Day 364
[Note: Just getting started here. For the next few days it’ll be mainly a copy/paste from the daily FB posts. But I have plans. Medium-to-little-sized plans.]
Good morning! Hello! How are you? I hope you are doing all right. I am good. It is Friday. I have it off. It is beautiful out. I am going to be doing gardening all day. It's all very exciting. I went to the hardware store this morning to get supplies. I will only go to the hardware store first thing on a weekday. And not, like, right when they open at 6 because it's fully of maskless contractors. You gotta go around 7 after they've all cleared out to their job sites. I bought the extra wood I needed to make the front doors of the new compost bins, and the screws to assemble them, and some various soil amendments and some castors that SHOULD fit our wire shelves (third time's the charm) so I can roll the whole shelf out of the garage to begin hardening off the seedlings. Except the new ones, that i have to re-start because my spinach and some of my lettuce and a couple other things didn't quite survive quarantine week. But you can hear all about that tomorrow and watch it on YouTube on my gardening update.
Lumber is EXPENSIVE. It's insane. Boards I remember costing $2 are like $7. It is unpleasant. I found a few tricks - using stair rails or fence posts which, paradoxically, have not gone up in price, but. God. I'm sure glad the bulk of the compost bins were free. And Lowe's had no seed starting mix, which is WEIRD.
I spent an INSANE amount of time last night trying to figure out exactly what machine would shred pine needles. We have a ton of pine needles on the property. They make great mulch. But ours are too long and too stiff. They need to be shredded. Now, there are multiple types of shredder/chippers. There are the electric stick chippers - you stick one stick down a hole (huh huh) and it chips it. I have one. It's great for sticks, branches and the like. And we have a lot of those. But it can't do pine needles. There are the big, wide, circular ones that run on the weed-eating string. They're for leaves. They're cheap AF. And run on electric. They MIGHT do pine needles. Then there are the great big ones like you see in Fargo. They're fantastic. They are, however, mostly gas-powered. Patriot Products (great name) makes the CSV-2515 which is electric and looks MARVELOUS but is $1k. And LOUD, but.. Amurrca. And OF COURSE in the EU they make one for cheap - the ForestMaster FM4DEE and it looks AMAZING. Small, electric, but super powerful and will shred everything. Cheap, too. Well, cheap-ER: 250 euros. But not available in America. So I read all the reviews on the cheapo-Worx WG430 leaf shredder and people say it will do pine needles. So we will see. Seriously, though. It will be GREAT if it works. I am excited. Will be here tomorrow. Will give you a full report.
After that I watched Olafur Arnald's Tiny Desk Concert from his studio and it has this AMAZING wall in it of... like dark birch? Weet birch? And their vertical. And it looks so good. And I want a wall like that. Beautiful. WHAT A WALL.
I started an email list. Well, I haven't started it yet, but i signed up and made a "coming soon" placeholder. I will put the link below. You can sign up there if you like. Eventually that's gonna be the main thing, I think. I'll still post em here for a while. We shall see. Maybe just snippets. Still working it out. But I am going to DO IT. Sign up!
I have been on my statin for one year now. It's crazy I feel like I just got it. After maybe 5 years of battling high cholesterol I finally gave up. Even at the height of my diet where I was losing 80 pounds in a year, I could never fully get my cholestrol under control. It got better, but not much. Finally I just said "screw it" and started taking the statin. I don't love the idea, but, damn, my blood sure has awesome cholesterol levels now. Happy anniversary, statin.
Am I the only one who can't stand clubhouse? It just feels so creepy to me. And... I just don't want to be talking or listening to shit any more after a long day of work and meetings. It's weird people have so much Zoom anxiety but they're all gaga for Clubhouse. I just don't understand it. I must be getting old. And I cannot see how it's going to continue post lockdown. Aren't we all gonna be sick of this? Who wants to be on Clubhouse when you could go sit at the bar at the Miracle of Science or Bathazar and get a burger or something? No one. Except vegetarians. But they can get veggie burgers. Just sayin'. I am not accusing vegetarians of being predisposed toward Clubhouse I wouldn't want you to think that.
It's been one week and I am still giggling about the "I like Traffic Lights" song again. You should really listen to it. I defy you to not chuckle when they get to the "although my name's not Bamber" line. I am going to spare you though, and not put it on a mix. I am nice like that. I am saying "I" a lot today, because that whole thing is dumb. Most writing is dumb. I'm reading this book of short stories by Alan Garganus and it's SO GOOD. The last one I read, "Fetch" was so harrowing. It was only like 25 pages but it took me three nights to read because I couldn't bear it. Love the plot. And it is very well written but... it's... too well written? Every sentence is a perfect turn of phrase. And I think I used to love this but you know what? I do not anymore. It's too much. It's like having 100 orgasms in a day or 50 beers. Sprinkle your brilliant turns of phrase throughout, sparingly. It just feels like he crafted the story - the perfect, heartbreaking phraseology - for YEARS. And, I mean, some people like that. They like their cars to be hand made and their jackets to be made by four hundred japanese artisans across the decades. And I'm not saying I like disposable, I like hardy, but... I think there's a fine balance. Where the marginal return is less than the input. Both in writing and jeans. And after that, it just feels too.... rich. I am perhaps sounding more dogmatic than I intended, but these are the thoughts about Garganus' "Fetch" that have been running through my head today.
I like writing that flows. Is easy to read, immediately conveys its point, has an occasional bon mot or word or allusion that you might not know so you can feel like you learned something, but not so many that it is a distraction or a hurdle.
ANYWAY, it's almost time to get Janie, feed her, and then try and convince her to go to the garage with me and plant seeds. We'll see how that goes. OH and we have the cardboard shredder to set up. I bet she'll love that. Yeah, that'll be fun.
Let's do a mix. Did a bunch of work on them yesterday. Let's do a drone mix today. Drone vol 5. Eight droney songs that take up an hour of your life. Mostly new, some old. It's good stuff. Man I really love drone rock. Yo La Tengo made a fantastic droney album during the pandemic. I bet that was super fun for them? I mean, not being in a pandemic, but, sort of just getting together and droning for. while. I miss that so much. Playing one note with three friends for an hour. Can't beat it as a pastime. Actually, Wilco, Spectrum, Bailter Space, Beta Band.. this mix is half older stuff. I remember listening to Wilco play Spiders at Coachella on the main stage while the sun was going down and it was just... what a fantastic feeling, what a great day. Beautiful. Beautiful sun drenched days with pretty ladies and good friends and good music. I wonder if that'll ever happen again, or in hindsight the pandemic will be the bookmark between my "youth" and "old age," and from here on out I am just an old person. That seems... not impossible.
But for today, Sun!