Good morning good morning good morning. The sun is shining through the trees over the pond, reflecting golden light on my Thinline Telecaster and Jazzmaster. Lovely morning. Sure is cold out there, though. Cold and gold.

Jane was a teenager this morning. Slept through her alarm, didn’t want to go to school. We hadn’t successfully gotten her to brush her teeth in two days. She’s on her shit again and neither one of us has the energy to argue, so we are just letting her do whatever, yeah pro parenting. Except it worked, because she used toothbrushing as a stall tactic to avoid going to school for a little longer, so ha ha joke’s on you.

All that drama and we left six minutes early and were exactly two cars behind our usual spot in line. Normally those six minutes add maybe ten cars to the line, but I guess every other kid in the county is back on their shit today too.

On the ride there she said weekends should be longer, so like the good socialist parent I am I explained the labor movement, the invention of the 40 hour week, the abolition of childhood labor. Despite her surliness, she actually found that part interesting, so you know. Wins and losses.

Trump is tryhing to prosecute Jerome Powell and take over the fed, and even though the Supreme Court said in a (metaphorical, don’t @ me) footnote recently that the Fed was special, they will totally let it ride. Because that footnote wasn’t actually a warning, it was an instruction manual on the precise incantation of bullshit that trump needs to say so they can pretend it passes legal muster. Awesome, awesome. I don’t think ICE shot anyone else in the face this weekend, but you know, it’s hard to keep up these days. Great weekend for Democracy.

“Would all this be happening if no one paid attention and there was no news,” Emma asks. And, you know, I can’t rightly say. Imagine if the entire Right had just stayed off of Twitter, 4Chan and Stormfront. Do the kids even remember 4Chan and Stormfront these days.

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!

What are we listening to this morning. It’s good, whatever it is. Shoegazy. Ah. Glare. New album. Sunset Funeral. Eh. Not that new. April 2025. I may have listened to this already I would have to check my notes. It’s nice though. I like it. Perfect archtypical shoegaze. I think this is the band Bill told me wasn’t so good live so I skipped them. No regrets. Little worried about the shoegaze genre if I am being honest. Getting pretty formulaic. Except the scream-o shoegaze. And the electronica shoegaze but mostly all that sounds like the MBV Soon Remixes and Third Eye Foundation. Except Ulrich Schnauss that guy rules. Wonder what’s up with him. And that last Trentemoller album, excellent electronica shoegaze.

I like writing about Shoegaze because it’s interesting to like exactly seven readers and the rest of you think I am speaking greek.

Excellent weekend. Saturday I did some gardening. It was 70 degrees out (sorry New Englanders) and so I figured I’d just put my garlic into the ground two months late why not. I have very little hope of it growing more garlic, but honestly, it was that or toss it so I figured what the hay. Popped into the greenhouse, the winter spinach and lettuce were growing great. Picked some for a salad. Should have grown winter celery again that was dumb I was so lazy in the fall. Alas.

Then I got to work in the attic and it ruled. Got a good chunk of flooring done in what will be a closet. Lots of weird cuts and tons of ducts to move around. But I got a bunch done. I am coming upon a couple rooms in which I need to put speakers into the ceiling, so I got those ordered. I also got a pull string in place for the cable passthrough from the attic to the closet on the main floor where the IT stuff is, so I can begin the slow transfer of the IT infrastructure of the house to the attic. Ordered a new Unifi access point (in black!) for the attic, and a new switch for the main house so I can bring my old one to the attic. That way if it gets killed by sawdust it won’t be one of the posh new etherlighting ones, just an old switch worth, like, $99 eBay tells me.

We tried out a new Indian fast food chain, it’s, like, in Australia and Canada and the Netherlands and now America and I think Chapel Hill seems to be one of the first in America. It’s called Kolapasi Indian Canteen and I was a big fan. Hit with the whole family. Indian food is expensive round here, even more expensive when you try and order a variety. And they let you sample everything. Emma got heartburn last night so I am worried she won’t go back even though this whole endeavor was her doing. But Jane and I didn’t? And it was great? I hope she gives it one more chance. But also I hope she gets well soon. Poor girl. Heartburn and a lingering sinus infection. She has not had a good week.

So I think I can tell you now about a project Jane and I did all last year. GARFIELD POSTCARDS. When I was first talking to Annie about her cancer, she was telling me how she was going to have to liquidate her entire eBay store of vintage ephemera because she didn’t have the energy to work. I don’t know if that actually ended up being true, she kept doing a lot of work right up until the final sickness. But she mentioned in passing that one of the bits of ephemera she had — quite different from her usual early 20th century ephemera — was a pile of hundreds of Garfield postcards. Like the comic cat not the president.

So, you know, one of my best friends has cancer and is selling a pile of Garfield postcards, clearly the move is to purchase the Garfield postcards, help my friend out with cash, and do something with them. But what?

In the end I decided that correct move would be to buy a ton of stamps, an address stamp, have my daughter draw something on each one, and mail a Garfield postcard every day to my friends Sean and Jussi who, well, like Garfield.

And that is exactly what we did.

For almost all of 2025.

Jane would color them each morning in the car. We had a set of markers at the ready. On weekends she would draw on one while we were eating our breakfast. Each day I would drop one in the mail for Sean and Jussi. The plan was, originally, to never acknowledge it, but of course that fell by the wayside by, like, week 2.

Also I made a calculation error and figured I had enough postcards for the whole year if I mailed them 5 days a week, but then forgot that and mailed them 6 days a week, so we ran out in, like, late October. Except for the Christmas ones. Which we started back up around Thanksgiving for, well, a Christmas Garfield Postcard Encore.

There is the added bonus that Sean and Jussi are our neighbors in the Somerville apartment, so we got to see all the postcards at the end. They were never really lost. Sorta like Kirk’s antique glasses in Star Trek IV.

Satisfying project. Strong recommend. Would do again. Made me a better parent, too, figuring out how to coax Jane to do a postcard on days she didn’t want. Some days it was a chore, some days it was the most exciting thing of the day. Some days she’d draw a single dot in protest. Some days elaborate pieces of art. I wish I had a photo of each one of them. But, then, they are sitting at Sean and Jussi’s, so I guess I could do that next visit.

All right well I found a way to make the new playlist format a bit more legible, so there’s that at least. I am having an existential crisis over this whole “Apple Music doesn’t let you play playlists without an account and there are no free account” situation. Like, I could personally use SongShift every morning to make a link for this playlist on Spotify, but a) That’s a lot of work, b) There are lots of people who got off Spotify and are on, like, Tidal or Qbuzz or something, and c) that is the whole point, getting off of Spotify, and I don’t want to help people stay there. So, I dunno, man. Part of me wants to say “this is on you, just use SongShift to move the playlist where you want,” but that is a ton of work for everyone, I’m not even sure you can move a playlist away from Apple Music without an account, and they don’t even make SongShift for Android (though I’m sure there is some equivalent). The whole thing sucks. BUT, I am off Spotify, and I’m staying off. And if no one can listen to my playlists anymore, well, so be it. Shit I shoulda switched to Youtube. Maybe it’s not too late.

Anyway today is an Ambient playlist and it is great and mellow and I like it very much. thank you Nick for the Chuck Johnson tip. Thank you other Nick for the Avery/Cortini tip. Than, you Sam for signing Oheohtrix Point Never. Thank you some random dude on the internet for telling me about the fantastic Civilistjävel! & Mayssa Jallad album. Thank you Canada for the Rheostatics.

All right let’s go Monday the hell out of this Monday.