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Tag: thoughts

The cold bleak November we all know & love has arrived.

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Dried sunflowers in the early morning breeze, on a gloomy November day. (Fig 1.)

Halloween is over, the decorations have come down, dried off, cleaned and stored for the year. Leaves were raked, mulched and added to the garden beds. Nearly three hundred tulip bulbs were planted in those same beds. Last but not least the Dahlias were dug up, dried in the sun & breeze, and stored in the basement under a blanket for safe keeping.

Now we sit in the luminal spaces where we wait for Remembrance Day observances before the big gear up for Christmas. I DO NOT wish to hear Mariah Carey until after twelve noon on the eleventh. Let the vets have their time unmolested by billionaire divas nipping at their heels. Lay a wreath, take a quiet moment to reflect, then you can go whole hog into holidays of all shapes, sizes, and traditions.

I have blood work to do during mid day of the eleventh so I will wait until the twelfth to erect our tree, unless the kids want to help in which case we will assemble it on the Saturday of the fourteenth. We never celebrated Christmas until after my oldest brother’s birthday in early December, but my daughter likes the tree up, and the holiday themed gimmicks, so she wants the house done up well before. I find November to be bleak, and dreary, and so the lights and decorations are a welcome diversion from the grey, brown drabness of outdoors.

Soon I can dig up all the holiday classic movies so we can watch them all as a family, or independently. Likely I will watch a good chunk of them by myself while I wrap gifts, or clean up, or decorate the house. The next nice day we have (which could be as early as tomorrow) I will cut the grass one more time, and then put the Christmas lights up on the house. I won’t plug them in until after Remembrance Day, but I will put them up when the sun is shining, and the temperatures are above zero. I absolutely hate decorating in windy, sub zero conditions. Which is something my inlaws insist on doing. Waiting until the worst possible weather, and then spending fourteen hours getting next to nothing done because they want to argue about every cord, switch, and item position. Infuriating! So I get mine out of the way when it’s more pleasant out because I know the shit-show is coming along hot on my heels!

Today’s task, instead of splitting wood, was to dig up the last of the Dahlias at the farm for my mother in law. They are up out of the ground air drying in the cool breeze. Ready to be tagged, pruned, boxed up, and stored away wherever they decide to put their own flower bulbs.

One last row of Dahlias dug up to air dry. (Fig 2.)

I do not know what will become of all the left over peppers, and tomatoes, or any other vegetable still left in the patch. I imagine they will simply till them under. But it could go in the back of the trailer to head north and feed some deer by the cottage. I’m sure the last pumpkins, and squash will head north for that exact purpose.

They must have reworked the fields once more because I found another seventy five or so sizeable rocks and such which I picked up and enlarged my current standing piles. I have something like nine to eleven piles of rocks to dispose of. Could almost make a small chimney if I was one of those bush craft YouTubers. Make a tiny lunch time hibachi or stone BBQ for eating hot food out by the fields. Ha. Disaster waiting to happen!

Welcome back to Monday after what felt like the longest weekend I’ve had in a very long time. Halloween, two ball games, Wonderland, visiting extended family to trick or treat out of town, yard work, dog walks, five hours in a bar with friends, a time change, and the last moments of my wife’s week off of work. We were trying to do all of the things! I’m exhausted. Phew!

Ciao Bella!

Dune: Part Two

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I enjoyed it just as much as the first one, though it does seem to have lost a little of that world building touch. No more mentats, lurid family pets and things of that ilk. Still a gorgeous spectacle to behold, and it runs on rails right from the get go, carrying on after the exploits of Part One. Timelines are changed to be very streamlined, and they have changed various plot points but it reads on screen coherently as far as I am concerned. I don’t know if it would qualify as a “Master-Piece” on its own merits, but certainly as a pair, and more likely as a trio with a more definite ending after one additional installment.

