Morning, morning. Chaos this morning. Jane won’t go to camp. The irrigation people are here for work on both houses. I have a 9:30 meeting. And then a 10:30. And then a 1 and a 1:30 and then at 2 I gotta do this weird-ass, complicated KYC form that Chase has decided our company needs to fill out after being a client for over a decade very mysterious. My head hurts and I have convinced myself it is because of the Zepbound. I didn’t have a terrible headache last week and I had skipped the Zepbound for Chicago. Had one the week before. I sense a pattern. We will keep paying attention to this.
I am listening to a new song from Phoenix called “Run Run Run” that is not, in fact, a cover of the JJ Cale song, notably covered by Spiritualized. Alas. I love that song.
BUT when we were out with the irrigation guy chatting about replacing our controller box with a wi-fi enabled one. And we have a leak in our backflow preventer on our irrigation for some reason. Which is great timing because I just schedculed a visit from the inspector. Like nowadays in our county you have to have your irrigation backflow preventer inspected by the county. I have no idea what is up with this. I don’t know what kind of weird problem faulty backflow preventers are causing our county water department. It is a mystery. Anyway, I learned this last year when the county sent us a threatening letter, acting like it wasn’t a brand new law and that we’d been decade-plus scofflaws. I called my irrigation dude and he said they can’t perform this service, it needs to be an independent backflow inspector not weird at all okay. I guess it’s like building inspectors? Except a) the county employs them and b) you only do it while building? But now you gotta do this shit every year.
SO, anyway, I found this woman last year who provided this service in Orange and Wake and was expanding out here to Chatham. She was so great. You do it all by text, she comes whenever she feels like it, you don’t have to meet her, you don’t have to be up at 8 AM or stand by from 8 to 2 or whatever the fuck. She does the inspection, handles it all with the county, and you Venmo her the money. I don’t even know what she looks like. So this year I just searched my texts for “backflow,” there she was, Nissa Pauley, and we texted for like two seconds and it was all scheduled and she is the greatest business. And I told her this. And she said thank you and that if she could ever get her business back from Google and them believing he’s legit, she’d ask me to write that in a review. And this is the SECOND person with whom I’ve chatted recently whose business is being held hostage by Google.
Which is interesting cuz I was watching a Youtube video last night of a Dutchman in rural Portugal trying to buy an excavator/backhoe (which he called a “digger”) and he spent so much time of his online shopping trying to confirm and ensure that the businesses with which he was conferring were actual businesses and not scams. Like the dude, quite reasonably, fully knew that he couldn’t trust the internet at all to do his online shopping. That the odds were any individual site with which he interacted as a scam. That struck me as really sad. And a giant failure on the part of Gen X for making such a crappy internet, sorry.
SO, I guess Google kind of has a point? It has to be borderline-impossible to get your business on Google because the internet is one giant scam ham at this point.
Oh! Also! Check it out! MY FIRST APPLES! I am so excited! Only took three years. They probably taste like crap. But still! Apples!
Oh shit they’re done with their work at this house gotta run over to Chore House and do Irrigation Things. Who knows when I will finish this. Stand by.
Okay! 10:18. I have 12 minutes. Irrigation people have come and gone and was mostly a disaster. Pump house has a leak in it. Backflow is broken. Woo woo home ownership shit just breaks shit just breaks all the time.
Here is a somewhat terrifying picture of me in my new Wein Air Alaska hat, the airline my grandfather converted from a charter service to a scheduled airline, which eventually grew to be one of America’s largest airlines before deregulation and private equity ignominy killed it off in 1985:
[Also note the painting of Mrs. Fannybotoms (RIP) by Emilia Olsen miss you Emilia).
Made five doctors appointments yesterday: Arm doctor, finger doctor, foot doctor, nose and ear doctor, and a CT scan of my brain to see if these headaches are physical or not. Woo. There is a day in July I go to a finger doctor in Chapel Hill then drive to Raleigh to the foot doctor. I will stop at the Rockler store for that Adirondack Chair template and…
..and also oh my god I did not realize Adirondack chairs are so controversial! So many of you do not like them! I like them because you can put a drink on the armrest but holy moly people hate them! It’s true they’re hard to get out of, though. Wow. Yeah. I might have to rethink this whole thing. What a trip. You guys teach me new things every day.
One last question before I go: Citric Acid. Anyone got any opinions about citric acid? Emma’s dentist said it was fucking up her teeth. But, here I am, 52, citric acid all day every day for 40+ years and my teeth are fine. Is this universal? True? Has anyone ever given citric acid a second of thought? I have been so cockily proud of my stevia-based non-caffeinated soda but had not thought about the potential silent killer of Citric Acid omg oh no bbq wtf satanic panic.
Ugh you now what? No time. I gotta go. If I don’t send this I won’t get to it till like 3 and I have a ton of other shit to do. I LOVE YOU BYEEEE.
Mom! Dad! Bingo! Bluey!
Media of the Day is the new Mono because I listened to it yesterday and it ruled and it was recorded and mixed by Steve Albini and we all miss him so much. Sigh.
I have so many good topics for you. Tomorrow!
In a very weird coincidence, I was randomly reading about backflow the other day. It can contaminate your potable water supply which is bad, obvs. If you'd like to know more (said in Starship Troopers voice) https://www.atlasbackflow.com/post/the-unseen-dangers-consequences-of-unchecked-backflow