Day NinetyFive: Still no hockey to get up for at 6am... AND it's Sunday... Why... why... please tell me why my family has the need to be up at this time on a Sunday... didn't they get the memo? Day Of Rest... Fuck if, got up and made breakfast, eggs bacon avocado some fresh squeezed juice. And then Gurgle gurgle gurgle... did I mention the drain clogged up the other day in the garbage disposal? Ya, 2 minute fix with a plunger, didn't seem pertinent to mention at the time. Well it apparently got stuck again on the way out of the house... the gurgling noise it the sound the pipes make when water is no longer exiting the house through the usual method. After breakfast I went down and turned the breaker off for the sump pump... you don't want to have the plumbing all opened up when that kicks on and empties the ground water from the hole into your lap. Sure the water is pretty clean but it's still a hell of a mess. So now that I've take measures to prevent any massive rushes of water into the pipe I was opening in preparation to run the snake down it, I proceed to uncap the stink hole. Been there done that before, seems we should watch what we put down the drain a little more closely... BUT People don't think of that when things are going well... just when things are not. So I start ramming the snake in the hole.. and Flush... OK the wife had one of those not thinking moments even when we were in the middle of the crisis... Thank you I appreciate that all over the floor in my workshop. Long story short, I fixed the blockage... and spent the rest of the day cleaning the floor in the basement.

Day NinetyFour: Buying eggs off a different farmer now... they sold me some last week and dated them so I knew which ones to use first. Nice but not really necessary, I only bought 6 dozen, if they are good today they will be good at the end of the week when I need more. Today I picked up the same amount, she realized there was no need to date them... and she didn't. I'll be back for another 6 dozen next week. Did I mention Lawson doesn't really eat cereal? So ya that's what I did before breakfast because we had run out. then omelettes. Now everything I touched I dropped this morning, put my finger right threw an egg like I was the Incredible Hulk putting his finger through an egg... like someone turned off the sensitivity levels and left me to run amok. Best not to work with power-tools today. Artsy, yes lets just stick to simple things today that wont harm anyone. Heather had a project due for tomorrow... suppose we should have started working on that earlier. After all it's only been on the to-do list for a month or so now... gee, reminds me of every school project I ever did. She got out her Sax and I hooked up the computer equipment, borrow the boy's mic he got for Xmas some speakers... made a little studio in the dinning room... finally needed to relocate the bird to the bathroom and close the door (Watch the Video, it didn't Help) - And we got to some recording. A few glitches with bumped volume knobs on the mic and lose wires, but no worries we only had troubles when she nailed the song perfectly. After battling with the hardware we finally got a good take, I shot some footage with the camera and dumped it through the editing machine we use to do the boy's hockey videos, which took a while. Made a break for dinner... Once again it's Pizza and Wings night... I'd post photos again but if you scroll up you might find it a little redundant. Back to work on the video. By 9pm we had a copy uploaded to facebook for the Timmins Symphony Orchestra to use for their fund raiser this spring. Link to follow. In the breaks in between recording I had some spare time while Heather's lips reinflated or something like that... I made a little ad for the new mindcraft server (posted on my wall) - Now I have a special sense of humor... I found this funny as hell. I like to go onto servers and build something that blows people away. One of the first servers I worked on as admin was one such server... I built beside Spawn, they tried to hide what I was building with mountains all around the spawn area but it didn't work. You could still look out my window and look down on the little spawn area... they eventually just gave up and asked me to build for the server. What's that I get to use world edit... LOL, you thought my builds were Epic Before... Hold my Beer and watch this. Anyway I go to post it on line and apparently facebook wont let me mention the title of the server online because of some issue they have had with people using the service in the past. So I can't mention pow.apexmc with another dot and a 'co' after that... dot com is fine but that's doesn't work to play the game, you need the dot co. Meh, I put it in the picture, they can't read that. Tired... might just go to sleep now.
-------------------------------------
https://www.facebook.com/heather.e.turnbull/posts/10163896714615245
$5 says they pull it for facebook issues of some sort before the night is over.

