Good morning. Hello. How are you? #922
Weekend chores, emailing various local governments, actually meeting a few new people
Good morning there, friend. Hello. How are you? Did you have a lovely weekend? Get lots of chores done? See some nice rain storms? I do hope so. It is hot and muggy here, mostly over 90°F this last weekend, mostly right around 79, 80% humidity. Some big heavy rain showers. All the plants are going crazy. It’s really quite lovely.
Another productive weekend of chores. So many chores. Did some gardening, trellised up the tomatoes, which have now produced their first edible tomatoes of the year, three small San Marzano. But they’re on the cusp of exploding with maybe a hundred tomatoes, it is insane. Don’t think I even need to put shade cloth on them this year because the grapes are taking over the hoop house and providing a bit of shade for the tomatoes. The whole thing really is nuts. Harvested maybe six more cucumbers. The beets have sprouted, which is nice. I thought maybe my seeds were bad. But my second wave of cucumbers that Jane and I planted, nothing. Kinda weird. Going to buy some fresh seeds and try again. Carrots sprouted, beans are killing it, peppers doing nicely, harvested the lettuce and ate a nice salad with it. Potatoes look like they’re about ready to be harvested. The garden at the new house is mostly recovered from the deer attack. Luffa and Watermelon got little buds on them. I need to trellis those. Next weekend.
Got some new house chores done. Paid the plumber and roofer, the electrician came buy and got some more work done on the garage electric. He got the lights replaced so now I have nice new bright LED lights which is so much better. I got smart locks installed on three of the doors now, so that is nice. I can let people in from home. I am getting very good at changing locks. Got a camera on the driveway finally. And one on the back yard.I moved my office to the room across the entryway, which already has hardwood floors, so I can tear out the carpet in my old office and do my first flooring job. Very excited about that.
But the most exciting thing is that we may have found a tenant for the old acupuncture office. Emma saw a post on Facebook in a local group about a pediatric speech therapist looking for an office and she poked around and realized the woman was a friend of a friend. So she inquired and heard great things about the the speech therapist, and reached out. She came by Saturday and loved the space. It was a little big bigger and more than she needed, but I’m also using it for storage right now so we worked out a way to divide the space in half where she could get two rooms and the bathroom for her practice and I could keep a room, a large landing and the area under the states for my storage. It will be great. We are all excited. Hopefully it works out. She is a “neurodiversity affirming” speech therapist and is excited to have an accessible and private space with some outdoor space. We did some sound experiments and the sound privacy seems solid. I emailed my insurance broker to see what I’d need to do about the insurance to handle the situation. Fingers crossed.
The other very exciting house news is that I emailed the county building inspectors about setback requirements between septic systems and greenhouses and they confirmed my reading of the NC Building Code, that it is only 5 feet, which is huge, and so the greenhouse is back on track. I got some surveyor’s tape and marked out where I want it to go. It will be permitted and legal and I am very excited about this. The drone was very useful. It will be again after I do some brush clearing, which is a bit stressful but needs to be done. That is really the point of no return on this project.
More chores chores chores. Here are the “completed tasks” from my Reminders app for the weekend: write check to roofers, vacuum master bath, recharge Eufys, weed whack the edge of the pond (that one was a hoot, at one point I accidentally dipped the blade into the pond and the thing completely covered me in pond water), move deck chairs to deck ( we were gifted some patio furniture for the new house from some neighbors), catalog Nimbus swag, order more Truewerk, order more Peach Icebreakers, buy some Bud Zero, do the groceries, sort the HVAC estimates and decide on heat pump (leaning yes, HVAC guy is coming to visit this week), pay draw to Don the electrician, make waffles, order groceries, refill pills, take out compost, ask the old owners what the Honeywell pad outside the crawlspace is (humidity/temp sensor for office HVAC system.
Chores!
