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Tag: blog posts

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.

PA Day Antics.

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Hello glorious Friday morning, how are you! For what it’s worth the sun is currently shining, I can see some light grey blue sky out my window and the kids are home off school because of the York Region pa day schedule. I believe there is another one, plus the Family Day holiday in February to plan around too.

Not to mention there are only a few weeks left until Valentine’s Day. Not a huge deal, atleast not around my immediate neck of the woods. We do something nice/simple for the kids, but we don’t make much of a fuss about it between my spouse and I. Haven’t done so since the mini mites entered the picture. We haven’t celebrated some of our more minor milestones from November yet. For a few years running, actually. Finding a trust worthy baby sitter has proven challenging, and we don’t go out all that much to warrant an exhaustive search. My eldest can do her babysitting course in another year or two, and then we’re all set to go out on the town to enjoy ourselves until 10:00pm. Living large! I’m excited. For a few years from now, we’ll really be able to live it up together, as a couple! Instead of trading off to go and do stuff separately.

The temperature is still really low, low, low, low. Not going to be much fun to go outside. I know we’d spoken of doing an outdoor skate this weekend, but I fear that will require hours of labour to clear the rink before we begin. And by then I’ll be too tired/frozen to want to skate for an hour or more.  The things we do for the ones we love. Not looking forward to having to manhandle the old snowblower around on the ice pad at the in-laws. Heavy and traction less. Stinks to high heaven, and never wants to start. I always end up pulling skin off my fingers pulling the recoil fifty times in a row. Not to mention the sore shoulder that will give me. Or I’ll get to scrape down the ice pad with a metal blade and then shovel the fine crystals off so the ice is nice and smooth. The only thing I don’t do, because I think my brother in law enjoys it, is flood the rink or run his homemade zamboni contraption. Can’t say I blame it. Setting the boards, stakes, and liner was a real chore. Cleaning the ice sucks, but maintaining the cleared ice pad is a piece of cake in comparison.

Which reminds me, I need to find all the skates and helmets for the outing. Pray that last years oversized skates still fit, and that the edges are still keen enough to skate on reasonably well. The girls have done two sessions of Ringette so they know how to skate, the basics anyway. Can move forward and backwards, but we’re not doing olympic trials or speed runs or anything like that. Good enough to just have fun is all that matters at this point.

Working from home during a pa day certainly is an experience in futility with small kids at home. Some times I think my oldest is mature, and other times – yeah, not so much. To think the original plan, pre Christmas was to be back in Florida right now. Several things didn’t line up, so we had to pass on it, but otherwise we could have avoided much of this sudden deep freeze, and be riding roller coasters right now, or sitting on a beach. It wouldn’t be all that hot, but a mid sixties to low seventies is better than the minus twenty give with the windchill we currently have. I can do shorts and a sweater in a theme park. I sure as hell can’t do that here, right now, deep into January. Brrr. No thank you.

I very nearly pulled the trigger on a new bandsaw yesterday. I held off though. I got to looking at saw mills again, and my eye started to wander. Then I was looking into chainsaws and Alaskan mill set ups, and got to thinking – again. So I halted all activity because I’m obviously not 100% certain of what I really want to do with my limited funds. I think I still need a bandsaw regardless of if I get into milling. I need to be able to resaw boards, more than I need to be able to slab logs. No, scratch that. Processing my own logs into slabs is great! But, I still need a bandsaw to break down slabs for use on anything other than live edge projects which are not trendy anymore. Had a real hay-day the last four to six years, but moving away from that sort of thing now. More straight edge, asymmetrical designs. Think minimalism with a flare for angles and joinery. But I digress. I only watch a few Japanese, and American furniture builders right now. It’s what I’m seeing, but that’s a tiny sliver of what’s going on out in the wider world.

Anyway. Have a nice Friday, and a great weekend. Stay warm!

Friday, friday, fri-yay!

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Wasn’t there a terrible song about Friday’s written and performed by some music executives tween child about a decade back? Oh, fun memories. Can you believe it is the fourteenth already, holy shit. This month is just a zooming on by! What a wizzer! Phfoom! Aaaand it’s gone. Can’t forget about Halloween on the way to Christmas!

Having to really think about whether we’ll wait until after remembrance day this year to put up our Christmas Tree & exterior lights. I think that if I get a nice day between Nov 1st and 11th, I’ll just go ahead and do the outside lights. I dislike putting them up in heavier winds and near freezing rains. Plus i need to check the downspouts and it’s better on a drier day for that sort of mucky business.