I’m not going to be controversial here but I feel as though Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken were used to great effect. I can tell that Florence will be a bigger player along with the as of yet unborn sister Alia in the third portion. I’m also glad that they thinned out the royal entourage and hangers on by using just Lady Fenring as a go between hinting at a broader court of intrigue. This movie could easily bloat up to twenty to thirty hours if you tried to stay too close to the source material. I for one am glad they trimmed, blurred, and shuffled characters and events into one another to simplify the story. I never liked the Barron’s propensity towards CSA, and eliminating the assassination attempts and subsequent murders of raped children was the correct call. The gladiatorial match hints at the behind the scenes scheming which the Harkonnens are prone to, so that left me satisfied with one aspect of the streamlined divergence from the source material.

Speaking of villains, Beast Raban plays a cowardly bully very well, and Feyd Rautha was a fantastic psychopath with a knife fetish, and a insatiable blood lust. Worth the price of admission.

Otherwise it was pretty good. I enjoyed it a great deal. I will buy it on bluray if it is offered as physical media come summer time. The CGI is of a high quality. The on location filming is really lovely. The depth of field would lend itself to 3D with no issues. I saw it in DBox Atmos AVX because that was the largest screen locally that I could see it on that doesn’t require more than an hour drive each way. I was going to aim for the late late show but opted for the six PM, and it was a touch fuller inside than I have grown accustomed to. Not a fan of crowds nowadays. Too many people coughing or sniffling for my comfort. Should have stuck to my guns, although had I of done so then today would be a wash. I can’t stay up until 2AM, then do the 8AM school drop off run, and be a fully functional human adult. I don’t have that in me anymore. But I digress.

Good movie, great sequel, better as a whole. Fingers crossed for a third and final installment from Denis Villeneuve. Have you been out to see Dune: Part Two yet? What was your assessment of the film? Ciao Bella.

Somehow we made it to Midnight, and rang in the new year awake.

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And now I’m up and about just after 8:00am and the house is very, very quiet. Didn’t drink anything yesterday other than water, Gatorade, and a Coke. Decided against getting blotto for the big year end finale. Thought it would serve me better to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for the morning. Sorted laundry and cleaned up a bit around here. My jacket stinks to high heaven of smoke & ash. That should be fun to wear for the next few days as we wind down the Christmas break. In true fashion I had an upset stomach while the family did fireworks, so that’s the same as always.

Welcome to 2024. Today is Monday. This is the last week of winter break, so time to make the best of whatever you have going on at the moment. We ended the year by clearing out junk that had been sat going mouldy and rotten. Having an enormous fire that I’m certain you could have tanned beside, as it put out so much light & heat. Flames don’t put out UV light though, as far as I know. I’d have to look that up. I know welding arcs are so bright and hot they can tan/burn skin from exposure. I’m getting off track. We cleaned up, and did some much needed juggling of resources/space to make our lives better. It’s worth the time and effort is all I’m saying. I’m sore in the shoulders and back. My coat smells like smoke, and I burned a hole in the sleeve of my jacket. But it’s all worth the hassle. I cleaned the burn pit, and the shop, and the laneway of debris and leaves. I feel better about it all.

Do I have any words of wisdom for 2024? No, not really. Try not to be too hard on yourself, but do take responsibility for your words/actions. Plan ahead even just the tiniest bit and you might save yourself some trouble. It’s not masculine to forget your wife on holidays and birthdays. That’s just a dick move, don’t do that shit. If they forget about yours then perhaps it’s time to move on – yeah? Common sense stuff like that should get brought up every four to six months so that we can all realign and get right with ourselves. It’s easy to drift off the line and get out into the weeds a bit. Shake it loose and adjust yourselves accordingly.

But I’m not a prophet or guru, I don’t have any answers that you couldn’t find without a quick google search or an encyclopedia. I remember Encarta, the cd rom disc, it used to have audio clips of composers I would listen too because we didn’t have the internet in my youth and actual CD’s were rare and very expensive, and I could hear 20-30 seconds of In The Hall of the Mountain King whenever I wanted thanks to that CD rom disc of Encarta. Memories.

