Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1110
Glasses in the cabinet, visiting friends, greenhouse progress and bed filling, a bunch of media, a boring rock dream, goth mulch, infinite craft
Good morning, friendo. Happy Monday(s). Hello. How are you? All well? Excited for the week? Oof. I can do it.
Had my annual “charity gala concert” dream, which seems to be some sort of recurring dream I have. I wonder if I have it once a year, like the gala concert therein. That’d be funny. This year the headliner was PJ Harvey in her current era, except she was only playing songs from the first two records and she ended with this awesome version of “Man-Size” that started out like the sextet version but ended as the rock version and people were losing their minds, it was awesome. I was selling charity merch in the back of the theater, which seemed to be based on that theater that Jon Whitney had that Brainwaves festival at with Stephen Stapleton and such. Regent theater. Anyway, great cream. There’s a part in the dream where I get crushed in a mosh pit, well, not a mosh pit just the crowd crush. And it was great. Miss that horrible feeling.
Hey important question for you: when you put your drinking glasses into a cabinet, do you put them in with the open mouth face up or face down? I just noticed that within the same cabinet, I have a shelf of glasses mouth up and another one mouth down and it occurred to me that it is very important in my life that I make a decision one way or the other and standardize these things because these are the sort of important things we need to have worked out. And I suspect somewhere on the internet, this battle has been waged to the point of absurdity but I cannot be going and looking for things like that, I have standards dammit.
Hey another important question for you: if any of you are older than me and/or have parents who lived in Boston in the 70’s can anyone tell me about the establishment Webb’s in this photo of Kenmore Square in 1972? What was it? Inquiring Webbs are dying to know.
Our friend Ashley is visiting with her son George. Jane literally played sick this morning to spend more time with George. Two peas in a pod, those two. I could tell the alternative was going to be massive, willful disobedience until she got her way, even though I kept asking her if she wanted to stay home. So eventually we had a very forthright conversation about how she doesn’t need to play sick to stay home and she should just talk to me about it, and she can’t stay home tomorrow too and if she had to choose one, which day would it be. And she chose today. Cuz tomorrow is her 100th day of school and she is for some reason very excited about that. Except she’s probably missed 20 of them.
Does her stomach really hurt too, like she was halfheartedly claiming? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, weekend update. Three solid days of hardcore yard work and one day of doing absolutely nothing. We got one of the Viridian crews here this weekend and spread 20 yards of goth mulch around the much beds our house. It was not enough. We probably need ten more yards. So much mulch. Such a huge goth tax. Goth much is so much more expensive than brown mulch. You don’t even know.
Crew also spread four more yards of gravel onto the path between the houses and the path is now officially passable. Is it done? No. Is it an easy climb up the hill? No, needs stairs carved into the hill. But you can do it without stepping in the pond now, so that is exciting.
While they did that I worked on getting the greenhouse set up. Had to get all the Birdies Beds in there, which meant re-assembling a few of them into their new configuration, pressure washing them, spray priming with rust protectant all the spots inside each bed where the paint was peeling, getting them in place in the greenhouse, filling the bottom of them with logs. And filling them with logs meant gathering the three or four various piles of logs that I’ve made around the property over the last year of landscaping. Some of them needed to be sawed down to size, so I had to get out the TIMBER CROC (still a wonderful purchase) and sawing a bunch of them. Then loading all the wood up in the bottom of the beds. Then leaves and some twigs and whatnot. Then all the dirt that we had hauled over from the other house last weekend. I had the crew with me for that part. One guy would load the wheelbarrow with dirt, the other guy would bring it over to the greenhouse and delicately load up the beds while I poured various soil amendments into the dirt as he went: perlite, vermiculite, blood meal, garden gypsum (when necessary), assorted organic fertilizers in bags that I had that were all leaking cuz squirrels apparently try and eat organic fertilizer those lunatics. Oh and Neptune’s Harvest Crab and Lobster Shell because I found a five-pound bucket of that lying (laying?) around.
