Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1030
All domestic stuff, greenhouse building and computer fixing and a sick kid like always these days.
Good morning hello how are you did you have a nice weekend I hope you did yay run-on sentences. I would like to personally thank Kevin Kearney for DJing his holiday party that one year in the basement of the old CBGGs and playing the Hot Chip cover of “Dancing in the Dark” so that I got a chance, just once, to dance to that song in the manner that god intended. Man what a great song, what a great cover. I mean that whole LCD Soundsystem outro of “All My Friends” is weird but fine but I don’t need that part I just love the “Dancing in the Dark” cover it is so good. It came on this morning as I was driving home from taking Jane to school, sun blinding me, following a dented up white minivan. Life in suburbia.
Lots of work on the greenhouse this weekend, though not much to show for it. So much sorting of an infinite number of parts, trying to decipher the multi-lingual, Ikea/LEGO-like non-verbal instructions, watching the YouTube video over and over, even though parts of the video are inapplicable because, unlike LEGO or Ikea, the instructions endeavor to cover, oh, like ten different models. Also the greenhouse kit keeps missing pieces. Or we lost them, more likely. Like all of the hardware. So we had to go to the hardware store and buy more bolts. And then they did not ship the curtains, which would be fine, except you have to put curtain grommets in on, like, step five, so we couldn’t go past step five. Luckily Melinda at Exaco is amazing and she lets you text her and she personally went and grabbed all the shit we need and FedEx’d it to me so we would have it all today. I think we are in a pretty good shape now to make some real progress whenever we get time to work on it again, which is hopefully Friday we will see. As it stands now, it has only the foundation, for corner posts, and a single roof beam installed. But I think we’re past the hardest part? Hopefully? Fingers crossed.
The crew did get all of the Carolina clay dirt spread everyewhere and flattened, and the top soil spread over the part of it in the front yard. We got the walkway round back of the greenhouse to the future location of the compost bins all graveled. And we got a giant tree stump that was in our way cut down to almost nothing. My god that was hard. Every saw in the world wouldn’t cut through that stump. Me and one of the crew guys took turns exhausting ourself on it — him with a pickaxe and a concrete saw, me with a chainsaw and Sawzall — one went, then the other went, for about an hour until the thing was finally cut to underground, then buried with gravel. I’m sure it’ll pop up again eventually but out of site, out of mind.
Then I swear to god I spent half the weekend looking for a lightswitch. Somehow, when the roofers were over, or something, I don’t know, someone managed to turn on this giant floodlight on the back corner of the house that does nothing but illuminate the woods, but has the unfortunate effect of shining right into MIL’s living room, into her eyes when she is watching television, a good hundred-plus yards away. And I could not find the light switch. Eventually I had to e-mail the old owners, who gave me some ideas, but the light switch I found was definitely not the one that originally got turned on, because it was locked with one of those little light switch lock things. So there is clearly another light switch. But I have no idea where. It is bothering me, still, quite deeply.
Also at one point this weekend, I needed an HDMI-to-DVI cable to do some work on an old laptop I am reformatting for charity. And I went right to my amazing cable organizing coat rack and I found that cable in about ten seconds, not having touched it in, oh, probably seven, eight years, and my god my cable filing technique is unstoppable.
I’ve had less success, however, fixing Emma’s old iMac, which is unofficially Jane’s computer, for if she ever needs one. Thing just suddenly started crawling. I have wiped it clean, put a brand new clean copy of MacOS on there, and it’s still crawling. Which means it’s… probably bad RAM? No idea. I am completely stumped and that is very embarrassing. I wish Apple would release that diagnostics app the use in the retail store, that would make my life a lot easier.
Jane was sick again on Saturday. Fever, maybe? Wouldn’t let me take her temperature. Pumped her full of drugs and drove her to Bojangles, tried to buy her a biscuit, but she didn’t want it. Then I drove her to the dump to drop off my hazardous materials because it was the county’s four-times-annually “hazardous materials drop-off day” which was SUPER FUN and Jane was sort-of interested, but mostly she just laid in her car seat curled up and moaning, which is when I realized “oh, huh, this is a real illness.” This shit is exhausting. Luckily she is better so she made it to school today. But I mean, seriously. We are now at five illnesses — mostly different symptoms — in less than two months. I hate this shit, I hate how sad it makes her, how lethargic. I hate that she is learning “the letter S” and “how to count from a certain number” in school when she is learning multiplication and reads at a fourth-grade level. But, then, she is also learning “how to tell a story” and Jane is actually really bad at telling stories, so maybe that will be useful. But god. School is such a Faustian bargain. Also I keep thinking “oh I have a few extra hours in the morning for work and meetings” and schedule something at 8:30 or 9 AM and then she’s sick and I have to cancel, so I guess I don’t really, reliably, have that time back anyway.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s very tiring for Emma and I, Emma especially. I guess we’re sort of over considering taking her out, but gawd. Bah. Bah! Humbug! Stupid things are stupid.
Also I need a new travel backpack. Ideally it would be good for a 2-3 day trip without a suitcase. And it will have a stinkin’ bottle holder net on the side. If you have one you love, let me know?
Okay byeeee off to do my country flash cards important stuff is important.
Moody and quiet playlist for you today what can I say it is autumn and grey and.. I mean, I love autumn and grey but, then, I love depressing music too. Mostly new stuff, listened to a lot of new albums this weekend. Very into this L’Rain album. It is… weird in a good way. Some timeless classics here, like Space Needle and Damon and Naomi and… well, I guess that’s it. I don’t know what this Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project is but it has a million great guests and the tracks are great. Must investigate more.
Okay let’s Monday the shit out of this Monday and week the shit out of this week. Famtabulous. Ciao.