Good morning. Hello. How are you! #781
NYT strike, friend moving, Elon RADAR LOL, FBI Fabergé LOL, Bake Off hottie alert, important butter update, Zoom overheating mysteries, shoe composting plans
Good morning! Hello! How are you? What’s going on? What day is it what is happening. I am groggy I did not want to wake up today, and it was made more difficult by not having my Wordle to get my brain moving. Today is the New York Times one-day strike. We, as good little supporters to labor, are supposed to eschew all NYT content today in support, mmmkay? And that includes Wordle. You can do it! Unless, of course, you do Worldle first thing in the morning, from bed, and don’t get around to reading your GMHHAY till later, and you don’t know about the strike yet. That’s okay, just be good the rest of the day. Maybe skip tomorrow’s Wordle now that you know.
Our professor friend got a new apartment nearby and had been mailing stuff to our house for the last few weeks: housewares and stuff. She’s moving into Southern Village — we are so jealous. It’s a part-time thing, she commutes to the region for work part of the week then goes home. Anyway, last night I packed up her new mattress, a rug, and all of her other boxes from the garage and drove them over to her new place. It was the first good “help a friend out with moving” haul I’ve gotten to do since I bought the Lightning and it was so fun. Honestly, first one in ages since, you know, we are grown-ass adults now and most of our friends pay for movers these days instead of getting their friends to do it. But it was fun. And her new roommates are, like, undergrads or barely barely grad students or something. You know, children basically. The whole thing was so gloriously retro I can’t remember the last time I had a roommate, let alone a roommate I just met. Made me feel young just being around them haha.
Item number one today in the who-could-have-predicted-it files: Tesla is going to re-introduce RADAR into their cars’ self-driving kit, like everyone else does, instead of just relying on LIDAR, which no one else does, but Elon insisted was safe and totally fine. Who could ever believe that such a perfect genius was wrong about something I, for one am shocked there is gambling going on in this establishment.
Item number two today in the who-could-have-presidcted-it files: It turns out that the Feds did not, in fact, seize a Fabergé egg from that Russian oligarch when they seized that super yacht in Fiji. Lisa Monaco, human being magically at the center of everything, always, really saved her keister when she threw in that “alleged” at the last minute during the press announcement for the yacht seizure. “We recovered a Fabergé—or alleged Fabergé—egg,” she said. Yes. Alleged. Spoiler alert: they did not. Keen daily readers of GMHHAY could have seen this coming, and were I the self-quoting kind of Substack, I would now include a long blockquote here reminding you just how correct I was in predicting that the FBI did not, in fact, find one of the The Cherub with the Chariot, the Necessaire, either of the 2 that Fabergé never delivered and may not exist, nor one of the five not seen since the Revolution and presumed destroyed. But I am not that kind of self-quoting area Substacker. I’m just the kind to gloat, heartily. I am somewhat disappointed but not surprised.
Important hottie-baker alert: my two biggest Bake Off crushes are both appearing in this year’s New Year’s Eve Great British Bake Off special: Lotte and Manon. Very exciting. Of course, god knows when this will arrive in the US — we just got a Bake Off Christmas and New Year’s two-epsisodes “special” season on Netflix, which was presumably last year’s UK specia, delivered to us in the US a year later, which means Netflix is planning on waiting a year to let me see Lotte and Manon go head-to-head in the baking arena, and that will just not do, so I guess that Nord VPN subscription I pay for every month is going to get a workout soon.
Important butter alert: Whichever one of you told me to just put the butter dish closer to the stove and its pilot lights, I believe it was one of the Taylor twins… you win! The simplest solution worked, I once again avoid the need to buy one of those butter crocks. This was made all the more doable because I have already placed a cutting board over the back center burner of my six-burner range, because who the hell needs six burners, and it’s a nice place to keep spoon rests and a shaker of salt. Man, imagine my joy the day I found a perfectly sized cutting board that was exactly the irregular size of my center rear burner. Great innovation, that. At any rate, moving the butter dish there for the winter has allowed my morning waffle butter to return to its silky soft state and I am happy.
Oh hey while I’m on the topic, I am in the mood market for a giant wooden butcher’s block slash cutting board for our counter. I have one now, I would say it’s about 16x24” and I love it, but it is sort of falling apart, and I could save it — I recently oiled it with my food-safe cutting board oil — but the panels are separating and I’d need to use filler and glue and I don’t love that idea but also the thing was cheapo to begin with hardly an heirloom and I’d like to invest in something substantial and posh. Any one got a line on a quality artisinal cutting board maker? I think that might make me fleetingly happy for a day or two. And who knows, in the end it could turn out to be one of those posessions that gives you little moments of joy for years. The most magical, impossible-to-predict items. Love those.
Question for you: Why do I get so hot in Zooms? Yesterday was a pretty intensive, three-Zoom day and I got hot in all of them. I get hot in all Zooms. I used to think I got hot only in Zooms where either I drank or I was nervous/intimidated/stressed, but neither of these conditions have been met in most of my Zooms of late, and I still get hot in sweaty in all of them. I do not have a hot light or anything. Does this happen to you? Is it weird? Is it normal? Why does this happen? It’s extra-annoying in the winter, since the heat is already on and it’s weird to turn the heat off and turn the AC on, but that is what I have to do. And it’s really weird because it doesn’t extend to my feet, and my feet are always cold in the winter, so I’ll be on this Zoom absolutely sweating with freezing feet, which is no fun at all.
Please tell me this happens to you as well and, ideally, there is a secret magical Shazaam-like phrase you can say before the Zoom that helps prevent it, that would make my life so much better, k thanks.
Product alert: I would like to alert you to these relatively stylish, Camper-ish looking 100% all plant-and-minerable-based shoes I learned about from a friend on a Slack yesterday, and bought a pair. They say that when you’re done you can mail them back to them and they will return them “harmlessly to the earth” but fuck that, when I am done with these I am going to shred them myself (somehow, tbd) and compost them and my god wouldn’t it be great if I could compost all my clothes? Will keep you apprised of future developments.
I would like to close out by saying I haven’t mentioned my daughter much of late, because she has not been throwing tantrums, or refusing to pee, or really anything too annoying. She’s been really great. She was interrupting a lot at dinner when I was trying to tell hilarious, Dilbert-esque (without the Republicanism) little storylets about bureacracy and office life to my wife. But I stopped and took the time to explain to her that we take turns talking, and that she just needed to say “excuse me” or “could we please change the subject,” and then I would wrap up my talking and then she could talk. And she did it! But more excitingly, later, when we were with our friend catching up post-move, Jane did it then! It was great. I was very proud of her. She informed us she did not like her baby cameras where they were, because they interfered, I think, with the beauty of her bed canopy. I was a bit worried because our house is huge and we cannot hear her in bed from our offices, but we settled on a compromise where we just moved the cameras across the room, still pointed at her bed, and she was so happy about it. My god. So happy. She went to bed early last night just so she could experienc her unblemished canopy without those hideous camera wires. Such an artiste.
How bout a psych rock playlist for you this morning. Man, I just had a dream where Spring Bar in NYC was a venue, and this Finnish psych rock band was playing and they were so good. First set was super quiet and intense, second was a full-blown freakout. Just phenomenal. I wish I could see a good psych rock show soon. Maybe Acid Mothers Temple could come play my back yard.
All right until tomorrow luv.