I took a turn on my Record brand wood lathe recently to turn a few small Walnut bases for my sculptures. Unfortunately I had already put my finished items onto permanent wooden blocks, so that means I need to do some new things to fill them up. But not just new. New and good. The Walnut, after a clear coat looks pretty top notch. So I don’t wish to waste them on generic, run of the mill silliness. I’d like a slightly higher quality bust to go one or two of them. There is no time line for these, so I can have them ready at some point next year. Though I have the bug right now, and the finger tip sensitivity you build up when you really start going again. So if I can manage it, I’ll keep going rather than wait until after another long hiatus.

I picked up some regular sculpey and it’s so sticky & oily it feels more like the soft wax clay I was using. It’s kinda nice. Could do without the dye being left on my hands, but it spreads like oil based clay, and tools nicely. If I can keep myself from rushing, or growing impatient I might make something reasonable this time around. Maybe? Maybe not. It’s just a hobby man, don’t over think it. Be present in the moment. Remember the things you’ve learned along the way, and use the reference materials you have!

The farm ran a little light on pumpkins this year. The July to mid August drought was rough on the patch. Still got a good few, but not the teaming masses of them from years previous. Need to grab some for my kids school, but it has rained a bunch and I don’t fancy slogging through all that much to grab twenty pumpkins. Hopefully we get a clear day this weekend, and I’ll grab them then.

Not much else to say, except the fridge looks to be going off – again. Not sure what the deal is there. Must have been more moisture in it than I could see, as it kicked off some ice while the fucking thing was empty. So. Yeah. Fun times. Ciao Bella!

230 days of writing just a little bit.

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I’m fairly certain that if you were to analyze the content, style, structure and execution of my writing over the previous two hundred and thirty days, I don’t believe you would find much improvement at all. My writing is choppy, sloppy and at times semi incoherent. But on the plus side, I have stuck with it for nearly eight full months! Wow! Look at me, just going for it. Had a few scares here and there. Forgot about writing once or twice, had a fair few power outages, plus a complete nation wide communications service provider outage that nearly cost me my streak. But Bell was there to see me through at my in-laws place. It has been a ride, I’ll tell you that much. I don’t recall a lot of what I’ve written, stream of consciousness and all. Only a handful of posts have been pre-planned and those would have been a part of my collected works of short fiction/science fiction. Which reminds me, I never did post the finalized book two to Kindle Unlimited. Oh well. I may just revisit both books for a style check, and print them out myself at home, just to have a paper copy. A good enough reason to buy a new working printer. Or so I think.

I forgot to mention (not really) that today is Day 150!

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Which I think is a pretty decent milestone to reach for having written something here on my blog every single day. Weekends, illness, good times and bad. I’m pretty happy with that. Not only that, but the discipline to keep writing has helped me develope a commitment to lifting weights and exercising again. Which my heart will thank me for in the long run. If I can psyche myself up to run or bike that would potentially go a long way to help reduce my waist line. It has made it easier to pick up something new and do a little of it more often than not. I switched to home reno projects, and away from my children’s book last week, and this one. But I did manage to get an awful lot of it onto paper, and I’m in a great spot when I go back to it. I’m reading proper books again, not just twitter and the news, which is great. I miss reading when all I do is scroll twitter and read about politics 280 characters at a time. I’m currently painting my screen door frame, waiting on primer to dry actually, if you must know. Then I need to cut down Cedar strips and keep this bad boy rolling. I want to have it hung up before June 1st, which is attainable, if I don’t all of a sudden become paralyzed by fear of fucking something up. I’ve even made plans on an interior window project next. So I need this one to go fairly smoothly, now that I am committed to finishing. The trim will have to be cut twice, into 8ft long strips from a 6x1x8, and then taken to a .75 down from an inch in width. My door, after sanding, planing and lots more sanding, is no longer two inches thick where the mesh screens will be inset. So slight tweak there, but nothing too awful. Maybe i don’t have to take it to .75, i could potentially go thicker. I need to double then triple check my measurements before I cut it down too far.

So Day 150 huh. Seems like a lot. But isn’t really all that much. Not even a full half a year yet. My “streak” began about two weeks prior to Christmas when I was panicking about how little I had written last year vs. The year before. Far more traffic with short/micro stories than my regular blog jabber. No surprise there. I’m not an interesting person, nor am I famous or grotesquely handsome. Just run of the mill me. Running my mouth and thinking thoughts like a person.

