Good morning! Top ‘o the morning to ya. Monday Monday. How are you? Did you have a good weekend? Did you catch covid while being vaccinated? Seems like its all the rage. My god this is so fun. Jane is going to spend half her life in this house. Increasingly the property just feels like the Silent Running ship. We’re an isolated vessel, traveling through emptiness. Small supply ships occasionally dock for resupply, but they leave everything outside of the airlock, simply indicating through electronic means that they have delivered their supplies.
“This is your GrubHub driver Sean. I’ve left your order outside of your Front Door.” Well, you haven’t, it’s outside the garage door, but I understand. The pre-populated text messages only go so far.
“Your recent order is being shipped with Estes. Want info? Track here.”
“Hi Richard, this is your SHipt shopper, Jackquelin. I just picked up your order from Harris Teeter. Will text when I’m on my way, see you soon!”
Jacquelin has the coolest car. Yellow Xterra. She’s a repeat we get her almost every week.
This isolation narrative isn’t entirely true as I am happy to report two very exciting events this weekend: First, we had a visitor! Amazing. Our friend Todd came over, whom we hadn’t seen since the beginning of the pandemic even though he lives, like, fifteen minutes away. It was very nice. We had dinner. He introduced us to alcoholic Kombucha, of which I am now a huge fan. Jane was well behaved and very cute. It as almost like the old days.
The second is that on Friday, I took Jane out of the house and to a store. Emma was trying to get work done and Jane was not having it and nothing was distracting her from her laser-like focus of making it impossible for Emma to get her work done. And I had to go pick up the pizza so I was unable to keep attempting to provide distraction. So I asked Jane if she wanted to come, and she said yes. She kept saying she wouldn’t wear a mask but that she wanted to go and I said that’s fine but if that’s the case you don’t get to go into the store or the pizza place. When push came to shove and we were standing in the parking lot, she agreed to wear the mask, and she was very good at it. She walked through the grocery store saying “hi!” to every single person (most even said hi back!) and repeatedly saying “it’s so fun to be in the store.” Girl hasn’t set foot in a store in half her life but capitalism seems to be set in her bones. Must be in the water. It was so cute though, and she was so happy, and she got to see the gang at Village Pizza, who hadn’t seen her since she was like two. It was a good time.
It was probably a bit of a risk but she was very good with her mask and most everyone else was too and we didn’t get to close to anyone. And some of you are like “bwahaha my kid is a professional wrestler these days” and I understand. To each his own. Baby steps. Or toddler ones.
Lessee what else. I got my podcast done on Friday, I was very chatty and when on long, discursive stories about 1996 and the Cindytalk tour and Imagesetters and hardware RIP NUBUS cards for Power Macs and such. It was fun I really like doing that podcast, it’s, like, I don’t get a lot of conversation in these days, except with my wife which I do converse with quite a lot since, you know, we basically got married since we love talking to each other. Huh so maybe that theory is incorrect and I’m just a blabbermouth. In any case, I had fun doing it, and here it is:
A good chunk of the rest of the weekend was spent gardening. It was time. I had been hiding my head in the sand for about three weeks with the garden, too despondent about the devastation caused by the wildlife. But it was time to pick myself up, dust myself off and get back to work. The Farmer’s Almanac said so, since it was time to plant the fall beans and watermelon. So I did that, and I spent a long time figuring out pest protection screening techniques. Most notably, I wrapped my main tomato plants in squirrel netting. I’m not sure if it’s going to work — Emma thinks a squirrel’s gonna manage to get up in there and then get stuck but it’s been two days and it seems to be working so far. I also put cloches over my two grape plants, and I put netting over the new beans that I sowed — a bed of long beans and a bed of soybeans — but then I realized that technique wasn’t going to work and will need some hoops. I put a big bell cloche over the new pot of watermelon seeds. I ordered a lot more wildlife-protection cloches and netting and hoops and whatnot, that should be here for next week. The planting dates for fall crops spread all across july and august, so every week from here on out for a while, I should be planting new stuff, screening it over, and hopefully, little by little, the garden will return to its former glory and be protected.
I did a harvest and while it looks very photogenic in this picture, the potatoes were kind of a failure and I am 90% sure it’s because I didn’t put enough holes in the bottom of the buckets and the bottom of them had mostly anaerobic soil. So, more holes for the next round. If I can chit and sprout some new potatoes.
Harvested the radishes and they mostly worked just great except I planted them too close together (a recurring problem of mine that I need to get over) and they were small, but very delicious and not too mauled by wildlife so we’ll be planting some more, less dense, next week. And I trimmed back a pepper plant to the stems to see if I can get a second growth cycle out of it this year.