**Answer to my question, a bon fire foes not emit enough UV light as it is primarily in the visible light spectrum. A welding arc however does emit high levels of UV light radiation and will tan you to leather, burns, and/or skin cancer if you don’t wear appropriate PPE when welding.**

Day #675: Out in the Weeds

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For the life of me I can not recall a reason as to why I kept this writing streak going, other than compulsion, and daily habit. Even so, I’m awfully close to going a whole year without writing any short stories. I have written copious amounts of nonsense, and silliness though. Funny to think I felt my numbers of views were down in the year to year review, so I tried to write every day for a few weeks before I hit New Years Eve and was going to stop. Then the next calendar year had the best showing ever, and then dropped off again. Not as low as in years I posted almost nothing, but I failed to gain enough traction to warrant making the writing streak a compulsion. So what do I do now?

Did a few other things as of late too. I finished my sixteenth book this year, by John Scalzi, called “Starter Villain”. It was a fun little jaunt in a mixed up James Bondesque world of mischief and mayhem. Finished it in just a day or two. Very pleasant read. I’m back to the Adrian Tchaikovsky novel I tried to start several weeks ago. Hopefully now I’ll have the available concentration to read five or six hundred pages of science fiction. I’m still halfway through “American Prometheus “, so I should either finish that or hang up that particular book mark, and call it a day. It’s good, and thorough to say the least. A bit like reading a textbook. Something I haven’t needed to do in close to twenty years. I feel as though I should read it at a desk with a highlighter in hand. Gives off those kinds of vibes. Still a good read. Just more dense than I care for right this minute.

I got into the shop this week to work on my pine framed bed. I have some work to do on the box joints, as I didn’t go deep enough, and I need to square off the bottom of each joint, as I left them rounded over. But on the bright side I did some bandsaw work, some hand saw work, and got the project just a little closer to finished. I’ll take it!

We have a PA Day today, so the kids are up early, of course, not that we have to shake them and roll them around their beds to wake them up on a regular school day. Where they cry and moan about wanting to sleep in, but on the days they can do so, they are up earlier than usual without a problem. I can’t tell you what a surprise it will be once either, or both start to sleep in on weekends, summer days, and holidays. I imagine they’ll be up late making a racket around the house so not much of a win there anyway.

The other day I went out and picked all of the remaining apples off of our two fruit trees to send to my friends horses. I had a fair amount of quality sized apples this year. The red ones all fell off earlier, and the wasps terrorized those for weeks. Once the temp dropped enough to drive them away I came to claim what was left. A half a grain bags worth. No where near what was on both trees, but I don’t fancy getting swarmed and stung for apples. I thought we were going to get a bunch last year with all the blooms the trees had, but then no fruit was produced. This year however, whoo boy! If I had a bee suit and a cider press I could have picked all 2-300 apples between the two trees and made some cider or fresh apple juice!

Apple picking on the side yard.

Funnily enough I recently saw that an old acquaintance of mine was coming to the end of a contract position, and i saw a job posting that i thought could be right up their alley, and they complained to me about it. So don’t be alarmed should i not do things of that nature for other people. This year has really reiterated how bad of an idea it is to do anything nice for other people. Yet i keep on doing it. Going to learn my lesson at some point. Or become a jaded prick about it. Either way – we all win!

It is currently raining. It started to rain several hours ahead of schedule so I am happy we decided not to go back to Canada’s Wonderland for another Halloween Haunt adventure. Was supposed to start between eleven and midnight, but was softly pattering on the ground by eight o’clock. We’d have been there for little more than an hour and it would totally kill the vibe. Mist is one thing, but a full on rain would end the night. Precious few available days left this season. I think we might be finished, but perhaps we can get one last visit under our belts this year. I’d very much like to ride Yukon Striker one more time. It’s such a smooth ride. I like the articulated carriages. Plus I feel as though they weren’t concerned about the footprint so they were able to make softer transitions between tricks/gimmicks, and your neck and back are all the better for it. Five stars, do reccomend! Try it at night in the dark.

Love those decorations!

Divisive fact: House rules on games beat what’s listed on/in the box.