101 Dastmalchian’s.

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Polka dots, polka dots every where on this rainy drizzly Friday in March. And not a single dog in sight. Puddles of cats up to your ankles. This coat itches and the collar has hairs embedded in it. My vest made from donkey chest is a tad ill fitting through the middle, must be a little saddle worn. I should put another feather in my cap as I stir the macaroni pot with my shoes. Do you hold your drinks with your fingers in the liquid? I held my wine glass by the stem as though writing with a pencil. 101 ways to wash cars in your Jeans. Acid wash Vs. Pre ruined garbage bags for sale only seventy dollars a pop. But for you, my friend, I’ll do seventy five.

I would classify my interior design aesthetic as plastic caught in trees, and other helpful euphemisms. Like an oil slick on your morning coffee that shouts “Don’t stray too far from a toilet.” A juxtaposition of jumbled malaphors, and too much grey on grey on grey, with cappuccino browns and textured caramel ceilings, with black toilets, sinks and tubs, using gold filigree inlays. A real what’s what of whatever you can throw in the sink to stick. Popped nails and prematurely cracked dry wall speckled with toothpaste. Minty fresh! Damn near useful.

Morning comes too early, and the night disappears too quickly. Thank Fuck It’s Gone or (TGIF) to my friends out there in radio land. I have a voice for print, and the face of radio. But I have a mean limp when I walk this way. Bawk bawk ba-gawk!

99 Days : The Story of the Day Before the Day Of The BIG DAY.

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Also known as Thursday March 24th, when I will hit the 100th day of writing every single day without fail. Some entries were short, some sweet and most are nonsense. But the trick of it is, I did it regardless. On the brighter side during those one hundred days I have created thirty two new chapters to my short story series. Filling in some gaps while propelling the story forward.

I think I was rather sad when I finished book one, if you can believe it. Happy I had achieved nearly 60,000 words of coherent melodrama, struck something from my bucket list, but felt also like I had lost something too. Took me just about nine months later to get out of my funk and commit to writing anything again.

Today is an inclement weather day, due to freezing rain, so the whole family is home along with me today.

I don’t have any big plans for tomorrow. In topic or otherwise. My milestones seem to just pass by lately. Talk of new cars or family vehicle, needing to buy the eldest child a new and larger bicycle, talking about the build process for the screen door? Who knows. I sure don’t.

Day 95!

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I realize as I write this that we are NOT 95 days into the new year (2022). As I started the writing streak early on in the winter break as I was getting antsy with how few posts I had made in 2021, compared to 2020. And I thought I could goose the numbers with a slew of posts late in the year. A real procrastinators move. Not that I thought I could publish a years worth of content, stories and nonsense in two weeks, but I gave it the old college try anyway. And then I just kept on going. At first I was thinking that if I hit a twenty one day streak, I’d be happy, then it was fifty days, then seventy five, and now that I’m close to one hundred, I think I’ll keep going regardless. I like the habit of taking a break in the day, or morning to write a quick post. Sometimes funny, sometimes absurd, and sometimes I will touch off on a rant, or explore my options on the creative writing front. I enjoy it. Getting the short daily post out tends to prime my brain for more complex thinking, and I can hone in on a new chapter. I am sure the streak will end on an innocuous note, as I just forget to post on a busy day, and go back to day one. I’ll either be kicking myself, or I will not give a shit. 50/50 it goes either way. In the meantime, I’m a few days from hitting one hundred. This is the best year my blog has ever had for views, eyeballs and traffic in general. I tried to turn off ads, but I have to upgrade beyond my current upgrade for the option, and I’m not interested in more money leaving my account. But you with the Ad Blockers, you do you. I don’t care. In the near decade I’ve run this site I’ve made 5 cents off of ads, so it’s not exactly taking food out of my kids mouths, so – yeah.

On the story front – What have we learned so far? The Company has seemingly cured 4000 troops via a Nanotech software upgrade. UB313 and the evil Doctor have several weapons and hidden tricks ready and waiting for the approaching company fleet. The somewhat Alien ship ‘K’, and its ambulatory spokesperson Katayna have come out of their data processing hang up, but can’t view their sensor data logs in chronological order. Have found several items of note, some are random, others are just plain strange like the discovery of plans and out going messages regarding a trans-dimensional For E’s engine. Racquelle is alive and well, though she ate desiccated human remains she found, unknowingly, and was not aware a war had started between her evil doctor boss and The Company as a whole. Learning out of the blue that a flotilla of large ships were a few weeks away from Pluto/Charon’s orbit, with vengeance on their minds.

So all out war is coming, and things are looking perilous for all involved. Stay tuned and follow along, as we finish the last chunk of Ghost of the Dirty Starling.