Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1522
Studio build work, a gas leak, gardening, the return of Daddy-Jane dance party.
Good morning, good morning, fellow humans. ‘Tis Monday. I have slept a mostly normal amount. The jetlag dwindles, though it is by no means conquered. It is crazy how long this is taking. This was my third trip to Alaska this year. I did not have this problem on the other two trips. But of course this one was different: I stayed there much longer. I was on vacation so I felt comfortable sleeping in, also because my family was with me, so I didn’t mind getting off the east coast schedule. It is rough.
Last night I went to sleep at mostly a normal time and woke up at a normal (summer) time. It was still rough going falling asleep. I get close, and then panic, then freak about what I am thinking about, try to police my mind away from topics I won’t obsess over, the whole thing fails. I realize some people take forever, normally, to fall asleep. I usually fall asleep in seconds. So this is all very disconcerting.
We are listening this morning to a woman named Gelli Haha. I assume that is a solo name. I don’t know much about her. My friend Nicholas sent me a link to this album last night. It is fun. It is dancy. Kinda like a lady Ginger Root. Album is called Switcheroo. Worth a listen.
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!
Chores chores chores. Spent the weekend doing chores. I mean, not the entire weekend, I guess. I slept very late saturday, and did not get right to chores either morning. Saturday I hung at the house with Jane till Emma and Jane departed just before lunch for some hot birthday party action. And Sunday Jane and I did breakfast and then the playground before I made my way to chores at around 11 AM.
It has been a bit challenging getting back into the studio rebuild after the vacation. The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. I wanted to be lazy. But I knew that a pause on a project like this can mean death. You stop for one weekend… you’re done. No studio.
I am also in a very boring part of the studio build. I am redoing the subfloor back in an area that won’t even be in the studio. It’s back behind the amp room and the storage room, in the crawlspace where the HVAC unit is. I know, academically, it is very important to redo the floor in this section — or in some cases, put in a floor at all — for soundproofing purposes. This area is above the rental unit. The rental unit is two floors down, but it is, nonetheless, the part of the house that is occupied most often, with paying clients no less, so it is important to be soundproofed. But it’s just so unpleasant, and not glamorous.
But then I had an epiphany and combined these two competing lazy urges. I could do the boring part, because that meant doing it right. And “doing it right” meant that I could go slow. This tickled my lazybone fancy. I pitted two of my no-work gremlins against each other and churned along at a comfortable, lazy, speed, going slow because I was “doing it right.”
Unfortunately I did not go slow enough, and on Sunday I nicked a gas line and filled the attic with methane gas, yay me. I had thought I had turned the gas off prior to this, and I also thought this particular gas line was not in use anymore, having previously gone to an old hot water heater that I had removed from the attic when I converted to tankless. I also thought that the gas line was a very hardy fellow, covered in vulcanized rubber.
I was wrong on all three counts.
I turned off the gas to the backup generator, but not to the house.
The gas line was, in fact, still in use. It lead to the HVAC unit for heating. I could not tell this, because the spray foam people had covered it up, and made it hard to follow.
And, according to the gas guy when he arrived: “oh yeah, no, these things are paper thin, you just touch them and they can rip.”
Reader, that seems like poor engineering.
And, for my part, I was not just touching it, but I was using a Sawzall within a quarter inch of it, trying to free it from some floor boards I need to replace. I swear to god, I did not even touch it, but, like the guy said, paper thin, so I guess I did. Within seconds of cutting, I smelled that rotten egg smell.
I turned off the HVAC and the music so I could hear, stuck my ear to it, and, yeah. It was hissing. Turned off the lights and power and got out of the attic, closing the door on the way. Opened a door on the main floor for ventilation. Stupidly did not open the windows in the attic. Called the gas guy.
They come quick, don’t want people blowing up and all. He showed me where the actual gas shut-off was, and how to shut it off. Lesson learned. He did a lot of testing. The gas was not explosive in the attic. There is a level where if it’s high enough, he has to fix your gas leak, but he also has to call the fire department. That level is 20 something-or-other. It was 19-point-something something-or-other. So I did not get it fixed, but on the plus side, we did not have to call the fire department.
