Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1486
Mom boxes arriving, gardening, studio work, Laele Neale, Killdeer nest update, shelving builds, 3D printing
Hi hi hi. Good morning. Back from school drop off and guess what! For the first school morning in, oh, six hundred school mornings, I am not tired! I was not dying to go back to sleep. I feel just fine. Amazing. Had some good music in the car this morning: American Analog Set, Stargazer Lilies, This Mortal Coil and Afghan Whigs. ‘Twas great.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
We are listening to Lael Neale this morning. This album is great. There was a song, “I am a River” on her last album, one of her trademark lo fi indie drone tunes, and Jane just loved it. Like expressed more excitement about “I am a River” by Laele Neale than almost any other song. I have yet to play her this new album. I think she might enjoy this “Down on the Freeway” song in the same way. Laele Neale, man. She is great. Good bangs too.
Didn’t get a chance to talk about my weekend yet, what with all of those “forgotten topics” yesterday.
‘Twas a good weekend. Been sort-of dividing my weekend between a gardening day and an attic studio day lately. Since, you know. Spring. Garden planting and all that. So it was thus this weekend. Saturday Jane and I did our morning breakfast, ran into her breakfast friend Violet, then went to Lowe’s and bought my gardening supplies for the week (it just occurred to me about fifteen minutes ago that I may have lost a 100-foot roll of half-inch drip irrigation tubing that I bought that day. Haven’t seen it since. Mysterious). Back to the house and Jane read McAtlas, like I have mentioned, while I did some gardening. Mulched the new apple trees, refreshed the big long low center bed in the greenhouse, planted a row of bok choi in there and two tomatoes, with whom I am going to try and learn to pollinate myself. Hopefully my gardening friends will help me. I am scared. But it has to be done because last year my tomatoes grew like crazy in that bed but did not pollinate much. I have also added a fair number of flowers this year to the greenhouse, though, and am keeping the upper vents open, so maybe it will be better. Fingers crossed.
Sunday I worked on the attic. Didn’t get as much done as I would have liked because I had some pool/storage company work. But I did get the first part of the fully-assembled subfloor down. Because I needed to see how it would work. And I need to get one section done so I can move shit onto it so I can get the first part of the subfloor done in the rest of the room. So I took the control room area and did the layers: one layer of 1/2” foam, one layer of 1” foam (the reason for the two separate foam layers is to buy me some space for underfloor wiring conduits which is about to become a whole thing and you are going to get so sick of hearing about it), two layers of 1/2” type X sheetrock, which is so heavy and I cannot get a 4’x8’ sheet up to the attic in full so I gotta cut ‘em which sucks, but it’s okay because a) caulking b) overlapping seems on the two layers. Then two layers of 1/2” OSB. Whole floor ends up being about 3-4” thick. Well, you can do the math.
Shit I forgot to take a picture of the floor. Well I will get you one of those soon.
And the good news is that at every stage, including when it’s just the rigid pink foam, you can walk on it without damaging it. I mean, you can’t like stomp or dig your heels into it or anything, but you can walk on it. This is huge because I have been very stressed about how I was going to need to do all of the layers at once. But I don’t. I could do it all foam then all sheetrock, or section-by-section. I have flexibility. That is a relief and one of the things I was hoping to ascertain from this exercise.
Unfortunately I miscalculated and didn’t buy enough OSB so I don’t have the subfloor completely done yet, so I can’t put a bunch of shit on it, so I can’t continue on the layer-one-subfloor-replacement process. I have ordered the additional stuff for delivery this coming weekend. I am excited. We are making progress.
I also did two very small DIY projects for the weekend that I am excited about:
I built a replacement/additional shelf for my absurd library room, which has 111 shelves around all of the walls. Custom shelving job, got it done maybe eight or nine years ago. But I need a few more shelves. So I measured and built one and got matched paint from Sherwin Williams and it looks as good as the ones the carpenter made me. Well, not up close. I did not sand enough. Only sanded the thing to 180. It’s smooth but you can still see the grain. But it works. I am happy. Bought a Kreg shelving jig to drill the holes for the shelf pins but have not gotten to that part yet. Hopefully today. I will get you a nice picture eventually, I know you’re dying for it.
And relatedly, I was thinking to myself “you know, I would sand more if all this sandpaper were organized” and I realized I had a 3D printer now, and I could just print myself a disc sandpaper organizer, and I did, and it was $3 of filament and I did not have to pay $12 or get anything shipped from China and I got it same day, well, eight hours later. This is very excited because even though I bought this 3D printer for Emma for her birthday, I rationalized it by being able to do this exact sort of thing, but this is the first time I’ve done it.
Now if I just find, like, 200 more things like this I will have saved enough money to have paid for the printer.
Except Emma already used it enough to pay for the printer by saving a grand or two by fixing our drier flap.
Oh! And I didn’t tell you about my new workshop shelf. It is very exciting. I had all these bins and organizers just piled up on my miter saw stand. Not in the way of actually using the miter saw, but it was annoying. And I fixed it. And now they are all on the wall and it looks awesome. Behold:
Very nice, very nice.
The packages from my mom’s house have started to arrive. So far I have received eight packages and nothing has arrived broken. Five packages arrived yesterday, took, you know, 12 days priority mail from Alaska. Lotta memories, lotta stuff. But nothing broken. It is splayed out on our dining room table until all the stuff arrives and I figure out what to do with it all. Lotta emotions.
Finally, update on the birds at the constructions site. Still no hatched eggs. When you walk toward the nest the mama killdeer flies about 20 yards away and starts looking like a wounded bird to distract you and entice you. Little does she know the (old form of) the federal government has your back, little killdeer, and as far as we know we still honor our migratory bird treaties with Canada. You know. For now.
Anyway here is a picture of mama killdeer and some tractor treads.
Jane’s been in a good mood the last day or two. She is obsessed with those little folding triangle clover fortune telling paper things. They are strewn about the house and she makes us choose colors and numbers and then tells us something lovely like “you are kind” or “you are loved” and it is just great. Very snuggly these days. A+ parenting days.
Moody and quiet playlist for you today. Mostly new, all new I suppose. Yes. All new. Some Laele Neale for you, though her slow songs aren’t really the jam you know? Other artists you’ve heard me rambling about of late like LIsa Germano and quickly, quickly and the shoegaze(ish) band Bnny I learned about from KSUA in Fairbanks. The one good moody Jennie song. People say her Coachella set killed but I dunno man I watched it on the internet and it… it’s weird Coachella just has lip syncing dance artists now. Not that I don’t like such artists but it just seems weird. Quiet, cynical Gen-X Rick. Get with the times, maaan.
OK have a lovely day talk to you tomorrow be cool.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.