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

Tag: random thoughts

Don’t we all just take code word classified documents home from work for no reason? No? Oh well, just your pal then.

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One can only imagine how much information could be contained within twenty seven (27) bankers boxes of paper work, file folders and manilla envelopes. That’s too much cheese for one Cheddar coloured man to horde. Going to attract rats, and moles, and all manner of other pests into their midst. Not worth the effort. Should have left it all alone.

Had a few work related e-mails and some personal text messages come in before 8:00am so now I’m wide awake watching CNN discuss DJT and the subpoenaed classified boxes. Oh lordy. Can we get a break from TFG. All I want to see of him is an arrest, a over arching criminal trial series that covers many of his criminal activities, and finally a sentencing. That’s it.

Did a tiny amount of wood working yesterday, nothing major. Refinishing an old bench that has sat in the elements for several years. If I could have taken it back to my shop I could have done more to it, but sanding it in place wasn’t too bad.

You know what I’m really starting to miss, playing my guitar. I’m looking forward to having a lengthy jam session with my trusty Gibson Studio and my portable speaker. That and tapping out some tunes on my electric keyboard. Music really is a vital part of what relaxes and recharges me. Back before I had kids I used to cart all of my gear up north and play on the dock. It wasn’t much but it was a whole lot of fun.

Looking forward to playing some golf on Sunday with one of my brothers and his eldest son. I have to imagine that his daughter doesn’t care much for golf, she’s into ballet, and quite talented from what I’ve seen. (Which isn’t much unfortunately, given Covid). I’d have to ask. Wish I had brought my own clubs with me. But I left them elsewhere. That’ll be the fourth round in twelve years, woow! Look at me, developing a golf habit. Ha. I had hoped to go to the driving range, and play several rounds of golf this summer, but I’ll take two rounds of nine (9) holes. Better than zero rounds of eighteen! I’m more of a nine iron, pitching wedge and putter type of golfer. I’m either right down the middle, or twenty seven strokes to the hole. Not much inbetween. I tend towards mini putt and the driving range more so than actual golf. Probably why my game is so streaky. I can get a good run of long straight balls, then fall apart. So we’ll see how Sunday morning turns out.

I’m closing in on 250 days soon. I may even take this to a whole year if I can! I wonder if I should dig up my children’s book this fall and try to finish that up. Would be great to get such a big project finally finished. I started it when my eldest was like three years old, and now we’re getting close to eight, so, you know. Get on that shit my man! Then I’ll post the pdf’s for all three books on here and see if anyone at all reads them. Not that that really matters to me, I’ll just be happy that I had an idea and brought it to life, story and artwork and all. Nice!

I didn’t know she was 115 years old.

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That’s ancient in dog years, holy cow. Today marks continuous writing day 115. That’s not any specific kind of milestone, but I did keep going even while having a pretty dastardly flu all this week. So that counts for something around here. Though it was a light week for paid work, some labels, a display, a meeting through a glass door, a some customized brochures, I did much more outdoors. Spring is in the air! And so is the sun and slightly warmer temperatures.

To celebrate I put out the patio furniture. The deck carpeting, chairs and kids toys. The solar lights and ornamental garden decorations, the hose ( but didn’t turn the water on yet.) This whole month is one longish rain storm, with intermitten fits of blue sky and sun. The slack line went up. The swing is back in working order. Crab sand box is uncovered from leaves, snow and winter debris. Porch chair, and drinks table put up. Scooters dug out of the shed. Gardening tools brought to the front, and winter shovels and de-icer moved to the back, and away from the front door. I did not uncover the AC unit, as that’s about 6 weeks away from being needed, if at all in the spring. Cleaned the car of snow gear and toboggan etc… a productive morning.

In the shop I built the second peg board and placed that over the lathe. It’s a bit bare, but I wanted it off the floor, and that’s where it was going anyway. I got my large cross cut sled holed so it can finally hang on the wall and get out of my way.

I have a new project from my wife for the farm orchard, a rustic bench. So I’ll move that in front of my adjustable saw horses. I was looking at last years progress on the screen door, trying to see if I can salvage it, or am I putting good money after bad on it. I do need a door there though. So I might press on with it.

I had an hour or two tweaking the kids bikes yesterday, so all good there now too. Cleaned a bunch inside, got the laundry sorted and put away. All in all a good week for having been ill. Still am, but not as bad as last weekend. Maybe I’ll watch Dune again. It’s long enough that I can just phase in and out of attention with it and still enjoy it a bunch. Part two coming next year!

Odd question for you.

