Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1051
The holiday, greenhouse progress, dousing rods, and a new obsession with Cities: Skyline
Good morning, hello, nice to see you, been a while. Took the holiday off from writing, which was probably a terrible idea but also just great. How was your Thanksgiving, was it swell? Ours was just great. Meal, courtesy of yours truly, came out great. Carrots were a little sweeter than expected but everything else was *chef’s kiss*. Jane helped: she cut carrots and she cut potatoes and she cut bread for the stuffing which was super cute because she kept eating it as she cut it. She got two cuts on her fingers, wrapped in Hello Kitty bandages. I got one, though it was deeper and stupider, and it is wrapped in. Nexcare waterproof bandage. A+. Rick approved bandages, those Nexcare. Mom and aunt Bonnie and mother-in-law and Emma and Jane and I, and two neighbors over later for pie. It’s like nor normal members of society and not weird, troll-like recluses.
I wrote my thankful list all day Thursday like I do every year, but I’m not going to share it anymore. Suddenly that decades-old practice seems braggartly, so we’ll just put aside that childish thing. We taught Jane to make one too, and I haven’t read it yet, it’s in the notes app on her phone but oh man I gotta read that I bet it’s amazing.
It is that time of year again: If you would like a holiday card from us, or you have moved in the last year, please fill out this form. Gracias.
Stayed away from the computer the whole weekend, which means I am ridiculously behind, and it turns out today is shockingly busy for a Monday, so, you know, that is just great. Totally ready for work, I am. Really. Honest.
Lots of work on the greenhouse this weekend. By one measure, you could call it done. It is greenhouse-shaped, it has all the glass in that we can put in at the moment. It looks awesome. But by other measures, it is nowhere near done. No electric, data, water. The door is slightly out of skew. The curtains aren’t hung. BUT it is doing the the thing that greenhouses are supposed to do, which is get warm, so it is now officially a greenhouse, at least. Two solid days work by three people. Plus yours truly helping where he could but mostly cleaning and handing tools to them like I am a doctor’s assistant. It was great, though. I am excited. My driveway is slowly emptying of giant pallets of shit.
Also I bought a giant load of ten cubic yards of triple-shred (aka very fine, fluffy, will break down in the garden quickly), non-dyed mulch and spread it out in front of the greenhouse and other places so I am very excited about that. Still probably have about four cubic yards. Need some mulch?
Ricardo taught me to use a dousing rod and I swear the things work and it was really fun and weird and now I know where the water pipe is between my well and the house, so that was very useful.
We did a pool company meeting at 9 AM on Friday cuz there was no other time this weekend, gawd. We are close to closing on the land for the boat storage facility. Have to do it in the next couple weeks. Banks been positively fighting over us trying to get us as a client, which is completely hilarious compared to my experience in tech, it really is night and day. Looks like we’ll get a rate about 2 under prime, which is… pretty swell for this day and age. Excited to get that project rolling.
On Friday night after Jane was asleep Emma and I were both exhausted, sitting down in the basement and too tired to watch anything, and we stumbled on this guy who was doing a retrospective of Sim City and it took both of us back and we got sucked into a rabbit hole of Sim City and other Sim nostalgia. I bought Sim City five back when I lived in Williamsburg and it kind of sucked and the always-on internet connection requirement was BS. Watching all these videos filled me with a deep, profound sense of loss for Sim City and I could exactly see how awesome a new Sim City would be, how good the graphics would be and how much I desperately wanted that.
And then I discovered Cities: Skyline, which came out like eight years ago but has recently been remastered for the PS5, and after watching one or two videos on that one, my god, I bought that so quickly.
SO, after two days of cooking and two days of greenhouse I was exhausted from my vacation and ready for a vaction from my vacation, on Sunday I played Cities: Skylines Remastered on my PS5 from basically 8:30 AM to 8:30 PM last night and it was so great. It is exactly the Sim City you want for the 21st century. There is a new Cities: Skylines 2 out just last month, coincidentally, but only for Windows for now, so not really an option for me. But this remastered version of the original is just great. I am so happy. I fell asleep seeing zoning grids and it was the best. Apparently this random Swedish company makes it, and when EA/Maxis whiffed it with Sim City 5 they decided to just go for it and make their version and THANK GOD.
Just what the doctor ordered.
So I regret to inform you, my readers, along with my coworkers and family that you will never see me again, I am heading off to a fiber-enabled RV park and living out the rest of my days in a trailer with a very fast internet connection and I’m just going to play Cities: Skyline until I die because that shit is pure heroin.
Excuse me I gotta go flip the record to side D of Lana Del Rey’s Lust for Life, now reissued on translucent coke bottle green in shops now.
Jane us been being pretty good this weekend. Five days was a lot. She was getting bored a lot. She missed school. She was very excited to go this morning, which was nice. She’s got a sniffle, but nothing too bad right now. She did a lot of LEGO and worksheets. Dance party is a drag now because all she wants to hear are the same Blackpink, Taylor and Olivia songs and I like all these artists but it is getting borrrring. Also she doesn’t dance, she just plays weird dictatorial games about where we can stand. She also does this upon waking me up on weekend mornings, so I am just out of bed, kind of cranky, not yet dressed or my teeth brushed, and this weird kinderfascist is telling me where I can stand and step and screaming at me if I make the bed before she is ready to open the curtains and it is just easier to go along with her instead of standing up because I can’t stand listening to that wail, so ;tldr I am being a bad parent and teaching her to demand what she wants and expect to get it at all times but I guess that’s also good femisim so I roll with it.
She asked why we have thanksgiving and told me that they taught her about pilgrims at school, which is sorta annoying. I told her it was a bad story that we pretend to is good to make ourselves feel better and she said “okay, I don’t want to know it then” and I was briefly happy then I felt bad and was like “no, you should know the dumb story so you know why its dumb but we can worry about that next year” and that was fine with her. I suppose now that thanksgiving’s over she’ll come home with a nativity scene or some shit and this is a very liberal county sigh. Though I do like nativity scenes. What can I say. God. Why on earth do I like nativity scenes. Therapist!
Oh also our pool company needs Google reviews so if you are interested in a bit of surreptitious SEO for a small local business drop me a line and I will explain how this works. Apparently we need like thirty so I will probably beg you with increasing desperation over the next week or so.
Okay here we go I am going to go actually think about work now. Terrifying.
Oh man. A playlist. Wow. I have not thought about this in five days. Let’s look. Cool. Nothing is ready. Okay. Hold plz. All right, here you go. Club mix was closest to being done, so this is the one you get, which is a shame cuz Heavenly’s “Atta Girl” was playing in the car this morning and I thought “this needs to go on today’s playlist” but it is decidedly not a club track. Soon I guess. Man. Clubs. Wonder what they’re like now. Emma let’s go to Vegas and spend $20k on bottle service at XS. Is that place still around? Old people!
OK well I missed you good to see you let’s talk more tomorrow see how we really feel about it.
greenhouse may not be done but *looks* legit—nice work!
My dream: Rick’s picks, a microsite of every product recommendation ever made in this newsletter