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I say this because some of y’all been creating bloated over designed games that rely on a massive text book sized set of rules that impedes the fun we are trying to have. So if I should trim those rules down, or eliminate some clunky mechanics that’s a plus in my book. Why slavishly hold to the printed word if those words are either unclear, overly complicated, drag on the flow of the game, or are just upsettingly idiotic. So, now we have House Rules, and those outweigh the printed rules around here. Provided – he says. We all agree on them prior to playing. Can’t just be out here changing the rules on the fly. Unless! You all encounter a game crashing/ending bug that you all refuse to accept and can negotiate a new addendum rule to alleviate the issue. So that’s my thought on that. Like – the makers of Uno have these wild thoughts about what you can play after certain cards are dropped, and we say – yeah fuck that noise, we be about our own rules here my friend. +4’s on +4’s, as many +2’s as you have in your hand can be played at once, and if you get the smack down laid upon you, you gather your new horde of cards, and still get a turn to play card(s) if you have the number, colour, face card to do so, or else you pick up a card and the turn moves on. Don’t at me, I said what I said.

Pretty sure today is Saturday. Looks lovely outside, with the sunshine, blue skies, and reduced humidity. I need to bag up some wind blown apples for my friends horses this weekend. Best to clear them out before the wasps all settle in. They, the wasps that is, get so aggressive in late August and September.  Make the apple/pear trees a real hazard to have near by.

Once again I didn’t spend as much time utilizing our back patio as I would have liked. But since we go to the cottage several times a year, I sit looking out on the lake as opposed to the giant cedar hedge we have here. So not a downgrade, but it seems sad we don’t sit outdoors here much when we have the deck, stone patio, and a reasonably private space to be in with shade/sun, and breezes. I think our house would be better if the massive front & side yards were our actual back yard space. But it is what it is.

I was just interrupted by a massive Caterpillar crawling out from under the dishwasher across my kitchen floor. Beige-green in colour with a few long black spikes. How oddly random is that. I’ve gone ahead and scooped it up into a Tupperware container and put it outside on the deck. Where on earth would that have come from? Do we have gaps that lead in from outside under the counter/sink/dish washer? Is this a sign of some other expensive issue? I just can’t wait to find out.

Fridge is slowly heating up once again, but not icing over in the freezer portion, so that’s new, as far as the malfunctioning fridge sags goes. New water softener still isn’t right, but kind of works. Water heater was fixed with a new overflow valve, so that’s a check in the win column. Fun times.

Acerbic Anaerobic Excercises for the forthright and direct.

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Some days the hardest part about writing is coming up with a useable title to follow. Usually I utilize it as a lead in for my one sided conversations, other times it’s a click baity nonsense jumble to attract attention, and other times I think it’s a funny thing to say. Doesn’t really matter. I don’t think a mere title has ever gotten me more views, clicks, eye balls or deeper reading into the ole back catalogue of 555 days of entries. Some will say it is a numbers game, others tap into rage, some humour, and others technical skills or an educated treatise on a subject worthwhile of attention. Not this guy. Domestic Duties Monday, or Wednesday, Hump Day, Middle of the Week Day diatribes about laundry, messy kids, the local weather, and jabbering on about freelance graphic design, or attempting to finish my short story collections, and an illustrated children’s book. You won’t find Nobel Prize winning content here. A fair bit of snark is available though. Plus TMI stories of Crohn’s Disease, and intestinal distress. Glory to those whom behold such words. Words, I say! Explicit, delicate, sonorous words. Munch. Blather. Bile. So many to choose from.

I have some website headers to produce today, a few more photo edits to make, and a series of event posters too. Work is a bit lighter this week. I do need to hit up the local Lifelabs for blood work this afternoon, so that’s there, sitting on my mind. Here’s hoping my requisition form is still in good standing, or it may be a shorter visit than intended. Then a late day school pick up for my oldest, whisked off for an indigenous day downtown with a school club for a speaking event. They all seemed pretty excited about it. Happy to see it. Now I just need to wait around between 3:00pm, and 4:30pm or potentially later for their bus to come in. Hopefully they will update us using the parents Facebook group. That would be a really great service.

