#337 - Success!

After getting to bed well after three am, I think it was fair to say I was tired. Emotionally too.

I hate missing my mentor deadlines. I am still struggling with getting my assignments started early and even worse, when I finally did start a day earlier it was like pulling teeth. The whole experience from Saturday didn’t do anything for my sleep.

Eventually, my mind stopped running through its paces, and I feel fast asleep only to wake up to my alarm and once again having no idea where I was, or what day it was. And the worse thing that can happen in that instance is to learn it’s only Monday.

What a slog this week is going to be!

I had a bunch of messages coming in from work over the Teams app and none of them required me to answer them from my desk. It took me a good half hour to stop answering questions or reading posts before I finally dragged myself to my desk.

The rally cries were going out for people to take overtime hours to get us caught back up to speed. I don’t think our crew wants much of that right now. They are tired and burned out as it is. It’s been a tough slog just to get to where we are.

But I have to look at the episodes I am working on a look for efficiencies. Which is what I did for most of the morning. Part of that is making sure we are gong to get all the designs we requested and that they will work for us properly.

And as usual, a little after ten am the number of messages and requests dwindled off, and I headed to the kitchen for some food and caffeine. I still had half a leftover omelet and some home fries from Sunday. I reheated them and added a little splash of Frank’s Red-Hot sauce to add a bit of freshness, enjoying it at the kitchen table with a cup of earl grey.

By the time I returned to my desk, the art director had approved a bunch of paintings and I set about rendering them in to PNGs so they could be sent to the next department, who just happened to message me as they were wondering about getting more work.

I was happy to be able to accommodate them.

Some of the painters were rolling off the current episode and needed assignments. It messes with your head a bit as the supervisor when you are juggling multiple shows at the same time. But, as long as you are careful, mistakes can be avoided. It’s really important to make sure you are in the folder of the right show at all times!

I handed out work to two artists and then went back to rendering and adjusting the tracking software. It’s always nice to see the complete pile getting bigger than the incomplete pile. The art director had a couple of revisions she wanted, but there were no notes telling me what to do, so I left those for tomorrow. Sometimes when you are asking for changes, you know something is off, but articulating it is difficult. So, you sit on it for a day or two and then it becomes clear what needs adjusting.

The weather wasn’t wonderful today. It was wet and rainy the whole day. In fact, it’s supposed to be that way for the rest of the week. Nothing but rain. Great for the plants and grass I guess.

But as such, we skipped the lunch hour walked and we both stayed at our desks. Robyn had some extra work to do, so she is using up every available minute of the day.

By one, we had our department meeting, and there wasn’t much to cover. The painters are doing well, and we mostly chatted about our weekend and new shows we were watching. My supervisor had her birthday this weekend and she rented a smash room. I’m sure in the UK that means something different. But here in Canada, it’s a room that you can break things in with hammers, axes and baseball bats. It’s a way to get out all that pent-up stress. And it’s good exercise as well.

I can see how it might be fun to destroy things and get your rage out. She certainly looked a lot calmer this morning!

In the afternoon, I put on Netflix to run in the background. I chose Alleycats, which is the new animated Ricky Gervais show. I guess you could call it research, since it’s my job to make these type of shows. My initial reaction was to the voice acting. I felt a bit like a podcast for a bit. Just Ricky and his friends having a bit of fun. But as it went on the rhythm started to make sense for this show. The dialogue doesn’t feel so forced and there are some great one-liners and throw aways.

The animation and backgrounds are fairly simple which is something a lot of other creatures might learn from. The artwork should be good, and the animation has to express emotion, but it doesn’t need to be rendered to the ends of the earth. I imagine they are able to get a show out on time and on budget.

There are some heartfelt moments throughout the show and a lot of bravado. The side characters are the funniest to me. My favourite being the cat named Puke. He gets most of the best lines followed by Fang, who is the one-liner king. I have to imagine a lot of Fang’s lines were adlibbed during the recording session.

My initial reaction to the show was agnostic, but as it played, I liked it more and more. I suspect with the Gervais name on it will do well either way. I think he’s made lots of money for Netflix. They really seem to love him.

I did find myself laughing out loud a few times.

