Good morning friends, family, fellow sorcerers. What is up. Monday Monday. So good to me. Monday Monday. It was all I hoped it would be. Never got that song. Such a great day but his woman left? Be sadder, dude.

Not a big fan of these Kodiak breakfast bars. Made a mistake and got a “chewy” one. I do not like chewy granola bars. Give it to me hard, man. Give it to me crunchy. I am a man.

The sun is shining through the trees. I’ve been editing vol 3 of Gmhhay (buy vol 2 now!) and I have forgotten that I used to say that the sun is shining almost every morning that, well, that the sun was shining. The sun shining through the trees is there anything prettier. Love it so much. I mean I suppose the midnight sun in Fairbanks over the flats of the Tanana is more beautiful, especially with a bonfire and all of your friends. Miss those days.

I’ve been shopping for my ticket to Barcelona in June. It is very expensive. Flying is very expensive right now. They say we’re gonna run out of jet fuel before June. Will the strait ever open? Will I make it to see my friend whom I have been promising to visit for years? Will it bankrupt me? And then there’s this whole thing with flights within Europe that are very cheap once you get there. We have five non-stop flights from RDU to Europe: Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dublin, Reykyavik and Paris. Can’t actually stay for a couple days in any of those cities because of parenting and whatnot, but could I maybe just buy a non-stop to one of them then get a friend in Europe to buy a cheap ticket to Barcelona? I don’t mind an hour in a crappy plane, but I do mind six hours in coach I am old and wide.

Maybe some Barcelona-based mobile publisher is considering a new programmatic mediation platform and I can bill the whole trip to work. And they’ll insist I am there on the 1st insteaed of the 3rd so I can see Current 93.

Do we think Tom Waits will leave the bay area and fly to Barcelona and do “Boots on the Ground” with Massive Attack? Probably not, right? Do we think Liz Frasier will come out of retirement and do “Teardrop” with them? A boy can dream.

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’re listening to She’s Green this morning, a shoegaze band, their EP called Wisteria. Except everything is in lower case but like I said I don’t have time for that. They are a pretty legit instance of neugaze. I like them. They sound like they might be like 19. The internet tells me they are from Minneapolis and none of them have been in a band before this band or at least not one Discogs deigns to track. But shit yeah, they are solid.

Working my way through the “to investigate” queue from the top. It will take weeks probably. It’s about 60 hours long.

Wu Lyf has been postponed in Boston, no reason given. It is ironic since Wu Lyf were, of all the bands that I am going to see next week, the one I had not seen before, thus justifying the trip. And now I have built a whole trip around it and they are not coming. Which means they will probably come some other date and I won’t be able to go. This is… unfortunate.

BUT:

I stopped by the hardware store to get some screws to fix my mother-in-law’s pantry door and the dude who worked there got very excited about my Xmal Deutschland shirt and said he saw them at Danceteria when he was a kid so that fucking ruled. First time, I think, in my eleven years I have gotten this sort of reaction to a band T-shirt here and let me tell you, reader, I am still riding that high.

It is Monday so we get to talk about chores. I was constrained in my choring this weekend due to the bridal party staying at Chore House. So I did chores at home on Friday and Saturday. Friday was actually mostly errands with my wife. We took care of the trash and recycling and went to Walmart and the Teet and whatnot.

Walmart was… fine. The registers reserved for Spark Drivers were back to normal so.. I don’t know maybe they always have some reserved for Spark Drivers but they were out of order or something like that. I have a new theory of which row I should grab a cart from in order to get a cart that does not wobble or stutter. I am two for two on this theory. Gonna give it a little bit more time to see if it has legs before I relay it to you. I am having a granola bar crisis. And a popcorn crisis. Bring back butter flavor bagged popcorn, man.

But the big news is Walmart has, in fact, gotten rid of their vinyl selection and, look. I have over 11 years maybe purchased 10 records from Walmart and I am a relentless vinyl buyer so I can see why they maybe want to reclaim that shelf space. But it is sad. I liked looking. And I always maintained hope that they would, you know, get better taste. No such luck.

Next I suspect they’ll get rid of the physical media movies which will be very sad. It is weird how some Walmarts – like the one in Fairbanks — have giant Blu Ray and DVD selections and others have… none.

Oh also I promised I would give you a photo of the lovely loon drawing I have framed. Here you go:

Saturday morning Jane and I went to Bojangles and they do not play music anymore at Bojangles and their music was so good and I am so sad about it. There was a prayer group (NA? Seems weird to do NA in public) of 20-30 elderly black men there so I spent time explaining clubs and such to Jane.