Pretty sure today is Thursday. Mid to late June all ready, I can hardly believe it. I mean I should, my Visa bill came in all ready so that’s always a strong indication the month is about to close out. Had another birthday party invite for the kids today, up to four now for the next two weeks alone. At this pace I’m going to go broke buying Lego sets for other families. Ha. Ain’t that the truth. Thus far I have planned nothing for the summer. To be totally honest I haven’t had the time to think. Well, up until this week I had been going pretty hard with work, but I saw a real slow down very recently, and I did some additional tree pruning, and house cleaning. But I haven’t given much thought to summer activities beyond the park, the farm for weeding, rock removal & watering, or swimming at the in-laws. We can visit area splash pads, but the pool is more private, and has far fewer interlopers. I don’t expect I’ll be all that busy until late August and beyond. As the events have to happen before we can audit them, or conduct research. I have done almost no wood working this spring either. Was too busy with freelance design work (which is a good thing). And what little extra time I did have available I spent cleaning up, tearing down, and reorganizing the space to make it feel more open, and less cluttered. Now I can fit my lawn mower down two aisles from front to back of my shop space and not get snagged on anything. A miracle. That allows me to move bicycles around for repair & maintenance work too. A true boon. I do have a big box full of burnable stuff to go out, but I’m not that concerned about it right now. I have done a pretty decent job of decluttering and opening up floor space, so for now I am satisfied.

Well, I need to eat breakfast and send some proofs off for review. Talk again soon. Ciao Bella!

Patience can be rewarded, or be used against you when it comes to accounts payables.

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Nobody likes to chase money, when I decided to go full time (or close enough to) as a freelancer the last thing on my mind was how much time I’d wind up spending thinking about, worrying about, dreaming about; money. I far prefer to do the design & production work, than to do my books. I am very fortunate in that my clientele pay me on a reasonable basis, for which I am deeply grateful. It wasn’t always this way. Back in the early days when I made $7,000-$10,000 in a year if I had a client fail when they still owed me over a thousand bucks, that was a hard blow to take. I never did see that money. I threatened to go to collections, but the company dissolved once the property they operated out of sold, and the equipment was auctioned off for parts. It still hurt me deeply. So now I will send an invoice monthly, rather than wait for a potentially months long series of projects to come to a close. You may not see every penny, but remaining afloat will relieve a bunch of stress, and leave more brain power to focus on the quality of your work, and not developing grey hairs from stress.

Do with that information what you will. If you wait too patiently to submit an invoice the AP folks may not honour it as it’s too far out of date. You really need to know a clients payment habits, and SOP when it comes to submitting an invoice. That kind of mistreatment should sour a relationship immediately. Rush to supply them artwork, but wait 90 to 120 days for a partial payment. These types of groups should be avoided. Pure aggravation. Do not reccomend.

My personal goal is to get popular enough that I can work forty hours a week, have five weeks of vacation time to be with my kids, and make enough to save for family trips, entertainment, and to cover off various peripheral living expenses with the household. I don’t think I’d ever want to get big enough to have to take on staff, and rent premises to operate out of. That’s too much stress and worry, and requires an awful lot of capital up front. Yikes. Then I’d need HR policies, training guidelines, be looking after hiring & firing. All the management style stuff I detest. I just like the work. I like designing and solving art based problems. I’m done with people and office politics, and all that additional stress. Yuck! How are you supposed to sleep at night when you now know you are responsible for the gainful employment of others. Argh! No. No thanks. Making payroll while waiting on clients to pay! I guess at that point you’d have to institute a retainer system, and then charge over top so that you always had some funds available from every client on hand to pay for fixed costs (think rent, insurance, subscriptions, payroll, heat & hydro), and then top that up, make your profit from the big ticket invoices once those actually get paid. I can only imagine how much time and energy an agency is required to put into client retention, and growth for finding more paid work, or partnerships for tasks you’d like to outsource. Boggles the mind how intricate this sort of thing can get.

