Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1480
Gang of Four show, bands who have played the same song twice at a single gig, studio attic work, garden work, Buck Pets, kill deer update, statue update.
Good morning, hello. Happy Monday. Hope your weekend was lovely. Mine was action-packed, just the way I like it. Lovely weekend, no complaints. Let life forever be weekends.
Had a dream last night that featured a lot of Gibby and Luke, two Boston friends from, like, 20 years ago. Not really sure why. Luke was angry, Gibby was tired. There was a sad party house. Oh and Luke worked at a Christmas Tree shop in a dead mall. This is probably a reference to the Christmas shop I worked at in a strip mall in Fairbanks in the 80’s. I was a professional tree lighter.
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Listening to the Buck Pets. Does anyone remember the Buck Pets? I randomly found myself reading the Celebrity Skin Wikipedia page on Friday: the Hole album not the dirty magazine (not even mentioned in the Hole album Wikipedia page weirdly). It was produced by this dude that was in Material with Bill Laswell, worked with Eno. Never heard of him. Went to his Wikipedia page, you know how it is. Was reading through the list of records he produced, it mentioned the Buck Pets. My friend Hugh loved this album when it came out in 1990. I don’t think I’ve listened to it since. So I figured I’d give it a whirl. In my 35-years-ago effort to get into this album, I put the track “Pearls” on a few mix tapes. Love that tune. Hadn’t heard it in decades. Rest of the album, I think I could still give or take, though.
Produced well, though.
Speaking of the Rock Emma and I went to see Gang of Four last night with our friends Nora and Brian (Hi Nora!). It was fun. It was a rock show. It was going out. It was having a nice dinner with friends. All things I really do not do that often. Gang of Four were great, they currently have a lineup that features my friend Ted and another Rhode Islander in the band that is pretty awesome. Ted was made for that job. We texted a bit but I could not stay awake long enough to try and meet up afterwards I got a kid and gotta get up at 6:30, maaan.
I do believe this Gang of Four show was only the third time in my life a band played the same song twice. The first was the Sundays on the Reading, Writing and Arithmetic tour, where they played “Here’s Where the Story Ends” twice. That was the first show I saw when I got to Boston in ‘90 and I thought maybe this was a normal things bands did but nope. I do not remember the second band to do it but I know in the back of my head I have experienced it one other time. I have a Worcester vibe connection to the memory.
Some updates:
The Killdeer Plover Bird thing has now laid two more eggs eight where our storage building is going to go and every time they lay a new one the clock resets so god knows what is up here. So many bird eggs. Right here:
You can see them just to about 10 o’clock to the bottom-most cone there. Look what good environmentalists we are, cordoning off their nest. As we level 10 acres of farmland.
The St George and the Dragon state has made it home safely. I had this idea, now, that I am going to repair it even better than I did when I was 20 or whatever, as a testament to how much I have learned when I was an adult. And I am going to re-paint it because this white paint is inauthentic and all items from Grotesques the Gargoyle Store on Newbury in the 90’s painted everything in a sort-of stone color so now I am going to do that. Full restoration.
So, weekend activities. Friday evening we got dinner and then went to the hardware store as a family which was fun. Emma bought lots of flowers and I bought lots of dirt. This meant I did not have to go Saturday morning, because I was very stressed about my delivery from a different Hardware Store, because I was ordering sheetrock and it was about to rain and I needed to be there to convince the forklift operator to put it in the garage.
We also got gelato and the gelato store in Pittsboro owned by a woman who clearly has a kid that goes to Jane’s school cuz they’re always doing PTA fundraisers there. They were playing Nirvana when we got there so I thought that was promising but then the music went down hill. Alas.
Saturday was a gardening day, it was great. From 10 AM to 5PM in the garden, what joy. We made it home in time for the sheetrock delivery, so that worked out.
I cleaned the greenhouse and planted a ton of shit in assorted raised beds and some things in the dirt. Planted potatoes and shallots and tiger lilies and hyacinths (that probably won’t take, I found the bulbs from last winter and had forgotten to plant them but figured I’d give it a whirl) and beets and two lemon trees and a raspberry bush and did more seedlings from seeds that just arrived in the mail: thai peppers, shishito, watermelon, chives, and a lot of basils.
