Good morning. Hello. How are you today? All well? Hanging in there? Omicron treating you all right? Recovered and/or avoided it? Got a kid in school? Is it complete chaos? Emma and I keep waiting for Chatham County to update the schools dashboard, which is kind of our best baramoter over here of how things are going. They did an update this Monday, the first since the holiday, but it felt… incomplete. Next Monday should be the real test of things.
Thank you for your feedback on the covers. It was surprisingly all over the map, but i think I can can narrow it down to 4-5 instead of 17, so there may be another round of feedback in a couple days. I hesitate to call it “voting,” since, well, you know, I might ignore you guys completely. But I do value your input all the same.
Got some fun stuff in the mail yesterday. Got a copy of the old Barbarian Group media server. This isn’t, like, secret Barbarian files I’m not supposed to have after I left or anything, but rather a copy of the community-maintained server where we all kept our music to listen to and things like that. It’s a glorious snapshot of a bygone era, I am happy to have it. Copying it up to my ColdStorage drive on Plex, so I can get it up into my BackBlaze backup. I’ll then parse the thing for any good music and video that can go in my main libraries. I’m ridiculously excited to have this thing again, after all these years. The Barbarians were all so good about the media server, people would update it with interesting stuff then email everyone on a special list what they uploaded, with some critic’s notes and whatnot. I really miss that.
I also got a new winter coat in the mail. Like an adult sophisticated grown up one, all high-tech fabrics and bring looking. Well, I mean, it’s Carhartt, it’s not, like, Patagonia or North Face or one of those hipster brands I can’t keep track of or something, but for me, who has never really owned a proper winter coat except a) Parkas that are too warm to wear in the real world, b) long black things you wear with suits, it is very exciting. Now when I go to the grocery store or something, I will look like everyone else in their boring, high tech coats. Except it’s in black.
And, finally, I got my two copies of my 2021 Unexpurgated Diares in the mail yesterday. Man, yesterday was a good mail day. Two book-form copies of my entire diary for the year, one ot place on the shelf with the rest of them, one for backup in the storage unit. It looks very nice on the shelf with the rest of them. Happy to have that task done. That monumental shelf of books I’ve written, even if they are in copies of one, only for myself, reminds me when I look at it that I’m not completely unproductive. I should probably look at it more often.
But in the biggest and most upsetting news of the day, it seems that my — and Janes — doctor is… gone? No longer working at the clinic? Maybe retired? It is unclear. But I get the sense that it can’t be good. I was reading about continued Wegovy shortages, and also how I’m supposed to ramp up doses eventually: the instructions say every month you’re supposed to ramp up, but I have a three-month supply at the lowest dose. That was probably my doctor’s fault for not following the guidelines, because what do I know about it, but that’s a done deal. The shit is expensive, so I don’t want to waste the stuff I have, so I will probably spend 3 months on the lowest dose. But anyway, I figured after that, I should ramp up, and because of continued supply problems with Wegovy, I should, like, get the prescription in now, so that hopefully it arrives at the pharmacy before I run out in 10 weeks. So I messaged my doctor all of this, and some other doctor lady replied and said a) Paul was gone, b) she’d refill my prescription but, most alarmingly, c) if I wanted another refil aftr that I’d have to go in for an appointment, which is exactly why I loved paul so much, he didn’t make you jump through stupid-ass hoops and he understood that you knew how to handle your health care and he was mainly there as a facilitator and for emergencies. I wrote back thanking her, but also asking directly what happened to him — did he retire? He was older but not much older than me, and very healthy, easily had another decade of doctorin’ in him. Did he move to another clinic? She completely ignored my questions and just said that they were “working on hiring another doctor to cover his patients,” which, LOL, I’m too old to be just taking whatever rando doctor the clinic decides to assign to me and my daughter. It was a brush-off non-answer, and I know, like, they’re probably not allowed to talk about it, but still. Kinda makes me want to make a physical appointment (post Omicron, natch) and just sit in the appointment and say over and over again “What happened to Paul” until they give me a direct answer or make it reeeaalll uncomfortable that they don’t.
Anyway, this is a huge bummer. Emma and Janet have a different doctor at the same clinic, but she’s hugely booked, never around, some bigwig in the UNC system who just does one day a week to, you know, keep in touch. I mean she seems great but she also seems unattainable, also she will probably want to, like, talk before prescribing me things, which, yeah, that’s no fun.
(I am somewhat exaggerating, Paul did occasionally make me come in for appointments and blood tests and stuff, he wasn’t, like, hands-off completely. He was just reasonable.)
