Good morning good morning! Would I say that I am behind schedule today? Or merely doing things out of order? I’m gonna pretend it’s the latter. Even though I slept… nine and a half hours and then Jane came into my room in full-on denial that it was a work day and strongly recommended we go eat breakfast somewhere out of the house, and we did so, the two acts eating up all my time before my Monday 10 AM meeting. So Here I am. Scintillating.

Had a horrible dream which involved organized crime, Liam Neeson, and.. I dunno, man. It didn’t seem that terrible when I think of the plot, but it was terrifying, full-on nightmare. Consider me unsorted and scattered this morning.

RIP to Om Malik, dead at 59. I had only met OM a handful of times through the years but he was by far the kindest, most thoughtful, least full of himself Silicon Valley titan I have ever met, and I have met most of them. Virtually every remaining good person in tech is heartbroken today. The world needed more of Om.

Also, god. Fifty-nine. Gulp.

We got a heat wave coming, half the country has it coming. Will be insanely hot here Thursday and Friday.

Supreme Court just upheld the E Jean Carroll verdict and said states could count mail-in ballots after election day. Two good rulings, but obviously a continuation of their blatantly political habit of issuing a bunch of horrible rulings then one or two minor good ones to placate people. We still have the birthright citizenship ruling this week, so I will await any sort of relief till then.

My Q tips are disappearing. I had strategic reserves both upstairs and downstairs, and when in the course of human events you happen to need Q tips both upstairs and downstairs at the same time for different reasons, and realize that both reserves are missing… well, your mind starts to drift toward conspiracy. Wife what have you done with my Q Tips. Jane did you craft a Q Tip family or something?

Important COVID update: there is still one person running around Cary, NC shitting out a ton of Covid. So much covid in one person. They don’t seem to have shit in neighboring counties in the last week though.

Unrelated: my family is headed to COVID today.

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 this morning to the 1991 debut album from The Hair and Skin Trading Company, entitled Jo in 9G Hell. The band features two ex-members of Loop, or they were ex then, I think they went back to the re-formed Loop? Gotta double-check. Also features two members of a band called Savage Opera, whom I never heard. Gotta check them out. Hair and Skin Trading Company broke up in ‘95 ish after their second album but not before I got to see them at TTs in ‘94. They were freakin awesome. Had this album on CD since it came out, but after ten years on my Discogs want list, a reasonably priced, American-shipped vinyl copy came up for sale, and here we are.

(also I am sorry but the rule of no hypben with -ly words is dumb. “Reasonably priced” and “American-shipped” are the same linguistic constructs and they should either both have a hyphen or not have a hyphen. I can see why people are so bad about hyphens).

Happy birthday to Spiritualized’s masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space, which turned 30 this week. Think I saw… mmm… six shows on that tour/those tours? So good. So good. Also, of course, let’s not forget my wonderful autographed billboard.

This album is one of my favorites, though not my absolute favorite Spiritualized album. Maybe third. Man. I should re-rank. But they are my favorite band, they changed my life, that band, and that album is the gateway drug for most fans. It truly is a masterpiece.

But we all know you’re here to hear about chores, and, reader, my god, what a glorious weekend of chores. I got so much done. It is so good to be working on a different part of the studio. This weekend I worked on the floor above the front patio. And there were lots of things going into the ceiling of the patio: two speakers and two cameras. And all of that needed to get wired in before I put the floor down. And I did that. I put in utility boxes for speaker cables and ethernet cables and put them into nice junction boxes with keystone jacks and labeled all the wires with my label maker and my god it was all so satisfying. Then I did a shit-ton of spray foaming because the builder of this house did not feel compelled to seal the attic from the outside, coming in from the patio. So much spray foam. Fun fact: Walmart has, by far, not even close, the cheapest cans of big gap spray foam. Literally half the price of Amazon, even. GE brand, which is weird. Who knew.

Then once that was done I put down the Safe N Sound and then I did the OSB and now the floor above the patio is all done and finally, FINALLY, next week I get to start on the remainder of the main open room, doing all of the floor that will complete the main room of the studio and finally, after like… two, three years of work, we will finally see the true size and majesty of the main studio room. I AM SO EXCITED.

Also this week I got the HVAC contractors in to start re-routing ducks ducts and moving thermostats and intakes so I can properly frame the IT room and vocal booth. They also cleaned up my not-terrible-but-not-perfect work building an entire floor under the HVAC unit. They were very impressed with my use of floor jacks to hold the thing up. Said they had never thought of that and would be buying some. I felt very proud.

Also road-tested the slap bracelets as wiring conduits and they work so great. I am so happy with that. Brilliant invention. Gotta take some pictures of that for you.

HVAC people coming back this week to do some more work. I am very proud that they basically view me as a competent carpenter. I mean, sure, they’re buttering me up a bit but also they were not shy about pointing out places where I half-assed things, so… yay me.

Oh shit it just occurred to me we are pulling the line set on the HVAC on potentially the hottest day of the year. Guess I’ll run by there tomorrow and chill that attic as far as I can. Gulp.

Be a good test of the insulation I guess.

Been thinking I need to make a Youtube video, or series of videos, about the attic build. I would like to get caught up to the present in, oh, six to nine months, so that when I start getting to the audio wiring portion, where I am far less knowledgeable, I can have know-it-all Youtube commenters telling me how I should do things. I enjoyed my time as a Youtuber, just didn’t enjoy the weekly schedule, so I will do it less frequently. Maybe monthly.

Because I need more things to do.

Lovely weekend with Jane, she spent six full hours at the pool Saturday and even I took a little time off from studio work and stopped by to the pool to meet up with the pool partners and their spouses and cute 2 year-old daughter and relax and eat tacos and dip in the pool and it was quite nice.

She’s also switched back to skirts from shorts. Last month of school it was all shorts, I think maybe peer pressure? But now she’s back on skirts. Very cute.

She’s on a chores-for-points regimen, which can be exchanged for either cash or screen time and even though she considers screen time to be the funnest thing in the world, she is hoarding her points for cash, even though she doesn’t have anything she wants to buy with it. I think I have perhaps over-endowed her with the idea that if you have enough money, you don’t have to work. And even though I do not work a lot, and work from home, she is still very sad when I have to work. I may have accidentally created a young capitalist, when I was trying to create a young Trekkian.

Will need to work on that.

Got a synth pop playlist for you today. Mostly new. Lotta people in Boston went to see the Human League this weekend along with Allison Moyet and Soft Cell. Mixed reviews from friends there for a show we loved here, and I think I know the difference: here it was outdoors, there it was in a theater. 80’s package tours should be outdoors, and you should be far away from them so you cannot see how much they aged. That’s my theory. Thank you to Aug for teaching me about this Jah Wobble/Julie Campbell song. Thank you to Nicky for Vox Low, which we discussed here last week. Thank you to Margot’s Got Money Troubles for showing me how great this Robyn song is. Thank you to Ashley for Gelli Haha, that show really one of the highlights of the year. And Avalon Emerson, man. She is a genius: amazing pop artist and amazing electronica artist rolled into one. Not many of those out there.

Until tomorrow, fine friends.