I ordered some food grade tweezers for using around the kitchen. What can I say? I felt it was time. I am a bit of a foody anyways and the large tweezers have some advantages over a regular set of tongs. They are easier to get underneath the food for flipping and grabbing. The are a little more precise as well. And let’s not forget the cool factor. When the person cooking your food whips out the medical tongs, you know he’s made some good food.

My pair is coated in black, and I think I’ll get plenty of use out them when I make dishes like chicken ruby, or when I want to turn vegetables with more precision to get a nice maillard effect on both sides, the nice crispiness that makes food taste amazing.

Our art director did some more approvals and that meant I could start to render even more paintings for the next department. I also received some requests to fix some layers and to rerun a few that weren’t rendered properly. Sometimes, Photoshop does unexpected things when we are running files on the computer farm. Just goes with the territory.

None of the fixes were very difficult, they usually aren’t.

I checked on the delivery estimate of my new earphones, and it looks like they haven’t even shipped them yet. I think with these bilk orders they give them a few days to see if anyone cancels their orders. I realized after buying them that I could have got the same pair for the same price at the local Staples. And I wouldn’t have had to wait for them; I could have walked out the store with a pair. But the truth is, I don’t desperately need them right away. It’s more of an upgrade. None-the-less, I am looking forward to trying them out with the dictation software and in a call for work to see if I get the same audio quality.

I got confirmation from Robyn today that we are going to be supplying one or two meals when we visit the family at the cottage. I am going to make chicken ruby again as well as the roasted parsnip and pear soup. I may also make a poached pear dessert as well. The soup and the dessert are things I wanted to try and make anyways, so why not use the family as guinea pigs?

I got some recipes for each, so it shouldn’t turn out to be terrible.

One of the things that Robyn and I both agreed on was that we would be bringing our electric griddle up to the cottage. It’s the best thing for making a bunch of bacon, eggs or pancakes for a group of people.

I am really hoping we will get to have a campfire when we are up there this weekend. It’s the one thing I miss when we rent our cottage in the summer. They don’t allow fires. I like to have at least one night were we all sit around, roast marshmallows and slowly start to relax. You know it’s working when everyone just starts staring into the fire like it’s got them hypnotized.

And who knows, maybe it does. Fire has always seems to have its own life force.

I received my response from my mentor after telling her I was unable to finish the story in time. She reset the due date, and she never says anything bad, but I always feel worse, like it was her I failed. And in some ways, I did. I know she loves to read what we send her and she loves it when we get it right and deliver something good to her. But it’s time to reset and let the past be in the past. Holding on the negative feelings won’t get my backup on the metaphorical horse.

The rest of the day was rendering and getting things ready for the next show. Overall, it wasn’t a bad day, but with little sleep from the night before I was developing a headache. The end of the day couldn’t come quickly enough. I popped an Advil and slipped into bed for aquick nap around five thirty. I must have passed out almost immeddiatley and didn’t wake up until about six forty-five.

Robyn was downstairs working ion some freelance work, so I started thinking about supper. She still had her second job to go to as well, and I didn’t want her to come home without having dinner on the table. I got to work chopping what vegetables we had and baked premade chicken breasts with cheese and broccoli stuffing. It wouldn’t be a gourmet meal tonight, but it would be warm and waiting for my lady when she got home.

I set about writing while I waited for the meal to cook, taking my laptop to the front room to sit in one of our grey highbacked chairs. I like to change my writing locations, because sometimes it can start to feel a little like I am working at the studio.

Kiddo #1 has a Wealth Simple account I set up for her and initial funded. I took a moment earlier in the day to get her to use the accumulated dividends she had received to buy some more stocks. I had her buy some shares in Pizza Pizza as the shares were down at the moment. I even took a moment to buy a couple hundred myself inside my own Wealth Simple account. The initial one-thousand-dollar investment I gave her has doubled since she opened it. Not too shabby. And I think she likes the idea of knowing there is an amount of money she has that keeps getting larger without her having to go and earn it.

The kids have a better understanding of the value of money these days, but I think they now see the cost of all the time you have to spend in your life to make that money.

