Opened the pool!

On Saturday Taunton pools came over to open our pool and man these things require a lot of maintenance!  They suspect there may be a leak somewhere in the liner as water levels dropped a lot over the winter but I need to get it up and running before they can send a diver to take a look so I’ll worry about that later.  In the mean time I’ll just pay attention to the water level and increase it as necessary.  Since the water levels dropped though, the cover went into the pool and left a small spot open to the elements which meant a ton of leaves, needles and some small sticks found its way into the water and to the bottom of the pool…

Took me about 1 1/2 days to clean it all up, unfortunately I didn’t take a before photo but I did take an after and it looks pretty darn good.

Haha it’s just absolutely freezing right now, I haven’t turned on the heater yet as we’re still in maintenance mode, tomorrow I’ll get the water tested and ready to swim in, having family over next weekend so I’m hoping it’ll be ready for that.  In the second photo I laid out the pool cover, as I mentioned earlier the guys from the pool place came over on Saturday and it was raining really hard so I aired out the cover yesterday and man is it large!  I think when we close the pool this year, I’ll take care of putting the cover on as I didn’t like the way it was done last year.

I’ll talk about the weekend tomorrow, had a surprise (not great) at the cottage but I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to blog about it now.

Happy mother’s day!

My mom is on a cruise on the other side of the world so we did a quick mother’s day thing for Maggie this morning.  Brandon made this really pretty paper flower and then we went for a bike ride in the morning.

Enjoying some of the trails out here in the Durham region, it’s been a while and I was pretty tired at the end but didn’t want to show it lol.  In the afternoon I went to take a few photos of the flowers that Maggie planted in our garden.  I don’t like that stuff but it’s certainly pretty!

Relaxed the rest of the day and I got to reflect on what a great wife and mother Maggie is, life is pretty damn good.

Thank you airsofters, more to do

So the Liberals are pushing the ridiculous Bill C21 which only addresses legal guns and with the help of the NDP, airsofters were able to get an exemption for the hobby.  Score one for common sense but we have so much more to do, C21 should be scrapped altogether and my hope is that the bill fails to become law before the next election, I guess we’ll see.

One set is free, the other is still banned so yeah there’s still more work to do.  As a legal gun owner (and former airsofter), I am tired of being used as punching bag, whenever criminals use guns the Liberals try to placate the masses by adding more rules or banning guns that are used by legal owners.  It’s a farse and I hope that people realize that the Liberals have absolutely no answers to any of society’s problems.  They’re pushing gun control because at a time of high inflation, an economy teetering on the edge of recession, Chinese political interference (that benefits the Liberals) and their governing record is abysmal and they have nothing to run on.  Their last 8 years has been a complete failure, they’re personally corrupt and only have wedge politics, that’s it.

The next election can’t come soon enough and I would love nothing better than the total destruction of the Liberal party.  It doesn’t stand for anything and this incessant team politics will ruin Canada.

Oh to anyone calling me a simplistic Conservative, feel free to look through my previous blog posts and you’ll see that nothing could be farther from the truth.

What a waste

As I watch the war footage coming out of Ukraine it makes me so sad to see, what exactly are the front line fighters fighting for?  It looks absolutely horrible and to at least the Russian soldiers do they even care about why they’re there?  I wish we had a system where if a leader wanted to start a war of aggression, that they’d have to lead from the front or at least their family members there too, then we’ll see how many of these conflicts are necessary…

There have been so many needless deaths for idiotic reasons.  With that said while Russia is wrong by being the aggressor here, I also do believe it was provoked into this action by the West & NATO.  I also hope that Ukrainians realize that the US will fight Russia till the last Ukrainian, their goals and the US’ is not the same.

No wonder aliens don’t visit us, we fight each other viciously over the most idiotic reasons. We’re not nearly intelligent or civilized enough to deserve recognition.

Special day

This morning I took Brandon to shoot for the first time and it was amazing.  While Maggie has enjoyed shooting in the past, she was against Brandon participating till he was older and more mature and well that time has come. 😉

It’s been a while since I’ve been to Silverdale and they’ve changed a few things up.  We went to the action range and Brandon mainly shot Maggie’s Ruger 10/22 and her S&W M&P22.  He did try some 9mm out of my HK SFP9 but found the recoil a bit too heavy for him so he stuck having fun with 22LR which is fine.  Whenever I bring a new shooter out it’s always about their comfort level and I do not push them to shoot anything beyond that.

Like every new shooter, Brandon held the S&W M&P22 hard, hard enough that sometimes he was shaking but that’s common from many new shooters to squeeze the gun super tight.  I’m glad my 22LR guns eat the cheapest crap though the Remington Yellowjackets did vary in power a lot, sometimes while the bullet exited the barrel (I’d do my ACTS & PROVE) it wasn’t enough to cycle the slide and we had a few FTEs.  I don’t think it’s due to the M&P22 being dirty, I cleaned it beforehand.

