Easy, Bacon, Brown

It was an early rise again today, and I managed to get out of bed without too much moaning. I somehow was out the door by seven-twenty and the early train I wanted to take was eight minutes behind schedule.

I arrived in Toronto with less time than I needed to get breakfast, so I gave up the idea of getting my steps in and took a streetcar along King Street and got of at the Sherbourne exit. The Patrician Grill is only a few steps away from the stop. The diner was busier than usual, mostly because people knew it was closing in a few months and were getting in their last few chances to get a meal at a local favorite.

It could very well be the last diner of its kind in the city of Toronto. I can’t think of another one that has the history and the ambience.

I order my usual. Easy Bacon Brown. And a cup of their delicious coffee, of course. The order was up in about a minute and was served with home fries. It’s such a simple meal, but a wonderful way to start my morning. I will miss the place an even the people who own it and work there. They are a bit like an institution.

I stayed for about half and hour and had a second cup of coffee.

Tomorrow, I plan to go again. I figure if the studio insists on dragging me to the city three days a week, I should at least get my bacon and eggs while I still can.

Work was productive today. Only one other painter was in studio with me and I took the opportunity to cover over her work. We decided to make some minor adjustments that we thought the client or art director might call and then she when off to make it all happen. I looked over another painters work and sent him a message with the revision notes. I used pictures with a draw over to indicate the revision notes. It’s easier to communicate whatyou want to someone who isn’t right there with you this way.

I had a short lunch, but we had a full table and some lively conversation. One of the people had brought the odd combination of wanton soup with a sandwich made of hummus bread and tuna salad. It’s a combo none of us had ever seen before.

After lunch it was back to work, focusing on a painting of my own. I didn’t get to finish it by the end of the day, but I made a good start. By five o’clock I was back to being a lead again, going through my painter’s work and approving it and sending it on to the next phase in the process. Which is getting approved by the paint supervisor and then off to the Art Director for the same.

I took a streetcar again to the station since I had stayed later than normal doing the approvals. The train I took was an all-stops again, meaning it would take an extra fifteen minutes to get there. On the plus side, there was plenty of seating and I managed to have no one sit down beside me. I have wide shoulders, so elbow room is a must if I am going to get any writing done.

I watched the first week of the Advanced Setting classes last night. The assignment was to type in the opening of a James Lee Burke novel to get the idea of setting into your head and fingers. I have typed this opening in before just for my own learning. I have it saved on my computer as reference for how to write a great opening.

I’ll type it in again. It can’t hurt to do it and it’s only the first seven hundred words or so that is needed for the assignment.

Tonight, if time allows, I will audit the second class, Advanced Character Development and see what pearls of wisdom I can uncover. I still need to so some more work on my mentor assignment, so that will take priority this evening. And it will be a better way to get my word count than writing long blog posts.

These longer posts have had some positive effects on my writing aside from the obvious typing practice. Just spending the amount of time needed to write these is something I had to get used too. And now, I do it without much thought about whether I can do it. I just do it. Not wanting to fail the challenge helps. Not wanting to break my streak also helps. But I do remember not so long ago when I struggled to write even a three-hundred-word blog post and now they routinely top two thousand words.

I feel my spelling is getting better. Maybe not my typos, but my knowledge of words has improved. Certain types of punctuation are becoming more intuitive. Not perfect by any standard, but improved. I remember zoning out in English class when they taught all this stuff. Maybe, if the had made it more interesting I would have pyed attention. Theyn again, back then I didn’t think I’d need all these rules, I was going to be an artist. And I did become one, not the type I thought’d I’d be. My dreams of being a bookcover artist never really went anywhere, but I have lived as a professional fulltime artist since 2009. Not too shabby.

If there is anything I’d like to get better at with the blog writing, it is to make even the most boring of my days sound interesting. Or make it interesting to read, I should say.

That means writing hundred and thousands more of these, incorporating some of the fiction skills I will Iearn and a desire to keep getting better.

I am nearly at my stop, and the sky is starting to clear. Somehow, I avoided any rain all day. I woke up at six AM to the sound of violent thunderstorms. By the time I got out of bed the skies were grey and had a turbulent look about them. But nary a drop fell on my bald head, and it looks like clear skies for the rest of the night.

Something to be thankful for.

People were driving very slow on the way home. It’s nice to know there are so many people who are not constrained by time.

That was sarcasm. My superpower.

Dinner was channa masala and basmati rice with naan bread curtousiy of our microwave. I opened the oven and removed the floor panel of the stove and observed the igniter lighting up but no gas flowing. The broiler works fine.