Robyn returned and was happy to have a warm meal ready and waiting for her. I over salted some of the roasted vegetables, but when mixed them with the fried vegetables, it seemed to balance it all out. I used the rosemary salt I made, and I keep forgetting how powerful it is. You really don’t need much to season your food. It makes everything delicious though.

Robyn had more freelance work to do this evening which worked out great for me because as it is the end of the month, I have to make up all the quota due for the 2026 words a day challenge.

I owe six thousand words.

That’s more than I was expecting, but because the writing was so slow last night, I didn’t get the word count I was hoping for. I thought I might have to make up four thousand words this evening, but things didn’t work out that way.

At least this has been an improvement over the last few months. If you remember I was writing five and six thousand words a night or a week straight at the end of the month to complete the challenge. And all those hours nearly broke me. It was a real effort to get through every night. I remember thinking I wasn’t going to make it and thought about quitting the challenge at one point. But I persevered and eventually I crossed the finish line and stayed in the challenge for this month. I’m glad I pushed through and didn’t listen to the part of me that just wanted to get into bed and watch some tv or read a book or just get some sleep.

I sure hope the September portion of the challenge goes as well as this month did and if I can make it even a bit better, that would be great.

We have some social engagements, like going to the cottage for a couple of days that can really throw my numbers off. I write a lot of the time in the evening and that is when people want to sit around and chat. Moreover, with the little ones being there because after they go to bed their parents are less likely to be distracted and participate in adult conversations.

Even with the assignment from the last few days, I missed getting any reading done and have to restart the streak again. Tonight I won’t have time to read either with the final night of the challenge demanding all of my attention.

Another reason to get ahead and stay ahead this month. I think my goal is going to be to overwrite. Make sure I go past the minimum each day so that when distractions like the cottage come up, I can actually enjoy them more and not feel so stressed about it.

I’ve played with the idea of getting up early, but that has never panned out. I am just not a morning person. I really wish I was, but I am definitely not. I could be a lot more productive if I was, because this world works best for early risers, it is just the way it’s all set up.

My friend Ray has been winning a bunch of gold tournaments lately and getting all sorts of great prizes. Recently, he won a tournament and now gets flown to Germany to play in a tournament there. What a great experience that would be. I am not much of a golfer, just ask my father. People used to cross over and try and show me how to hold the club. To be honest, I only ever went to spend time with my dad, but after a while I think he was happy I gave it up.

But what a great thing to win a trip doing something you would normally do just for fun. I don’t think I would ever get something like that doing my job. I picked all the wrong careers in life. If you are reading this and just starting out in life, have a look around and see who gets all the perks in life and go do that for a living!

Be a Ray and not a Brian.

Anyway, I am proud of my friend for his achievements. He’s a good guy and deserves the wins.

Robyn told me about one of kiddo #2’s friends, who recently went on a date. The kids are in their early twenties. The date was apparently going very well and they had spent about six hours together. Her friend thought that they would definitely be seeing each other again. Then the guy askes her if she likes to go to the clubs. She said she would go now and then with her girl friends to have a girl’s night out.

Then he told her that he thought girls that go to clubs are sluts. I don’t think that went down as well as he was hoping it would. A little life lesson for you mister high and mighty. Girls who go to clubs usually like to dance and have fun. I am curious to hear if the young naïve lad is the religious type or if he or his family is from strict nation that likes to control their females.

Anyway, if she goes out with that guy again, she needs to get her head examined!

In the news, it seems that the so called renaming of Lake Ontario by the US government has put a spotlight onto something else entirely. With google and apple maps choosing to make the change to the map for the rest of the world, excluding Canadians, many people in Canada are rethinking their technology and what companies they want to support.

Apparently, the Bing search engine is gaining in popularity because of the map issue. But as Canadians look around for alternatives it is becoming clear that we don’t have enough home-grown replacements. There is too much reliance on US businesses. Even payment options like Visa and Mastercard are all US-based.

This may stir some entrepreneur to fill the new void, or it could be used against Canada at some point in the future. Either way, it has pointed out a potential area of concern for the nation interests of the Canadian people. And as Trump continues to cancel research grants, Canadian know how my get a leg up on the international competition in the tech space.