I’m glad he had fun, I really enjoyed taking him out and he was all smiles the whole time he was there. 🙂

Busy day

Today was certainly a busy day as Brandon had two important activities, his BJJ grading and a scouting event later in the afternoon.

Since we had the scouting thing, I asked Kevin the main coach if Brandon could do the grading with the 9-11 year olds so we’d have enough time and he took it easy on the small kids.  Brandon is pretty good with not taking advantage of less experienced or younger kids so the coach was totally cool with it.

My boy earned his solid grey belt, he’s worked hard in the sport and definitely deserves it!  I’m very proud of him and it’s great to see his progress.

About 45 minutes later, he joined the Scouts joined the Cubs & Beavers at iFly and while Brandon was scared, he went through with it and had a good time.

Little Georgia went too but she was so frightened, she didn’t participate. Ahh well I think she’s like 6 and that’s how it goes sometimes with the younger kids.  iFly looks like a lot of fun and maybe I’ll take the family there in the future, it’s pretty close to our house so why not right.

It was a pretty busy day, all for Brandon but that’s my job as his dad and I am thankful for it. 🙂

Myrtle Beach

So last week we headed down to Myrtle Beach for a quick impromptu vacation.  I didn’t really want to go but Maggie was jonsing for some nice weather so whatever.  On the way down we hit a huge snowstorm and because we were going south, I didn’t bring a snow brush with me which ended up being a big mistake.  The first and only thing I bought on the trip was a snow brush from somewhere in Pennsylvania.  The snow came down so hard I had to pull off at the first opportunity and we stayed at another hotel for the night.  The next morning we continued down to Myrtle Beach and get there for dinner.  We’ve been there before and did a lot of touristy stuff so this time it was more low key, Maggie did some shopping, we spent some time on the beach of course and I booked a boat tour looking for alligators.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any, combination of early in the year for them and that they’re really hard to spot.

The nicest thing about being in Myrtle beach was walking around in 20+C weather and it revitalized Maggie at least.  It was a short trip, we came back on the weekend and in the last photo, I parked in a spot far away, there are plenty of other spots but this guy and his big truck needs to park right next to me.  I guess at least he’s in the lines…

Short and relaxing, that’s what the doctor ordered and it makes me wonder maybe I should retire and just enjoy life now. 😉

Auroras!

I’ll post an update on our trip over the weekend but wanted to do a quick post on a spur of the moment photoshoot I did last night.  There was a large solar storm earlier in the week and it hit the planet last night producing some beautiful auroras.  I’ve never seen them before so it was quite a treat and thanks to Cav and his finance Carrie for joining me last night!

The auroras were much fainter than the photos indicate, these shots were all 15 second photos so my Canon EOS R5 was able to capture a lot more light and while I could see the green colour, the purple as not visible to the naked eye.  I did bring my night vision along and that was a lot of fun to use, on a near moonless night you could really see the auroras dance.

LOL Cav and I made the decision to go see the auroras around 10:30pm and since they were moving East to West, he came to me and we drove about 30 minutes North of my house to a random farmer’s field because it had a good view of the northern sky. Ended up chatting and taking photos (took a video through my nods with my phone, will post later) till about 2am so I’m pretty tired today but it was worth it.

This was definitely on the bucket list and man I can’t wait for the next solar storm to try this again!

Just back from a quick vacation

Went to Myrtle Beach last week and got back today in the afternoon.  It was nice to be in 20+ weather for a few days and to watch Brandon play in the ocean (which was freezing cold) anyway we’re back safe and sound and I’ll post updates tomorrow or later in the week with pictures. 🙂

Slow walking into WW3

So I’ve blogged a lot less recently and I’m not sure if I’ve spoken about the conflict in Ukraine yet but man as an outside observer it feels like all politicians want WW3.  Why are we governed by people who act like school yard children on the world stage?  Sure Russia is the belligerent however this immediate invasion and conflict did not start last year but has its roots going back much farther.  Watching Western media cheer weapons deliveries and escalation as good things boggles my mind, neither side Russia or NATO (Ukraine is being used as a pawn unfortunately) want peace and at every opportunity either side has only turned up the heat further.

There are no negotiations going on because the logic of thought from both sides are the same.  One wants to negotiate from a position of strength but if you’re in a position of strength continue the fight.  Start to lose and propose talks but don’t want to negotiate while weak so must fight more to get into a better position and around it goes.

I don’t know what the answer is to this conflict, I think the West should acknowledge Russia’s security fears and recognize that it lied to then Russian leaders saying NATO would not expand one inch East after the fall of the Soviet Union and that it had a hand in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, that’d probably help.  Finally give Russia a way out, yeah they were stupid to start this war but if you push Putin into a corner without any options then well we’ll see the actions of a very desperate person…

If only leaders had to fight from the front instead of sending conscripts to die for idiotic political reasons…