Of course I forgot about crossing Day 300.

Talk about consistency eh? Was so angered by the refrigerator acting up for the fourth time I totally spaced on crossing day 300 of my writing challenge. Which is a milestone for sure. Perhaps when I get into the whole self indulgent year in review mood, I’ll get a final word count for every single post over the 365 days. What do we think the total will be? My early guess will be around 250,000 words for the year. Nothing too insane, given I wrote about 100,000 for my second book in the early part of the year.

I have definitely not been anywhere near as consistent with my working out, but I’m still working on that. I need to find some additional exercises to do in order to keep things fresh and add a hint of fun. Or, now hear me out here, make it more exciting. Standing still while using dumbbells is not a thought that inspires me to action. Though I feel better now after doing it more often than not. I do miss my olympic lifting sessions. I just don’t have the room for a squat rack, full complement of bumper plates, bars, and kettle bells, and essentially a full box gym. Which is a shame. But that’s the reality. I also don’t want to pay to join a gym I won’t go to as much as the expense would demand. Wah-wah-wah. I get how this all sounds.

With the recent big clear out of the shed, by sending the pergola to the cottage, and gifting our Barbie Corvette power wheels vehicle to my niece I was able to move all four bicycles out of the garage and into the shed. You can now move freely inside the garage for the first time in many months. I took some time during our holiday weekend at home to rearrange some elements in the garage. Giving me the ability to make some longer cuts on the table saw before I have to rotate the whole saw in the space for really long cuts. Or anything over four and a half feet long. Which is pretty rare for me. I work in the two to three foot long space most often. When I build boxes and end table and such, I keep my projects on the smaller side. As much as I would love to, I just don’t know if I could do a whole dining room table build. Would get awful tight in the space I have. I’m thinking on whether I could replace my radial arm saw by getting a larger and more robust sliding double compound mitre saw. One with a twelve inch saw blade to it. I’m hearing conflicting reports about the veracity of that statement, but I think a chunky well made mitre saw would do what I need, and save me even more floor slash wall space. I need to somehow regain some assembly space, which I don’t currently have. I don’t like having to leave partially assembled bits on my work bench if I still have more building left to do. And constantly moving things between the bench, the floor, or the table saw top is a hassle. Again, more whining. But, in this case I am doing something about it, albeit slowly. Piece by piece over months or years. Playing the long game here with this one folks.

The youngest is home under the weather again. I think she’s pulled a groin muscle after tripping on a dining room chair, falling at the park, and falling over at school all within a 48 hour period. Then swimming for two hours last night to aggravate it. So she’s doped up with kids Tylenol for the ache, and is watching the Spongebob movie for the hundredth time. On the plus side her cough is settling down again. She’s self contained, bundled in bed with drink & snacks. Which means I’m able to work, glad I’m not as busy as the last four weeks had been. Stay well out there. Ciao Bella!

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

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.

Looks as though the plan is working.

Every single day, for an undetermined amount of time I put some work into my childrens book, and thus far it seems to be paying off. I have the whole layout done. The type is set in place, the cover & Title design is done, and I have started to produce artwork for the internal pages.

This is way more work than just writing stuff. I knew it would be, but sweet cheese. I still have a lot to do. The bonus is, that I am making headway after more than a year of putting it off. Much like my short story series I don’t believe this will bring me any sort of fame or fortune. I just wanted to do it, so I am. In my own way. No need to be hood at it, just trying things out, striking items off of the bucket list. It’s actually fairly rewarding in an internalized, intrinsic way. Good enough for me.

My thinking for the books interior pages is this, I will build out all of the colorful backgrounds first, as I’m enjoying the painting process in Photoshop right now. Though I wish my tablet was still supported, but it crashes everything when I plug it in, so mouse painting it is for now. Then I’ll have to settle on the design for my two lead characters, and some peripheral materials. But that’s a decision for future me to wrangle with, not present time me.

Slowly filling in the background of the illustrations. Some I like & will keep, while others are a starting point to be improved upon.

Still working out every single day. I used one skip it day, when my back was really jammed up, so I’ll take that 24 hours of no weights, or body weight exercises as a small win. As I came right back too it, instead of three months from now. I might even ride my bike today. Or I’ll shape up the hedge rows in the yard. Or continue to line the curbs. Cutting away all of the over hanging mess along the far side of the property.

Trying to stay busy, and focused on getting things done around here while I can. More outdoor birthday parties coming up, so saving things for the weekend weather gets harder to do, when I loose prime sunny working hours. No matter. All good here. Stay strong, we’re all ready at Thursday! Yay!

What’s so special about Day 121?

Nothing really. Still madly working away on projects for my day job. Built a bench out of scrap pressure treated lumber for our orchard down at the farm. And have been working on house hold things like laundry, dishes and bathroom cleaning, you know fun stuff.

Today also marks 14 days of lifting weights again. Not much change due to starting light in weight, but I think because I changed my mindset about 121 days ago, in regards to finding the time to do things that are important to me, I’ve found it easier to stick with the exercise because that reward pathway is built in my head now. It doesn’t have to be much, as long as I do something physical every day. I don’t even put a time expectation on it for duration. Just do anything, everyday. Eventually I’ll discover a rythm or a regimen that works. But I’m not at that point, I’m just trying to do it, at all, every day. Bicep curls, tricep curls, rowing, chin lifts, kettle bell swings, Turkish get ups, shoulder press, arm raised, shoulder shrugs, bench press with a make shift bench, chest press, squats, lunges. If it can be done with two or fewer dumbbells I’ll try it to see if it works for me, without hurting myself. Do I aim to run marathons or run an iron man triathlon, nope. I just want to feel a bit better, and possibly fit into some nice pants in the future. I’d like to be able to lean over to tie my shoes without my belly impeding my way. But weight loss isn’t my concern right now. Just building the mentality to do it every single day. Legs, arms, back, belly. I don’t care which. It takes time, and a small effort, but I’m happy to have started. Much like writing, I’ll see how long I go for, no pressure.

Tackled two jobs yesterday that I had been fixing piecemeal for multiple years, and the shabby nature of the file, and compounding small fixes finally caught up with me. Had to invest multiple hours into rebuilding them from scratch. It’s better now that it’s done in this manner, but boy did it give me trouble. The project started out with minor changes, then a few more, then several more, and then a total redo. But due to the nature of the first changes, it wasn’t worthy of a rebuild. But mission creep, and the totality of the changes over the years warranted it now. Plus it was giving the printers grief, and made me look bad in the process. So I bit the bullet and fixed every single facet in a single day, and hopefully now it’ll be perfect moving forward. And I don’t hear about it until next year when products get added or dropped, and distributors change their contact info, or logos get updated etc etc…

So that’s my Thursday. I’m waiting on two more parts of my large report and then I can send it off for proofing all of the data / tables and graphs/charts. Then I can make any edits and submit it to the clients. Then it is time for the invoicing! Getting paid – ya!