Good morning. Hello. How are you? #704
Good morning. Hello. How’s it going? Freakin’ Monday amirite? What fun. Another five-day week around here. Oh wait! I lied. This Friday is our “Recharge Day” at work. Four-day week. Oh, it’s been so long. Hello, old friend. Well that puts me in a better mood.
Lovely weekend, A+ no complaints. Slept in exactly thirty minutes each morning, to 7:30. I cannot convey to you what a huge difference those thirty minutes make it’s crazy! The pure luxury of sleeping till 7:30. Amazing. But instead I get up early every weekday. For you. For GMHHAY. For art.
Lots of gardening. The cucumbers were done, which was sad. Were getting a weird leaf disease. I looked up “cucumber leaf diseases” on Google and it only listed a bunch of stuff that required hard-core chemicals to fix, which I do not use. I felt like something was off, but it didn’t occur to me that it probably had to do with the bazillion small white aphids on the leaves. Once I Googled “white aphids cucumber leaves” and learned I could have used neem oil, a) the leaves were too far gone, and b) I had already pulled the plants out to prep the bed for fall. Kind of a shame, but it was still far and away my best cucumber growing season ever, and that’s really all you want: progress from the year before. The same could be said about the tomatoes, which are still producing but looking fairly sad from dead leaves from septoria and summer heat. I have definitely passed maximum production. Which is kind of sad, I mean, it’s warm here through October. I kind of want to start more. But these aren’t… done yet, just.. sad. I don’t know.
Other than that, planted more shallots, refreshed the Birdies Bed where the cucumbers have been. That was a pain. My garden soil pile is pretty small now, and it’s wet, so to load a load of dirt into the wheelbarrow, I gotta kneel almost to the ground, and slide the shovel nearly horizontally, and shove it hard into this wet dirt, and then lift the super heavy wet dirt, over and over, it is murder on the knees and back. For two wheelbarrow loads. Total pain. Looks easy as pie in the time lapse, though. Great thing about time lapses, all of your panting from exhaustion disappears and you look so energetic. Gonna prove increasingly useful as I age, I’ll wager.
Checked the potatoes, one bucket, not promising but not terrible. But they’r enot yellowing yet, or flowering, so I guess we can let ‘em grow a little longer. Lettuce is doing great but not quite there yet, still a little bitter. Rose bosh is killing it. I thinned the carrots and radishes. Peppers and beans are producing nicely. Herb garden is great, grapes are doing great, blueberry is great, fruit trees are in pretty good shape. They really need to go in the ground, but it is too early in the season. I am torn. Will they be happier in these pots a little longer, or in the ground too early? I just don’t know.
Anyway, here’s the video for the week:
Also did my podcast, which I did not think I was going to do, I had so much to do. Had to go to Lowe’s Hardware to get some supplies for the eventual fruit tree planting — hardware cloth and fruit tree fertilizer and some netting for good measure. I went at 10 AM Sunday and was convinced it was going to be packed, but it was actually shockingly empty, which was a relief for my germophobe brain.
Also made marinara, best batch yet, if you ask me. And waffles for the week.
Anyway, lots of chores, which made me convinced I wasn’t going to get the podcast done, but I did. Really feel like I might stop that thing, just feels like too much overlap with GMHHAY. Except for the media report, I delve into the media I consumed a lot more on the podcast than I do here, where I try to keep media talk limited. Emma and I were talking about that this weekend, I have a lot of weird rules about GMHHAY: limit TV talk to only a couple days a week, only one show, don’t make the whole thing a TV talk thing. Spread out the politics. Spread out the depressing entries, try not to do two or three bleak ones in a row. There are other rules but I can’t remember them. I should really write them down sometimes.