So probably not the igniter, or the temperature sensor and most likely is the gas regulator which probably means I need to call in some one to repair it. Or we bite the bullet and buy a new gas oven and then we are looking at two to five thousand dollars. And one of us isn’t working right now, so we’ll try the repair and hope for the best.

Even though our dinner wasn’t the most homemade, it was still good and about as much food as I wanted. With having a big breakfast and a decent lunch, I wasn’t incredibly hungry.

Today is my fifty-seventh consecutive day of playing at least one game of chess. Amazing how those days quicky add up. And I won the game after getting myself into some trouble in the opening. My opponent opened with a bit of a gambit, and I didn’t play it the way most people do so he got flustered. Playing a game through memorized positions will only get you so far. Thinking your way out of a problem is part of chess.

I used to play in-person games every Tuesday night as part of a chess club I joined. The games started at seven thirty and sometimes went until midnight. I can clearly remember feeling the moments my brain shut off during games. This would happen when I had a really hard day at work and then played a really challenging game.

I miss some of the people and playing against a human that is sitting in front of you. But it started to feel like it was a chore. Some Tuesdays I just wanted to go home and rest, see my wife and relax. Covid stopped in-person games and after the world returned to normal, I made the decision to end my club membership. I’ve been playing online at Chess.com since and I enjoy the shorter games as well as the training available and the chess puzzles.

The kiddo just came into our room complaining that he can’t make frozen pizzas or bake muffins. He has a friend over to watch movies, and this was apparently a large portion of their evening plans. He thought because of all the YouTube I watch I should be able to fix it. Unfortunately, YouTube told me that in this case a regulator issue requires a qualified technician. And who am I to argue with YouTube?

The internet gods have spoken.

Cue the thunderclaps.

My Soundcore Sport X20’s had some trouble with all the city-noise this morning. The noise cancelling couldn’t seem to make up its mind about what it wanted to cancel. There was a very strong wind in the morning and that might have had something to do with it as well.

Still, they were still better than not having them. The loud truck engines and the sound of the diesel train engines was more that it could handle.

I broke out the Spa Bubbles machine again to soak my weary muscles. Sitting on the uncomfortable train seats and then spending the day on a less than idea studio chair isn’t the best for my hips and back. Although, I have to admit the current studio chairs are miles better than the ones we had even just five years ago.

A little while ago, we bought foam pillows that are meant to be used while reading or watching TV in bed. They have also significantly helped my back feel less abused by the end of the day. It was never apparently just one thing that was causing my back and hip pain, but a series of abuses. Since getting a pillow for my desk chair at home that relieves pressure on my coccyx, I rarely get any more hip pain. No more waiting for the bone to click back into place.

We watched an episode of ‘Cross’ this evening. Not my favourite show, but it was all we had left to watch. It’s a decent show, and I can’t really make any complaints about it. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Entertainment need not be of the highest calibre to be enjoyed, it just has to entertain, and this show has plenty of those moments.

I’ve read a few of the James Patterson books that this character is based on and enjoyed them. My writing teacher often uses Patterson’s work as an example of pacing. He also is one of those authors who broke the “You can only write one book a year” mold. He smashed that myth into a million pieces.

I didn’t get around to auditing the Character Development writing course tonight. And Tomorrow is the Survivor Hot Tub Pizza evening. Looking like it might be a Friday or a weekend viewing. Have I said there isn’t enough time in the day somwhere on this blog today?

The stock market was kind to me today. I am up a little over five thousand dollars since I jumped back into the market on Monday. Nice to be up a tidy little sum.

I’ve just gone downstairs to get a Perrier and a chunk of old cheddar. The cheddar, as you well know if you’ve haunted these halls long enough, is to give me great dreams. Cheese Dreams if you will.

The Perrier is there to wean me off diet sodas and so I can have something bubbly without the added caffeine. The thing that bugs me about Perrier is the new can size. It used to come in two hundred and fifty millilitre cans. A perfect one cup of carbonated liquid. Now they are packaged in larger three hundred and thirty millilitre cans. You pay a higher price for a pack of eight. The old format was the perfect amount. The new cans make me feel like I am always past the pioint of wanting more, but the can isn’t empty yet. And this pisses me off. I can only think the reason they changed, other than being able to raise the price and effectively sell you more product with same carton purchase, was due to changing can sizes. It could be that getting those smaller cans was getting more expensive because every other manufacturer had moved on to the new bigger size.

The point is I don’t like it.

And get off my lawn!

I am going to read some Dunk and Egg stories for a half hour to end my day on a positive.

Good night.