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Why is it that all of our local bicycle repair, or sales stores around here open at or after 11:00am? Is this in preparation for warmer weather and a morning ride with no rush to get in to open the stores? I don’t get it. In most parts of Canada, bicycle riding weather is mid April until early November, at the best of times, and that’s not guaranteed. So what do they do the rest of the year? Are these the Peloton people? Anyway. I went to our local bike shop to buy what could have been $100-$150 worth of name brand parts for my kids bikes. Namely brake pads, kick stands, bike pegs, and some much needed bike specific repair tools for chains and tires. But they weren’t open for another 3 hrs. So then I went to Canadian Tire, which had empty spots for brake pads, no kick stands whatsoever, and no service people around. Then off to Walmart, which had most of what I’m looking for, sort of. I might have to put down the break pads they did have, but otherwise I made out ok. The kick stand wasn’t exactly what I was after either, but it’ll work just fine as is. My last hope, in town anyway was a SportChek, but I didn’t have much faith in that store. It’s all glitz and no underlying product strength.

I’m trying to avoid Amazon. Not out of anything worth a damn, but because if I can grab it now, I can do the work now, sort of thing. I hate all the waiting involved. I looked at various other bike related stores but they opened at 10:00am, 11:00am, 12:00pm (noon) or as late as 2:00pm. WTF. I don’t have time for that. Gotta be around for school pick up. Plus I’m not comfortable with how Covid is progressing to have my kiddos tag along when I wander around stores searching for stuff. Maybe after Wave 6 is behind us, or my youngest is finally old enough to have all of her jabs.

Yeah so. Odd start to the day. My Flu is still in me working it’s filthy tendrils deeper into me, but I’m keeping the worst of it at bay with NyQuil brand products. Sleeping well, eating & drinking fine. On occasion I can breath through my nose properly. Feel off, but not horrible. Which is a big step forward from last Friday/Saturday. Still testing negative – so. Yeah.

Going to eat and then work on the bikes for a bit. Ciao.

We’re only human after all.

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Six days in and I’m finally starting to feel a little more like myself. Still have the register of Barry White when I talk, and fluctuate between stuffed up and Oh God, Eew! With an occasional cough. So not totally out of the woods yet, but – still negative. So, we have that going for us, I suppose.

I had some work to do yesterday, most of which I did, while my head was swimming in cold & flu medications. Nothing major though, and I left a good chunk for today just to give me a chance to plan it all out so that my foggy mush brain didn’t cock it all up. So far, so good.

Kids were all on the up & up yesterday after five days off school recuperating. This bug hit us all in fun and exciting ways. No two completely alike! Fun fact, I can’t distinguish between eaten tomatoes and watermelon in a puddle of vomit. Suspiciously alike in many ways. Ask me how I know! Go ahead do it.

Views here have tanked, obviously. No one wants to read about me whining of being sick. But I’m not mentally in a place capable of plotting some of the most important chapters/installments of my short story series. This brain fogs gotta go. DayQuil and NyQuil , whilst excellent for treating symptoms, make me spacey AF. So a delay is in order. Hopefully you’ll check back in once they start up again.

I need a shower and a nap.

Our children’s school currently has

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No EA’s in the building, and at least four teachers off sick. Oh! Who ever could have foreseen this happening? Uh, everyone!?! So we have that going for us. My youngest is off with a lingering cold (not covid – tested negative twice over a period of six days). Who would have thought that no longer wearing a mask in a building full of unvaxed four year old was a good idea. Not too mention the poor vaccine uptake in the five to twelve year olds. Ugh. So what’s next, a school closure because they don’t have the physical adult bodies to keep it running. Get all those consultants and board folks in here to keep it running. They were so keen on their political aspirations, and ambitions to find a cushy job later on, that they signed off almost immediately on dropping masks in schools, with very little push back, if any, at all. But they still work remotely because their offices are too dangerous to go to work in person. Must be nice to set different parameters for yourself, and leave the kids your jobs are centered around, out to dry. Very frustrating. If it was dropped for some, it has to be dropped for all. You made those decisions, now go wallow in your folly.

In other news, I have personally worked on two Ukraine Support gigs in the month of March. Which is cool. Raising money for displaced families via multiple micro breweries. Very different artwork for both ventures. I hope that they both manage to make a difference in somebody’s life for the better.

Hey! , yeah so yesterday I busted out the angle grinder, a cut off wheel and some angle iron to make my rigid router sled. After a practice cut where I was a full quarter inch shy, due to a wandering disk, I got two 6.5 inch cut offs made without maiming myself, or burning the house down from flying sparks. I wore my leather apron, gloves, goggles and ear phones, so I was most protected from a 10,000 RPM spinning wheel. Then I filed off all of the slag, rough edges, points and vein opening Shanks on both pieces. Then bolted it all together with quarter twenty bolts, washers and some nylock inserts to keep it from coming undone. Looks like I thought it would, and gives me just shy of 42″ inches worth of width to flatten slabs, or bigger chunks of wood. The aim was for a full 48″, but I forgot about my routers handles that stick out of the sides, and connect with the sides of the sled, impeding full coverage. But no matter. I don’t really have the room in my shop to work on slabs that are close to or over four feet wide. Three feet would be best, given the constraints of the space. Fine with me!

