Good morning. Hello. How are you? #913
Tell me about your household maintenance chores. Sonic Boom in the Sofia trailer. Here's a picture of my new tiger.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am pissed, just lost my streak on Wordle. I had four of the five letters by the second guess. But it was one of those words that has, like, forty words that rhyme, so you’re just left trying different words randomly, no real way of knowing which of the forty is the one, aside from trying to read the mind of the “World Editor” (what a job), which is always a fool’s errand. Sure, sometimes you get some great guess and think you have their number, that Wordle Editor, but the mind-reading endeavors are just as likely to fail. And today, they failed. RIP streak.
It’s been raining for days and I love it. Rain is the best. Not sick of it at all. And the plants are certainly happy my tomatoes are bonkers. Except I don’t want it to rain Sunday in Columbia, MD. I am constantly checking the weather, one day the weather tells me it’s going to be sunny at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Sunday, the next day it tells me it’s going to rain (this morning it tells me its looking good). I do not like my emotions being toyed with in this way. Will I go see the Cure in the rain? Hell yes. Do I prefer it not to rain? Yes, yes I do. I am a wimp. Even though I love the rain. No “prayers for rain” over here, har har, not for Sunday.
Okay so a friend of mine just bought their first house and he is a sometime-reader of this publication, enough to know that I am a giant domesticity fan these days, so he said he’d love to just chat on the phone sometime and talk about house maintenance chores and I am all over that. So I thought I would open it up to you guys: what maintenance chores do you do on your house?
Some, like changing the HVAC vents every six months, we are really good about. Some we are terrible about. We have never sealed our tile grout. I don’t even know what tile grout sealing does. When I was a kid my mom made me seal the tile grout and it seemed utterly pointless. And actually, now that I think about it, I am sure I was doing it wrong. No one ever really taught me about it. Do you seal your grout? Do you have a horror story from not sealing your grout? Do you know what it does? Part of me hates all the tile in our house so I’m fine if it just falls out and I need to replace it, but part of me hates that I am fifty-one years old and I still don’t know anything about tile grout sealing. I need to rectify this.
Hrm one more question while I am asking questions of you rather than using Google: Anyone ever buy their kid a cool solar system model?? Jane is very into planets right now and we are shining lights on globes and spinning them, talking about how sunrises and sunsets work and seasons and gravity and wind and orbits and I feel like a solar system model would help things. If you’ve ever found one of these that doesn’t seem like complete junk, let me know. And of course part of the problem is the sheer scale of the things: have a sun that’s, like, three inches in diameter and Neptune has to be like many feet away to be realistic but that’s okay I think. Maybe just the inner planets or something. Or I guess just a book? Any help is appreciated.
Sofia Coppola released a trailer yesterday for her new film about Priscilla Presley and it looks pretty good but most notably for me the trailer’s music is the song “How you Satisfy Me” off of the Spectrum album Soul Kiss (Glide Divine), so… that is pretty weird? Did to take Sofia for a Sonic Boom fan, wonder if she was at any of those New York shows back in the day. Man that album rules. Sofia’s got it on lock. I ordered that Sofia archives book, now that I think about it. I wonder when that is shipping. Site says Sept 2023. Fun. I will have once again completely forgotten about it by then so that will be a nice surprise.
Small update on this awesome new computer; it now takes seconds, rather than minutes, to do a save on my five gigabyte Scrivener file that contains every GMHHAY entry ever. You may recall that this process took forever, every morning, on my old (very fast) Mac. And it had this modal dialog box open that was not hideable. It was a minor annoyance in my life, every morning. And now it is just… gone. Poof.
Oh and also I am now running my first iOS app on my Mac, which is a thing you can do with Apple Silicon, and it is pretty awesome. I’m running Authy. Wait did I already tell you this? I might have already told you this. But it’s great. I hate having to fumble around and find my phone every time I need a 2FA code. Really does make things faster.
This Mac really rules. Noticeable quality of life improvement, right here.
I think that’s all I got today. Been in so many meetings the last two days. My calendar says fifteen but I think it’s missing one or two. And I have a couple more today. Work is good though, feel like things are clicking this week. Our non-zero chance of putting an irritating dent into the monopolists is feeling slight more likely this week than the last couple weeks, and that is nice. Gotta find your reasons for sticking with this industry.
Jane’s got some new moves during Daddy Jane Dance Party. More and more complex spins and things. She’s still spending a lot of time on her floor moves. Her fevered obsession over “Hung Up” is now fading a bit, but she’s still very much on “California Girls” by Katy Perry which is kinda rough. I do applaud the art director, though. Someone had a really good time making that video. Couldn’t get her into Stan THEE Boss, tried to watch an Olivia Vedder video to see if she’s any god, nope, pass, there was a new Elise Trouw I wanted to watch, nope, pass. We compromised on Blackpink, but I think my interest in that band is waning. We still got Linda Lindas and St Vincent, that was nice.
But the best part was she sat in my lap for about an hour of bedtime and that was just the best.
Noise and metal mix for you today, your favorite, I’m sure. I was upstairs dancing, once again, to Katy Perry’s “California Girls” thinking “wow yeah I sure have heard this song a lot” but I didn’t mind especially, and then I remembered earlier in the day I was listening to the Boris/Uniform record and the contrast between the two gave me a good chuckle. I really wonder what it is about my 50s that makes me love this kind of death metal, it really is somewhat out of the blue. I had a thing for Cradle of Filth in my 30s but it was kind of a joke? I mean I think it still kinda is but also… it’s not. I love this breakdown between genres: metal and goth and shoegaze and drone and post rock. It’s a good time.
Until tomorrow. Miss you, friend.
i had the same experience with Wordle this morning. so annoying.