Also got my gardening video done, but it was so hot that my camera kept crapping out, so it’s a bit herky jerky. But here it is if you’re into that sort of thing:
Other than that, hrm. I played some Civilization. I listened to the new Bobbie Gillespie and Jenny Beth album that was good but not at all what I expected. I listened to the new New Order triple live album. I thought a lot, as I do every time New Order has a new record, about Sean Drinkwater’s masterpiece un-produced screenplay Creepy and how I would totally watch that film (there is a subplot about the “New New Order” record, as in a band called “New New Order). I ripped First Man and the new Blu Ray of Brotherhood of the Wolf to Plex. Well, they’re not there yet but they will be soon. I mailed out an old hard drive sold on eBay for $1. I just sold a $60 Ride Nowhere CD so that is exciting. I’ll get that out this morning.
I called my mom. I texted with some old friends. I got in a big argument with Rex about the Steel Dossier that went on, for, like, 60 messages on Slack and annoyed everyone else I suspect. I will say he did get me to re-read it and it is way more pee tape focused than I rememeber. In my head it was “blah blah Russia kompromat, Trump tower, etc., and one passing line about the pee tape,” but no, it’s way more pee tape obsessed than I remember. I suppose I’m one of those loonies on the left that thinks that one day, when I’m like 90, we’ll learn there was a pee tape, but Rex thinks it’s all just fevered fantasies of the left, which seems really weird because my fevered fantasies involve him either dying in an American jail for his more obvious crimes or just keeling over dead on his own no need to complicate things with Russia.
I forgot to take photos of my record crates for Adam I should do that now. Done. We watched a bunch of Mythbusters. We watched episode 1 of the McCartney 321 doc on Hulu. Rick Rubin is a clever interviewer. I read more of my book about concrete. It is fantastic. I will finish the whole book and still not understand exactly how concrete is made, but I’m glad to know that I’m not alone in thinking the Roman Pantheon is otherworldly and insanely impossible for them to build. I visited that place in 2001 with Nick and I still can’t get over it.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos. One of my Home DIY guys bought an 80’s church to renovate into his home and workshop and I got very excited and jealous. I mused for a long time how badly I want a proper workshop, but reminded myself I do indeed have enough space for a proper workshop, I’ve just made different life choices. And as much as I love tools and building stuff I am actually very bad at it and also I don’t need more stuff, and I have enough of a workbench to do the sort of work I can and need to do. And I should really convert that weird spot on the patio into a raised bed but wood is so expensive.
I watched another YouTuber, this woman that Jane finds mesmerizing. And she went swimming with her gay guy buddy who lives in the cabin next to her and they just sort of drove there, went swimming, put on their t-shirts and went home and I went into a very long think-hole about how wet they probably were and how I always hated being wet under my clothes after swimming and that was probably a character flaw in my because look how much “fun” they’re having and they’re having “experiences” and “living in the moment” and I wonder if Jane will be the sort of person who can just put a shirt on after swimming in a pond and not get annoyed with being wet or she will be more Larry Davidian about it like myself. Later on in the weekend Emma and I had a similar long rant about camping. I am very scarred from camping on frozen lakes in -20°F weather as a child so I’m a bit biased, but to me camping for camping’s sake is weird. It’s like saying you’re into hammering. I mean, yeah, hammering is kinda fun but mainly it’s a tool if you need to like, a) survive, or b) hike a really long way in to see an amazing vista or something. You should know how to camp, of course, but… as an activity in and of itself? Not into it.
I just googled “Hammer Competitions” and apparently that is a thing.
I didn’t read any news so I am a bit behind on Cuba, on COVID in the Olympic village, on NSO, on everything else. I will catch up today. I did read two long articles on my phone but I was accidentally in private browsing mode and I have no recollection about them but they were very good. Maybe one day I’ll remember and I can tell you all about them!
Hrm well I guess that was a decently productive weekend I can hold my head high I did not laze about doing nothing. Cool. Let’s do a mix! Shoegaze mix. All new stuff in a tasty sandwich between a single old classic at the beginning and one at the end. Shoegaze is alive and well and it makes me so very, very happy.
Okay let’s do this let’s, like, tackle this week with a modicum of energy and not just mope our way through it and hope it ends soon. We can do that, can’t we! Because we are, like, functional human beings who enjoy things. YES.
"One of my Home DIY guys bought an 80’s church to renovate into his home and workshop" URL please! We are planning to buy a church in 3-5 years and renovate it. Def love watching stuff like that!