Oh and of course the Walmart/recycling center run, where once again a redneck asked me about my Lightning. It happened twice this weekend, I swear it happens almost every time I go out these days. I’m now thinking that might be why that other Lightning owner I ran into at the recycling center last week wasn’t very chatty: maybe he was sick of people asking him about his truck. Anyway, if Ford can ever manufacture these things at scale, they are going to dominate. Its nuts.
Come to think of it I guess I made two Walmart runs again this weekend since I went back for the surveyor’s tape and Emma needed birdseed. Man I love a double Walmart weekend.
Had lunch Friday with this ex-vet that my friend introduced me to. The guy was a hoot and we had a great time, talked for 90 minutes. He’s looking for a job, I kinda want to hire him for both the pool company or my day job. Guy seems like he can do just about everything. He seems so competent that some woman he barely knew left her kid with him to watch for three days while she went on some vacation date to the beach. That was weird. He has two daughters, I think the woman rationalized that the daughters were going to do the watching but of course they have their own lives as girls that age do.
I think I may have inadvertently changed Carrboro’s election laws. I was doing some digging into the maximum allowable donation to a campaign in the town of Carrboro for that person I had talked to a week or so ago. So I read the applicable parts of the town charter, and I found the part of the town code where it says they could change the maximum donation (it’s in Chapter 2). And I read the part where they had changed the maximum donation to $250 in the past, but it was expired (it’s in Chapter 5). So it seemed pretty clear to me that the maximum donation was, at this moment, the state/federal limit, not a lower limit. But I’m not exactly a master of reading town charters, so I figured I should double check. And I had had such great luck with emailing the building inspectors in Chatham about my septic setback, I figured hey, let’s do it again. So I email the town inspectors and the assistant inspector writes back and sends me a document and says it is a law that was passed a few years ago updating the charter and extending the law that limits donations to $250. And I read it, and that law is set to expire right around now, before the next election season. So I email her again and ask if there was a newer one, because this one seems set to expire right now. And she isn’t sure. She says that she only happened to remember when this one was passed. I ask her if there are a bunch of laws not on the website and she says oh yes definitely. Cool. She is going to figure out if they’ve passed a new campaign limit law. But I get the feeling they haven’t, they’ve forgotten and I just inadvertently reminded them, so now they’re going to go pass one. Or maybe someone else knew the law had lapsed but was hoping no one else noticed, so they could have a fundraising advantage? No idea. But I definitely feel Heisenberg is happening here. Whatever the answer ends up being, feels pretty clear that my inquiry into it effected that answer.
Two bedtimes with Jane this weekend. First was an utter catastrophe, she was just intransigent and unkind (“I like being unkind”) and chaotic. It was rough. Most desultory bedtime ever. But Saturday’s bedtime was lovely. Lots of playing, laughs, slides down pillow ramps, did her jammies in two minutes. Excellent dance party, lots of CHVRCHES, Linda Lindas. I tried to show her the Katy Perry Super Bowl Half Time show and she liked it until they started to play “California Gurls” and then she was like “nope turn it off” cuz she only likes the video version, though weirdly she did not want to watch the video that night.
She starts kindergarten next month — we are pretty sure we’re gonna send her. She is going to an Art Camp this week, so that’ll be a little test. A week of afternoons away from her parents, which is not something she ever did. She’s had no day care time. The pandemic sorta took that opportunity away from her. But this week will be interesting. Tomorrow she has swim class and art camp. It’s like she’s a normal kid! I wonder how she’ll handle it. Readers, I shall be sure to keep you apprised.
Got a playlist of covers for you today. Yes it has two covers of “Waterloo Sunset” and, coincidentally, my random wakeup playlist decided to play the original today. Love that song. Also getting very excited about the Peter Gabriel show this fall. That’s gonna be great, I assume. I wonder what he’s like live these days.
Until tomorrow! Hope you had a lovely weekend. Missed you guys.
'Neurodiversity affirming' speech therapist sounds great (and is what Oliver goes to as part of the school program he's in). BTW as a somewhat related aside, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman is quite the read.