Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1389
A quick thanksgiving edition thanking you guys, the readers.
Good morning. Hello. Happy Thanksgiving. I hope your thanksgiving is going great so far, I hope it goes great all frickin day. Ours is off to a roaring start. Jane and I went to McDonald’s cuz she really wanted it and we were up early and it was actually really nice and she walked around the restaurant and said “Happy thanksgiving” to all the people there and I think it generally brightened people’s day. The resident Kei Car enthusiast was there. His daughter is a friend of Jane’s but he doesn’t really know me. It was all quite nice.
Then we got to work prepping and getting the turkey in the oven. Turkey and carrots are in the oven, first baste is done, mashed potatoes and beets are cut, we have some free time now. Jane is playing Cities Skylines. I am measuring different routes to get the fiber to Chore House.
When I was a kid, my mom had me make a thankful list every thanksgiving. We would print them out on our Imagewriter II, which surely made the list, on that dot-matrix, pin-fed roll paper oh man I loved that stuff. Fold it and tear off the pin feeds on the perforations just the best. They still use it in airports at Delta terminals. Makes me want to work for Delta.
Anyhow, it is a cherished memory, because it fuckin’ worked, and made me realize all the great things in my life, and I have done it ever since. Longtime subscribers to GMHHAY will recall seeing them in past issues.
Buuut it does feel kind of weird to do it in public, and people always comment that it is “just a list of things I’m looking at” or perhaps a little braggy. And, I mean, yes, a lot of it is a list of things I am looking at because, man, once you get in the thankful zone, well, in the immortal words of Emmet, Tegan and Sara and Lonely Island, everything is awesome.
So I am doing it this year — and encouraging Jane to do the same, but I guess I won’t post it.
Buuuuut…
I am very thankful for this vacation and getting all this stuff done and my new miter saw stand is awesome and boy is it great to just putter for five days.
I am, of course, very thankful for my family, and I will point out to aspects that will be ridiculously braggy: no one argues on thanksgiving and no one in the entire family voted for Trump. Well, probably some aunts and uncles, but none of our parents.
I am thankful for this job that lets me have this life, even if I think Adtech is kinda awful sometimes, but, then, that’s why I’m trying to help change it and make it less awful.
I am thankful for my wonderful daughter, and specifically thankful on three recent emotional developments:
1) She has started to learn to actually, sincerely apologize.
2) She has begun to have an inkling if she doesn’t want to be late to something in the future, her actions now have a direct impact on that.
3) She has begun to be genuinely helpful when cooking, which is so nice. She can chop that sage smaller than I ever could.
And, last but not least, I am thankful for you guys, the readers of GHMHHAY. You rule. This is a special thing we got going here. I just read some study again about most men having no friends after 30 and, well, they oughtta be readers of writers of a daily email newsletter about nothing but noble pedestrian domesticity and This Coulda Been a Think Piece™. You’re great. I love it when you hit reply and tell me the most nobly pedestrian things in their life. A reader wrote in with their new GMHHAY-inspired band-aid organization scheme and my god, that was just fantastic. I did not respond gushingly enough, Hunter, that was awesome.
All right, have a lovely day. If you feel compelled to reply to this email with photos of your thanksgiving well I am not going to mind one bit. Favorite holiday and all that, just dandy.
Should I do a playlist today? Oh god, should I do a Christmas playlist? No no Christmas playlist. Maybe tomorrow. We don’t start thinking about Christmas round here till Thanksgiving dinner is done. Here is a shoegaze playlist. Play it for your parents, tell em its what the kids are listening to, which isn’t untrue!
I doubt I’ll write tomorrow, gonna try and lay the fiber in a single day, which is totally not going to happen but also I might “test lay” it between the houses, unburied, to make sure everything works? That seems conceivable. Wish me luck.
And happy thanksgiving!
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.