And just like that, I am on vacation.

Admittedly it will be largely a staycation but it will be nice to be able to – once again – attempt to catch up on some of my To Do list.

At the same time there’s no NASCAR so there’s nothing to be watching on the weekend, save of course old races on YouTube because why not? There’s still my review of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Season for Track Talk to be done. Not to mention maybe watching some WWF House Shows for the Milner Mat Report.

This past week I visited Paul Sutter, Publisher/Editor of Shelf Life, to pick up copies of the latest issue. With the new issue out, it means the website can be updated. Meanwhile, I am still working on editing the third episode of the Your Milner Moment podcast, which will be Part 2 of my conversation with my former co-worker, Lyz DeMarco. So yes, not a shortage of things to do. It’s just a matter of getting up and getting stuff done.

Some exciting news around the Milner household. On Wednesday, out of the blue, the company my folks have been working with called to say that the windows they had ordered had come in. On Thursday, they arrived and began installing them. I figured it would take a day or so but they were completed before supper time. I think they look great and my parents are thrilled with the end result.

I said earlier that it would be a largely “staycation” but my folks and I have been discussing what flea markets and antique stores we’re going to check out.

I may decide to largely stay off social media this week, just checking in to update the social media accounts I run and perhaps provide any updates here on the site. Next weekend, however, I will let everyone know what adventures I’ve got up to on vacation.

Until then, stay safe everyone!

As the last hour or so of my weekend slips away, I can honestly say the entire weekend seemed to slip away on me. What I mean is I did nothing really of note this weekend.

After this week, I will be on vacation so I’d like to plan out a way to get as much of my “To Do” list done before I head back to work after the Civic Holiday. Of course, I never get as much done as I want and I’m sure this particular vacation will be no different. I am, however, hoping that perhaps I’ll take a different approach. Sure, I’ll want to get some stuff done on my “To Do” list but I may just take some time to relax, recharge my batteries. Read on my back porch. Go for walks. Watch a movie or several.

This past week did have a scary moment. My folks went to get groceries and I was on a Zoom call. When I got off the call I went up to see how Mom and Dad had made out. My Mom gestured to my Dad and exclaimed “He fainted on me!” That’s right! Apparently my Dad went down at the grocery store. He was okay when he got home and has been doing okay since. As my folks are prone to do, they were both working hard around the house on Monday. (Of course he couldn’t wait until I was off work on Monday and let me cut the lawn so he did it himself.)

I am hoping that, with NASCAR off for the Olympics and me having the week off, I can catch up on my reviews of the 1987 NASCAR season. Guess you’ll want to check out Track Talk to see those updates. I also need to work on editing Part 2 of my discussion with my friend Lyz DeMarco for my Your Milner Moment podcast.

One thing I hope to get done this week is finalize signing up for a course at Fanshawe (about writing for the web) as well as some similar LinkedIn courses. Yes, I am going back to school so to speak to refine my Comms skills.

So, hopefully it will be a quiet yet productive week, both in terms of my duties at King’s and getting some of my To Do list finished and getting prepped for my time off.

Hope everyone out there is doing okay as well.

It was a full week back at work but really didn’t feel all that long, even after having just a two-day work week last time ’round. Definitely busy with lots to do but I think that’s what made the time seem to pass faster. Having a lot to do means you have to make sure you keep yourself organized so you don’t let anything slip your mind but it definitely makes days go faster. Ironically, it is the complete opposite from the days I worked in retail where you would be dealing with a rush of customers and think “Man, I bet that took care of a huge chunk of time” and instead only a few minutes had passed.

My sister and nephew came down for overnight on Saturday. Believe it or not, we all gathered around the TV to watch the Superstars Racing Xperience race from Slinger (Wi.) Speedway and my nephew was asking me a few questions about the race and the cars and drivers involved. Admittedly, other than my Dad and I, most of the family were nose-deep in their phones from much of the night but it was still nice to be able to employ my “expertise”.

My folks, who are always in the process of one home improvement project or another, have been working on enlarging our back porch. They are just about finished (just have to paint over some spots) but with the set up we have now it has been very nice to sit out in the evenings and read. I have found that, even if we have rain earlier in the day, the chairs will dry pretty rapidly. It’s a very relaxing way to spend an hour in the evenings.

It was a short week, work-wise. Two work days, in fact. To be followed by five – yes, FIVE! – days off. I decided to make the most of it and actually get some work done, while also relaxing a bit.

I am proud to say that, with the exception of posting some July 1/Canada Day socials for the various organizations I do such things for, I have been largely off places like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram since I “left work” on Tuesday. Instead, I’ve been doing some things around the house, but also spent no small amount of time sitting on the back deck my folks are building, reading.

