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

Tag: blog

First day back after the break…

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And I’m seeing an awful lot of maskless people and children. This is so not going to be a good couple of weeks. Unless a miracle happens some classes are definitely going to shut down, and people are going to get violently ill. But what do I know, I’m just a dude who has watched things open, and cases spike, and things all clamor to shut down, every sixteen weeks for the last two years or so. Same as you. An announcer at a fireworks event in town was talking about how glad he was that the pandemic is over! – over? Over, he says confidently. Oh buddy, this isn’t over, it’s ramping up to hit an all time high.

To everyone else who wore a mask when out and about today, a big thank you goes out to you.

Should potentially be a quieter week on the work front. I have two of the three large reports out the door. The last, and probably the largest or more cumbersome will come in next month, most likely. So now I can focus on the house for a change. Get to that Spring cleaning, tidying up, and possibly purge broken toys, and collected junk from the winter. I’m going to wait another few weeks before I wash, mend and store away all of our winter gear. This is southern Ontario, and could get a snow storm in mid April from out of the blue. But I love it when we get to open window weather! Birds are more active around here again too.

Maybe I’ll skip the infrastructure stuff for my garage and get right back on the screen door for the back of the house. I found some weather striping too, so I don’t have to be crazily precise about my first ever door build. Well, not exactly. I have put doors and lids on custom boxes, but never a full sized door to go on a house. Built from scratch. Have hung a few doors, repaired one or two aswell. But this is new, and kind of intimidating, if I’m being totally honest. Worst comes to worst I’ll just paint it white, if the Ash doesn’t look as nice as I have hoped once situated on the house itself.

The grass needs some work this year. I don’t see myself as the ultimate green lawn kind of guy. The kids burn patches down to the mud where they play in the same spots constantly, so I’m not willing to spend a lot of money to just have that happen to an expensive green lawn. I like that they play outside a bunch, so why introduce some aggravation to it on my end. But we have the supplies on hand to properly wash out vehicles now, and exterior windows/brick/drive way too. Should keep the kids busy on a Saturday or Sunday once the weather turns for good.

We are back to Monday, how is everyone feeling today? Are you all back onsite for work? Seems our politicians should have to be, and maskless too, if that’s what they are going to do to our public school kids. But I digress.

Can I just say, I’ve only just realized I surpassed the 40,000 word mark for new short story / creative writing material this year! (2022). That puts me over the 100,000 word milestone I was looking towards! Passed it without even realizing it too. Isn’t it amazing how some of the hardest goals we put up, can be surpassed with almost no fanfare whatsoever. Some wins feel a little hollow huh? No matter, on-wards until the story is done!

Everybody loves you when you’re 93.

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It’s all sit down, don’t lift that, enjoy a toffy, don’t get up, I’ll fetch you some tea, why are you doing that, go sit down! Ah, life is pretty mellow when you reach the nineties. Scratching names off of lists, because you’ve outlived yet another person you know. Marvelling at the next big craze going around in fashion, dance and entertainment. Feeling lost in the transition between VHS, DVD, BLURAY, and now cloud media, you don’t actually own, but rent access to. A shame to have spent the last two years plus in lock down and isolation, but the current illness of our times has not been kind to your peer group. If you are lucky enough to get visitors, it’s been waves through a window, and pantomimed questions from behind doors, and shouted answers through glass. If you are one of the more technically inclined ninety year old, perhaps you did more face time this year than your whole life before it. Strange times indeed.

My John Scalzi book arrived, and my Expanse series of collected short works/novellas are arriving later today! Reading is back on the menu boys and girls! I for one am pumped.

Here’s one of the bigger trees we had to take down the other day.

Took a few hours to clear up.

Do you celebrate this, the holiest of days? It’s tree chopping day here at the ranch!

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It does what it says on the tin. All hands on deck for chopping down three large problematic trees here on the grounds. They are dying, dead or dangerous to be under. Safety gear abounds. Chainsaws have had blades sharpened. Axes at the ready. Ropes and pulleys and come alongs are at hand. It’s a great day of the year. I will pray for you and your kin. Take the utmost care. Peace be with ye. And also with you.

Update: the fourth man is an hour late in getting here so much of the work has ground to a halt. A more involved breakfast was proposed, and we are following through with that course of action.

Work notification is turned on for the tree work, and the rest period required afterward. I will be back to paid work tomorrow. If my hands aren’t too tired perhaps I will tackle a new chapter today aswell. Possible. Potentially. Maybe.

Monday’s back, back again, look who’s back, it’s chicka chicka chicka Slim-Monday.