Anyway. It is early Saturday morning, and my oldest is out doing Ringette lessons, coupled with power skating. Had to have new skates and a brand new helmet in order to participate. It was offered to the youngest too, but she turned her nose up. I think she regrets that choice now, after the new helmet & skates turned up for the older one. Wait listed now, so no chance she gets in to the program now. Stouffville is big on skating, and ice pad related activities.

Are you an over the knees or around the ankles kind of a person…

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Well now, that’s a deeply circumstantial – and awfully personal question. And the answer is, it depends. Am I home, away, early in the am, very late at night, inebriated, hung over, under gastrointestinal distress? Everything factors in to the answer. No way would I let fabric touch a public men’s room floor. Nu-uh! No way. Never. But if fighting for my life on the seat, may strip down entirely (when at home). Who needs clothes on when it feels as though your entire life is draining into the porcelain. Unwanted firehose spray back is a powerful deterrent. Like I said, that is deeply personal, and I thank you for respecting my privacy at this time.

Tuesday – forgot it was recycling day today. Saw the neighbours gear out front and twigged to it, luckily before the green trucks came through. I didn’t even register it was going to be Tuesday while prepping for gymnastics last night. Usually I pull the bins out of the guard box on Sunday or Monday to load them up, and be ready to spring into action anytime after 7:00am should I hear the grumble of the green trucks on our street. But I completely blanked on it. How odd. I have been fairly busy straight through since January 2nd this year, which is – really, really rare for me. No major breaks as of yet. Oh I know they’re coming. Highly unlikely I’ll be this busy all year long.

I had to put the Urn build on hold due to the cold, and volume of work I had on tap. Glue doesn’t set properly in deeply cold weather. And as mentioned before, no major heat source out there right now. I have it partially insulated, but I have a long way to go before the temperature would stabilize enough to work comfortably between December and Mid March. The base is done, the exterior chamber is done. I have the pieces for the interior cut and ready to glue in place. I have the top of the cover ready, and can build the tray and cover fairly quickly. Then it’ll just be a matter of scraping, sanding and then a highly polished finish to make it shine! I’m ok if they decide to not want it. I’ll put it in my office closet up out of the way, and can hold on to it for myself.

Started a Richard Morgan book I’ve had in my possession since 2007. I remember how much I loved the Altered Carbon book series. This is in that universe, but not directly related. I have a fantasy novel he wrote from 2008 in my to read pile too. I usually tend to buy more books than I can read in a year, so I’m happy to oblige historical me, by actually getting around to reading books that have sat on a shelf for ten-fifteen years or so. I know I have a Mo Hayder book I haven’t read yet too. I’m usually not into horror / murder books, but she writes great, creepy, gripping stuff. The current Richard Morgan book I’m reading is “Black Man”. Longest book I’ve read in quite some years. Over sized paper back with tiny type. So I feel like it would be a much longer trade paperback than the page count it currently has. I’m two fifths of the way in. Lots of action, lots of science fictiony hand waving tech jabber, and lots of mystery/suspense. For some reason I thought I had read this when I kept seeing it on the shelf, but it’s not ringing any bells no matter how far I get into it. Which is great. I hate when I forget I’ve read something before. Invest all that time to read it, and then PING! oh! I know how this ends, oh I’ve read this before! Damn it! On to the next book.

I haven’t put any time into sculpting yet this year. I know I will at some point. Just not right this minute. I haven’t put much thought into finishing up the illustrations for my childrens book either, come to think of it. I really should get that stuff squared away. Not that my writing career will ever go much beyond this space, and self publishing. Sometimes I just gotta get a story out of my head. Doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. I share it, if anyone besides me reads it, or enjoys it, all the better. Hope I made you smile, or wince, or chuckle, or cringe. Better than straight up apathy. You know what I think? I think that many of you out there have a story you want to tell. I think you should put pen to paper and get it out. Just let it fall out of you. Don’t worry about style, voice, the hook, or any of that. That’s for the editing stage. Right now, go jot down some points, and just plop it out on the page. The good, the bad & and the ugly. You’ll feel better when you do. Way easier to tweak and refine what you have in your hands than wish you wrote the perfect thing in one go. But what do I know. I’m just some dude talking on the internet to the three folks that read me off and on. Hey guys! Hope you are well. Ciao Bella!