The way forward is unclear, but it is disturbing when the President of the US makes demands to an international company like Apple to make changes to its map software to smooth over his ego.

There was a time we had our own cellphone company that was adored by businesspeople and loved for its security. It was called Black Berry. It’s primarily a software company serving the auto industry now as it got out of making hardware when the iPhone stole most of the market share.

I was sad to see that Ridley Scott’s new movie Dog Stars isn’t getting the greatest reviews. I had that movie marked as one would like to go and see at the theatres. This season’s films are sure having a tough go of things. So far it seems like Spiderman, The Hail Amry Project, The Odessey and maybe Toy Story 5 are the big winners this year, at least so far. We still have an Avengers movie and Dune: Part three to look forward to as well.

Dog Stars wasn’t a franchise we had seen before, so I had some high expectations it might be good. And with Scott at the helm, it had a good chance of being good. Although may of Rodley’s newer films feel like they got “fixed” by executive producers that fancy themselves experts on film. And even a veteran like Scott has to navigate those dirty waters to get a movie made. Who knows, maybe it is better than early reviews are saying it is.

When I was making dinner this evening we didn’t have many vegetables left in the crisper drawer. Then I remembered that we had a yellow bell pepper plant growing in the garden and one of the peppers looked about ready to pick. Maybe it needed a couple more days of sun, but it was most yellow at this point. They start off as green bell peppers and then turn yellow.

I took a chance and picked it anyway. Slicing it open it looked just fine. I sampled a small slice, and it tasted fresh and crisp. A little less moist that the ones from the grocery store, but maybe that was because it was fresh from the vine. A sliced a few more to let Robyn try it raw. She is a lover of yellow bell peppers as a snack. The rest I chopped into one-inch squares and sauteed with some mushrooms and onions with a chopped clove of garlic. A little salt and a dash of Old Bay seasoning and I had a tasty addition to our chicken and roasted vegetables.

The peppers turned out great and we couldn’t tell the difference between them and the store-bought ones, other than the store-bought ones are a little larger and probably grown in a greenhouse somewhere. Bell peppers are notoriously hard to grow according to all my friends with gardens. It’s a long time to wait to harvest a single pepper. I can’t imagine it is possible to grow peppers commercially in Canada without the use of a greenhouse. The peppers seem to need a long growing season to mature.

A quick Google search just confirmed to me that most commercial farms are using greenhouse and hydroponics to get the yields and sizes you see in the grocery stores. I picked a total of two so far. But all the others are still green and not very large. Probably the same size as a baseball or smaller. I really need to learn more about growing them when I get a second.

But in the end, it was satisfying to skip the store and pick the fresh produce right out of my own yard. I feel the same way every time I pluck a strawberry or tomato off the vine.

The one thing I wish I could grow is cashew nuts. I do love a cashew.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I haven’t started writing any of the novel ideas I’ve had while I have been doing my mentorship. Mostly, I think it’s due to exhaustion and the idea that I am learning so much that waiting until the mentorship is finished is the best time to start a big new project. But maybe writing some more short stories throughout the week might be a good idea to. The week after I had an assignment might make the most sense. The extra writing practice can only help me to continue to develop, and I could use them to practice specific craft techniques without the pressure of anyone ever having to read it.

I wrote a few stories that I thought could turn into series. The first story I wrote for my mentor was a about a crack team of Candain specialists that operate on their own terms. They are known for getting the job done, but they always make a bit of a mess too.

And then there was the retired lady detectives in Michigan who are pulled back into their old lives when the bother of one of them gets himself into some trouble and goes missing.

And then there was another Canadian based intelligence services team that operated in Toronto solving and preventing terrorist attacks and local insurgents. I had a lot of fun with that one and I even blew up my favorite dinner in the story. It was closing for good and was marked to be demolished anyways and that was my little homage to the Patrician Grill.

Anytime I wrote a thriller with lots of action I seemed to come up with some good and more importantly something I enjoyed. Enjoying the process is half the battle.

I turned another assignment about writing about a local spot, I chose an indoor swimming pool, into an assassin story, that even surprised my mentor.

I did a science fiction story that started with a tense spacewalk. The story was more of an opening of a novel really and it’s one I’d like to expand. I could see a larger more complex world in that story.

