of whatever is playing across your face. A touch of the RBF as it were. That being “Resting Bitch Face” or however you refer to it. Something else to ponder while the world burns down around us, am I right?

I have a list of work items to get to this morning, so I shall not linger for too much longer. The third book I have chosen is actually five stories all collected in one omnibus, so if I can finish it by the end of March, I’ll be miles ahead of my reading challenge. The book being over 800 pages has me more than a little concerned. That’s a pretty sizeable visual block to get over. Read for hours and it hardly looks like I’ve made any progress. Let’s see if it defeats me!

Four months of cold snow, ice, and bitter winds is enough to drive anybody batty. Not only that but we have six weeks left until the absolute earliest point in the spring, which usually still involves snow of some sort, and cold winds, slush, and grey overcast skies. I’m over it. Done. Bring on the warm sunlight, green leaves, and green grasses.

I was able to catch up on my reading yesterday, and now I am two books down over two months. Right back on track! Yeah-buddy. I will start a three part omnibus of collected stories today if I decide not to start painting my newly primed Warhammer miniatures. Or if I decide not to start another 8.5 x 11 canvas of whatever I have lying around in acrylic paint. I played some guitar yesterday too, so there’s always that option available. I completed my latest sculpt the other day, he turned away from goblin, and became just a man. Nothing fanciful about him at all. I do have an armature waiting on clay, so I could do that too. Or swing wide and get back to work on my resin model kit that I put away last spring. Too many options. Choice paralysis! Argh!

I do like having options though, they are the spice of life in my opinion. Ha. Not to worry, today is Wednesday and while the sun is most definitely shining the base temperature before the windchill is minus thirteen. Feels like minus nineteen an ever so slightly warmer low for the day. Not by much but it means the kids might actually get outdoor recess today. Who knows!?!

I long for the days of sandals, shorts, and a hat with sunglasses. Miss me with all this snow, ice, and windchill factor baloney. I’m not built for this sort of thing.

Started this book last night, and just finished reading it about twenty minutes ago. Lots of the technical details went over my head, but learning about the technological wonders of the JWST was pretty astounding. I can’t wait to see what they developed, and then deploy next. Though I guess the Artemis missions to the moon are what’s up right now.

So yeah, two books down, with a three part omnibus on deck next. Going back to space faring science fiction and war stories in the Warhammer 40K universe. Dan Abnett and a couple of Gaunt’s ghosts are in the house! Pew-pew.

I did give some thought to going back to finish Mistborn, but I’m not in the mood for magic systems just yet. Give me a couple of weeks of reading dystopian war stories and I might want a break for elemental magics, and a good heist.

I have a massive book of dragon tales I can read, as well as yet another Aliens omnibus, so I have no shortage of things to read. Also my brain is a tad mushy after 200 pages of science history and telescopes, and Spectrography discussions. I’m not a smart man, numbers aren’t my thing, so it took a fair bit of focus to read all that, and keep a through line of what it all meant. Brain is tired. Much like those days when I would write 4,000 or more words of a short story, my head would get foggy, and I’d need to dumb things down a bit before bed. Know thine limitations!

Anyway — book good. Photos lovely. Science neato. Short and Sweet.

If I had my way I would scoop these sorts of things up from the farm, take them home to my garage shop, break them down, strip off the paint, add all new hoses & fittings, fix any bearings, pins, and bushings, chase threads, repaint it, reassemble it, and enjoy watching it get a whole new life of use on the farm. A few things stick out as to why I don’t. One- can’t lift it. I do not own a skid steer, a truck robust enough to carry it, nor a shop crane to manoeuvre it once at my shop. Two- I don’t really know anything about hydraulics, systems, hoses, fittings, pressurized lines, and how the flow of fluid works within such systems. Although this being an attachment for a tractor I suspect the majority of those complications lie inside the tractor, and not this add-on attachment. Three- my shop is not big enough to house this thing which is larger than it looks up close. I also don’t have a sturdy enough work bench for that type of weight. I also don’t do any sort of metal fabrication, so I couldn’t weld anything, bend anything, mill/lathe any simple fixes, or do much of anything worth while to it in my shops current state. I do mainly wood working, and a hint of vehicle service, and household repair. It’d be fun to figure this thing out though. Repair linkages, repaint it. Carve off the stickers & decals and then reapply them when done before a thick clear coat finish was applied to seal it all in together. Fun times!

There’s this sizeable wagon I want to fix too, that if you could add a third, fat wheel to at the front, that articulated would allow you to steer it around, could be used to hold a watering barrel for those hard to reach spots in the gardens. It needs sanding, dent repair, some minor fabrication, and a paint job. Possibly new, or just properly inflated tires, and some body work so the tires spin freely. Could also be a fun project. Likely a whole lot simpler than the excavator attachment. Weigh a whole lot less too.

In other news I finished the Jason Pargin book last night. It was fine. Glad I got through a book, and am not into another one. This is about the James Webb Space Telescope, and so far reads pretty easily. Less textbook, more biography of the processes required in bringing it to life. Also — space photography! Ooh, aah… Very nice. While I’m not sure if I can do the twelve books in twelve months this year (my eyes and all that) I’m glad to finally sit down to read this one. I love science fiction, but occasionally I need to read about real science. Not that I understand much of it, but I am glad that others do, and are able to act on it in our favour. Sweet!  Also the books not that long. Fewer than two hundred pages with a lovely photo spread in the middle. Just like the New Horizons book about the Pluto mission. One of my all time favourite books about actual science. But I digress.

I spent some time yesterday priming over my poor earlier paint job of several Warhammer 40K miniatures. I intend to redo those with my air brush, and considerably more patience. Not that I am able to battle with them, I just want a much cleaner paint job for the few that I have. I might even wash, and primer over some Eldar that I have too. My first pass with yellow was unsuccessful, let’s just put it that way shall we. Hideous results. No matter. Strip the paint off, and begin again!

All the best to you out there!