Bleak: Now there’s a word for you.

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I love the word bleak. I like how it rolls off my tongue. How it feels in the mouth. The wretchedness it evokes. A very vivid word, bleak. I feel as though it gets used just enough about town to still feel special and evocative. There’s a newness, no, a freshness about words that don’t get thrown around willy-nilly all the time. As though it still has that “new car smell” to it. Or the cellophane still on it. I like that. Bleak. Just love it. What a word!

Not bleak.

So, here we are. Wednesday. Hump-day. Middle of the week, day. Again. Seems as though we were just here. I wonder what day is most peoples point of reference. Do you look at your week from Sunday to Saturday, or Monday to Sunday? Friday to whenever the hell you like? I don’t know. I guess it would depend on a whole host of factors. Do you work alternating shifts? Nights, weekends, evenings, or a 9 to 5? All of those could alter what day of the week you use as a reference point. Lots of people have those Sunday night blues about going back to work on Monday. So are you always refocused on your life come Sunday, or is it the awful trek to work on Monday that orients your week? Are you working for the weekend to get blotto on Friday through Sunday afternoon, just to make it to next Friday at 5pm? Lots to unpack here. I have a fairly introspective hobby, with this blog, so I constantly evaluate my week, and each day within it. Domestic Duties Monday slash bleed into Tuesday, is a common refrain here. Same with Hump-day, thinking Thursday was Friday, Thank god it’s Friday, and then the rush to go do as much of nothing as we can for the weekend. Which is a conundrum. Do too little and it feels wasted. Do too much and it feels draining as you head back into the work week, with all of the evenings responsibilities. It’s a whole thing. Finding the right balance of something fun, but not overwhelming, and a whole bunch of nothing to book end it, to make the weekend seem restful. A balancing act for certain.

Also… ugh. I hate to say this, as my kids are a handful, and we try desperately to rein them in when out and about. But exert some semblance of control over your shitty kids please. How often do we have to see and hear them all run amok at every god damn second of the evening when out at township programming. Take your unruly kids elsewhere. Take them for a walk. Go look at cool rocks outside. Show some parenting and calm them down. Get your face out of your fucking phones and be a parent for a second. Jesus christ. Look I get it. Watching 7, 8, 9 year olds fumble their way through patterns is less than appealing to most, but why make it worse with your little shit heads screaming, and shouting, and running about on the side lines making things worse. The kids can’t hear their instructors, who then need to shout, and then the meek kids check out because of the angry tone, and then other kids start to chatter, and it becomes this cascading failure. I’m not asking people to beat their children. But rein that shit in. If you know they’re hyper, go DO something with them, instead of hoping that THIS time they’ll sit still and be quiet. Act accordingly. They are your children. You should know if they can or can’t sit and watch others do stuff for an hour without needing a break, or skipping it entirely to run around in the park for that hour like a maniac. Be their fucking parent. Not their buddy. You have to make hard choices. Know their limits. Work within them. Jesus. It isn’t rocket science. I’m not asking for perfection here, god knows we aren’t able to attain it ourselves. I’m not asking for you to physically restrain your child(ren), but to *NOTICE* how out of tune they are with the surrounding environment, and act on it, within reason. You can wander the hall with your child, go look at the display cases, talk to them outside the training area, play tag with them elsewhere. Just don’t have them act like shitty kids infront of thirty others who paid to be there, and are actively trying to learn what is being taught. I’m sure your little ones would love it if others chose to run a jack hammer outside their classroom as they are trying to learn a skill they are fond of. Treat others with the respect you would like to receive yourself. Again, I’m not asking for a muzzle, or straight jacket, or wee automatons that are seen but not heard, this isn’t the 80’s. No hitting, no screaming, no anger. Just ACT. Do something about it. Remove the child if they are over stimulated, if that is something they respond positively to, so that they can calm down and come back. Not asking for them to be hidden away. But perhaps 30 seconds to run the hall or play a game might bring them back down to a calmer level. Just don’t sit there, face in your phone letting them disrupt every body else because it’s too much like hard work to parent for a bit after you sat down, or zoned out. Yeah, it’s tough, and thankless. I get it. I don’t like having to miss out because my child chose that moment to go apeshit. But you do it. Calmly. And with love and affection. Eventually they’ll figure out self regulation and can do it in a calming peaceful nurturing fashion. But you gotta be willing to lead them in that learning. It’s not a punishment. It’s a loving, and positive correction of behaviour. But man oh man, do I hate it when parents abdicate that responsibility. Grinds on my nerves.