And another sci-fi story that had a thick political bent and took place on a space station in orbit around a very special planet. The planet dwellers were at the point of rebelling against the powers that be who owned the space station and controlled all the polluting industry on the planet’s surface. That too, was a novel just waiting to be expanded upon.

I would say almost half the exercises turned out to be projects I could see myself going back to turning them into bigger things. And that’s a cool feeling. I’d often heard my writing teachers talk about their own work that way. They’d write a short story and all of a sudden they had a reoccurring character and then another and sometimes those characters lived in the same world and could be in each other’s stories. I thought that was amazing. For one, it makes it easier to write a story when you already have the world and most of the characters.

The year before, when I wrote a short story a week, I don’t think I ever wrote something that made me think it could be a series or a reoccurring story. I don’t even think I saw any novel potential in any of them either.

So, you can imagine how cool it is for me to now see all these possibilities with these new stories. I think a lot of that has to do with being more experienced as a writer but also that my mentorship has identified a lot of my weaknesses and I have been able to shore them up. And that has created rich stories and more interesting characters.

I can only hope that I continue to grow as a writer with the remaining time I have left with my mentor. After December I get cut loose no matter what and we are done. She doesn’t renew the mentorship after that because she says we need time to get her out of our heads. And I think I know what she means by that.

Hopefully, she’ll still be amenable to answer the odd craft question now and again.

Well, it’s midnight, and I still have a good seventeen hundred words to go before I can go to sleep. It will be a late night again but not as bad as it’s been in the past. I suspect I’ll be able to get everything done before two am at the latest. I can usually get one thousand words per hour when writing a blog post.

Both kids have barged into our room. They must need some mommy time. When Robyn gets busy, they start showing up here late a night before we go to bed. It’s the only time the know she’ll have a few minutes for them these days.

They pile on her like puppies. It’s cute, but also a little annoying because of the time of day, or we are trying to read or watch tv. Or in this case, get some writing done so I can go to sleep. My poor wife worked three jobs today and now is surrounded by the crazies.

She’s a real trooper and a great mom.

I guess I missed all the news about the flooding that has been happening in Nepal. It looks absolutely devasting. Our friend Paul sent us pictures he took when he was there as a young man, and we got to see what it looked like back in the day. And I guess what he looked like as well! I could still see the hope in his eyes. The world had yet to crush his sole!

He and his brother we there to take a white-water rafting trip, but as he mentioned as seen in the picture, there was more paddling and less white water when he was there.

It’s a stark contrast to the images coming out of there this week.

But the devastation in the area looks brutal and so many lives have been lost or changed forever. I’d heard the flooding was caused by a glacier breaking off, but I’m not sure if that is true or not. I think I’ll dive into the news feeds a bit more tomorrow to get myself more informed. One of the things I don’t get to do as much of is read the news when I get on deadlines for things like mentor assignments and word quotas.

One of the things we have been talking about is where to take a vacation this year. Initially we thought we might both be out of work and travelling was out of the question. And then we thought one of us would be working and the other would be full-time at school. And down one income also means no travel.

Turns out we are both still employed and now a vacation is possibly back on the table. The problem now is where to go? Cuba is out of the question at the moment, at least until they get more oil or fix their power infrastructure. Or the president of the US gets replaced for whatever reason.

We love the Cancun Riviera, but we’ve done that five times or more. Jamaica is a bit expensive, and we didn’t love it enough to want to return. But some of our friends have stayed n other parts of the island and loved it. We also didn’t get the best service when we were there. It almost seemed like there was maybe a dispute between the hotel and the workers.

There are places like Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic that have plenty of all inclusive resorts and white sandy beaches. I’ve never been there before but the pictures look nice. I’ve heard it’s not as safe as Mexico, but I am always skeptical about some of these reports. Crime happens just about anywhere in the world where there are people. A little more research is needed on my part.

I’ve also never been on a cruise ship before either. I’m not sure how I feel about them anymore. They used to be the pinnacle of food and fun, but these days I think the standards have dropped a bit. Poop cruise is a term that has been floating around recently and that doesn’t bode well for what kind of experience I would have.