I had a couple of books (On Bowie by Rob Sheffield, Killing Patton by Bill O’Reilly and The Poet in Exile by Ray Manzarek) which I finished off and then started in on The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan, about the final battle for Berlin in 1945. I have read Ryan’s The Longest Day and, especially, A Bridge Too Far, several times over the years but never The Last Battle. I have picked up a used copy of it somewhere and always meant to get around to reading it and 2021, I guess, is that time. I’ve surprised myself at just how engrossed I can get in the book and I’ve sat down to ready 20-25 pages and ended up reading 50+ pages.

My folks are working on the back deck, having torn down (with some help from yours truly) the one that’s been there since we moved in back in 2009 and building a slightly larger one. There is still a lot of work to be done but we are able to sit out on the back deck. I’ve taken to sitting out there the last few nights and reading, which is a very nice way to spend an hour or so. (I have even passed up watching NASCAR Race Hub, so you know there’s something to be said for this particular pastime.)

SPOILERS FOR The Poet in Exile. The story is supposedly how Ray (or “Roy” in the novel) begins getting cryptic letters that lead him to believe that Jim Morrison (or “The Poet”) is still alive and living on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. Ray does track down the former lead singer of the band who tells him of his life after faking his own death.

Okay, first of all, if this isn’t a thinly-hidden reference to the Doors, this book probably never gets published. It’s basically just two old friends talking about one’s life for the last twenty years. I’m sure I could sit down with someone and relate what I’ve done but that doesn’t meant I’m going to get a book deal out of it. To be brutally honest, it’s going to be boring to anyone who’s not a Doors fan.

As a Doors fan, there is that aspect of “Did this really happen? Is Jim Morrison still alive?” that sparks some interest. But the last half dozen pages has Manzarek tagging on this revelation that “The Poet” is dying of lung cancer, rather than returning to the U.S. with “Roy” to restart the band.

In a way, the reader has found themselves not wanting the Poet to be dissuaded from returning to the limelight. He seems much more at peace with the state of his life, married and with a couple of kids. Any fan of the Doors who has read or heard about Morrison’s wild ways probably hopes that this could have been the way that Jim spent the decade or two after faking his death. And so you read A Poet in Exile, you hope that Manzarek’s story is true – even if Jim ultimately has passed away. But after you think on it a while, the lung cancer twist seems almost as if it was Manzarek’s way of dodging any questions of “If you found Jim still alive, why couldn’t you convince him to come back to the States and reform the Doors?” as well as dissuading any Doors fans from flocking to the island to find Mr. Mojo Risin’.

As much as you’d like A Poet in Exile to be Ray Manzarek’s revelation that Jim Morrison is/was still alive in the years and decades after his supposed death in Paris, the book instead seems more like what Manzarek (and by extension Doors fans) wishes could have happened. It is an interesting idea, just poorly executed.

Okay, so back to what else I have been up to. On July 1, my folks and I went to Embro for their annual town-wide yard sale. There really wasn’t much there but it was fun to get out and check out the yard sales, especially when there was hardly any to be found last year. (I will say I think there might be a podcast in the future about yard sales.)

Speaking of podcasts, I finally got back into the swing of editing Part 1 of the Your Milner Moment podcast episode with my friend and former co-worker Lyz De Marco about our days working together, watching The Last Blockbuster documentary, and how working in retail has changed over the years. Definitely worth checking out.

July 1 was also my nephew, Jack’s birthday. The kid turned 13! Yes, that means I am now the uncle of a teenager. Can you believe it?

Well, I still have a bunch of stuff to get done before I go back to work on Monday. Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy.

So it was kind of an up-and-down week for me.

On the one hand, I had my annual review at King’s. I was a little concerned on how it might go. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. I got a glowing review from Jane and Chantal. It definitely put an extra spring in my step as far as the job goes.

Another plus was on Wednesday I was on campus for a short while and got to see the entire Communications team. I literally met our two interns for the first time in person.

The downside of the week is I went to bed on Thursday and woke up again Friday morning with a severe headache. (It wasn’t quite a migraine but it was certainly threatening to turn into one.) I was hoping I could survive the day but by 1:30-2:00, I finally had to admit defeat and, after sending out a Principal’s email, I said I was heading off for the day. (Actually it was suggested if I wasn’t feeling well that I could head out, which I am grateful for. I have worked in places where no one ever seemed to notice or cared if I wasn’t feeling well.) Went from the home office right to bed for about three hours.

I don’t know what brought on the near-migraine although my Mom noticed I have somehow gotten sunburn. Yeah, this is how much of a wimp I am. I am out in the sun for an hour and that gets me such a sunburn I develop a massive headache because of it.

We did end up going out on Saturday. The day got off to a bit of a bad start as the first collectibles store had literally closed down overnight. We went out to the Brickyard Antique store in Delaware and went to a couple of Value Villages. Didn’t get a lot (a Bill Elliott “action figure” and two T-shirts) but it was nice to get out.