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The sun is shiny, and the ice is icy, and the kids are off school and in need of something to keep them occupied. The time change meant they slept in for a change, but only just. This is the time of year where I wish we had more disposable income, to take the kids skiing down hill and cross country, go play tennis some place, or soccer, go to a movie, or indoor play ground, or go to a beach somewhere. But, Covid is still a bigger issue than earnings being down for the second year in a row, you know, because Covid, once again.

Finally managed to write some new chapters. Mostly because I have a large project on the go, and wanted to rest my wrists, and I had a flash of inspiration that hit. I can see the end drawing near, which is nice. I have some thoughts on how to pull everything together. The direction had eluded me, but I think I see a way to do it sensibly. Yay! I have a little ways to go in order to get the pieces where I need them, but it shouldn’t be a slog to do so. I think that after I finish writing book two, and then complete editing, I may pull book one from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, in favour of just having it sit on my site in pieces. I would gladly send anyone both completed pdf’s, but I don’t believe anyone will buy either book. I have a year of sales data to prove my thinking. It was a goal to write a book, publish it, and sell at least one copy, all of which I have done. So bully for me.

How are your 2022 projects coming along? Did you keep up with your resolutions or wishes for the year? I don’t know for how long I will continue my writing streak, but I’m glad I’ve gone as long as I have. I started a sculpting project recently, so I’m happy about that.

I don’t know about that.

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I try not to get too invested in the statistics associated with either my blog posts or my creative writing series, but it really is a crap shoot for what will get any attention, and what will flounder with one single, individual view. I can not find a rhyme nor reason as to what draws people’s attention and what doesn’t. I have had to make a concerted effort to not pander to topics that catch on (in regards to what I would consider to be a good viewing day) vs. Stuff I enjoy writing, or feel like blathering on about daily. In all honesty I don’t write for the views, I’m writing because I made a decision to do a little of it every single day, regardless of quality nor the contents of each post.

I like to discuss family, working as a freelance graphic designer, home DIY projects, sculpting, woodworking and being a stay at home, part time working dad. Followed up by chaotic absurdism, or achingly real melancholy. With no real content strategy. Would I enjoy tens of thousands of views and a potential short story writing career? Yeah sure, awesome. But I’m not currently building towards more work in my life, rather having a fun and fulfilling creative outlet. My goal was the try to reach a cumulative 100,000 words, using the 59,000 word head start from 2020/2021. That feels like an obtainable goal for me.

I also want to sculpt more this year, and do more furniture restoration, or building. I have my eye on some shop infrastructure projects to better utilize the space, and to make setting up for milling my own lumber just a bit easier. Wheeled cart, wall hanging cubby for nail guns and pin nailers and charging hand tools, as well as a peg board for exposed tool. Mixed in there will be a live edge water fall coffee table, and any dressers or tables I tackle refinishing this year.

Our farm has a smallish metal trailer that needs tending too, as once we have to start watering crops by hand, a wheeled trailer i can put a rain barrel with hose in would help immensely. I need to strip off the rust, bang out some dents and twists, reform the tongue portion on the trailer, sand and paint it all. Will be a loud project with all the hammering needed, but could be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, the front door needs to come off again, get sanded once more, primed this time around, then repainted properly. Took me half a day last time I did it, several years ago.

One of the next steps for exterior house work is adding a rain barrel under one down spout, with a hose attachment point, and a shut off valve for that hose. Then, in the near future, I want to add some solar panels to the roof, so that we have energy saved up when we get those summer time rolling black outs, due to aging infrastructure, and our local population being too dense and heavy for the amount of power our town has available. I think a portable generator would not go amiss either. Losing the contents of our fridge over the summer power outages is getting to be a real threat.

In the midst of report #2

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And it’s a big one, but not as large as the report that came before it. Woah-buddy, now that was a biggie. This one, luckily enough has fewer pie charts, by a full 1/3 of the quantity, and is shorter in overall length. Which is nice. I’ve gotten all of the low hanging easy wins related to the project finished, and now the body of the audit is my next big thing to tackle. Which reminds me, I need to source new images to spruce things up a little bit more.

I read earlier that it is supposed to snow all day now. I wonder if this will keep the ice around for a few more days, or if that’s mostly a lost cause now. Not sure. Would love to get the kids outdoors for another skate or two, but “We get what we get, and we don’t get upset”. Every body now!

Laying in bed last night, and the last few nights at that, I’ve thought up some great titles and subjects for posts, but they elude me in the mornings. I wonder if I’m dreaming it, or what. I don’t want to log on to write it down as I want to go to sleep as they come to me, but eh? I’ll make due.