I had hoped to start in on my adjustable saw horses, but sick child #2 is home, so that’s a no-go today. And by the sounds of it, tomorrow as well. She finally reached the snotty expulsion phase, so we have another few days of this before it clears. Then I have the router table sacrificial fense to build, and the face plate for the trim router so I can mortise out wider pockets without it ripping downwards and gouging out uneven holes. So many things to do!

What is there to say…

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We’re here, the flotilla has jumped in to battle. I can’t hide from it, nor steer into a detour any longer. Well, I think I have one last point of view to check in on before the big to-do of it all. Plus having written another 3,000 words of short stories yesterday, i may not write again today. “Can’t brain today, has the dumb.” Is a quote that oft comes to mind. The second installment yesterday garnered almost zero response, and it took some doing on my part to get it written. But I did it, I like it, and I feel it’s a worthy entry in the series. One of the longer ones too, clocking in at just under 2,000 words itself. Plus the somewhat related prior entry that was around 1,200, I think it fills an interesting space with more POV’s.

Have been running full steam in the garage shop. Managed to completed the following: wheeled cart, tool cubby, router table for table saw gap, built a peg board panel, a router bit display block, a T handle hex key stand for my Imperial & Metric Hex Keys. That makes for a pretty good build week.

If I get the rigid router sled made, and two adjustable saw horses, and the oversized 12×12″ router cover panel made from clear acrylic, I’ll be finished with all shop centered projects and can begin a real wood working project again. Like the nagging screen door, or a new coffee table build.

Work is going ok, some previously quiet clients (due to Covid) have started to make their way back into spending marketing budgets again. Happy to be thought of for stuff like that. There was some potential for new clients on the horizon, but I’ll have to wait and see. I gave my presentation, and now I have to wait and see. The Joys of freelancing solo.

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!

Let me tell you what kind of person I am.

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I’m the kind of person who hates having an appointment in the middle of my day, because I can feel it looming over me. So I don’t like to start anything prior to the appointment in case I forget about it, or turn up late. So in most instances I sit and wait, minute by minute until the appointment arrives. I hate that. So today I forced myself to run some errands, which took 45 minutes, possibly 50 to complete, that on any other day, I would have had to rush to complete after my appointment was done. But now those three things are done, and I have a full hour left to sit and wait. The waiting always makes things worse. I wasn’t nervous about it all week, or last night, or this morning when I woke up, but now it’s filling me with anxiety and bubble guts. Argh! Hate that. Oh well c’est la vie.

So day 100! Woohoo! Milestone for sure. Did you catch yesterday’s back to back chapter entries for the interconnected series Ghost of the Dirty Starling? Fun stuff. Those Bison drones sound gnarly, and a tad volatile. Hmmm… foreshadowing perhaps? Or just another side trip I can make later on if need be? Good to give yourself off ramps occasionally, I believe. I was going to do something funny with Norman and Gerty, but changed my mind. I like the self serving killer for hire in a tutu. I also liked the fact she knew enough about murder to do her gloating afterwards too. None of this providing your captive with extra precious seconds or minutes to formulate a plan or escape out of sheer luck. No sir! Gun’em and then gloat. Like a good little hitman – hired gun, contract killer etc etc..

I might be fortunate enough to pick up some bakery bagel display unit design work today or in the near future. Which is great. I kept in touch, once every six months since Jan 2020, with all of the folks I freelance for, and recently those connections have become active again, as people feel as though the pandemic is coming to an end. I have thoughts on that, but I am also a huge fan of the work coming in as well. Work in, and invoices out, this is good for business.

Had my oldest child help me with some cleaning in the garage. I had to tear down some tables and stands I had for equipment. I have a larger table saw now, so I need to recover some space by placing my jointer and my planer together on a low lying wheeled cart, so it can be tucked under the rails of my hybrid saw. I can’t have that space go to waste anymore. I have completed projects eating up space, which I need people to collect, or accept delivery of. It’s all bought and paid for, and I knew I would have to hold on to it all, but now it’s getting on a bit, four plus months later, and I would like to not have to maneuver around it any more. It’s not a huge deal, but it aggravates me. I’m not working with 40,000 square feet here people. Think, tall single car garage stuffed to the gills with house hold stuff, Christmas  lights, bikes and wood working tools. Not a pretty sight to behold.

If I had the money, and paid work, I would use a dedicated dust collection system, and air cleaner, rather than my ShopVac. But it’s nice and compact, and I can store it under tables and shelves with ease. But the dust means you have to work in a mask at all times. Not a real problem,  since I use a fair bit of Walnut, and you want a mask for that stuff anyway. I have my eye on a hickory slab waterfall coffee table I want to make later this Spring/Summer/Fall. Could be a real looker if I take my time with it. I have the angle iron I need for a rigid router sled to flatten the slabs. I am looking forward to it a lot! I will also venture to build adjustable leveling saw horses to hold said router sled. So those will be fun to build too.

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.

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!