Good morning. Hello. How are you? #828
Bathroom archeology, update on the round soaps, the origin of High School fight songs, palette codes and disassembly, the paradox of purchases, the French strike, Jane's DuoLingo
Hey there! Howdy ho! Good morning! Tuesday! I had yesterday off, hence no GMHHAY. I feel just great about that it was a lovely day off. Spent mostly in my office, ironically, but no regrets. A four day weekend in February. Man. That is a gift. February. Always was my least favorite month. But Jane keeps telling me it’s her favorite month, because of Valentine’s Day, and it was unseasonably warm this February. Maybe it’s not so bad after all.
Reorganized my bathroom area this weekend. My share of the sinks and cabinets and drawers of the posh dual vanity in the master bathroom. I discovered the following:
Thirteen sticks of my deodorant
Seven tubes of my toothpaste
Three tubes of my body wash
Five small round soaps stolen from my regular hotel in New York that I have only been to two or three times in the pandemic, and also stopped offering these exact soaps maybe four years ago.
I’m immensely proud of that last one. Long-time readers of GMHHAY will recall my obsession with buying a very heavy stone soap holder that exactly held these small, 1 1/2 inch round soaps. And how it gave me some sort of mystical sense of sastisfaction, but also filled me with a bit of stress because where was I going to find more of these soaps, and how long would my supply last? And yet, I had “acquired” enough, by 2019, to last through a wholly unexpected supply shock of a pandemic and the hotel stopping to carry them. I think I can make another year or two. I should probably redouble my efforts in obtaining more.
All of this, however, makes me realize that I do not, in fact, have enough deodorant to last me to the end of my life, which was my goal. So I think I’m gonna need to buy, oh, I don’t know… Hrm the interent tells me that a stick of deodorant is supposed to last three months or so. I feel like mine last a lot longer. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Anyway, if the internet is to be believed, and I make it to eighty, I need something like seventy more sticks of deodorant. That feels extreme. But okay!
So Emma convinced me to watch the new Sarah Michelle Gellar show, because she has returned to acting and she is great. It is a teen show from the maker of Teen Wolf about.. Teen Warewolves. It is called Wolf Pack. So far, SMG seems criminally underused. But it is a dumb teen show so all the parts of my brain that pick apart prestige TV are turned off and major plot holes don’t bother me in the slightest and it’s very nice.
It also reminded me of high school because my high school’s mascot was the Wolfpack — one word, no space. And that got me signing, for some reason, our high school “fight song.” I suppose I have an excuse that I know all the words to our fight song even though I was a disaffected moody goth because my mother was the Vice Principal and so for my entire childhood — well before I went to the school — I accompanied my mother to football games and other sports events that she had to attend as part of her duties. So I suspect I knew all the words to the West Valley High School Fight Song before I even attended the school.
Anyway, the West Valley Fight Song is, like most high school fight songs I suspect, a rehash of some university’s fight song. I just Googled it. It is a rework of Go-U-Northwestern. Anyway, it occured to me last night while brushing my teeth that someone, at some time, had to decide this was West Valley’s fight song. Someone had to re-write the lyrics to make them West Valley appropriate. Who has this job? Is there some special module where the first principal of a school, along with the first band teacher and the first oh, I don’t know, football coach all get together and decide the fight song? Do some high schools not have them? Is it a thing? Is it not a thing? Is there a special class at principal school: “Concocting a Fight Song through Plagiarism 101”? Inquiring minds want to know.
I took apart a palette this weekend. My neighbor had both of his automobiles torn apart by a viscious squirrel that rendered each car unusable. It really was spectacular. And he found the squirrel nest inside a palette he had discarded in his woods. And Emma and I were looking at this and Emma said “you should probably take care of those palettes you have leaning against the house.” So I had to do that whole thing and look up the stamp codes on the sides of palettes to figure out if it was toxic or not. Fun fact: it probably isn’t! If it’s stamped MD it’s toxic but no one does that anymore in America so if you have a newish palette you’re probably good. This one was stamped with HT for Heat Treated so it’s fine. So I took it apart with a crowbar and a hammer and a Sawzall and turned it into fire wood and stuck it by the fireplace using this firewood carrying tote I bought a while back that is immensely satisfying to use. This is all probably not very interesting but I found disassembling palettes to be roughly commensurate with my skill level in the shop so I had a grand old time.