We could rent out my brother-in-law’s condo in Florida, but by the time you pay for flights and a rental car, we could have gone to an all inclusive that’s located right on the beach.

There is a part of me that would like to try out some more local spots too. I have never been to Halifax for example, and with one of the children returning there I could see us having an excuse to travel to the east coast.

I also have to consider that my in-person writing class may be going ahead this year after being cancelled two years in a row. They still have my money for the course, but after Trump came into office and all the airline issues starting happening, they felt it best to cancel the course.

It’s still slated on their website to take place in January of 2027. I should probably send them an email and see if I should get a refund.

Well, the clock just turned to one AM, and I am almost exactly a thousand words away from reaching my word quota. My estimate of finishing by two AM seems to be right on the money. I was thinking I should have used some dictation to do part of this blog, but I just couldn’t be arsed to do it. The only place where I feel really comfortable using the tech and speaking out loud is in the privacy of one of cars. And it is hot and humid out there this evening. So, a big no to that, thank you very much!

It can be so much faster though, but only if you have an idea of what you want to say. Otherwise, typing is slow enough to let your brain catch up and stop to do a little thinking before continuing.

I would still like to do some more experimenting with the technique as well as getting in some more practice. I felt the last time I tried it in the car I got a good rhythm going and the software was able to accurately translate most of what I said. At least it did it better than I had in the past.

There seems to be a lot of writers who swear by dictation, and I would like to use it more myself. One day I might have a place quiet enough to do that. If the kiddo moves back to Halifax, I might be able to use her room. Having a room that has a door that closes makes a big difference in the ambient volume levels.

And I’d love to test the new headphones when they arrive and see if they could work well with the dictation software with their voice isolating software. Or will it make the dictation software work worse. They say Bluetooth microphones are the worst thing to use with dictation, but Bluetooth has advanced a bit over the years and might be good enough with some newer equipment like the Skull Candy ANC HESH headphones.

I bought a book of short stories on Saturday based on the recommendation from my mentor. She mentioned in her short story class as a great example of how to write in second person point of view. I’m not sure I would ever want to do it…. but I was intrigued to read a good example of it. The only other thing that threw me off about was the title and perhaps the subject matter. Somehow, I don’t think this was written for me in mind.

The collection is called Cowboys Are My Weakness, by Pam Houston.

Yup.

I haven’t even sneaked a peak, but I will suffer through it just to learn something about the craft. I do this for you, my loyal readers. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I think. It’s important to keep an open mind. But I suspect this was likely written for a female audience or others that have a weakness for men on horses.

They say writing in second person is that hardest one to pull off. So, I wonder what made this writer choose it for these books. I just jumped ion Amazon to read the blurb on the back cover and now I feel a little beter about the stories. I think there will be more than just learning for me in this book. I might even enjoy it.

The fact is, if my mentor bothered to mention it, it is probably really well done. She doesn’t have much use for bad writing.

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is going to be September already.

Time sure is slipping by this year.

The kids will be heading back to school again and the roads will be impassible during the hours the parents drop off their kids. The Go Train gets incredibly busy and stays that way until about mid-October. All the college kids meet friends who can give them rides or drop out.

Then the Royal Winter Fair starts up, and the train gets busy again with day trippers looking to get a glimpse of a horse or a cow for the first time.

But look, I have already jumped ahead to November. No wonder time feels like it’s moving too fast!

It’ll be Christmas holidays before you know it. We get two weeks oof Christmas and I for one am ready for that break. I hope we have a more relaxed and quiet Christmas this year. Last year felt to hectic. Too many places to go and eat. Too much time spent in the car getting from here to there.

I strangely pine for the time we all had co-vid and we stayed in bed and watched the entirety of the Sopranos, cuddled up in bed together. That is the kind of rest I feel I need.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. In five minutes, it will be exactly two AM and I am less than a hundred words shy of my goal. If you’ve stuck around to the very end, I thank you. I’m excited to start the new month and see what it brings. There are two statutory holidays this month, so I have that to look forward to.

And the sexy cowboy book, let’s not forget about that.

I mean who could?

Until tomorrow. Who knows what it will bring?