Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1425
Garden work, making billboards, pacing yourself with the political evil, cookie delivery, new Calla
Good morning, greetings from the ass-end of Monday morning, oh my god I hate getting up at 6:30 so much. Sun is rising earlier, though, so at 6:20 a sliver of sunlight shone through my curtains, thus convincing me I had overslept, and causing me to jump straight up. So, you know, at least I had the adrenaline kick this morning.
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Today is the first GMHHAY of February, which means that for the next month I am only posting the link to Facebook,not the full GMHHAY test. And I am done cross-posting to Threads. We are doing this, people. Here we go.
I am listening Calla there is a new Calla song this is very exciting to me. Calla is the best ever dark indie band from Denton, Texas. The drummer Wayne is an old acquaintance of mine from his time in Bowery Electric. Calla are awesome, used to go see them a ton. All of the members were also in a band called The Factory Press prior to Calla and I just loved them so much. There are actually two new Calla songs out, so I think we can maybe hope for a new album? Shit what if they tour that would rule.
Crazy political shit over the weekend, just terrible. This is an absolutely terrible thing to say and I am sorry you have to hear it, but I am, despite all that’s happened, planning for things to get much, much worse, so I am trying, trying so hard, to maintain some mental capacity for, you know, February and beyond. Dude hasn’t even used congress yet.
I do think the tariffs will, eventually, break the economy. I think most of “Wall street” (lol term) are idiots-who-think-they’re-smart, and think that they can pick and choose winners and losers. So I am not one of those people waiting all weekend for a crash in the markets today. Could be wrong, but I think we have a few more idiot decisions before that happens. Canadian and Mexican tariffs gotta kick in, then, I assume, they’ll use their big guns: Canada will cut off energy supplies. That oughta spike gas prices. I’m also enjoying the early signs from Canada and China to target red states specifically. I hope they extend that to Elon: he’s making a real gamble with China, assuming they will not punish him for the tariffs. I am desperately hoping China blocks Tesla from operating in the country, that would be a lovely silver lining.
But anyway, it all sucks, I am not a “the media is broken” kinda guy but the utter lack of reporting on the absolutely malevolent EO regarding trans rights is fucking despicable and should have been reported everywhere.
As (some, the few not-bright-but-not-fascist ones. The suckers not the Nazis) turn against him it is going to be very, very hard to not tell them to fuck off. Mitch McConnell, for example, that fucker had the power to end this in the palm of his hands, was told explicitly that this was the risk, and he just fucking let it happen. Now he’s all butthurt. I will find room in my heart to forgive or at least be gracious to some of these people. But some of them, big ole nope.
It’s too soon to let it ruin your life. Pace yourself. Things are gonna get worse. Consider blocking “Trump” and “elon” on social media. For a week to start. Pace yourself. ANYWAY.
Good productive weekend. Set ambitious goals for myself for two days off and I did pretty good! Didn’t get everything done, not the stretch goals, and I didn’t get to work on the attic this weekend. But I knew I would not be working on the attic this weekend. Too much else to do.
I made billboards for the Boat and RV storage company, to put up along the road at the construction site. They are… not great? I give myself a C+. I think they’re suitable for roadside distances? Here is a picture of them from about 20 feet away:
Of course, ten minutes after i took this picture, when I was in the shower, end of the weekend, I thought of a better way to make them: no glue at all, just wrap the boards in Tuvek and staple tightly on the back.
God, 3/4” plywood is so heavy why do I keep finding myself working with this unwieldly material so much of late.
To glue the Tyvek onto the boards, I bought this cool little Chinese contraption, a roller that has a reservoir above it, and a trigger, and you the glue grips onto the roller and you can spread a perfect coat. It was so good. Impossible to clean, so I suspect it’s a one-time use affair (I have it soaking in some cleaners in a bucket but I am not optimistic) but my god it really helped. Judging from the reviews I feel like I am one of the first humans to purchase this thing on Amazon. But strong recommend if you have a giant glue project.