And the firewood carrying tote got me thinking about the paradox of purchases and how some purchases just give you the most immense satisfaction and some feel like junk almost immediately or you regret them and man it is one of the most confusing things in the world. I still cannot predict with any degree of accuracy whether a purchase will be regretted or not. Absolutely stupid shit like firewood carrying totes and stone soap dishes seem utterly dumb but then they keep providing joy. The other day I turned on the lights in the garage and it brought me immense joy. Maybe eight months ago I paid this electrician way too much money to rework the lights in the garage and when he gave me the bill at the end I thought “well shit that was way too much money I regret this.” But I was wrong! I feel joy every time I turn the lights on in the garage now! There is no way I could have predicted this.
This is challenging because Emma and I are considering a purchase and we both kinda think it’s a good idea but also it seems dumb but also I think it will bring me immense satisfaction but also I could well be wrong and I wish there was a Marie Kondo spark joy rubric for future purchases, that would be nice.
Check out the patterns on this mommy:
I forgot to tell you this but on Thursday I was having a nice chat with my French lawyers they really are the best, Marion and Catherine. Anyway, we were on Zoom but they were both at home. I didn’t think anything of it because I work from home and we had a giant pandemic and lots of people still work at home. But no, they were home because there was a massive nationwide strike in France that day. It was a strike against Macron’s proposal to raise the retirement age. So they were telling me about this and, being the good progressive I am, I’m like “Well I mean if you guys need to leave and go strike, go for it, viva la France.” And they said, well, it’s kind of moot, because lawyers in France are legally barred from participating in strikes. And I’m sitting there talking to them about an utterly postponable bit of legal arcana and… yeah. I mean, that seems more like a thing America would do than France, banning lawyers from striking. I mean, who’s gonna negotiate the end of a strike if all the lawyers are on the pickett lines, I guess.
Jane is very into DuoLingo now it is kind of crazy. I mean she hasn’t picked up a ton but it there are a smattering of Spanish phrases here and there. I’m gonna have to learn some basic Spanish so I can keep up. She gets obsessed with it for a few hours at a time. She’s on a four day streak. She’s very into streaks now. She’s on a five-day streak of throwing the rag into the sink. She also learned nouns, verbs and adjectives with startling speed. We’re working on prepositions, interjections and pronouns now. She craves learning, asks us to “do school” all the time. It is really something.
Let’s do a moody and quiet playlist today. All new stuff. Oh I guess Pan·American isn’t new, I just discovered they had a bunch of “new” albums I didn’t know about since I stopped listening to them in the 90s. And Rex isn’t new but it is newly reissued on Numero Group. And Dodie isn’t new because she’s been around a while but I only sort of pieced her existence together recently even though I’d listened to her before. I did not properly investigate. But Feist is new! And Caroline Rose and Sylvan Esso and Pearla who are great and new discovery Pictoria Vark who is great lots of great stuff this is a very pretty mix.
Here’s to another 4-day workweek oh man that is only occuring to me right now. Yesss.
Could be your mom is even featured in our little history. I wonder if I saved it, I was very into school spirit in those days. Will have a dig through my boxes and see what I can find
Somewhere there exists a history of West Valley including such fun tidbits as how the fight song and school colors were chosen. Also stuff about double shifting at Lathrop and such from the days when the school was being built. It was a class project, I think maybe in AP comp with Carol Merritt? Not sure about that but somehow we were assigned this. It was actually pretty interesting. As to the fight song, I do not think the words were really changed except to make it about the Wolfpack and west valley instead of Northwestern. But somebody should ask google to be sure.