Day NinetyThree: Heather took the day off work today, mental health day... maybe vision problems... she couldn't see herself doing another mindless job from the mindless job-jar waiting for everything to get back into full swing of things. Long weekends are always good. Wait, I spoke too soon. My day was one problem after the other... I'm mostly blocking now so today's entry will be short. Now Heather being home always makes is a good for food, I got her in the mood for food with a pancake for breakfast. She did the rest of the work from there, fried rice (without rice) for lunch and General Tao's Chicken for dinner... but someplace in there she made this rhubarb cloud thing that was too good not to have too much of... mean while Lawson and I fought with things in the garage. He was challenged with boxes... just break them down... I showed him enough times that I did most of the work my self. He spent hours out there just stabbing boxes with a steak knife. I fought with the Lathe... wrong switch... no wonder I got a deal on it... I wanted a maintained switch and got an intermittent one... hence push the button and it goes off sure... but let go of the button and it fires back up on it's own... I'm now on a quest for the right switch... I will get back to you when I find one. If you have one let me know. It's an Eaton Cutler Hammer 10250T5 I think... A two position maintained push maintained pull control unit to go on the switch unit I have. Used is ok, I'm not too picky.

Day NinetyTwo: Seems more like 3 months... Went through the morning routine and worked on the Minecraft server some. See the photo for our progress... this is going to be the new spawn area for Acid Island. It literally dwarfs the generic spawn area but still needs a lot of work. What you can't see in the picture is the shops inside the volcano and under the castle... still need to do the detail on the castle, the inside, jails, rule boards, the tutorials... the mind reels... Sidekick was working in the area and stopped by for lunch... we dug out the rest of the burgers from a few days back and finished them off. Tried to take care of some business and do some stuff online... print some other things out... technology was not our friend, nothing worked, the internet sucked, the cell phones would send anything, likely due to the crappy weather, wind was unreal, lots of rain, hail, cats, dogs.... all the usual shit falling from the sky... it was just ugly... and we know the internet is going to suck on these days. Sidekick went to finish off some work and I met him at his place later on to look at the car again. Tightened up the bearings a little more, still can't get a proper tork reading on them but looks better... sounds better... speedo still doesn't work. The bearing seems to be lined up perfectly with the sensor and ring... must just be a bad sensor, but honestly we did nothing to it but unbolt it and put it back on.. this one has me stumped, it should still work. Meh, car runs and the wheel isn't going to fall off now so we have that going for us. Came home for dinner... Heather made me make her pancakes for dinner, yes they are that good. Big news after dinner was Lawson had a bath... LOL... Lawson hates baths for some reason... yet he never wants to get out of the tub. I worked on the Spawn area a little more before falling to sleep.