Anyway, here’s the podcast. Topics include: Day 888, Eye doctor, Pool timez, fairy party, marinara, chili powder, Jane, gardening, LFO, The Beach Bum, Sun Kil Moon, Kellis, Bauhaus, Eurythmics 1984 soundtrack, Lloyd Cole, Cocteau Twins Box One, Olivia Newton John, Rogue One Soundtrack. Bad Brains, Julien Baker, Santigold, Screaming Trees, Gia Margaret, Hor, Oxbow, lil Ugly Mane, Artificial Brain, Cave In, Gastr Del Sol, Chat Pile, Florist, Of Montreal, Beyonce, Wet, DC Gore, Seedsmen to the World, Sabrina Claudio, Working Men’s Club, Jane Inc., Brijean, Manchester Orchestra, Mail Grab, Orville New Horizons, Westworld, The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, Light and Magic, What We Do in the Shadows, Sandman, Jurassic World Dominion, Top Gun, Prey, Corporate Rock Sucks the Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland, The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Before the Storm by Rick Perlstein, Nixonland by Rick Perslstein
(Really wish Substack would build one of its super-cool paste-a-url-into-substack-and-get-a-sweet-embeddable modules for Apple podcasts/music and Spotify).
Did the Walmart run on Friday, no good UHD Blu Rays, but they did have a 40th anniversary, limited Walmart edition on pink vinyl of Olivia Newton John’s Physical which really is a sort of stunning coincidence, so I bought that. Very excited.
There’s an event space not far from us in an old church called the Parlour Chapel and it is lovely and we are big fans and follow them on Instagram. Emma learned that they were hosting an event from an organization called Haute House Kids that basically designs these ridiculous custom children’s events then charges for them and they were doing a “fairy” party at the Parlour Chapel this weekend, so Emma bought tickets for her and Jane. This thing was all girls with their moms, not a single son or dad, which is kind of a shame. In my head I thought this thing was in Cary and a hike away and it was gonna last all day but in reality it was 5 minutes from the house and lasted two hours and now I kinda wish I had gone because it looks like Jane had so much fun and was so cute and the whole thing just seemed ridiculous. All these kids dressed up as fairies and pranced around in the mystical woods and shit. Emma and Jane dressed goth, Jane was a little goth fairy and my god, it was ridiculously cute.
I mean the whole thing through Twitter eyes or something seems cheesy AF and so bouzshy and white but my god did she have a good time. She came home and she wouldn’t get out of the car and moaned “I want to go back and stay there forever.” It was the first time I really felt like all this staying at home has impacted her. The whole rest of the day she kept saying she wanted to “do something fun” and basically all activities at the house were boring to her.
I dunno man maybe we ought to send her to pre-K or something we are so weird.
One nice thing is she was in this super cute black dress with her hair all done up the rest of the day, that was nice.
Made for a very high-maintenance bedtime, though, where her new game was to stand over me on the arm of the couch next to my chair, say “are you scared??” until I admit I am, then jump as high in the air as she can, and land in my lap with her knees, narrowly missing my balls each time, then standing up and thinking its funny to try and stand on my balls. Then she decided that kicking me in the head was her new favorite game. I was kind and firm: “we do not kick people.” And eventually she gave up, only to have a new game during PJ time where she would swing them like Indiana Jones’ bullwhip and try and hit me, where we had to go through the whole thing again. Man. Exhausting.
Westworld was so good this season and then they ruined it with the finale. I mean, they really just told the story they felt like telling, not the story that the entire season was pointing them to. They have zero interest in consistency or answering the questions the viewer has, or explaining the basic law of the land. Then they ruined it with a five-minute coda that was a transparent ploy for an additional season that made zero sense and honestly probably ruined their chances for an additional season. The most frustrating thing is they got so much right it would have been trivial to fix the wrongs, but they do not care about you, or answers, or logic. It’s time to end it, which is a real shame, and I have been a big booster of these later seasons, but you’ve lost me now.
Justa mix for today, old and new, mostly new, because of new music Friday, which was… okay. Still very into this High Vis band. Oddly compelled byt he new Interpol, like this new John Cale, love this new First Aid Kit, very into this Jane Inc. band of which I know nothing but can’t fault the name. Very much digging this new Panda Bear & Sonic Boom album. Given both of their pedigree, it coulda been a drone fest, but it’s kinda crazy it’s like a weird twisted 50’s valium fantasy, very Twin Peaksy. I am into it.
All right time to face this work week I can do it. I can do it. You can do it too. We can all do it.