Skip to main content

Merry Monday: Canada Day Weekend

 

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="398"] It's Monday again![/caption]

On Canada Day, I decided to go geocaching. Out of three attempts, I found one cache. My friend, who has hundreds, assures me that it will get easier and that finding any at all was pretty good. Between cache one and two, there was a Bridgehead that was open and had delicious watermelon rooibos iced tea. It was a welcome refreshment on the warm summer day. Cache number three seemed like it should be easy, but I couldn't get to the coordinates for some reason. I'll try again soon. Cache number two is very close to CSIS and it feels weird to be climbing through bushes and whatnot with their cameras pointing at me. I don't really want to have to explain that I'm urban treasure hunting. But I'll probably get up the courage eventually. I should get some high DEET bug spray so I'm not worried about ticks in the long grasses. After that, I finished my one garden box but the new roll of chicken wire pinched my fingers so I couldn't start the others and switched to writing my MTS blog post and working on a short story for a Hallowe'en collection. You'll hear more about that in the months to come. In the evening, I watched a shark-themed B-movie with some friends in honour of shark week. I also kicked off a month of love poems on my site and finished my first garden cage. You can read my view of staple guns here.

 

[caption id="attachment_5659" align="alignnone" width="720"]cage The first line in squirrel defense![/caption]

 

Saturday morning, I watched the cutest group of martial artists. My friend's toddler is in the class and they're too adorable to be scared of them. Saturday evening, I cleaned up the mess from drilling and stapling the cage. No more sawdust and failed staples littering the floor. Then I listened to some new-to-me records (The La Bamba Soundtrack and Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits) that I got for $2 each. I also have Man of LaMancha and a Neil Diamond album, which I'm not sure about, but for $2 I thought I'd try as I do like Sweet Caroline. I also bought a few trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and marching band albums. I never went to band camp but I was a band geek in my younger days.

At iaido on Sunday, I was the senior student and had to pretend like I knew what I was doing as we demonstrated Tachi Uchi No Kurai. I hope I was convincing. In my mind, I could hear someone reminding me that as a lowly shodan, "I know nothing". Or maybe that was the finale of Game of Thrones lingering... There were a couple of newbies and they're always cute rather like the Taekwondo toddlers.

I've had to put together a schedule to keep track of everything I have going on as far as writing goes and ensure I have time for other things like learning French and practicing guitar. I'm learning the art of putting a hard stop on my writing time and trying to stick to specific writing times because I was burning myself out.

As far as French goes, I'm working my way through L'Etrange Vie de Nobody Owens by Neil Gaiman in comic book format. The pictures help fill in the gaps and I'm enjoying the story, which is quite silly in a lot of ways. It's about a little boy who is raised by the ghosts in a cemetery and one vampire who goes out at night to get him food.

I'm currently working on a short story involving one of the characters from The Page & The Magician. It's a mystery and I suppose it's also a fantasy/romance. I'm aiming for 10,000 words and I'm on a deadline. About 9,000 words to go!

My first post at My Trending Stories (MTS) is up. You can read it here.

Ciao,
R~

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Under Siege

My city is under attack. I wish I was being facetious.  The so-called "freedom" convoy is here and so far this is what has transpired: 1. They parked on the war memorial. These people who call themselves patriots. This is where the Unknown Soldier rests. This is where Corporal Nathan Cirullo lost his life in October of 2014. The cars were towed, but who knows what actual repercussions they will face. 2. Later, when asked to move away from memorial, one stood and jumped on the tomb itself while others cheered.  3. Despite having port-a-potties provided for by the mayor, they've been defecating on Parliament Hill, in snowbanks, and on streets nearby.  4. Flags being flown include the Confederate flag of the United States, Trump flags, the Quebec equivalent to the Confederate flag, upside down Canada flags, regular Canada flags, Fuck Trudeau flags, libertarian flags, and ones adorned with swastikas. Yeah, this is totally about freedom rather than racism, white su

The Gauntlet That Was October

I had a lot of things happen in October. I watched Frankenstein in the cemetery with friends. I had tea with a friend. I started a new sport: curling. This is really fun and I'm enjoying the level of activity it provides and all the strategic elements. I'll do a separate post on it soon. Unfortunately, soon after my first game, I came down with Covid and so did the friend who I had tea with, so I think we both caught it at the place we went to. That wasn't fun. I already posted about that. I was fortunate to be free of it in time to attend Can-Con where I took in lots of panels, saw some of the wonderful writer community, bought many new books, and volunteered to help out in the rooms. The following weekend, I went to the livestream for Danielle Allard's new album release, followed by the in person release. As part of this, she has a 6 video series that releases every Sunday on her YouTube at 1:15 PM EDT. Video number 2, Falling Into Place, is one that I feel fortunate

December 2023 Holidays

The drive to North Bay was pretty smooth until I was 30 minutes away and ran out of windshield washer fluid. That was the first time that ever happened to me. Luckily, about 10-15 minutes later, there was one last gas station where I could fix that. Since it's my busy season, I worked the mornings and took the afternoons and evenings to spend with family and friends. My brother stopped by with a special gift, a new ornament for the tree. My mom loved ceramic Christmas trees, so it's a perfect way to keep her with us at Christmas. His friend, Fawn, helped him get it made. She has a YouTube channel you can check out here: https://youtube.com/@thethriftyfawn After that, I visited friends in the slightly rural part of Callander, Ontario. We were having a lovely time catching up and then the evening had a surprise in store. Someone in the area had hit a small deer with their vehicle. My friend's dad skinned and gutted it in around -20C (due to the windchill) weather.