Minecraft Acid Island Spawn

Day NinetyOne: Humpday again... as early as our day starts as usual the wife is long gone before Lawson and I get moving. Grabbed a shower, breaky and hopped in the car. Showed up to take sidekick to town for his doctors appointment. Sat in the car and waited for him. Afterwards I finally broke down and decided to look for some things I have been needing for some time... Glasses, my glasses broke months ago, I had old ones, I made due, but Lawson's glasses broke the other day too... now it was just a missing screw on his and a broken wire on mine that held the lens in so I know it's only about a 2 minute job... I get stopped at the door... after all you need an appointment and a hazmat suit to go into the office now... I told her I don't need to come in and left my glasses on the the table at the door, just take these and fix them... she wanted my phone number so she could call when they were done... Um, it needs a screw just fix them and I will be back later to pick them up, I'm in town now, I'm not making an appointment and coming back in 2 weeks for a 2 minute job... they agree, she talked to the guy who does their work, he had time to do them in 20 minutes, I told her I would be back later and asked when they were closed to make sure they didn't bag off at noon or something stupid like that... 5pm when the mall closes... fine... then we went to Crappy Tire... APPARENTLY I was correct about the staff there all this time... they can't count. The COVID Door Nazi had a new Rule for us to follow for the day... EVERYBODY MUST TAKE A CART! I'm like ya, I don't need a cart, I'm not touching that germ infested thing, I need to go to that end cap literally 9 feet away from the carts, pick up one thing and leave. Their madness for the rule: They use it to keep track of how many people are in the store... my mind reeled at the possibilities here... do I take the cart, head out side with it and put it behind the store some place and keep doing that every five minutes until all the cart are gone and no one is left shopping in the store and see if they notice? Naw, too much work... I took the cart... didn't actually touch it and then abandoned it 8 feet into the store. I was looking for a gas bottle for one of those Soda Streams that they have in isle 1... like they have a whole isle in the store dedicated to this colossal piece of shit. After all it's just a big plastic button that squirts gas into your water, the actual cost to manufacture it has to be almost nothing and the markup must be huge... and they have a whole isle of machines and squirty flavors for it... but no fucking bottles of gas to work the fucking thing... I'm not sure what the status is on these things in other parts of the world but if you live in Northern Ontario... just know before you buy one... you need to buy $10,000 worth of little tanks filled with gas when you purchase the unit because you will never see one again. this will mark about 4 or 5 months we have been looking for a refill tank... out of stock... there was actually a guy standing beside me asking an employee WTF... big empty space on the shelf... none in stock... AGAIN... we have even tried the CT in KL... no luck... been checking sporadically for almost half a year, NEVER ANYTHING... not even any idea if they will ever get them again. I go to the service desk... nothing they can do for me, no idea when they are getting any, glad I wasted my time... I went to leave the service desk towards the store... I got stopped. "YOU CAN'T GO THAT WAY" - Like listen lady where the fuck do you want me to go? Apparently backwards though the line of people towards the Cart Nazi was the answer, like that made any sense. Fucking stupid people with stupid rules are going to get us all killed. I gave up and went to shop someplace else... BestBuy, at least I don't have to deal with stupid there... I took Melanie in that one tie-dyed shirt that looks like it has an M on the front of it... what to buy... I needed a tape cartridge for the label maker, a bottle of gas for the soda stream and an adapter to go from the regular side headphone jack to the smaller one so Lawson can plug into the xBox controller and stop using the phone all day long to play with his friends. Thay had none of these things in stock... but is was good to see Melanie again after all these months... we let her get back to work and left the store empty handed... OK, emergency shutoff switch for the lathe... this is going to cost me... I went down town to the electrical repair shop, you never know what they will have kicking around... in the widow is the same motor hooked up to my lathe so things look promising... but I'm batting 1000 today... nothing in Stock... screw it, going to the electrical supply place to see if they will sell to the general public... if they ask, it's for sidekick's business... Now it took some digging but they found the switch I was looking for but it had been around since before the invention of the computer and wasn't listed in any of the software... remember back when you would buy parts and they would look them up in a parts book, get a number and then look in the pricing book, add their mark up and give you a price... ya it was from that long ago... pretty sure those books were long gone... he says, 'How's $20 sound?' - Sounded like a hell of a good deal to me... then I bought a box to put it in, metal, explosion proof, water proof, stupid proof, approved by the world federation of electrical supply geeks... ya, I knew that wasn't going to be cheep and it was in the computer... $80 for an empty electrical box, but if you're going to do a job, you might as well do it right... oh and a box of wire staples while I'm there because their small box (500) is going to cost less than a 10 pack at Crappy Tire... and I don't apparently shop there anymore so... lol. I got the first items on my list taken care of and found a new shop to buy stuff at. 　 Glasses should be done by now... I head back there... door is closed... she comes to the door and hands me back the glasses and apologises for no one being there right away... apparently they close the doors for lunch from 12-1 and forgot to mention that when I was asked when they were open... doh. OK day was starting to get better, electrical stuff and glasses done. OK nuts and bolts...

-- Hit my word limit again (I had a copy of it before I hit enter this time...) more to follow, see below.

