Good morning! Hello! How are you? Doing okay? Have a lovely weekend? Get some time outside? I hope you got some nice time outside. Some time to relax. Maybe put something on the grill. Wow. You know, I didn’t use our outdoor grill at all last summer. Not once. I wonder why that was? Because grills feel like vacations and pandemics do not? Maybe? Kind of crazy. I am going to have to try and remember to use it this year. I didn’t lug it all the way to the Carolinas from Brooklyn to just have it sit around.
Got a TON of gardening done this weekend. Not as much as I would have liked, but a good amount. AND I finished my gardening video of it:
Got the overwintered peppers out and gave them new life. I suspect most of them are going to fail, but at least two of them are already showing some new green shoots, so that is promising. Also planted the grapes and blueberries, I also suspect most of them are going to fail, but one grape plant is showing green, so that’s something! I got the two Birdies beds filled with peppers, which is exciting. I planted the cucumbers, the fennel, the baby bok choi. I filled a whiskey barrel with carrot seeds. I filled up all 30 chambers on the Greenstalk planter, so I really pretty much got one of everything planted. Well. That’s a lie. I did not plant any beans or beets - I need to do that ASAP. Maybe I’ll manage to do that before the weekend. Who are we kidding that is not going to happen. I also got one of each of the ten indeterminate tomato varieties planted which is VERY exciting.
For the next few weeks it’s going to be a pain because all my gardening time on the weekends is going to be spent getting things in the ground, and maybe getting some trellising up if things move quickly (I just peeked outside and I swear the Cucumber starts grew three inches yesterday), which means I won’t have time for another few weeks to get the drip irrigation installed, which means I’m going to have to carve out a half hour from my insanely scheduled day to water. Not sure when that’s going to be. But i will figure it out.
In other gardening news, one of my favorite gardening YouTubers, James Prigioni has returned to YouTube. It’s always interesting to see which gardeners keep making content over the whole winter, and which do not. Furthermore, most of the gardening YouTubers I watch seem to live in warmer climes — three in California, one in Texas, one in North Carolina. James lives in New Jersey, so he is going to get a later start than everyone else. But it feels like more than that. Obviously James probably did his seed starts a month or two ago like everyone else? But he’s just not bothered with YouTube. I kind of wondered if he was going to come back at all. I wonder if, like, he has a job in the winter. Has other shit he needs to do. Maybe doesn’t rely on YouTube for his main income, therefore doesn’t need to keep making content all winter in order to get that sweet, sweet ad money. He’s a funny dude. Kind of a Jersey Bro, little bit drum circle, but knows SO MUCH about gardening, and his plot blows everyone else’s away. Also he has a cute dog that really does make things better.
We had a huge rainstorm — perfectly timed, overnight on Saturday — that did a great job washing off a bunch of the insane pollen and draining it into the pond. The bad news is that it was also really windy and it knocked off about a third of the Cherry Blossom tree’s blossoms, so as predicted, we are gonna get about a week with that beautiful tree. I’m sad to see it go.
It really is nice to have the pollen reduced, though. My allergy defenses are holding — I take four allergy medications every day. It’s a bit excessive but that’s what it takes. Two inhalers, Claratin, and a specially compounded bottle of sublingual drops made according to my exact allergies and geographical location. I take three drops under the tongue for three minutes, every morning, year round. I bought this cute little timer for toddlers to brush their teeth so I don’t have to count to 180 every morning, like I did for the entire first year I took the drops. Anyway, the effort is worth it: I have a slight headache, and it is making me tired, and green goo is everywhere, but I am still mostly functional even in the face of such an insane amount of pollen.
I did a nice Zoom with some friend Saturday night. I had two beers and a tiny wine, which I admit is a bad mix, but my god the hangover the next day was all out of proportion. I felt like ass the whole day. Come to think of it that was probably the pollen. I learned about the film Light of Day, which I did not know about at all. Trent Reznor is in it. Who knew. Also watched Falcon and the Winter Snowman — er, Soldier — and it was better than the last few episodes but still not actually good. I am disappointed. It feels like work. I feel bad for the people involved cuz it could have been good. Maybe. Presuambly. Like it sort of wanted to be one of those austere international 70’s thrillers like the Conversation or Guns of Navarone but chickened out? Maybe I’m just imaging that. But, like, the opening titles, the… eh, maybe that’s just me subconsciously, constantly, associating it with Falcon and the Snowman. Maybe it’s all in my head. Actually, that would explain a lot.
