Good morning. Hello. How are you? #418
Carrie Goldberg and veggie sausage updates, a lotta YouTube videos, Jane was sad, we're approaching 600,000 deaths, and a weird bit about fart strategies and zits.
Good morning! Hey there. How’s it going? I am doing okay. Still pretty sad about my beans, and the deer. Spent a chunk of time yesterday researching anti-pest netting options, ordered some stuff. It should arrive by the time I’m back from Alaska, and I will try again. Kinda sucks I need to re-plant mid-summer, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. And we will be well prepped for our very long fall growing season. Still, I am sad. Those rascal deer.
Programming note: I talked about Carrie Goldberg’s book Nobody’s Victim yesterday, and about how jealous I was of her moment of inpsiration when she suddenly knew exactly what her calling was. Imagine my mortification, then, when I finished the book last night and she had a “well actually….” at the end of it that explained that that was just how she told the story these days in public, and it wasn’t really true, and the truth was much messier and more complicated and far less infused with lightning-bolt-struck inspiration. I was reading it and thinking, “oh wow, I was jealous of a myth, and one constructed to hide a much darker and more complex truth.” And in reality, of course, the complexity is exactly the point: that it’s not always so simple, so clear cut, and I have no reason to be jealous, far from it. And the truth is much more to Goldberg’s credit. Everything she’s accomplished is much more to her credit, when there was no lightning bolt of inspirational calling. She made it all happen through hard work and pushing through the uncertainty, just like the rest of us. I suspect few of you have read this book, but the irony of my misplaced, petty jealousy needed to be admitted nonetheless.
Programming note #2: After additional experimentation, I hereby rescind my claim that Morningstar Farms has reworked the formulation of their hot and spicy sausage patties. I am now 90% convinced the taste profile changed because I left them in the oven longer. This is embarrassing. I would like to formally apologize to Morningstar Farms. Thank you for your delicious vegetarian product.
Looks like today we will cross 600,000 COVID deaths in the United States. I still type the statistics, every morning, into my 750 words. Worldwide cases and deaths, US cases and deaths, NC cases, Chatham county. It is undoubtedly getting better, but several hundred people still die every day in the US. And a hundred thousand have died since the vaccination drive began in earnest. It’s crazy. It’s sad. It’s hard to keep that statistic in your mind, your brain, the world around you, is working so hard to just erase it. We are, right now, still at a death rate that is 4-5x the flu death rate in America. After all of this. Remember those people last year saying it was just a flu? Here we are in the good part of it and it is several times worse than the flu.
Okay, let’s see, how was my day. It was nice. Jane was lovely at breakfast, but didn’t eat much. When we came downstairs, she immediately wandered off and did coloring. This seems to be the norm these days, which makes me a little sad. I’ve had 3+ years of her sitting next to me while I work. I’ll miss it. I did some work, had some work calls, then we had a smorgasbord (god I will never be able to spell that word having lived in Williamsburg at an inopportune time) of leftovers, then we took our walk, and then I did Jane bedtime, which was pretty good. Lotta stalling, we had an unfortunate moment over jammies, but she eventually calmed down and came back to me and was yearning for fun and personal connection after her tantrum, so I turned off the YouTube videos and went through all of our fun activities: under the covers, all the way under the covers, bonk bonk, new flips, ABC circles, climb on daddy, daddy slide. Then we played with Duplo for a half hour and then bedtime itself was pretty chill. It’s really heartbreaking when, after a tantrum, she’s in this mood. She needs it all to be better. She’s not apologetic, really, but she is ready, desperate for an emotional reset, and wants to feel “happy” and connected again.
Talked to my sister and mother yesterday, starting to look forward to this trip. My sister has the whole week off! That is exciting. She’s been so busy I just assumed she’d be working and dealing with childcare and I wouldn’t get to see too much of her. But she has it off. And I get to finally meet my baby nephew Lucas, that is just great. Also received a care package for my mom to Jane from her trip to Kodiak and Seldovia and Homer and the weird abandoned mine they used to summer at and tried to get to but they couldn’t cuz the road is washed out. There was a Kodiak shirt for Jane with the alphabet on it and she just loves it.
Also I feel terrible — I totally forgot to look up when I was leaving RDU this weekend (I blame the hangover) and check to see if there are still balloons in the rafters. I really hope so. I’m happy I get a second chance to look.
Then I went through my YouTube video backlog. Lots going on. Farmers farming, LEGO people building legos, Wintergarten making his amazing Marble Machine X, not a lot of Civ content, which was sad. Lockpicking Lawyer kicking up the car lock content, the rebuilding of the American Hotel in Cerro Gordo has begun, Good Loki analysis, retaining walls got built, some sweet gardening videos, more Apple analysis (always), some drinking water tests at Project Kamp, a Montana farmer got his goat de-horned, the chateau people did some plasterboard, April Wilkerson set up a lovely rainwater collection system (man I need to do that one of these days), the Oregon Music Garage that RR Buildings is building got some floorboards in the attic, Adam Savage built a hat, Hannah Lee Dugan got a roommate. I missed my shows, my little online friends. The other day I emailed with Kevin from Epic Gardening because my Birdie’s Beds order is delayed and I felt like I was emailing a celebrity, it was great.
Man. That paragraph took a long time to create.
My copy of Japanese Breakfast’s new album came in last night on vinyl, I am excited. Also received the new re-issue of Spiritualized’s Pure Phase on vinyl while I was gone, looking forward to that. The laid-back stoner-psych Bay Area band Swell just put up on their Bandcamp page vinyl reissues of every one of their albums, and I have been currently working on getting all the Swell albums on vinyl, and only owned three so far so I just spent way too much money this morning. Right before I left for Boston, I watched the Wedding Present Seamonsters 30th Anniversary Livestream and it was great. Also, from that, I discovered the Wedding Present’s bassist, Melanie Howard, has a project called Such Small Hands, and I spent a significant chunk of yesterday listening to her gloriously mellow tunes. Her videos are mesmerizing. A+. I think my Pop Will East Itself and MC 900 Foot Jesus resurgances have faded, but I gave them both a last listen yesterday (X, Y & Zee and I’m Going Straight to Heaven, respectively).
Oh, in the one more bit of news, I have a giant zit on my nose. It hurts. It bled this morning. So, I am feeling just awesome. Travel is the worst. Your skin immediately breaks out, your digestive tract rebels. I didn’t get sick, though. That was something. OH. While I am on this unpleasant topic, I will also give you a bit of advice as you return to the normal world: no one wants to hear about how you need to re-work your farting strategies and remember that you just can’t fart everywhere anymore. I am sorry. But they don’t want to hear it. Don’t learn the hard way like I did. But I have some good news for you: your butt remembers. It’s like riding a bike. Which your butt also remembers. You don’t need to worry about it after all. Whew. Pew.
Let’s do a mix. Lotta lady pop on this one. Plus this dreampop band I discovered from Tampa that was in my iTunes and got a 7.9 on Pitchfork like a decade-plus ago but I never heard and now love, Candy Bars. And the new Lorde, which of course I can’t get out of my head because it sounds like George Michael. Lots fun stuff. This is a fun mix. New illuminati hotties is great. New King Princess too.
Ok! Tuesday and Wednesday are my super-busy days at work. Let’s go let’s go let’s get through it you can do it woooooooooooo.