(continued): OK nuts and bolts... there's a store for that, you need an account, sidekick has one... the doors are locked... ok here you need to call in your order and pick it up at the loading dock in the back... Ya, I need 4 of these bolts but an inch longer, how do we do that over the phone... he took the bolts and I sat in the car on my cell phone to finish the order... Hello? Ya, I'm looking for some nuts... do you have any there? They did, 'the staff'... so we wait at the loading dock door... I need 4 carriage bolts and 2 nuts, one for the lathe and the other to fix the car... they bring out a bag of 50 carriage bolts, 50 nuts and the one other nut for the lathe... um, ya I need one of those and 4 of those... 50... smallest bag they had... now a few weeks back I needed 50 carriage bolts, I bought them at the same place but they didn't have a box of 50, I needed to buy them in bags of 8... go figure... different size... SO... what about regular bolts... I may be able to use 50 regular bolts... definitely have no use for 50 of that size carriage bolts... and the price triples... and same with the one size nut for the car (which they didn't have the castle nut I wanted, just regular nuts)... hmmm... ya ok never mind, I'll go next door and get it (the actual auto parts store). She was applauded that we were going to go next door and get the stuff... lol... no she was more applauded we told her we were going to go next door to get the stuff... LOL Well we did come there first... even though it was a car part we are actually looking for. She gave me the one nut for free... didn't want to do all the paperwork for 30 cents. Never did get the nut from the auto parts place. It was well past lunch, we went to look at one more spot for that stupid Soda Stream gas shit... once again, no dice... or gas... Fuck it, threw the bottle back on the floor of the car, which is where is has lived for months now. Stupid fucking piece of shit. Went for lunch, drive thru... ate in the parking lot... the parking lot of the hardware store... As Lawson and sidekick finished eating I went inside to scope out the hardware... found the nuts and bolts I needed but not the one for the car. Grocery store... we stagger our entry so they don't realize we cam e in one vehicle... remember when carpooling was going to save the planet and now it's a crime that's going to kill us all... ah... good times... MUCH better than last week... I grabbed some cheese chicken and shrimp. Now Boy had been good so far... lots of waiting in the car, not much anything fun... I asked him what he wanted from the store... he asked for a Hazmat Suit so he could go play with his friends... he would settle for Oreo's with Double stuff... I bought him 2 bags full. Pushing up on 2pm sidekick gets a call and needs to do some work... we have to head back. I dropped him off at home... didn't remember eggs at the farm and just when home to put the chicken on for dinner. Heather got in and put on some cauliflower, dinner was served... Sidekick messaged back... seemed like he was spent to... we will get to the car tomorrow. Watched some more Flash on Netflix and packed it in for the day.

Day Ninty: Just another garbage day, not overly inspired to write about it... The boy and I had breakfast, took out the garbage and spent the rest of the day horizontal working on the Minecraft server, doing mindless stuff on the computer... it was like a Monday all over again. When Heather got home we went outside and got some stuff done. Apparently last time I used the BBQ I forgot to turn the IR Burner off, I never use it but it was on because I was going over it, cleaning it up and making sure everything worked... So I've literally been paying to heat the outside for the past week or so. I made hamburgers, Heather made buns, we ate and I got over it. While out side I did manage to cut a bit of the weed tree down... Manitoba Maple... it just keeps sprouting new limbs from the base, if left unchecked it could grow an entire forest from the single tree trunk. SideKick was busy the better part of the after noon... never did get to looking at that car.

Day EightyNine: Getting sick of this COVID BullShit... Starting to get reports in on next seasons ringette/hockey... they all ready have plans to fuck up the complete year... Ringette will have no games or tournaments until the year 2021... I just got an email from hockey, started to read it and it's looking like... Nope not going to read any father... only going to make me mad... then I will be up all night making angry post about hockey and stuff... Lawson and I worked on the Minecraft server for a little bit, he couldn't decide what he wanted for breakfast and I couldn't decide it I wanted to actually stand up... so Minecraft it was... by 10am I broke down and made him egg mcMuffins (no I don't give a shit about infringements on the Mc thing it was egg, cheese, butter on an English mcfucking muffin)... actually it was 2 eggs and real cheese so it was nothing like those shitty little breakfast sandwiches the Clown sells... Hmm... seem I may be in a foul mood tonight... maybe the shitty rainy cold weather is just made me more sore than normal. After breakfast I went back out to the garage. Fought with the lathe again... no adjustment in the motor placement was a bad idea... I changed the holes to slots so I could align different gears and different length belts... I need longer bolts, the belt is a little tight... I need a proper switch, the one for the lights sucks, pretty much burnt it out just testing things, going to get a proper safety kill switch on Wednesday, and longer bolds... maybe a new belt as well, can't see this old crappy one lasting very long... As to where my collection of tools/chisels and whatnot went, that's another story... I looked for those some today... I've seen them recently, just not sure where... in the garage I found that 4th tire for SideKick, he came by and rescued it... and some crutches... they helped me get around for a bit as my legs gave out... and I found that for some reason... I don't throw out boxes... almost like I've been saving them for when the box fairy comes and takes them and leaves money under my pillow... haven't got any money and she's not taking away my boxes... fuck the bitch, I'm going to use them for kindling. And those plastic totes... I must have 20-30 of the large ones... lids missing... broken... mismatched... and coolers... I could put the fixings for a 2 month long picnic in the coolers I own... Once I get rid of all my portable storage compartments I will actually have room for all my shit... WAIT, most of my shit is portable storage compartment... seems like I will have no need for storage and have a lot of it... I think that's kinda like money and time... when you have time you have no money and when you have money you have no time. The boy played Xbox with his friends all day, he should have likely been doing his home work, I think there is online class tomorrow. Heather made it home late, I was still in the garage looking for tools. There was none... must be inside someplace. Oh and I found a filing cabinet... with books and paperwork in it from at least 15 years ago... pretty sure we didn't need any of those either... lol, come to think of it... the cabinet is another box that I've collected... come to think of it there are 3 more in the basement and another in my bedroom... all just boxes where documents go to die... can't say I've ever found anything once it disappears into the boxish void... Yes Heather came home and made Pizza, and practiced her Sax, and complained about engineers because that's what geologist do. Sounds like the bearings are still loose on sidekicks car... going to have to tighten then up some tomorrow... might just fix the speedo problem. Should have actually bought a new nut for the job but some things are budget constrained and you try to make due with what you have... torquing the nut down was impossible since it took more tork to actually turn the nut that was recommended for the actually tightness... hope cheaping out doesn't leave us doing the whole job over again. Tired... going to look at the Minecraft server.