The other big project is that I cleared the absurd, horrible, giant dead “wildflowers” from the patch of dirt just to the right of the photo above. I had killed the grass and tilled that lawn last summer, but then I added this “NC Native pollinator” mix to it, which looked awesome at first, but then the “flowers” grew to ten feet tall with 3” wooden stalks it was crazy. They still looked good for a really long time, but eventually in the winter they all died and then I just had this crazy weird dead forest there.
So I finally cleaned it out this weekend which entailed like five passes: three passes with the brush trimmer, with the hardcore steel spinning blade, no string, this stuff would have laughed at a string trimmer. Did one pass, then pulled out most of the giant stalks, did another, pulled out the rest, did a third cutting them all down below the dirt level. Then raked. Then tilled. Then I dragged all the shit onto a tarp and dragged into the woods, 100 pounds of “wildflower stalks” easy. Just so much. Was like pulling a corpse not that I’d know.
I have a “before” picture everywhere and I envisioned myself making a little diptych of the before and after, but I am too lazy, so here is a boring picture of just the after:
Seriously. It was so hard.
What else, what else. Oh I pulled all the winter tomatoes, lettuce and arugula from the greenhouse, it was all going to seed. Lettuce and Arugula did great. Five tomato plants and I one plant gave me like 5 small tomatoes. A failure, I guess. They never flowered enough for me or the bees to pollinate them. I am kinda sad about that. The beets failed completely as well, and the onions, but the broccoli, carrots, celery all did great.
I also finally got around to planting the two apple and one pear tree I got in the mail last November. I am so bad about this. Last time I ordered bare root stock from this orchard — Century Farms in Reidsville, NC, over a hundred years old! - I didn’t get them in the ground for, like, five months so we did a little better this time. Last time three of the four survived. Hopefully I do a bit better this time. I didn’t actually put em in the ground, either. I was thinking of putting them in the newly cleared space but that space has so much potential, I am torn. Apple Trees can grow a lot of places. I wanted to think about it. So I planted them in the greenhouse. Will transplant later.
Also loaded up an entire truckload of trash from the attic, so even though I did not work on it this weekend, I did make a little progress. TUBTRUGS. Thank you, Colin Furze, for alerting me to the utility of these babies in demo removal.
With all of this we also made time for COOKIE DELIVERY. My friend Perry, a New Yorker who divides her time between here and NYC when she’s not globetrotting, ordered cookies for GIRL DELIVERY so we drove over the three of us and Jane delivered the cookies and we caught up with Perry. Also did a delivery in the neighborhood, and then later that night, some more neighbors bought us out of our ad-hoc inventory. We have one more girl delivery to Durham on the books, but that involves a playdate as well and that did not work out.
But the sad thing is that Jane’s troop won the lottery and got to do a booth in front of a high traffic area, and that high traffic area is out in front of the awesome comic store in Durham right next to the awesome Asian grocery.
I mean that is all awesome not sad, but their scheduled shift is next weekend, when I will be in Alaska for my cousin’s funeral, so do not get to sell cookies at the booth with them and that is SO SAD because I fuckin love selling things to the public from a booth shit I should have owned a food truck. Man I just love it. When I was a kid my dad’s Lion’s club had a booth at the fair grounds and I loved working that, until I got a job with the actual Fair org and then sold admission tickets. Also loved working the front window at the church’s soup kitchen, loved bartending in RVIP to drunken SXSW Karaokers, selling Freezepop merch in the main lobby of the Marriott at the heart of Dragoncon, you name it.
My god I just love selling shit from booths and tables.
There is always next year.
Please buy some cookies. They will not inflate in price. For at least a year. Ha ha.
Here. Have a “most depressing” playlist today. It is Monday so, you know, fitting. “Tomorrow Wendy” came on in the car this morning after I dropped Jane off. Not the studio version, a live version, but. Jesus. Still. What a song. Andy Preiboy from Wall of Voodoo wrote it. Got to see Concrete Blonde do it twice — once in a giant arena on the Bloodletting tour, opening for Sting, and once at the Middle East down on a reunion tour. Would totally go to another Concrete Blonde reunion tour. Or Johnette solo that would be fine. Her solo label is local to NC!
Anyway, if you’re feeling down today, do I have the playlist for you.
Farewell, friends. Until tomorrow.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.