The other big (“big.” ha) thing I did this weekend was watch a Civ VI Invitational Tournament featuring several big Civ VI streamers, including the two I watch most of the time: The Game Mechanic and Potato McWhiskey. Real battle of the titans. I’ve never watched one of these things before, it was interesting. There was a host livestream, and each player had their own livestream, so you could watch from an omniscient point of view, or from an individual player. After some back and forth, I watched Potato’s livestream. Most of the players decided to, like, actually try and win the game, which means they took “Turtle Civs,” or civilizations that are very good at defense from invaders. Potato, conversely, took a “War Civ,” in order to try and attack everyone and win a domination victory. As luck would have it the first other Civ he came across was The Game Mechanic, and what ensued was a battle-of-the-century battle between the two most popular Civ streamers, which is what all the viewers wanted. It’s nearly impossible in the early game to defend against a strong war civ, but TGM did a great job. The war dragged on and on. It was interesting because TBG knew that meant that neither one of them would actually win the game as a whole. It was classic Mutual Assured Destruction. You could tell it bummed him out. The tournament has multiple days, and you can win on score, so either one of them could theoretically make a comeback next weekend, but they made their lives much harder. The other turtle civs in the game just kept plugging away at arts and culture and science while TGM and Potato just threw troops away in a pointless war.
What was really interesting, though, was that TGM seemed to grasp this, and Potato not so much, at first. But conversely, Potato grasped that this was exactly what the viewing public wanted to see. TGM could see that he had a really high viewer count, but it was cold comfort as he was losing the war.
The war ground on, and eventually Potato got the advantage and destroyed TGM. It took hours though. And by the time he had finished the war, another player had acquired so much science it was going to be impossible for Potato to ever catch up and actually win the game as a whole. And it felt like it was only then that he really grasped the senselessness of that war. I mean, this is not true – he tried to offer TGM peace at one point, but at that point TGM had no chance of winning the game as a whole and knew it and figured he may as well go down in a blaze of glory and inflict as much damage on Potato as possible. But you could really sense, after the war, Potato’s remorse about the whole thing. What makes for great viewing (and thank you. It really was fantastic) does not make for an actual great civilization. That game really keeps on giving in terms of applying to real life. Real US-Russia-China metaphor going on there.
Emma didn’t know the “Pretty Sneaky Sis” reference. I made her watch the original Connect Four ad. Holds up. What a wholesome family, that family. Two siblings playing a game, not at a computer, actually being (more or less) nice to each other. Really brings a tear to your eye.
Emma also found a bird’s nest in one of our fake trees. Gotta commend those Carolina Wrens’ resourcefulness. Right on our doorstep! No fear. Pretty sneaky, Wrens.
I know that looks kinda weird and photoshopped. Doesn’t it? Maybe Emma is lying to me. Maybe she knows I’m not going to go out there and check to see if she’s making it up or not. Well I’ll sure show her. Maybe. Sometime. If a package arrives or something.
What else happened this weekend. We watched SNL. I did not know that Carey Mulligan was married to Mumford of Mumford and Sons. I did not know Mumford was English. I am not a fan or anything but I’ve seen those dudes like three times and had no idea. I also assumed he had a beard. He does not. SNL was funny. Bowen Yang is hilarious, Keenen Thompson is too. Not enough Chloe Fineman this week but they gave her the opening last week so I will forgive them.
All right. I have a whole host of other things on my list I could chat about today, but it does seem a bit sad to taint this pastoral GMHHAY with talk about Mitch McConnell or something, so perhaps we’ll hold off on those topics for another day.
So we will move on to our mix, which was, I confess, rather hastily assembled. I had such a good backlog of mixes for so long that I wasn’t quite ready when suddenly I had no mixes ready. Luckily I starred a few tracks this weekend when I was gardening, and that was enough to round out a justa mix mix, which really does seem to be rather all-over-the-place, but I like mixes like that. I know in this day and age every mix is supposed to, like, have a theme, but it’s just more fun when they run the gamut I think. Maybe that’s just me. So you get brand new Arab Strap and Dinosaur Jr on the same mix as Pat Benatar and Julie Delpy. Eh, you know, maybe this mix flows more than I am letting on. Maybe it’s exactly what you and I need this Monday. Only one way to find out.
Have a lovely Monday. I’m feeling decently mentally prepared to face the Monday. I hope you are too. Heck, maybe you don’t even dread the start of the week at all. If so, could you tell me your secrets?