Leanne B
We’ve had a lot of time lately and no money to get any of the jobs done we need. Everything (including me) is falling apart lately and last week of school thank god!

Day EightyEight: The day of rest... Hahaahaa... ya, can't see that happening. I made breaky for the family then we all headed back outside. Heather and Lawson went for their morning run with plans to stop at the Cozy and grab a coffee and hot chocolate to go... no dice... didn't look to be open so they headed home to regroup and make other plans.  I returned to the garage determined to get that Lathe working. The table it came with was crap and in moving up here I tore it all apart and left most of it down south so making a new table for it was today's task. Fortunately the pile of wood I offered to someone to make a dog house from didn't match their energy level so I have a supply of salvage wood... now normally I don't used wood like that either, far too much work... but I'm starting to take a liking to the look. I pulled a few select pieces from the pile and took them to the basement for a little cleaning and cutting. All went rather well, the wood looks good, I got all but a few of the smaller nails out (I didn't see them, not that I couldn't get them out) and I cut it to the sizes I needed... took out the sander and knocked off a few corners where the wood was splintering, which looks kinda cool all on it's own, definitely adds to the aesthetics of the piece... now here's what I learned today about reclaimed lumber... I had to put a bolt sticking up out of the one piece to bolt the Lathe down to... I cut a pocket, dropped a carriage bolt in place and cut another piece of wood to go over it and hold it in place, put some glue on it, tapped it in, ran it through the thickness planer to level it off and then set it aside to dry... the problem became apparent at that point... where the hell was all this glue coming from,,, it was getting on my hands.... it was getting on my table saw... it was getting on the leg of the stand I was building... damn, cleaned it off but it was still getting all over everything... FUCKING HOLES!!! It was like a driller hitting a flooded section of the mine while drilling from below... the nail holes from the reclaimed wood were oozing glue from the pocket I had made for the bolt. DOH!!! And of course it's coming out both sides so I just can't lie it down and let it dry... had to fill the holes... pushed little pieces of paper towel in the ones on the back and turned that side down until it dries. Problem solved. Now to clean up the glue again... honest I don't think I used as much glue as actually came out. A proper kill switch and I should be good to go now. At some point in the day while I fought with wood... Lawson and Heather went back out to make up for the coffee and hot chocolate that didn't happen... they went to the corner store and grabbed an ice cream to go. After all it warmed up from 6 deg C during their run to about 11 deg C, so that's almost like summer time here so ice cream was in order. Also at some point in there Heather fed me a tuna sandwich... the day went painfully slow... lots of breaks, sitting doing nothing while waiting for another moment of strength to carry on... prepping and screwing together 2 pieces of wood took all day... glad I'm not getting paid piece work, I would owe someone else money at the rate I was going. LOL Our dinner plans involved a charcuterie plate... Heather dug out the last jar of Pickled Eggplant that I made at the start of this COVID Crisis of 2020... some Brie and other cheeses, summer sausage, pepperoni (you make do sometimes with what's available), some toasted sliced bun bits... oh and nachos, Nachos??? yes... we don't eat them anymore... very bad for us... however Heather made some (not out of things that are bad for us) and they weren't half bad... almost like nachos... take out the taco flavour and add something else and you might be able to make nice crackers out of them too... (ya, crackers is another thing we don't really see anymore). Late breakfast, late lunch, late dinner = early bed time. Everyone played a few games and fell to sleep.