It was about 1PM Sunday when this happened, and I had about three more hours of work time, so I took this opportunity to turn to my garden, which had gone absolutely crazy in the three weeks I had left it unattended. The outdoor Eve Aqua irrigation broke, so all my outdoor plants were relying on rainwater during a heat wave. The tomatoes and peppers and sunflowers didn’t mind, but the cucumbers hated it. At least, the ones in full sun. They nonetheless gave up about 20 healthy cucumbers. There were another 20 that had, in the course of three weeks, grown to full size and then yellowed and started rotting in some crazed, accellerated life, no idea how that happened.
My tomatoes had all grown so much they were flopping over everywhere. I staked them all, got them organized, cut off all the dead parts of the cucumber vines, trellised them. There are a good 200 roma, san marzano, and cherry tomatoes, but they are all still green. I bet squirrels eat them all like they ate all my apples, those bastards. I should have netted my fruit. But there was so much, it seemed inconceivable they would eat it all. But they did.
In the greenhouse, the potatoes are almost done, the lettuce went to seed, the beets are huge, the bok choi mostly got eaten by some pest and I am sad and I need to figure out what to do about it. The two tomato plants I planted in there are huge but have no fruit. The summer carrots are sprouting. I have some onions, which never work in there because it’s too hot. A mixed bag.
I had a bed of peppers I had just planted before I left and five of the six plants are just… gone. Like… did a squirrel eat a pepper plant? That is crazy. Mysterious.
The sunflowers are doing awesome.
One Thai pepper plant is huge. As is the rosemary and sage.
I had a Thai basil plant last year, it got huge. I pulled it, planted a new one for some reason, not sure why. But last years plant’s seeds spread, and now I have volunteer Thai basil plants all over the garden it is pretty cool. There are, like, six of them. They’re growing like weeds, but I’m going to leave them for now.
Grape plants are doing okay but are not climbing their trellis, just growing on the ground. I am trying to get them to go vertical.
Two new apple trees are doing great. Wildflower field is doing great, but is being invaded by grass from the west. I will need to pull that grass.
Bermuda grass is seeping into my garden and I pulled a ton of it up. Things look much better now.
I was going to wait on all of this until next weekend, which is a three-day weekend: one day on garden and other chores, two in the attic. But the gas leak gave me an excuse, it allowed me to let my guilt go about staying productive on the studio project and turn to gardening. Part of me thinks my subconscious nicked that gas line on purpose.
Anyway, I gotta find a gas line repairman this week. Fingers crossed.
Last night Jane, Emma and I watched about an hour of Glostonbury Youtube, and we did a little dance party. It had been a while since we’ve done a dance party and Jane is a very good dancer now, and she “loves dancing, it is so great.” So that was super fun. She also finds live music hugely compelling, wants to go to a big festival. As old farts, we tried to explain to her that they look more fun on TV and they’re kind of a pain in person and it’s really hard to get up to the stage. She is undeterred. I may have created a live music fan monster and I am just fine with that.
We watched En Vogue and Anohi and Turnstile and Lorde and Wet Leg and Nova Twins and the Prodigy and Shaboozey and Gracie Adams and Jade and Weezer and Kneecap and Japanese Breakfast and Pulp and TV on the Radio and oh man I want to see the reunited TV on the Radio so bad. I saw em so much back in the day but it’s obviously been ages. I am hoping this reunion pulls a Ride or Slowdive and eventually does a solid tour of American b-list cities and they come to RDU. That would be just lovely. And seeing Pulp and Glasdtonbury made Emma and I want to go to the DC show. We have tickets, but it is going to be a logistical nightmare, a whole thing. BUt we are figuring it out.
Jane was really amped from all this, didn’t want to go to bed. But Emma’s new thing is to just let her do her thing, let her brush her teeth without nagging, let her get into bed on her own and… it seems to be working?
Girl does not like to be reminded of what to do.
Man I swear to god every single playlist I am working on is stuck in the 30-something minute range. I gotta, like, listen to some more new music or something. Send me some recommendations. Oh yeah I still haven’t listened to the new Turnstile yet. I should do that today. I guess I will give you one of these Glastonbury videos today. Sadly the Olivia Rodrigo appearance with Robert Smith is not yet on the YouTubes, at least not the official one. Here we’ll give you En Vogue. Man. These women can still sing. And look great. I would totally go see En Vogue.
Have a lovely Monday talk to you tomorrow.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.