Good morning afternoon y’all. Apologies for the extreme tardiness. I had blocked out an hour, 9:15-10:15, to write you this morning, but everything came unglued when Jane accidentally wore oversize crocs to tree climbing camp. And this isn’t, like, “kids climbing on branches like monkeys” kind of camp. It should more accurately be called arborist camp. Throwing ropes over branches, using specialized harnesses and helmets and weird foot climbing things. Haed Core. Needs proper shoes.

(pause for a moment while I go bribe the awesome Lowe’s delivery lady who drives her forklift all the way up Chore House’s winding driveway and will put the OSB in the garage. I bribe her. We have an arrangement. The dudes won’t do it. She rules).

Luckily it’s Friday and Friday is last day of camp and the day the parents go see their kid’s progress. So I do the math and realize if I go get the shoes, then to camp, I can get there only a few minutes after her bus arrives. So I do that. Also I wake Emma up and she comes with me because we already had planned to be going to tree camp in an hour anyway but now we gotta go earlier.

So we do that, Jane gets her shoes. Somewhere she loses her water bottle. We watch her do pressed leaves crafts then tree rigging swing tests, then climb a giant fucking tree. Just insanely tall. Madness.

Then we try and go get lunch. Emma is feeling like a burger because she needs iron or something but Shake Shack has no burgers. We go to Cookout. Has it’s charms, but inferior.

Then I gotta go to two different pharmacies for complex reasons involving insurance and monopolies n shit. Thank you to GoodRX who somehow has a coupon that saves me twenty-two hundred dollars on a two-month supply of Wegovy EXTREME because my BMI has one again fallen below the level my insurance will cover, even though I am still 30 pounds overweight. Maddening.

Another pharmacy. Recycling center. Dealing with angry contractors and plotting with my partners to get them paid. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

I feel very scattered and out of sorts doing things without my morning letter to you, Rudy, or my morning journaling. I can’t concentrate. I am vaguely worried I’m forgetting something. It is always unpleasant.

So here it is, 1:30, and I’m finally getting to you.

RIP Bonnie Tyler. I had mentioned she came out of her coma a few weeks ago, but the family cautioned that even when she did, she was still not well, and I worried for her. Sad. Coincidentally, Emma and I are watching that ridiculous Zillow Gone Wild series right now, and they recently featured the home of Jim Steinman, who wrote the song. Jim’s house is amazing. No one will buy it. They were originally asking $5 million. It is now being offered for less than $2 million. I, personally, do not desire to live in Ridgewood, CT. But otherwise, sign me the heck up. It has a tower with nothing but a thinking chair at the top.

I also learned, or re-learned recently that in addition to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” the phenomenal “Holding out for a Hero,” and Meat Loaf’s biggest hits, Jim Steinman wrote three of the biggest Sisters of Mercy Hits: “This Corrosion,” “Dominion/Mother Russia,” and “More.”

That guy rules.

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I am not listening to music right now. I am sitting, shirtless, in the Chore House living room, sweaty and cooling off. I have not gotten to listen to a single full album today and I have like three new records sitting at my desk waiting for my love and attention. Alas.

I purchased a record the other day and the wrote me back to say it shipped and I saw his name. Pretty normal American dude name — Tim — but I decided to roll the dice. Was the same name as a DJ in Boston “back in the day” when I “worked” (for free) at Venus De Milo. Turned out it was him! He had moved to California about a decade ago. Love it when that happens. Not when Bostonians move to California, but when you buy a record from someone you know or something.

That reminds me I still haven’t looked at the Tom Verlaine collection for sale on Discogs. Next week! Too busy!

Important update: I found a setting in Buttondown that lets you lock the archives to subscribers only. I do not know exactly how that works, but I’ll take it. Can’t have the robots eating my words and turning into Rick. Of course, they are trying anyway. You know they are. Damn robots.

I asked Google for directions in Google Maps using my voice. From a major corner in Chapel Hill to Shake Shack. It told me that it cannot open websites while I’m driving.

People want to run the world with this shit.

Really is something.

Anyway I gotta go. Gotta get these checks to the brick guy and the excavator lady and then I gotta go back to the school to check out FAIRY HOUSE CAMP and the work my daughter has done making fairy houses this week. This shit is IMPORTANT.

I think I actually have some playlists ready, but they’re at home. So I leave you with this Zara Larsson video from Roskilde. Do I like Zara Larsson now? I might. I know who she is now, at least. She seems suitably progressive and kinda bad-ass for her age. I like her weird eye make-up. I do not like the warbling parts of the song, but I do like it’s title: Midnight Sun.

On to a weekend of studio chores. I will try and remember to take a photo of the studio with me in it for scale for you.

And if anyone wants to come to Chatham County and do some weeding, let me know. My god. So many weeds. It’s so hot. I don’t want to weed till fall. It’s going to be a jungle by then.

Ta.