I’ve got two days of work this week and then three days off (plus the weekend) so I am hoping to get a lot of stuff cleared off my plate – as well as perhaps a couple of trips here and there. Hopefully that will mean some major updates on the website.

Meanwhile, stay safe and stay healthy.

Hey, so…long time, no write. I think that may have something to do with me being tired on Friday nights, busy (although not really accomplishing much) on Saturday nights and having the better part of a migraine on Sunday nights over the couple of weeks.

However, other than wishing it was Saturday night instead of Sunday night and that Ross Chastain could have caught Kyle Larson to win the Nashville Cup race, I don’t feel too bad tonight.

Of course, it was another weekend where I got almost nothing accomplished but I decided, as I went to bed last night, that I was going to be okay with that. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t do anything, I just barely touched my infamous “To Do” list.

Instead, for the third week in a row, my folks and I went to some yard sales in Ingersoll. The first week was the best, as I found a couple of Dale Earnhardt artwork pieces. I wasn’t as successful in finding anything the following two weeks. (This past weekend was the Ingersoll Townwide Yard Sale.) However, part of the fun of going to yard sales is showing up and just seeing what they have to offer. (I will say I’ve always considered writing a blog post about yard sales so it might become a podcast.)

With the lifting of some of the COVID-19 precautions, my sister and nephew came down last weekend. (I think part of it was just so Jack could gloat he was taller than Nana.) I was heartbroken to learn that my dreams of playing for the Canadian Olympic Badminton team were not to be because, like every other sport, I suck at it. But again it was just fun to play.

I need to get back to work on my podcast and John Milner’s Track Talk as I have been putting them aside in favour of other tasks, and sometimes just not having the energy to produce content. I have enough content for at least two podcasts, just in conversation with my friend Lyz. I just have to edit them.

Meanwhile, I have been posting some old wrestling reviews to the site, as well as a couple of history articles, so check them out.

Meanwhile, I hope everyone is doing well. Feel free to drop me a line at milner@johnmilner.ca to say Hi!

I may complain about the lack of engagement on most of my social media. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the response I got when I posted the before and after photos of the work recently done on our roof.

It didn’t come cheap that’s for sure, especially since they had to remove asbestos before they could go to work installing the roof. It was also fairly noisy but honestly, not too bad. I will say, however, that my folks and I are glad the work is done.

The next home improvement project on the list is to replace the back porch. I spent some time on Saturday afternoon ripping up some of the existing porch. My folks always take the lead on the construction but I’ve learned something about myself is assisting them:

When it comes to building stuff, I’m not your guy, but when it comes to ripping up stuff, hand me a hammer and crowbar and let me at it!

So this week – even with it being a short week, sure was busy at King’s as we had two major announcements:

(1) Vaccines will be mandatory for students in residence

(2) King’s will raise the Progress Pride flag on June 1

I don’t buy a lot of stuff through Facebook Marketplace. (Really, it’s been three occasions.) This week, however, I saw one of my ” ” cars: Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s 1997 Daytona 500 car. It was a 1:32 scale so I’m still looking for a 1:24 version. However, the version I have looks awesome. Well, as awesome as a diecast representing a car that hit the wall at almost 200 mph, flipped over, destroyed most of the right front fender and tore off the back deck lid can look.

Meanwhile, with the Indy 500 this afternoon and the Coca-Cola 600 tonight, I will be watching a fair bit of racing today. Hope to see James Hinchcliffe win Indy and Chase Elliott win at Charlotte.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy.

Happy birthday to my Mom as she celebrates the three-quarter of a century mark on the planet today. (Yeaaah, she didn’t seem to like me referring to it like that, so perhaps just wish her a Happy 75th birthday instead.)

So I am down to one last day for my vacation. As per usual, I went in with high hopes of getting a lot accomplished but ended up getting hardly anything done. I don’t know what it is but my weeks off always seem to get away from me. I did work on some writing and got a few minor things here and there completed. But as always, I come to the end of my vacation and think “What the hell did I do?”

On Friday, I went into Woodstock and got my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I have to commend the staff there as it was a very quick and efficient procedure. Being a wimp, my arm hurt if I raised it too far from Friday night and into Saturday, but overall the experience wasn’t too bad.

The Milner household was not overly quiet this week as we had crews come in to start working on replacing our roof. It was a definitely not a quiet experience and one that produced no small amount of drama. I won’t get into details but I will say that while one aspect was disappointing, the other far exceeded our expectations.

I suppose I could have sat around and watched TV or movies all week but I didn’t even do that. I watched a few more episodes of what is becoming my third or fourth rewatching of How I Met Your Mother, but also took up watching Season 2 of the Gilmore Girls (for the fourth or fifth time) and decided to start working through the third and final season of Lethal Weapon.