Maybe when some invoices start to roll in and the work slows down again – it always does. I’ll have more capacity to ‘brain Good’ and actually finish the last 1/3 of my interconnected space series. As I sit back and look at it, and connect some dots, I realized I had some real estate to make up, and some geography to cover in order to make it happen how I want. Either that or I graze past it, and save that for a third book, and just get as close to it as I can, and do it more justice when I’m not feeling so frazzled with paid day job work. I feel as though a duet of short novellas is better than a trilogy. I don’t want it to feel drawn out or padded. Perhaps I just need to be more judicious in my editing, and scrape off more sub plots or extra characters this late in the game. But then again, shoe horning some current character into a role not meant for them doesn’t help me either. I have no deadline, so I’m not going to rush it. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Not going to rush the ending just because I hate having it loom large over my head when I have free time to think. The story is not my enemy! It is there as a creative outlet to help me deal with stuff. Gives me a chance to build something from nothing, when I don’t have the time or energy to sculpt in clay or build using wood.

Eighty four things I hate about everything related to hyperbole.

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Literally or figuratively? I just don’t know anymore. But all preamble aside, let’s find more time for ado. Poor old ado. Never given the time to play out, always without further. A shame really, that. I’m a big believer in ado. Let’s the moment play out, it does. Gives us all the time required to stop and smell the roses, or check a text, email before getting started. We need to stand up to the ‘No Further Ado’ people and scream, Yes! Ado, give us more – more – MORE!!!

Otherwise it’s a quiet and serene Tuesday in early March of the year 2022. Yesterday the green grass was exposed and today we are blanketed by more wispy white snow. It won’t last though. The sun is getting warmer in the sky, and our average temperatures will exceed zero degrees Celsius on a consistent basis. What we are entering into now is the slush & mud period of Ontario Canada living.

Which also means the clocks will leap forward an hour making our morning awful once again, and our evenings brighter. We really need to choose one side or the other and leave it be. I hate flipping between the two. Not as much now that I no longer commute, but dragging bedraggled kids out of bed in the darkness is no fun. Zero stars. Do not reccomend.

If I recall I managed one or two new short story entries over the last few weeks. I really need to take better notes, so I can keep tabs on all my threads so I can bring it together in a sensical manner. I thought I’d have it done by the end of February, but paid work takes precedence over my hobby time. Not going to lie a part of me wants to just bullet point explain the ending to you all, and myself, rather than write out the necessary chapters remaining. Come to think of it, I have gotten as far as I had plotted in January, so I just might have to. I hope some of you have had fun following along. We only just passed chapter 27, so I hope to wrap up before it balloons out to 50!

“And we’re back”.

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Welcome to an early edition of Monday morning, bringing you all of the finer things in life, like dry eyes, the desperate need to urinate, and burnt coffee breath. Oh, it’s a lovely day in the neighbourhood! So what’s on the agenda for today? Well, work obvs’ but what else do you have in store? Laundry, emptying the dish washer, vacuuming, mopping, generally tidying up, cleaning the kitchen – again, Hey! I just did that!, and getting through your work day? Well step right up, step right up and let’s see if you can keep up with the music. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here in the corner increasing the BPM as we go, at random! Hold on tight, and good luck! Fortune favours the bold, but there are no old bold fortune holders! Give’r! Did I tell you we were going to get the room to spin on three axis’ aswell? No, well here is your two minute warning, flag on the play! Too many people on the field, fifteen yard penalty, and a two thousand dollar fine. Head straight to jail, don’t pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, and tip your waiters or they’ll spit in your drinks. The bill will be split evenly regardless of you having drank only water, and eating one appetizer! Someone ordered the nine hundred dollar bottle of wine, and had the party platter Surf n’ Turf. That’s on you pal, gotta read the fine print, doesn’t matter if the Xerox obliterated the legibility. You want to see the manager, I am the manager, GFY and empty your wallets or else the door WILL hit your on the way out. – Welcome to another manic Monday.

And still I have one frozen solid in the ground.