Anyway that was awesome and we got all seven beds filled in like two hours, and then they moved the remainder of the soil into one of my empty compost bins. Fantastico.
On top of that, yesterday Don the electrician got all the electrical done. Except he forgot one breaker. Unclear exactly what that means. Is it connected? Or not? I don’t now.
I also didn’t yet add the last 3” of soil to each bed because I am going to use new, fresh organic potting mix combined with home-grown compost there.
But we are so, so close to a fully functioning greenhouse. I mean, technically now I could actually grow things in there. Never mind we still need to connect the plumbing, replace the plexiglass on the north end with all the custom glass we had to cut in order to lower the door, order more shelf-adaptor bolts because I cannot find my old ones anywhere, cut the shelves, paint the shelves, install the shelves, build a garden bench, install a sink, get the drop irrigation hooked up, pick out a nice chair, find a good hose and, you know, plant things.
Because aside from that last 3” of dirt, I can actually plant things in there. And if you can plant things in a greenhouse, it is functioning.
Was I gonna do that last 3” of dirt yesterday but life kept throwing obstacles in my way: Emma was originally gonna take Jane on a play date, but the kid got sick, so I had to watch her in the morning, then I had to watch her while Emma went to pick up Ashley and George, and then…
I got completely sucked in to this Infinite Craft game, which is simple and addictive and super fun and deceptively complex and I couldn’t stop playing it. My energy abandoned me. So I spent, like, um, three hours trying to get the members of the Fellowship of the Ring in Infinite Craft. I am so close. I can’t make Boromir happen to save my life. I’m starting to think maybe he isn’t in there. I got “Minas Tirith” and trying to combine it with “Family” but no go. Nor did “Gondorian” and “Assassin.” Alas.
Media of the Day is a roundup today. Started season 2 of Halo which is probably the best sci-fi on tee vee right now. Not a single arguing married couple — oh shit, that’s a lie, there was one but it is over. Just great. Aliens, spaceships, lasers. All hits no fluff. Started re-watching Garfunkel and Oates they really were brilliant I am sad they broke up. Kate overcame lung cancer, got married to the guy who plays bass on “Everything Has Changed” by Taylor Swift and had a kid. Riki got married and had a kid too. The kid may or may not be Fred Armisen’s, Wikipedia tells me.
New Mary Timony album came in the mail, sounded great. New Idles is shockingly mellow and I think I need to listen to it way, way louder. Listened to the entirety of the American Analogue Set box set. Found out I accidentally purchased two, in two different colors. Pray to god your wife doesn’t read this far down today. New Sonic Youth live reissue is A+.
Haven’t watched a “new” movie in 25 days. Bought tickets for opening morning of Dune 2. Started re-watching Cloud Atlas and I still maintain it is one of the greatest movies ever made. Ebert (the real one, when he was alive) gave it four out of four stars. Tom Hanks said “I've seen it three times now and discovered, I swear to God, different, profound things with each viewing. He also called it “a movie that altered my entire consciousness," saying, "it's the only movie I've been in that I've seen more than twice.” Thank you Wikipedia for all of those quotes I totally stole all of them from the Cloud Atlas Wikipedia page, which says it got them from the Metro, Uproxx and the Radio Times and see, not committing plagiarism is so easy. Except I bet none of those quotes actually came from those places huh.
HA! I probably rang you up. You might remember the Indian restaurant across the hall, India Quality? After soundcheck on Landsdowne, stars would go there for dinner then come into buy records. My personal favorite was meeting Bobby Gillispie. He looked amazing, love chatting about records, and was very funny. Not guest list offers though..
"Old Boston" themed comment:
When I lived in Alston, we had cockroaches, which is why I developed the habit of storing glasses face down. I still do it to this day, even though there's no longer a reason for it.
"Webb's Inc" was at 526 Comm. Ave. and my record store, 'Planet Records', was at 536 Comm. Ave. Webb's was long gone by the time I was there, but we did take over the signpost that you see in that picture. No idea what they did. Tuxedo rental & disco dancing lessons?