Anyway. Was he just fed up with COVID life? I know medical workers are under a lot of stress but this place is just a boring-ass family clinic. No urgent care, etc. But who knows. Maybe he just decided I don’t need this shit anymore. I can certainly respect that.
Been thinking about this guy a lot. I miss this guy. Might have been the best meme of all time:
Twas a simpler time.
The Wegovy is making me have, like, zero appetite, it really is crazy. Yesterday I had a little pit of spinach and a piece of deli turkey for lunch, and I was stuffed. Emma made burgers for dinner, and I did finish the burger, but I was full before I started, couldn’t finish the potatoes. And I stayed full for the rest of the evening. It’s been about 15 hours now since I’ve eaten and I am getting hungry now. I think I might just have to start skipping lunch completely. But I have all this stuff in the fridge I need to finish! Down another pound today, so we are now at 12 pounds in 11 days. Not bad. I will take a pound a day forever please. Or, at least another 40 days. But, man. Not being hungry all the time really is amazing.
Ford has supposedly started taking orders for the F-150 Lightning, but they haven’t even emailed me yet to let me configure. I asked my dealer what was up, he said maybe they’d get 10 for the whole year, LOL. He said they’d go in order, but that order was dictated by Ford, and what you ordered and such. I am deeply skeptical of this whole process, given that my order with Ford closed about six minutes after they started taking orders. I can’t be that far down the queue, certainly not that far down this one dealer’s queue. But Ford is offering, like, zero communication, I have no idea what’s going on. It is stressful.
My hoop house from Gardeners.com has shipped, along with my 2022 seeds from Johnny’s, Baker Creek, San Diego Seed Company and Kitazawa Seed co (highly recommended, specializes in Asian seeds). So, you know, too soon to start gardening but I can think about it. Theoretically I could start sowing seeds in the garage in 3 weeks. But it felt way too soon last year. I am deeply torn, like I mentioned the other day. Start early for emotional reasons or later for practical gardening reasons.
Plus all those YouTube gardeners are gonna start, and they’re gonna make me jealous.
Jane was very good yesterday. She was sad when she woke up, kinda lethargic and didn’t feel like doing anything, but she wasn’t unkind about it, she didn’t scream. She kept saying “I wanted to be kind,” and I'd reply “you’re just sad you’re still being kind I am proud of you.” Eventually at breakfast she snapped out of that and, I think, most of the day she was tantrum-free, which was quite nice. Bedtime was positively angelic. She even put on her own diaper (excuse me, “night-time undies”) after going to the potty by herself, all without me even asking, so that was very nice. Thank you Jane. I would give myself a glimmer of hope that we have turned a corner, but I’m sure if I did so, today would be absolutely apalling.
Let’s do a goth mix today. Old goth. Hrm. How many of these bands have I seen live? Never saw And Also the Trees, but Annie did, and I am still jealous of it. No on Sol Invictus or This Mortal Coil, though I’ve seen a lot of members of This Mortal Coil and once saw Cindy to “Kangaroo” at a sound check in Charlotte. Seen Jane Siberry, seen Martin but not solo, seen Big Hat, oh man, I saw them so many times, I was such a groupie. I’ve seen the Chameleons, even the original Chameleons. Seen Difference Engine, of course, Boston band. Never saw the Essence or Balaam or These Immortal Souls, though, wow, can you imagine? Saw Miranda Sex Garden and it might have been the single sexiest show I’ve ever seen, uncomfortably so, and that was when I used to work my way up to the front of the Middle East downstairs. Man, that show. Jesus. Wow. And I’ve seen Bauhaus a bunch, though they seem to have disowned “Crowds,” which, yeah, maybe that’s fine. Slightly problematic lyrics.
Oh wow getting late today. Well, thank you guys, miss you guys, hope everything is spiffing.
I didn't know that Difference Engine ever relocated to Boston. I learned about them from one of the listservs I was on (grunge-list or chugchanga). We had a few folks from Ithaca on the list who knew them. I saw them once at The Rat and used to correspond with Margey. Pretty sure I bought their 7" from them at that show too.
You also jogged my memory by mentioning These Immortal Souls. I saw them once at the old Green Street Station in JP (with Mark Massaro) in like 1989 or so. They were amazing. It made me think about the many amazing shows I saw there. I think my first Galaxie 500 show was there as well! It's always so sad to think about all the great clubs that have vanished around here. Now we have O'Briens and that's about it.