Melanie T
mmmm ice cream

Day EightSeven: I got up sometime around 1am and cleaned the kitchen up... I was determined to cook breakfast in a relativity clean kitchen in the morning. Tried not to make too much noise. Must have worked, everyone was up too early for a weekend once again. Lawson and Heather braved the cold and went for a run before breakfast... which in turn left me time to start breakfast in theory... Now I assumed they were going to be a while so I took my time getting out of bed and into the kitchen. I made it there as they were getting home. Pancakes today... chocolate pancakes with chocolate chips was the boy's request... Heather and I went plain this morning (my special GF Low CARB recipe I posted), damn... I'm stall amazed how good they are... if you weren't told they are fake-cakes... you may never know. Heather figures that's my Super Power... Pancakes. Lawnmower was still on the To-Do-List so we all headed outside to get some work done out there... my out here involved cleaning up the garage and rebuilding the Lawnmower after I shagged it from the rafters. Lawson was set to the task of unknotting the extension core, while Heather had the honour of Mowing the Front Lawn. She cut down all my pretty flowers. She now realizes why I only did the hill with the riding mower, you can barely stand on the hill when it's slightly damp, never mind actually push a lawn mower up and down it... Riding Lawn Mower... on another list for another day. Still cold out, by noon it had warmed up to about 10 deg C... I lit a fire in the shop to warm things up a bit and get rid of some cardboard boxes. Plugged in a few lights and the ceiling fan to blow the warm air back to where people worked... turned the breaker on and we had both light and air movement. Lawson helped put a tree back out side that I've been drying out int he garage, pretty sure it's good to go now, going to cut it up and make something out of it. I found some tools I thought I had lost which was nice... got all the way into where the wood lathe was buried and I'm pondering trying to get that running tomorrow... had to go inside the house, didn't last no where near as long as I would have liked to... best to stop then push it to far and get hurt. We finished the Pizza from the night before for a late lunch. Rest of the day was spent horizontal, I think I caught fibromyalgia, still hurting... Heather made 'Buffalo' Chicken Wings for dinner... it is Pizza and Wings day, so... AND I took a few photos because I'm starting to believe no one up here has actually seen one before. (I will leave them as replies to this post when I'm done)... After dinner everyone kinda stuck there head in an electronic device and wasted the last hour or so before bed. Late lunch = late dinner.

Rod Turnbull

They are not breaded... nothing... nothing was done to them... they just go in the oil and swim around a bit... not the oven... not the BBQ, and not in the Fucking Wok (unless the Wok is Filled with oil bubbling away at about 360 deg). 

Buffalo Chicken Wings going into the oil

Celery and Carrots with Blue Cheese Dressing is what goes with them, Heather does make another dip that She like better... I'm still a fan of the Blue Cheese. And let them cook in 360 deg oil... when they look GBD, they are done... not Rocket Science.

Celery and Carrots to go with the Wings

If you were wondering, GBD = Golden Brown Delicious... which incidentally looks like this:

GBD (Golden Brown Delicious) Chicken Wings

Cook the sauce... it's not fucking BBQ Sauce... Not Sweet and Sour... Not Honey Garlic... or ketchup... or even Franks Buffalo sauce from the jar (however that is getting closer) - What is it then? Franks Original Hot Sauce, Butter, Vinegar and Worcestershire sauce... if you want More Hot, adding Tabasco is acceptable.

Buffalo Chicken Wing Sauce... NOT FUCKING BBQ Sauce!!!

Then dump that sauce on those wings, toss it about... can't get too much sauce on those... (save the sauce the chicken wings can't soak up, it's good on eggs for breakfast the next day) <<< THIS is what a BUFFALO CHICKEN WING looks like.

Proper Buffalo Chicken Wings

Engrossed in building the New Minecaft server for the kids to play on... can't type right now... check back tomorrow.