Good morning everyone. Before we begin, Girl Scout Cookie Season is almost over, and for the next three days they are having a 20% off sale on online orders. GO CRAZY.

Jane is home today. No school. Apparently there are tornadoes and gusts of wind up to seventy miles per hour around here. Something called Climate Change or something like that. Not sure. Heard rumors. This will be terrifying. Looks pretty calm now, though. Not sure when this is supposed to actually happen. I suppose I should check the weather.

I made her breakfast. She is upstairs playing Nintendo Switch. She will eventually come down here and play Mini Motorways and Stacklands. Man I wish I had a weather day it seems frickin amazing.

Let’s fuckin find something to be excited about this week. Being excited about things is tight. I want to be enthusiastic and giddy about something. I am welcoming all suggestions.

I did get a high score on my fruit merge game, though. Check this shit out:

Emma is still ahead of me, though. She is better than me at most things.

Thank you to GHMHHAY reader Patty that came up with the amazing suggestion of applying my standard operating procedure of “another of everything everywhere you might need it” and suggested that a) the labelmakers that don’t connect to your phone are quicker and easier to use, and b) they are cheap so you might as well buy one and stick it everywhere you need it because the best way to ensure you use your label maker is to have it everywhere. She also suggested the P-Touch 220 or better so it has the AC Adapter. Conveniently they are onsale right now at a certain evil online retailer. Thusly I am now the proud owner of two of these bad boys, perhaps more on the way.

BUT, while they do accept an AC adapter, they do not come with one, which means I have to do that thing where I try and buy a third party AC adapter and look. This is not rocket science, but for some reason it never works for me. They are impossible to search for online, the internet is flooded with cheap ones that break, or $30 ones that are multi-voltage, with switches and adapters to the adapter and just overkill, doubling the cost of the product. I went through this with my Buddha Boxes and I blew out my limited edition Throbbing Gristle Buddha Box and I will never recover from the loss. I suppose it is likely I would recover more easily from the loss of a Brother P-Touch 220 but who wants to risk it. Anyway Patty, if you wanna tell me how you solved this problem, I am your student.

slackblurb

We are listening today to the Dead Can Dance Peel Sessions, re-released as part of a 2XEP set for Record Store Day maybe 3-4 years ago along with The Garden of Arcane Delights. Did I already own both of these? Yes. But I was buying a bunch of goth records from this goth record store and they had a good deal on it. Then it turned out the goth record store was in Morrisville up the road, so the owner offered to drive over the order, and I was so excited to meet him and pepper him with questions about his North Carolinian goth record store and maybe I would make a new friend. But I was taking a nap when he came and I missed him. It was very sad.

Oh it’s over. I am now going to put on the Virgin Prunes’ The Hidden Lie. I now own the entire Virgin Prunes discography someone give me an award I am a very special boy.

OK I don’t own the slit flexi with The Higsons, whoever they are. SHIT.

Oh man it starts out with “Sweet Home Under White Clouds.” Always thought someone like Sinead or Dolores should cover this. Oh man they’re both dead oh god I’m gonna cry.

Virgin Prunes are all still alive aren’t they? I will pray for a reunion.

We are going to Boston this Friday. Oh I should probably take it off huh. I am excited. Miss my friends miss Man Ray miss our apartment. It’s gonna be great.

Weekend!

I did some gardening, except Lowe’s screwed me on my dirt delivery which is bullshit, pushed it back five days without explanation, so I couldn’t get my beds refreshed. My seedlings are doing well, I think I have successfully gotten the drip irrigation to keep them juast moist enough without flooding them. They are still a little too wet, but last year they all dried up while I was in Boston so I am trying something new and better a little too wet than dry, though the basil seedlings do not seem to like it. Also swapped out the last of the disintegrating plastic bins for these awesome metal ones and man I should have taken a photo for you it is beautiful.

In the attic I got the caulking done on the west side of the floor, layer four, and began to apply layer five, which is the first of two OSB layers. I am very excited. Got the first layer of OSB flooring placed underneath the behemoth HVAC unit and I am starting to think this absurd process is going to work.

Also put the finishing touches on the workbench area, including a tape organizer, got my computer set up again so I can control the music and make lists and look at plans and whatnot.

