Good morning. Hello. How are you? #689
A lovely weekend of gardening, games, podcast, pools and qt. What more could you ask for.
Well hello there. Good morning. How are you? Was your weekend excellent? I hope your weekend was excellent. Mine was pretty good. No complaints. Solid three-day weekend all around. Once again I have been smited with some strange bee attack, this time a single oozing, puss-filled bite on me leg that still stings to the touch three days later. So, that is unpleasant. But the good news is it’s on my leg, not my arms like last week, and there is only one. I swear to god I am going to need to garden wearing long sleeves and pant legs, but this is a fairly unpleasant prospect considering it’s, like, 95 degrees out there.
It was my mom’s birthday yesterday, we had some nice chats on the phone, and then me and Mom and Val and Jane all did a Facetime while Val and Mom were in a car up near Birch Hill cemetary in Fairbanks and it was very fun. Jane sang happy birthday to Grandma and said “I love you Auntie Val I love you Grandma.” Val and I usually text so she got to experience exactly how impossible it is to have an adult conversation with Jane around that was fun. Mom sounded like she was having a lovely day. We discussed possible post-vaccination dates for me and Jane to come up. I am kind of missing winter and thinking Christmas.
Walmart was lovely, thanks for asking. Actually made two trips to Walmart this weekend, cuz I ran out of fish oil on Saturday. They were playing “Big Country” by Big Country on Walmart Radio outside in the parking lot very, very loudly. I have a lot of questions about Walmart Radio I would very much like to speak to the program director. A little bit surprised by the largest size Cayenne Pepper they have at Walmart, not gonna lie, I thought it would be bigger. And they don’t have any dehydrators or rubber snakes. Also it still closes at 11. It’s weird Walmart seems hellbound committed to acting like the pandemic is over in every respect except, you know, restoring its pre-pandemic hours. This is no skin off my back but my wife is very sad about it since, you know, 2 AM shopping was usually pretty uncrowded.
Saturday night I was in bed reading my book — a history of SST records — and heard a sound and looked up and Roy was just sitting there staring at me like this:
Creepy.
I’m almost done with my SST book. Thinking of starting either The Expanse series or a few Agatha Christie novels. Any suggestions welcome. Need a fiction break before a coupel Patrick Radden Keefe books and then, gulp, I think I’m going to start Rick Perleman’s history of conservatism, which is going to get me so, so upset I do not know why I am considering doing this to myself.
Gardening is going well. Squirrels are mostly at bay. We have had three incursions in the last four days, but on two of those days we had no incursions, so that is progress. Right now about half the hoop house is surrounded by a line on the ground of cayenne pepper, kind of like those people in horror movies who draw circles around themselves with salt on the ground. But like those people, I’m screwed if there is a break in the circle, and the evil invading hoardes discover the break, which is just a matter of time. So I have a five-pound jug of cayenne pepper on the way. I don’t love this idea, but it occurred to me that I also have about ten pounds of freezer burned, year old thai chili peppers in the chest freezer. Really over did it last year with the thai chili peppers, did not accurately gauge my annual consumption at all. So I ordered a vegetable dehydrator and a spice griner. I have normal human-sized versions of both of these, but we are talking industrial scale here, it is a LOT of chili peppers, and also they are hot and are gonna permanently scar whatever implements are used, so might as well get some dedicated ones. If this works, I will be very happy. Grow your own squirrel defense.
Speaking of which, a lovely Youtuber Jacques in the Garden this weekend did a little video about growing corn, and it turns out you’re not supposed to grow different types of corn close to each other, because they cross pollinaste and you get mutant corn? I did not know this. I have three varieties of corn in close quarters. Crap. Man, you’re always learning weird rules in gardening I swear it’s like D&D or Card Battle or something. But in any case, I did this in the spring and the corn grew just fine. Did it taste good? Well, I have no idea, but I know it tasted good to the squirrels, because they ate it all. So I figure I will use it as squirrel corn and put it way far from the garden out in the woods if it doesn’t taste good to humans.
God. I am basically just gardening in the service of squirrels now. Why break in to the hoophoue when I will just bribe them.
In any case, I still got a very solid harvest of tomatoes, about five pounds, including four pounds of Roma tomatoes with which I made a nice marinara this weekend, which was super fun. Jane said she wanted to help but then she did not. I left the seeds in for the cooking, so I had to blend afterwards, which was a pain, because, you know, toddlers and extra-smooth foods. If you have a good recipe for marinara, please share it. Really is the best way to use up a shit ton of tomatoes.
Also harvested another ten pounds or so of cucumbers that I didn’t find in the patch last week, about 30 shishito peppers, 5 jalepenos, and two dozen radishes, which were delicious. Oh and a red bell pepper for janet. Not a bad haul.
