Good morning! Hello! How are you? Did you have a nice weekend? Was the air quality not too bad? I do hope so. Mine was pretty good. Somewhat marred by arthritis and tennis elbow and an obsessive, neurotic need to keep checking Duolingo to ensure that I was going to win first place in the Diamond League. This guy Marco really gave me a run for my money. The whole thing was very unpleasant and I ended up on Sunday evening spending like two and a half solid hours tapping away on Duolingo to ensure that I stayed in the lead until Marco realized the futility of his endeavor and gave up about an hour before the deadline. It just under 20,000 XP to win, to his 17,000. I know that seems like an overkill lead, but I’m convinced if the goal was more in reach for him, he would have kept at it that last hour and things would have gone down to the wire.
God that was unpleasant. I am never going to attempt this again. I don’t even care if I stay in the Diamond League. I’ve purged myself of this obsession and I never want to be reunited with it. Vamoose. Begone.
Still, though. Check this out:
Go ahead and right-click on that puppy and save it to your desktop to show people you made it to #1 in the Diamond League so you never have to go through the misery that I just went through. No one will know. I did it for all of us.
In other pointless tasks, I’ve cut my “to investigate” playslit down to just 28 hours of music remaining in it in this “give every album a second chance” action. I hope to finish this this week. Then I gotta make my way through all the actual vinyl piling up.
Someday I will be a full human again without neurotic chores lingering. Not because I have obtained a healthier point of view, but because the chores have been completed.
Decently productive weekend otherwise. Friday morning I went to Walmart and I was walking aroudn thinking about how I really need to quit the KitKats again and I went a nice long while without them and I didn’t gain any weight then I bought some weird European Kit Kats in Wilmington but those are almost done and I am almost done with the Birthday Cake Kit Kats I got at Walmart and I think I can stop again when what did I find but an all new Churro flavored Kit Kat. So I had to buy a few of those. They are yummy, not not distinvely churro-flavored or anything like that. Still, looks like the Kit Kat pause has been postponed. Alas.
Friday I spent most of the day working on my Business Epiphany™ presentation and a company state of the union presentation. It was like six hours of manic, frenzied Keynote deck making, trying to get all my thoughts down before I forgot them and trying to get everything in a coherent order. I think I accomplished that, but neither presentation is “done” and I have a lot more work in front of me and I am no longer in a frenzied work state so god knows when I will get it done.
Did a ton of gardening this weekend. Harvested more radishes. Delicioso. Harvested the garlic — got about 100 bulbs it is fairly insane. I hung em all up to dry in the garage at the new house so now my workshop smells like garlic, which I don’t really mind. The deer seem to be walking right up to the house and eating the cucumber vine leaves, but not the cucumbers themselves, weird. The vines up to a height of about six feet are completely decimated, but after that they’re fine. They’re funny looking. Harvested a few cucumbers, though. Cucumbers don’t last the whole spring/summer/fall season, so I will plant some more and put the cage back over them like I did last year. Didn’t even realize deer liked cucumber leaves. Weird.
I harvested the wheat, whatched a ton of videos on how to to turn it into flour, it is comically labor-intensive. Man, old-timey people had to do a lot of work for stuff. I bet I don’t even get a cup of flour out of it. But it all starts with drying out the wheat for a few weeks, so I got time to learn it. And as an experiment, it is working pretty well, and I have plans for a wheat patch at the new house. One guy in one Youtube video harvested his wheat with an old-timey scythe and that was really weird because it is the exact same old-timey scythe that Nick has in Wilmington you don’t see a lot of old-timey scythes these days but I have seen them twice recently.
Grapes are killing it, so many grapes on the vines. The vines on the hoop house are out of control, and I’m going to leave them there this year till fall, when I can trim them back. But the three sad ones along the porch, I moved to the new house and am working on making them happier. I added a bunch of fruit fertilizer and new soil and mulch to them, and one of them I put into the ground. I went and bought t-posts and wire to begin a trellis for them, but I stupidly bought short T-posts. I need to go back and get taller ones. Man T-Posts are really tall, even the short ones.
Jane and I planted new carrots, beets and beans, and I planted another pepper plant, and we watered everything because I finally found the leak in the irrigation system and it’s right at the start of it so the whole thing has not had full pressure all summer and hasn’t been watering everything. It’s been okay becuase we’ve had a rainy spring but it’ll be 100 next weekend so I need to get that fixed this week.
I shredded all the cardboard in the garage and Emma and I cleaned out the garage, moved an old Ikea table to the new house. It had been outside for a while so its vaneer top was all messed up but I lightly sanded it down and finished it with Total Boat Halcyon Clear resin which is really great stuff.
Planed down the last edge of the big workbench and gave it a thorough sanding everywhere and then put the first coat of Total Boat Halcyon Clear on it. Three more coats and the workbench project is done! I will give you a picture of it soon. I’m not sure I took a “before” picture, though, I need to get better about that.
I think that’s it? Man it really felt like a lot more work than that. Two trips to the hardware store, trip to the recycling center. Moved some big garbage cans and a potting bench to the new house, set up a potting bench area in the driveway that’ll suit me until the greenhouse area is built (hopefully) later this year.
Some good Daddy Jane Dance Parties this weekend. She is getting slightly less tolerant of breaking out of her comfort zone — it is almost impossible to get her to watch a video of a band with a male lead singer. But I think that’s fine, good even. Plenty of time for dudes later in life. Maybe. Maybe not! Made me turn off Fontaines DC and Sleaford Mods but I guess I don’t blame her on that one. Endured a Jim Bob from Carter USM solo video because it was animated. Absolutely would not contenance Nation of Language because the guy was singing not the girl.
I’ve gotten her to re-evaluate CHVRCHES, which is nice. Now I get to look at Lauren Mayberry all the time and who can complain about that. She’s into Olivia and Taylor enough that she’ll watch some of the slow ones now, so that adds some variety, she finally consented to watching “Drivers License.” Goldfrapp and Muna are now in regular rotation, as are the Linda Lindas, can’t complain about any of that. She enjoyed some band called MisterWives I’ve never heard of but we are slowly exploring. Metric and Haim also still in rotation. And didn’t hate Lana Del Rey so that shows promise.
One nice thing about revisiting the older stuff in the “to investigate” playlist is that my mixes are filling up quite nicely. Here’s a shoegaze playlist. All (mostly) bands I’ve had on other Shoegaze playlists. but new, unheard tracks. So much shoegaze. Not one band on here is a “known” shoegaze band or, you know, a godfather of shoegaze like MBV or Slowgive. Elks lodge shoegaze. There should be a shoegaze clubhouse in every city in America.
Gonna go do my country flashcards now, hopefully I get a 100 so I can skip them the rest of the week. Wish me luck.
sometimes when i read GMHHAY, i feel satisfied by proxy by your productivity. i spent the weekend fiddling with this new crochet project that may end up driving me bonkers or ruining my hands.
sometimes when i read GMHHAY, i evaluate my own routines. i have a newish one. i do “turn down service” about an hour before i go to bed. this involves putting on my pajamas, turning on my hatch alarm, plugging in my phone and prepping my bed. the latter (does one still use latter and former with more than two items?) allows me to make my bed all fancy in the morning and not worry about how annoying it will be to get into bed. i also think this routine sends a signal to my brain that it’s time to wind down.
Good morning, so bright and early! I learned recently that cardboard makes great brown matter in the compost. Are you using the shredded cardboard in your compost?