Looks like the snow is here. Gotta be Thursday tomorrow if the snow storm is here today. 2022/2023 the years of the Thursday snowmageddon. The mid week snow shovel break that nobody asked for. Glorious. And on that note, I will bid you adieu. Ciao Bella!

There are six books which I read cover to cover in January.

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The books in question.

I read Mary Robinette Kowal’s “The spare man“, “Fart Quest Vol.4“, Tom Segura’s “I’d like to play alone“, The first two “Dungeon Academy” books, and then Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of memory“. With a partial read of Robert Evans’ “The kid stays in the picture“. A book I feel like I should go back to now that I have cleared my schedule for reading through until July 1st, 2023. But we’ll see. It repeats itself alot, with the gambling, drinking, and adultery themes. The names, and motion pictures change, but ultimately he’s retelling the same six stories over, and over again, with that Shake or slap an hysterical woman, old Hollywood charm. The girls are prizes to be claimed, and discarded at whim. Interesting, up to a point. Not my tempo. As it were.

I’m about the start in on the N. K Jemisin Broken Earth Trilogy, so I have high hopes! Please let them be good. It would be better if they were great, but I’ll gladly take good any day of the week. Exceptional would be amazing, but a good trilogy, with no filler feeling chapters is hard to come by. Is this the authors seminal work? What they’re known for? I don’t know. I didn’t do all that much research, but a few names I trust from previous high quality references to books gave this one a thumbs up, and it has won a prestigious Sci-fi award for the whole trilogy, book by book. So that’s gotta say something positive? Doesn’t it!?!

I should really go back and try to read more of the Carl Sagan book, but it came across like a text book, so I need to be in that sort of mind set. For education rather than entertainment. That was the difference between reading about the Pluto mission, versus the Mars rover stuff. One was *a story*, the other a technical play by play, like a parts list, and engineered drawings in exploded view. One I thoroughly enjoyed as it did contain lots of education information inside the story telling, the other I detested, and only got part way through before putting it away. My labouring over a text days are done. Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, even Business Admin textbooks were a chore at times, and I’m glad I don’t have to hack my way through those sorts of things anymore.

Also I do want to know how the Grapes of Wrath ends, but who-boy, that was an exercise in patience for colloquial speech patterns. Feels like it will mean something by the end, but gah! The idea of spending the next five months reading five pages at a time to just get to the end of it feels like a total waste of my time. Can it provide a great enough epiphany at the end to warrant such a slow, halting, and seemingly unending read? I don’t see it. Not from the 150 plus pages I have all ready read. Maybe the end packs the most whallop? I don’t know. Seems fool hardy to leave your whole message for the very end. But I’m no writer of an American Classic. So he’s gotta know what he’s doing.

Today is Wednesday, and I’m looking at being pretty busy today, and this evening. The kids have things to do every night of the week excepting Friday, and the weekends. One month in and I am exhausted, so who knows how the kids are coping. I know they enjoy it all. But, I think we need to narrow down some interests, as this is a bit much. I am grateful that I get to see the improvements from gymnastics, Taekwon-do, and their dance lessons. Had I still been working downtown for any number of breweries or agencies, I’d never get the chance to see this stuff. I get to see them tey it for the first time, work at it, conquer it, then build upon it. Rather lovely – at times. Anyway, great day to you all.