I am tempted at some point – perhaps my last night of vacation tomorrow night – to watch either Army of the Dead or Love and Monsters? Meanwhile, think I’ll do an impromptu podcast just to see what reaction I get.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy.

Important announcement: As of 4:30ish this afternoon, I am on vacation. (Can I get a whoo-hoo!)

I know everyone always asks when you says you’re going on vacation “Any big plans?” My response would be “We’re still in a pandemic here?” (Or apparently, as we should get used to saying “We’re in the new normal!” And since I’ve never golfed (save a couple of mini-golf sessions) and don’t plan on protesting anything, I will be staying close to home.

That’s not to say I won’t have some “excitement” around the house, as we will be getting a new roof put on, so the first part of the week will probably be quite loud around here. Not sure how our cat – who hates noise and is skiddish of new people (and thus makes him the perfect pet for me) – is going to react to all the curfluffle, especially since we are taking our “catio” down for the few days.

I shouldn’t suggest that I won’t be leaving the property for the entire week – although it’s been …hmm…when did I leave the property? Anyways, I will be getting shot (or rather A shot) on Friday. Yes, I will be getting my first vaccination shot next week. I just hope that whichever shot I get won’t be immediately discontinued after I recover from the side effects.

I am a little bitter because I am going to Woodstock to get my vaccination, instead of Talladega where they let you drive around the track after you get vaccinated.

Above and beyond all that, however, as always I hope to get to work on my To Do list. I have decided that I am going to try and tackle one major thing per day and get it accomplished. Usually I figure “Well, if I break each task down into pieces and schedule to do one task from one major project each day, I’ll get it done!” But what ends up happening is I end up having 10-15 things on my To Do list. do about two or three and then stress out about not getting anything done. I am hoping that this approach will still allow me to get things done without the stress of trying to do everything at once.

One extra thing I am going to do this weekend is the debut edition of Your Midnight Milner Moment. Don’t worry – I’m not venturing into Vincent Price territory here. I am just going to record a podcast at around midnight and see where it takes me. Since I’m guessing the only person who will listen to it will be my friend Jason, I’m thinking I can be pretty free with what I have to say.

By the way, if you read this blog and want to see what I have to say, my podcast is located here.

I figured I better get one more blog post in, just in case this rocket that’s supposed to fall back to earth tomorrow ends up falling on my head. (I’m kidding, I doubt the small town I live is likely to have an errant rocket land on it…although it’s gotta land somewhere, right?)

It was a pretty quiet week – although thanks to my sister, I now I have an appointment to get a vaccine. The timing is great because it’s taking place during the week I am taking off, due to my folks getting some work done on the house. I’m guessing I will be getting more and more nervous as we approach the date of my appointment. (Wish me luck.)

You know, I bash on social media but I learned something this week. Tommy Milner, who I’ve followed on Twitter for a while, is a race car driver. He runs the Rolex 24 at Daytona and those type of endurance races for Team Corvette. (He’s the reason I follow the Rolex 24 as much as I can, just to see how Tommy runs. He finished 2nd in the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class in this year’s event.)

With NASCAR running their “Throwback Weekend” at Darlington, everyone from the Cup Series through the iRacing world have been using throwback schemes. And so, Tommy Milner posted the following:

Rooting on our guys right now and especially @RichardReganJr1 throwing it back to my Dad's teams NASCAR Busch series car from '94! Super cool. https://t.co/RiOiNpCnCM pic.twitter.com/dapab2ZyBo

— Tommy Milner (@TommyMilner) May 6, 2021

So…wait a minute…there was a Milner Race Team in NASCAR, and I’m just finding out about this now???? As it turns out, while his father (also named Tom) went into other disciplines of racing, he did have a Busch Series team in 1994, with Johnny Rumley and Johnny Smith combining to run 12 races. While I couldn’t see where the performance of the team was anything to write home about, at the Dover Race, Johnny Rumley finished ahead of Dale Earnhardt…yeah…THAT Dale Earnhardt!!! So that was kind of a fun research project.

I am hopeful that, in between watching the races this weekend, that I can dream up and produce another podcast. I’ll tell you, it’s become quite fun. If anything, it’s quite addictive – dreaming up the topics, writing the script, recording the podcast and then posting it for the world to listen to.

Okay, for the most part, my podcasts aren’t exactly setting the world on fire in terms of response but I remind myself, I’m really only promoting the podcast on my own social media. There is an option to promote the podcast on Spotify, which I may do eventually – once I get a bit more comfortable with the platform.

One thing that will help is the new microphone I ordered this past week. I didn’t go hog-wild on the purchase. (I saw some cool and very fancy ones but figured I’d just stay simple, since I will probably really only use it once or twice a week for the podcast.)

If you’re reading this, check out my podcast at the link above and let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I hope everyone has a great weekend and week ahead. As always, stay safe and stay healthy.