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A few weeks ago we had a mild spell. Actually I remember it well, it was the day of the fourteen hour power outage, and the kids were home all day, and it rained because it got up around eight degrees above zero. Anyway, it was warmer than usual, as a part of the mid February thaw that we always get at a random time in Feb, so I took the time to remove as many of the exterior Christmas lights as I could, that weren’t directly attached to the eaves on the house, which require a ladder, and would need me to move a bunch of stuff in the garage, which I didn’t want to do. Anyway, unwound the lights on the trees, removed the inflatables, and free standing light displays, and the wreathes that hang off the garage door, all in one spurt. Then tackled all of the cords on the ground, which is where I have my problem. All bar one came up without a hitch, but I have one twenty five foot extension cord with a one foot section frozen solid into the ground behind my steps with no way to get at it until it melts on it’s own. So we cleaned up, but I have one random yellow/orange cord hanging off the front porch because I am unable to remove it yet. Argh! However, today’s forecast is in the mid teens, so I will uncover the ice as best as I can without killing the ground cover shrub near it, and will attempt to pull it up and out of the ice today. I will make this attempt several times throughout the day if need be. We also have to watch for flooding in the back yard, but that’s it’s own issue.

Lazy Sunday is here, I wonder if we will watch a third film we haven’t seen yet? We watched the Mitchell’s vs. The robots, and the live action Dora the explorer film this weekend. I don’t know what else is out there that is for a whole family. I don’t know where or if we could find Sing 2, or something along those lines.

My wife and I have started to watch Parks and Rec in order starting from the very beginning. I didn’t realize; one, how short the first season was, two, how many times I had seen all of the episodes on tv recently without knowing it was season one, or in chronological order. Weird.

**Editor’s note: Got the cord out of the ground on the third attempt. Consistent sunshine and an average temperature of 14° Celcius helped to work the damn thing loose. Happy man! – 1:27pm.

What a weird weekend.

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Due to a sudden onset of a child’s stomach bug we had a three day weekend, but I keep thinking today is Sunday, and that yesterday was Saturday, but in actuality we’re only in the morning hours of Saturday March 5th, 2022. I’m all discombobulated because of it. Though it was nice to have everyone home yesterday to play card games, board games and watch a family movie together, it wasn’t how I had been planning to spend the day. I had been building up my rest day for a few weeks, ever since I get heavily into the weeds on my In-Store signage projects and then the fairly large marketing audit report on top of that. So the day didn’t turn out how I expected it to, but it was awfully fun anyway, in an entirely different way, which is nice. With the kiddos home, an idea of a peaceful day withers on the vine, as they can only go so long in close proximity before they squabble and fight, and fists start to fly, and bad names get called. I will say this, they actively tried to separate rather than go at it full tilt as per usual. I’m blessed, as it were. Thank your lord for small miracles.

Given that the weather is suppose to swing quite heavily throughout spring in Ontario this year, we will venture out today to try one last family outdoor skate session. Tomorrow it’ll be plus fifteen, so everything will dissolve into slush before our eyes, and who knows if the flat pad of ice will survive until the next precipitous temperature drop, which will happen the day or two after the uptick. This wild swing reminds me of how hard it is to dress kids in May, where it’s only slightly above zero at eight am, and then in the early to mid twenties by three o’clock, and the kids are melting in their morning suitable clothing. Layers, zippered, easy to remove and re-add, layers. Breathable textiles, and multiple layers to be shed as the temperature rises. Then try to remember how many layers you used, and counting the articles of clothing as they come home to make sure you have everything for the next day.

Can I tell you how much aggravation I endure due to having to keep track of every item of my kids possessions, and both their indoor & outdoor clothing. Toys, books, socks, hats, gloves, mitts, boots, shoes, water shoes, running shoes, indoor school shoes, fancy dress shoes, rain boots, winter boots, wellington for out in the farm field boots, all weather jackets, snow pants, long johns, face masks, helmets, dolls, doll clothes, favourite spoons & plates… the list is endless, and they move, discard, and then swap allegiance to their ‘favourite’ toy on a semi-daily basis. It could lead one to absolute madness. Try to keep that favourite pair of jammies washed, and ready for bed time. Where’s my sweater. No the other white fluffy, cloud face sweater!!! Wah-wah-wah! Ugh. Some days it can feel like altogether too much. But you know what, if they listened to me and put their sweaters in their rooms when they take them off, and throw the dirty clothes in the hamper, rather than bury it under a pile of toys, I can wash it, and you’d know where it was. So we didn’t have to have a five alarm tantrum when they can’t find the item they all of a sudden have based their entire personality on that day.

I’d also love it if my kids could describe a toy, or article of clothing like a regular human being who understands colours, shapes, sizes and how to describe actual things that occur in our reality. Telling me how the item makes you feel, doesn’t help me search through the laundry pile for the item. Describing a t-shirt as though it was a night gown also doesn’t help. These kids. I could go mental. Heavens above! But we trudge on through, and make things work as best we can.