Friday night was daddy bedtime and it went very well, thank you Jane for being kind. Then Emma and I retired to the patio for an evening of chatting and no TV and I had two gin and tonics which were delicious but gave me a helluva a hangover. Worth it. I like chat nights, they remind me of when Emma and I used to sit at Noir all night drinking a bottle of champagne, alone, until 1 AM when all the other bars in Harvard Square would let out and everyone would head to Noir for a nightcap and the place would be packed for an hour. We talked a lot about possible home improvement plans, and whether living in North Carolina was feasible in the long term political environment, future Boston trips, general state-of-living stuff, it was lovely.
One thing Emma brought up is: what is the point of a booze cart? Say this in the manner of Arthur Weasley: “What is the point of a rubber duck?” Like yes, a booze cart stores your booze, but so would… a booze shelf? Does anyone not on a train or plane ever actually wheel a booze cart around? What is the ostensible purpose of the wheels on a booze cart? Where are you moving the thing?
On Saturday morning I played a bunch of No Man’s Sky because there was a new update that let you do a bunch of fun things to your freighters as bases, which was very near and dear to my heart because I use No Man’s Sky partially to live out my fantasy of living in a motorhome, but their base functionality was very limited. It is a lot better now. I converted my large hydroponic garden to amazing new agricultural rooms with plants on the walls and stuff and it is just lovely. Unfortunately I need a boatload of Freighter Expansion Modules or whatever they’re called, to acquire a bunch of this new functionality, and those things were always super hard to find in the game, and now I need like forty of them. So I watched a video on how to farm them, and that was a good idea. I’ll probably do some of that tonight maybe.
Then after lunch I got my podcast done, which is not the most stimulating episode ever, but it is here if you want to listen. Topics include: Day 866, New York Trip, Jenna, Jenna’s Book Party, Eva, Derek Dorothy Karen and Felix, Tom Rose Jussi Mea and Jesse, the drive, the interstate system, Jane, diet, nicotine, work, gardening, squirrel battles, cucumber harvests, donating to the food bank, planting more stuff, Cronos (1993), Lush, Bright Eyes, Suicide (the band), Johann Johannsson & Yair Elazer Glotman, Mountain Goats, Skullcrusher, James, Guided by Voices, Topographies, M!R!M, Interpol. Mogwai, Alan Parsons and Andy, Philip Glass, Wola Jesus Jim Thirwell and the Movos Quartet, Chat Pile, SST Records, Minutemen, Stains, Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Saint Vitus, Dicks, Black Flag, Würm, Ms Marville, Orville New Horizons, Jan 6 Committee, Westworld, The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, Nick Cave This Much I Know To Be True, Lightyear, Party Monster, The Truman Show, Recorder the Marion Stokes Project, Rough Draft by Katy Tur, Corporate Rock Still Sucks the Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland.
Then I headed to the neighbors to join Emma and Jane because they have a new pool and have given us an open invite to head over to swim and Jane is really into it so I guess we are teaching Jane to swim now, which is fun. The pool is great, super deep, an amazing deep blue color, and the patio stones are on back order so the thing is just sitting in a yard of dirt and it looks so incongruous and weird. It reminds me of Laurence of Arabia when he stumbles on the Suez Canal.
Sunday was Marinara making and more No Man’s Sky. Lovely day, lovely weekend. Thunderstorms, power flickers, crap my barrier of cayenne pepper has probably been diluted from the thunderstorms and my five-gallon jug is not here yet. Today will require constant vigilance for squirrels. When the camera sends me an alert, I run outside screaming and then see how the squirrel gets out of the hoop house as they scurrey away, and then patch that spot up. Oh also I gotta go out there and move the fake snakes. Apparently they fall for em for a couple days but you gotta keep moving them.
Emma made these amazing books of Jane’s watercolors. Like she bought a GBC binding machine and punched holes in the edges and made these books, they’re just amazing and gorgeous. Jane hasn’t been painting as much lately, lately she’s been very into her doll houses, which is super cute, and creative in its own way, but, you know, does not produce such concretely bragworthy items as a result.
Anyway, great weekend. Some time outside, some time in a pool, some time gardening, some time in the kitchen, some time in the garage (man I shredded a lot of cardboard), some QT with the wife, some QT with the child, some time creating things. Really can’t complain. Retirement is gonna be fantastic someday. I will not get bored nosiree.
All right a modern classical playlist for you today, which admittedly weighs too heavily on Soundtracks, but, you know, that’s how a struggling classical composer can make a living these days, so don’t knock it. Of all of these on here, I have only seen a few live: Nils Frahm, Mary Lattimore, Michael Nyman (that was so, so good), and Clint Mansell doing his soundtrack work (also fantastic). Oh and Rachel’s (RIP). God, I would love to see Max Richter or Graeme Revelle or Olafur. That would be so crazy,