Good morning! Hello there. Greetings from rainy Chatham County, North Carolina. I am home. Mostly. Next door, quarantining. Luxurious post-trip quarantining really is quite lovely. If you have a spouse who desires it, I strongly recommend it. It is so choice. I got to see my daughter and give her a (masked) hug, but staying away till tomorrow evening. Why not. Emma prefers it, I ain’t gonna complain, and there’s a lot of garbage going around out there COVID aside. Also I wanted to work on this house anyway, so it’s pretty convenient.
Spent the rest of my trip sitting with my mom. We talked a bit about rearranging the furniture, and it shed a bit more light on the scars on the floor from Dad’s hospital bed and whatnot. She likes to rearrange the furniture a lot, but she lives on the first floor of this building, has an external door to the outside right from her living room. And the neighborhood in which Raven rests is a bit dodgy. So sometimes people would come right up to her door, even try it and try and come in. And if she sat in the room so that she didn’t have to look at my dad’s hospital bed scars, the weird interlopers trying her door could see she was in there. Plus she couldn’t see out as well. So her position is a circumstance of practicality not romanticism. That is probably good.
Also she told me a sad story about how she would always make my dad rearrange the furniture for her and he as his PSP progressed, he could feel his strength leaving him. And one time as he was rearranging the furniture, he told her “well, honey, I have about a month’s worth of strength left. So if you need the furniture rearranged again, your last chance is coming up soon.”
Oof.
Got in Saturday evening after a 14 hour flight (FAI → SEA → ATL → RDU) that somehow didn’t have my time for sleeping. It was comfy enough.
There were a lot of Swifts on the flight from ATL → RDU. I’m glad these rich parents are teaching their children the joys and rewards of rock tourism at a young age. I, myself, have really toned down the rock tourism in my later years, but I can still respect a good self-indulgent flight to do nothing but see a rock show. Most satisfying thing is to be asked at customs how long you plan on being in a country and explain to them you’re only there for one night to see a rock show.
Speaking of Taylor Swift she did backing vocals on a new National song that is… man this deeper and deeper collaboration between Taylor Swift and the National really is something. I love the National don’t get me wrong but… why the National? Anyway, the lyric video has only gotten 500K views? That seems very low to me. Man I have not listened to the new National album yet I am so behind on music this week is going to be a lot of catch-up. Leaving home is so disorienting!
I got all my Kindle article reading done on the flight that was very satisfying. And I finally started my second book for the year, Blood, Sweat and Chrome, an oral history of the making of Mad Max Fury Road and boy is it a lot more rewarding than A People’s History of the United States.
Someone asked me while I was on the road, I forget who, about A People’s History and my complaints about it. I don’t really have complaints, per se. I mean, it is one-sided, but Zinn’s point is that a lot of history is one-sided and he’s simply offering a balancing corrective. And I think that’s true, and I think that what Zinn did was important and good. But it is hard to read, and the painting of these leaders as one-dimensional can sometimes be trying. It’s definitely a worthy read, though I suspect most people read a chapter or section for school — that’s perfect. Every class teaching a period of US History or some world event should include Zinn’s chapter on the topic as a balance. But reading the whole thing, from beginning to end, uninterrupted. It’s a lot.
Bed early Saturday and then Sunday I spent working on the new house. I got a second batch of lawn covered to be killed off and turned into wildflowers. My god covering a lawn in cardboard boxes takes so many cardboard boxes it really is something. I also hung the first piece of art in the new house, vacuumed and moved a lot of rugs around, got the couches into the living room, and unpacked a ton more stuff. It is starting to look habitable. It is a nice house it is a cute house I like it. It is comfortable. Stays very cool in the summer, an underrated feature.
Uh oh. Plumber’s here.
OK we are now at the main house, there is a plumber replacing the kitchen faucet. This is a highly intricate dance of people and times, he needs to finish the faucet by 9AM so that he can be out of the kitchen by the time that Emma and Jane do breakfast. Then to the master bath to fix a leaky faucet, then upstairs to fix another one, then over to the other house to get an estimate together for tankless and another one for a sink in the garage.
And the Radon guy’s coming today.
And I have a big client call at 10 AM.
Big morning.
Plus I gotta turn my brain over to work.
Man traveling is great but it sure is discombobulating for a person of my… habits. All these habits and tendencies and hobbies to catch up on. Garden is doing well. Things are sprouting and the winter garlic is almost ready to pull. I thought you were supposed to wait for flowers on your garlic, and then for it to droop but this stuff just keeps getting bigger and bigger, no flowers, no droop. Lettuce and radishes and cucumbers have sprouted. Tomatoes and beans look like they’re doing well. The potatoes sprouted, that is good I was worried about them.
I’ve downloaded my photos and added my videos to plex and updated my log of all of my media consumption and updated the crib notes for the podcast and refilled the sodas taken the recycling to the recycling center and done a Walmart run.I did manage, more or less, to keep up on my DuoLingo. I caught up on Youtube last night it took like three hours. I still have to update iOS on my devices and open my mail and packages and do my quicken transactions and play my map game and and and. A slow hacking away at weird needless compulsions, as I make slow progress I feel my soul catching up with me from the travel.
Oh yeah that reminds me I need to give you guys a section of the ghost novel. I will do that tomorrow.
Don’t have any pictures of Jane yet only got to see her briefly. I will try and do that today.
Whoops plumber needs me again.
Back.
In the meantime, here is a nice picture of my sister and I on her birthday.
OK catching up on mixes this one is half new, half old. Moody and quiet.
Well, I was *almost* on time today and *almost* interesting. Still a bit discombobulated. Bear with me. Back on track tomorrow. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.