I explained how we as individuals are a series of overlapping circles of interest and some friends have some interests in common and some interests we don’t have any friends who share them so we join clubs. I actually had sketched this out recently in my Kindle while reading Anaïs:

Then we went to Lowe’s and there happened to be some “kids club” thing going on and one of Jane’s girl scout friends was doing it so Jane sat down and did one of those Lowe’s kid’s kits that we love and it was super fun and we will probably do this every month. Kids are very into it. She got an apron and a patch and made a planter and we are going to plant some shit in it this coming weekend. It was unclear to me if I could use the club as a babysitter and do my shopping while she built, so I did not do that, but, you know, that does sort of seem the point of the club, right?

Got home, did chores. Did the annual changing of batteries in all of the AirTags. I did a bunch of networking improvements and…

oh right. Thank you to Patty who recommended a new non-phone-connected label maker and recommended you buy one for every spot you need one and get the power supplies so they are always at hand and ready to roll when you need them. I now have them in four spots across home and Chore House and it is great. Labels galore. Got one by the server rack and I am starting to label everything. It is glorious.

Spent a lot of time cleaning off the various surfaces in my office of the junk and half-finished projects that covered them all. Made a plan for where to hang my beautiful giant new TMP-era Refit Enterprise Model. People think all men just think about the Roman Empire all the time but its not true. For a certain cadre of Gen-X American men, what we think about all the time is the Star Trek: The Motion Pictuere Spacedock scene. All the Time.

Found an old box of test phones from Timehop - like 10 iOS devices and 10 Android devices. The Android devices are toast but I can refurbish almost all of the iOS devices so I have been working on those one-by-one. Wiping them, labeling them on the back with the phone model and iOS version and whether they work with Airplay. I think they will be very useful as little home controllers.

I set up a Philips Hue hub because I am thinking of using Philips Hue in the studio and I have never used it. Got the hub set up but did not set up an actual light or anything so, you know. Kinda a waste of time. Will return to this project. I THINK I can have one hub for both houses combined and I can set up a Hey light bulb over there at Chore House now and it will work? We will see.

Sunday I stalled till about noon going over to Chore House cuz I heard that they were up super late post-wedding and I didn’t want to invade their space. So I did a little work at home, doing a bunch of measuring for a deck repair and going to the hardware store (again) to buy a pressure-treated 2×10 for the repair. Refreshed a raised bed at home so Emma could plant some stuff in it. Refreshed more iOS devices. Cleaned one last surface of junk.

Headed to Chore House around noon and confined myself to the greenhouse and got my Shishitos and Thai Basil planted finally. Did some watering and organizing and whatnot. Met the bride and groom, very nice. Met the bride’s father. Eventually I opened up the garage and did some cardboard shredding and organizing but I couldn’t go into the house or studio so eventually I ran out of stuff to do. Went home and showered and watched Youtube like a shlub. The end.

Jane was great for me this weekend but Emma took her to a museum with a friend and she was a nightmare. She was also a nightmare on another museum trip with her class last year, and they have an impending one and Emma is just exhausted by this and debating not being a volunteer chaperone to the museum trip except they don’t have enough chaperones and it woudl just mean foisting her off on someone else. I maintain Jane won’t be a nightmare to someone else but… one never knows.

So now Emma wants me to come with her, but it is a work day and the day after my birthday but also… she’s probably right, I should go. Except Ive been waiting on this business dude to tell me when I can go to New York for this business meeting and it is sorta touch-and-go, so I can’t commit, and if I can’t commit, Emma can’t commit, so we are all just very confused and limbonic. There is a store around here called Limbonics and it deals in prosthetics so I suppose “limbonic” does not mean “being in a state of limbo,” alas.

And Jane is very embarrassed about her behavior and when she’s embarrassed she won’t talk about it, so… I don’t know, man. It’s hard to coach her on this stuff. We had a good behavioral run. Seems like we have hit a snag.

Who needs to go to museums anyway.

We have a moody and quiet playlist for you, been a while, which is weird because I thought that these would be my most frequent playlists because I am a sad bastard, but we’re only on vol 195, whereas we are on vol 320 of “a mix.” This is a good one, though, all new stuff except Kingbury Manx, which I am re-into because one of the dudes owns a bar in Chapel Hill that is right next to our BBQ joint and I am always tempted to go in but never do. And Rain Tree Crow because… well, you can never go wrong with Rain Tree Crow.

Righty-o talk tomorrow love you.