And then I transplanted two apple trees and a pear tree from pots, where they’ve been growing all winter in the greenhouse, to the ground. And that ground, after six inches or so of great top soil, was so clay-y. I mean, I know Apple trees will grow in this clay because I have two in the front yard at the main house, but my god. Almost killed me digging through it. Kept hitting large rocks. My heart rate went through the roof. Was using a too-short spade shovel, couldn’t find my heavy-duty long one. So I couldn’t get any good leverage.
And reader, I never have to do this, but I had to go sit down and relax and drink Gatorade and get my heart rate back down after that task. It was crazy. I was so close to fainting. WHY. It wasn’t that hot out, it wasn’t the most physically demanding work I do. Very concerning did not like.
Sunday was playground times with Jane in the morning then work on the attic studio all day. I had purchased a sampling of materials to make the full floor assembly in one area of the studio: foam, more foam, sheet rock, more sheet rock, OSB, more OSB. I figured it would be good to do a segment of the floor and make sure everything is good before I order 2,000 sq ft of each of these (not cheap!) materials. I was very excited to do this.
But, alas, before doing that I had to caulk. Because, yes, sound is transmitted through material, that’s how we get sound bleed. But the material that sound travels through most easily is air. So a key to a good sound proofing project — well, one of them — is to block all air openings, fill them up with either a lot of mass, or something that stays permanently flexible. Hence, calk. Specifically, permanently-flexible caulk. Which in my case means Sashco Big Stretch, because I love the name.
So I bought myself an electric caulking gun because I have a lot of caulking to do and I don’t like RSIs and my hands hurt. And it is so fun, electric caulking. Takes a little getting used to, they have variable-speed triggers. But I got the hand of it. Behold:
Seriously. What fun. Takes four hours for the caulk to skin over, though, and a week to cure, so I did not get to make my floor assembly, alas. That will be next week. I (re)turned my attention to flooring.
There needs to be a word for when you get a lot done in a construction project but it doesn’t look like it. Like one day you can do eight boards and it looks like you did a huge amount of work. But another day you might spend hours on a single tiny detail. And this is what happened to me on Sunday, as I dealt with a ceiling speaker. Because the thing about completely replacing the floor in a room is that you can futz with all the things in the ceiling of the floor below. And there are these two Bose speakers in the office downstairs that are inexplicably linked to the TV in another room, no one needs that. So I needed to pull the wire, run new wire, test the speakers, clean out the bay, add the new insulation, re-test the speakers, all before I boarded up that segment of floor. And of course testing speakers means you gotta get a sound-source and amp run to that one, random spot in the attic. I got it done but boy, it took, like, two hours? But I am exicted. I am going to add cameras to the outside of the house and ceiling-mounted WiFi everywhere, because Unifi APs work so much better when they are mounted on the ceiling.
All very exciting, I am telling you.
That’s about it, I think? Garden day, attic day, Gang of Four, dinner with friends? Jane had a rough day Friday and so lost all of her device privileges for Saturday and then was a much more lovely person on Saturday. We talked a lot about procrastination. I am trying to tell her more stories of when I failed at things we are trying to teach her, so we talked a lot about my history of procrastination and places where I do and do not procrastinate now. Do not: procrastinate on anything that keeps mommy waiting. Do: procrastinate on personal projects that no one else cares about.
And, most importantly, if you are sitting on a chair, not moving, doing nothing, when you should be brushing your teeth, that is procrastination. But if you are sitting on a chair, not moving, when you should be brushing your teeth, because there is a kitty on your lap and the kitty never sits on your lap…
not procrastination.
Justa mix for you today. This is a weird one. Lotta new pop like Billy Idol (?!) with Avril Levigne (?!), Selena Gomez/Gracie Abrams and Suki Waterhouse is she pop? She is a weird one. But also some new weirder stuff there is a new Car Seat Headrest very promising and interesting and new Q Lazarus wtf that is so weird. And old Buck Pets and Clash and that Big Blood band I was into a few months ago still listening to them. Love the new Blondshell. Man, music rules.
Righty-o. Let’s turn our attention this this work week. Woo hoo, as Damon Albarn says.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.