Good morning good morning hello boy howdy hi how are you? Thursday. Can you even handle a Thursday? Not a given these days, not a given.

Busy day! Gotta finish these words pretty quick because we gotta be at Jane’s school at 9AM for the FUN RUN, some scheme to raise money for the school because the public doesn’t care enough about public education to cover all the expenses, I guess. So then they bring in this third party company to help them raise money, and the company takes half the money super cool. But the kids get to run in circles and they fucking love it, so hey I guess it’s all fine.

And then Jane goes back to school for three and a half hours, and maybe I can get some work done, and then I pick her up to take her to ROOT CANAL PART ONE, with no GA, just local, and I’m sure its gonna go JUST FINE no problems. Eight year-olds are known for sitting quietly with their mouths open for two hours.

Look at this freakin note how stupidly cute is this:

“Because I am alive.”

I have a confession to make: I skipped a rock show last night. And not just any rock show, one I really really wanted to see, of a band I haven’t seen in twenty-five years, and will probably never get a chance to see again. it fucking sucks and I am pissed with myself but also it was the right thing to do. We couldn’t get a baby sitter, I have this hugely busy day today, I had a splitting headache, I didn’t want to go alone. But still. It sucks.

BUT if you are one of those people who reads GoMoHHAy and thinks to themselves “god how does this dude so much on top of parenting and two jobs,” well, good news. I, too, get lazy and just give up sometimes. We are all human.

What a fucking bummer, though. Man I am sad about it.

I’m not even gonna tell you what band. I cannot bear to think about it. Bare to think about it? God, no, Rick. WTF. get it together. Bear to think about it.

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!

Listening to the Folk Implosion this morning, Dare to Be Surprised, ‘97 Orange vinyl edition. Bought it in January. Been sitting in the "easily-accissible” vinyl bin right next to the record player since then. I mean, I listened to it right away back then but I thought “yeah that deserves another listen” and put it in the bin and didn’t get around to it till today. Love the Folk Implosion. World’s least likely top 40 hit band. I like to imagine Lou Barlow these days, back in the Dinosaur Jr fold with the famously curmudgeonly J Mascis, working on a new song. And every once in a while they get in a little disagreement about some songwriting point, and Lou, just to piss J off, says “well, you know, J, I am the only member of this band with a top 40 hit.”

Fuck they’re another band I hadn’t seen in decades and I skipped because they were playing in Durham and not Chapel Hill and it was just tooo farrrrr to drive twenty-five whole minutes waaaaah god what is wrong with me. Oh right. I’m a parent.

Haven’t seen Kids since it came out. Wonder how it holds up. Might re-watch.

Several readers have asked me why I do not use the feature built into iOS and macOS to hide your email, rather than going to all this effort to make eighteen different email addresses (yes, it has grown by two since yesterday). To be clear, I think that is a great feature and one of Apple’s best. BUT:

1. I did try and use it, trying to confine myself to throwaway apps and accounts, so that I did not fuck myself. But in the end I somehow managed to fuck myself anyway, by using it on an app that seemed throwaway and then I needed to use more permanently, and it became a total pain in the ass. Especially, as my friend mentioned recently, if you end up having to tell a human being the email address. Then you enter into the land of ridiculousness.

2. I do not like the platform lock-in of the whole situation. Absolutely abysmal if you also use Android, or Windows, or Linux, or anything else. Doubly-so if you are endeavoring to use a non-Apple password manager. I was planning on doing both of these things at the time. I am, I admit, switching back to iOS (hopefully TOMORROW I will successfully order my new phone), but I very much want to maintain the ability to not use iOS again in the future, when John Ternus accidentally makes Terminator robots or some shit and you gotta go to Linux to survive. Or something.

If these two things are non-issues for you, that is valid and their Hide My Email feature may be right for you. Just be ready to be on the phone with some customer service rep in the future saying your email is [email protected].

Yesterday Emma and I decamped after lunch to Red’s, our boat and rv storage facility, to film this incredibly complex video for Google Business. We messed up our first two attempts at becoming a business on Google, so the only way we could now become one was to send them a video. The video had to be recorded live, in the Google Business app. It had to feature humans and signage and unlocking doors and documents and showing screens with Google Maps on them and driving down the road and showing them street signs and neighbors and driving around our property. It took a crew of five. It was ridiculous. I felt like I was producing a video shoot back in the Barbarian days (great website link, that one, not sure you know about it). Had to do it on cell service, because of the drive down to the closest street sign, which left our wifi range. Then I had upload a 5 minute 4K video to Google on 2 bars of 4G super fun.

Also I wore a Polo for the first time in my life.

And sadly I don’t think I have a single photo to show you for it. Maybe Emma does. It was tight. My belly stuck out. Yet somehow I looked thinner. One of life’s paradoxes.

It was fun, though. Been a while since I did a “crew" “team” project out in the world. I almost miss it.

Aside from that less-than-two-minute tantrum leaving the playground the other day, Jane hasn’t had a real, freak-out tantrum in days. And we’re going to the dentist today and she has not freaked out about it! It is amazing. I… I am nervous to even talk about it. She is doing her teeth in the morning, she is doing her teeth at night, she is stopping watching videos and going to bed and everything. Just phenomenal.

We had a talk this morning about disappointment and how you can feel it even when you do the right thing. I told her about the show last night and how I am really sad I couldn’t go but also it was the right thing and I am very happy to have gotten eight hours of sleep. And she was very into it, telling me about recent times she’s felt the same way. I brought up the playground: she was sad to leave but also she wanted to leave so we could go watch black hole videos and her friend was leaving anyway. It was nice.

We starred songs by CHVRCHES and a guy named Daniel Seavey, whom I do not remember liking. Kinda a cool synthy R&B thing. She was unimpressed by “Get me away from here I’m dying.” Maybe not the best introductory Belle and Sebastian song. We will try again. It is fun discovering music with my daughter I am very very relieved we invented Daddy Jane Playlist and I don’t have to listen to her complain about me listening to black metal all the time or something.

Oh look we have a mix done today: a Justa Mix. Though I guess if we are being honest, Justa Mixes are pop mixes. Not like I put the metal or ambient or drone or psych on the Justa Mixes. Let’s see what do we got. Just learned about this Big Troubles band from a free 7” Slumberland sent me with an order. I like them. Smart marketing move, Slumberland. Still love the Will Sheff album. Someone told me they liked the Tragically Hip so I checked them out. They were okay, not my thing. Thank you to Mandy for teaching me about Minako Yoshida and FIZZ. Actually I think Tragically Hip was Mandy too. But hey 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. New Teenage Fanclub is more Teenage Fanclub. We talked about Mineral yesterday. Thank you to Puppetmaster Jake for teaching me about LØLØ that was a fun one.

All RIGHT. Tomorrow we start CHORE WEEk. Though I guess I won’t have done any chores by the time I write you first thing in the morning, so you’re gonna have to wait till Monday to really dig in to Chore Week in earnest. But I am excited. We will talk about it tomorrow! Byeeeee