Good morning. Hello. How are you? #840

Rock musings and domestic life. And a patent.

Good morning. Hello there. How are you? I am good. Listening to the “Nashville Ambient Ensemble,” which is something Spotify snuck into my “Release Radar” algorithm. I was slightly convinced it was a fake band, but after a bit of Googling, seems legit. They are real. And I am very into the conceit of a country ambient band. They’re not the first I’ve heard in this vein, but it’s an under-explored area for sure.

Also it’s weird how when you’re listening to a band you’ve never heard of, and you want the story, you start Googling around. Sometimes it’s like that band I was talking about yesterday, shame, whom you Google and discover they’re on their third album and are pretty famous somewhere — in their case, the UK. But sometimes it’s like this Nashville Ambient Ensemble, where the band doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, and the first few things are their Bandcamp, their Instagram, maybe their Twitter. These tend to be in that order, which means I guess props to Bandcamp for their SEO. In the NAE’s case, it was maybe the seventh link which actually had any info about the band, a link to a Nashville record store, where I learned who the main person was in the band, and that they were indeed a legit band and not a fake band made up by a laboratory in Sweden for Spotify revenue optimization purposes. Which would, in hindsight, be hilarious because I suspect the market of country-ambient crossover enthisiasts isn’t huge.

I also learned that that shame band is playing Durham soon, which is kind of a bummer because I would love to see them play that Adderall song live, and the rest of the album is great but, you know, Durham is like 25 minutes away and that’s just too far. Yes, I used to walk an hour to Axis or subway an hour to, god help me, Terminal 5 to see a show, but now, 25 minutes in a car is just too long. There’s nothing I can do about it, this is a law of physics, not something I can overcome. The furstest it is physically possible for me to go for a show now, barring leaving town, is exactly the distance from my front door to Cat’s Cradle.

I would like to apologize for getting the date wrong on my playlist yesterday. It was March 8th, March 9th. I have done appropriate penance with the appropriate penance ahthorities.

Let’s see… what else. Had a good talk with my sister yesterday, she says hi. I’ve been trying to figure out when I would go up to Alaska this year and I think it’s gonna be sooner rather than later. Was thinking June, attached to that wedding in LA but now I am thinking I’m gonna go in late April. That’ll be fun. I kind of miss home. I don’t think I’ve been at that time of year in a very long time. I tend to hit solstice time or deep winter, so it’ll be interesting. Mildly worried I’m gonna hit the time of year where a winter’s worth of frozen dog shit suddenly reveals itself, but I suppose even if I do hit that phase, it’ll be a good reminder of my childhood. Sometimes you need those.

I was on a conference call yesterday, chatting away, doing work. I’ve rearranged my schedule so that Tuesday and Wednesday are both almost wall-to-wall meetings. I’ve put every single regularly-scheduled meeting into those two days so I can a) have some time to actually do my work, b) get out of people’s hair so they can actually do work. It hasn’t quite set in yet, so I still have 5 calls today, and even when it is working perfectly, Monday, Thursday and Friday are still there for any other meetings that crop up. But I can feel it starting to work and it should be awesome.

Anyway, that was an aside. What I wanted to say was that while I was on that conference call yesterday, my daughter quietly opened my office door, came in, walked over to me, handed me a piece of art, climbed into my lap and gave me a giant hug. She did this all very quietly, knowing I was on the phone. And then she turned around and left.

And my god if you ever tried to get me to go work in an office again? When I would be giving up that? Lunacy! Lunacy! Working at home is so awesome. I love it so much. I love not commuting, commuting blows. I love random hugs from my daughter in the middle of the day. I love lunch with my family. I love stepping outside and doing my calls on the dock. There ids absolutely nothing anyone can do to get me to go back into an office, ever. I get that not everyone feels that way, but it does feel like business owners absolutely do not get the strength of conviction of those who want to work from home. Some of us are committed.

Oh hey! I forgot to tell you guys! A few months ago we were awarded our first patent. It is very exciting. It took about… three years? It’s kind of amazing I’m very proud of our team, especially Marc. I never really thought it would work, but it did. And now I’m kind of like the dog who caught the car because I don’t really know what to do with a patent. Like… how do I enforce it? How do I get royalties out of people? How do I figure out if people are violating it? It’s a whole world I don’t know anything about. I kind of wish there was a book about it: So you got your first patent. I will have to dive into a research project. But if you know anything about such things, do drop a line I could use some direction and pointers.

I could also use a black version of this Care Bear cardigan, with pockets. It is very comfy. My only other cardigan is wool and wool itches. This one is, I assume, Cotton thread. And it’s so big and I love that. Like it’s probably a men’s 4XL. But it doesn’t have pockets, which is a problem and, of course, it’s got blue sky, clouds and Care Bears all over it which is also a sartorial problem. I mean, I do love Care Bears, don’t get me wrong. They are great. They are bears who’s thing is love. What’s not to like? But do I want them on my cardigan? I am learning that no, no I do not. Baby blue is not exactly a slimming color for a 51 year-old slightly overweight gentleman. No one ever called the sly “slimming.”

Does the kitty have no face because it is unfinished or for some darker reason?

It was my night off from Jane last night so I talked to sis on the phone and then read a bunch of work PDFs on my Kindle Scribe which was just lovely and made me feel very productive. Breakfast with Jane was great lately after breakfast we go downstairs and if I don’t have anything too pressing at work we snuggle on the couch and do our DuoLingo together. She’s been texting our neighbor Ricardo in Spanish. It’s a shame there is no Spanish in public schools during elementary schools I would like it if she did not lose this. Of course we could have her go to some Spanish lesson after school but that just seems stupid kids are already in schools eight hours you don’t want them to do more school after school. I want all those lessons to be the school. Which means now I’m leaning toward home schooling, god help me. But maybe we should send her to Kindergarten first to see if she likes it. I don’t know. We go back and forth every single day it really is insane. And Jane doesn’t really offer much of an opinion on the topic. Which is understandable. She is five and has never been how would she know.

Oh also on another call yesterday Jane walked into my office, carrying her cell phone, walked over to the back of my desk, reached into my office organizer and stole $20. Like a boss teenager. It really was impressive.

Moody and quiet playlist for you, all new except the first and last song. I was about seven minutes short so I threw a couple classics on there. Oh wait that’s a lie Gravenhurst is old from my recent Gravenhurst renewed obsession. Alaska Reid is not, sadly, from Alaska but it is her given (middle) name so I will forgive her. Basement Apartment is a band from Minneapolis. I bought a Medicine record on MPLS records and they sent me a free copy of this Basement Apartment record and I was like “ugh filler,” but I decided to put it on and it was really good so, thank you MPLS records.

Until tomorrow!