Place is really coming along. God I love working in the studio. It really is the best. I have had some excellent ideas this week as I’ve been in the shower or falling asleep. Some really great innovations that will be going on up there.

I would show you progress photos in the attic but they don’t really make much sense so instead you get another photo of the workbench.

The last big chore of the weekend was that I finally got all of my crap out of this starway vestibule in the basement of Chore House next to the Neurodivergent-Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapist and Occupational Therapist NAPSTOT. They had asked me several months ago if they could expand into that space and i told them I would get that stuff out of there “in a few months.” Reader, it has been more than a few months. They are the whole reason I am working on the west side of the studio by the HVAC right now, because that is where the storage area will be. But it is occurring to me it would a) be a bad idea to store things up there while under construction and b) it’s gonna take forever anyway, because I gotta get the HVAC contractors in and re-route ducts first. So I sucked it up and moved everything upstairs to a temporary location.

Twenty-six journeys up and down the stairs. I want a medal. Another one, along with my Virgin prunes one.

Emma did Chores at Chore House all weekend too, prepping it for the Girl Scouts, a few Girl Scout mothers came through checking it out Jane played with their kids. It was a real family affair. Emma slows me down a bit when she asks for help with tasks but I don’t care I love that we’re all there putting together it is so fun. FAMILY PUTTERING.

Also we went to Waffle House and there were some hipster older dudes there who looked like Father John Misty fans and they were all excited about the novelty of the Waffle House talking about the Waffle House index and whatnot and it made me feel like an old Vet as I asked the server how her test prep was going.

Oh also we went to Walmart and it was a top-five worst Walmart experience. All the Zevia is gone, which what the fuck this might be a harbinger of the horrific. There was a line like ten people long and the pharmacy-side self-serve area wasn’t activated. They are still out of butter-flavor Spartfood popcorn. The music was no good. Just a disappointment all around.

Oscars! Lucked out that school was cancelled just as the Oscars were starting so I could sleep in thus stay up late and watch the whole thing. Enjoyed the tie. Annoyed Nick Cave didn’t have to sit there all night looking uncomfortable. Shit who knows maybe he was there. He knew he was gonna lose to K Pop Demon Hunters, right? That is funny. That Sinners musical number was insane. Conan was mildly funny at times but not especially. I loved his skits though. Matt Berry should just host he is such a weirdo. They need to stop playing people off it is bullshit. If they have time for a weird ten-minute skit about Weapons they have time for the director of the best Animated Short or whatever to thank her mom.

I’ve watched all the Best Picture nominees except for the last half of Marty Supreme but dare I say I get the point? Anyway aside from F1 I think any of them deserved to win I did not have a pony in that race. I guess if I had to choose I woulda have chosen Sentimental Value but I knew it wasn’t going to win and was already a winner for best foreign picture and the sheer volume of nominations. I was pleasantly surprised that Amy Madigan won. Feel like Benicio was robbed, and if ever there was a year for splitting Director and Picture wins this was it. Also Ludwig: too much winning let someone else win for a change.

But I mean whatever maaaan. I used to care so much who won. Now I am mostly academically curious. Still pissed about Keislowski’s snub with Red though.

Jane’s been great this weekend, except bedtime. She doesn’t want us to leave the room, she gets very upset. So Friday night I just lay with her there for a long time, playing yes/no questions. Her questions were very interesting and her answers very insightful. I set a ten-minute alarm, and I extended it three minutes and that worked a lot better than the night before where she was screaming as I held the door shut and felt terrible. Also she is on a new resisting eye drops kick which is the thing that stresses me out the most because I don’t want her to be blind like her blind-ass dad. But last night that seemed to ebb a bit and Emma got ‘em in no problem. We went to the playground Sunday and I shot the shit with some parents while she played with the younger sibling of one of her friends. She is very good playing with younger kids. I am proud of her for that.

Don’t have a playlist for you today so here is a video Bradley shot in Cambridge of Mission of Burma last week that contributed to me missing Boston. Man I would love to see Mission of Burma again really took that for granted when I lived there:

All right see you tomorrow where I will probably whine about politics all day.