Good morning oh man I missed you I am sorry about yesterday. I was trying to get a chore done and I really wanted to get it done and it took all day and I didn’t quite get it done. I mean, I got it “working” but I didn’t get it all cleaned up, buttoned up, etc. Probably another hour or so of work on it today. Alas. But I don’t really care too much anymore. I am getting maybe 30% of everything done that I wanted to get done in Chore Week, but whatever. I’ve adjusted. I’m back to a “puttering” approach — I work on what I want, when I want, making incremental progress is enough.

I got the turtle cam back up and running, and better than ever. Redundant Cat6 cable, in wiring loom, mounted properly on the tree. It’s awesome. I am very proud of that whole project: build the floating pontoon dock, get it stationary, get a camera on it. Years earlier I had bought Emma a camera and a giant lens so she could look at turtles from the house but it never quite worked. This is much better. TURTLE DOCK.

I also got wifi to the dock dock — not the turtle dock. Which is nice. I have wanted that for a long time so I can sit there and take calls while sittin’ on the dock of the pond.

And I got the fiber up to the attic my god that was so hard. It took so many tries to get the fiber into that giant conduit on the exterior wall I showed you a photo of yesterday. But it is done and there is now a 10g switch in the attic. Why do I need a 10g switch in the attic? WHO KNOWS. But I have felt a compulsion to have one for, like, a year now and now it’s done. Mostly. Once I clean up. And re-insulate the wall. And put the outlet panel on. Etc etc. I’ll got to it.

I will say though, if I could go back in time ten years to when that dude installing our solar panels asked if I would ever need this conduit going from the basement to the attic, and could he use it and fill it up and we said yes without thinking about it. Well, I would not let him use it. That was a mistake. A mistake from a young, dumb, new homeowner who didn’t know what a treasure he had in that conduit, and he let someone else use it instead of him. Stupid.

I have wired so many CAT6 jacks that I have a whole little mythology about the wires now. I wonder if all IT people have this. Is the green wire the problem wire for all IT people? Do they think of it as the wayward, wandering son of the wires? That green wire will never stay in place.

Also I think all IT people should have a little pouch around their neck. Like a Saint Bernard trying to rescue people in the alps. You would put all the little wire bits into the pouch so they didn’t get all over the floor. I think that would be cute. It could be shaped like a little oaken keg.

Things I did not get done this week: spend at least 2 days working on the studio, mulch the house, gravel the garden, mount cameras on the gate and driveway at chore house, get the drip fixed (today, hopefully), clean the greenhouse gutters (though I have learned much and I think I have a plan), plant the lettuce/garlic/snow peas/broccoli, move the fruit trees into the greenhouse, get the thermostat in the greenhouse working. Oh my god I still have so much to do and it is getting cold. It was 36 this morning! I need to move those trees!

I DID however discover that this is a great way to live, puttering and doing chores. I am so ready for retirement I’m gonna be so good at it. So long as you pace yourself. My body is pretty beat up from a week of manual labor, going up and down ladders, walking over rooted paths and tripping a bunch. I was wearing kneepads all day yesterday and when I took them off my skin was all blistered up and OOZING PUSS wtf. like a clear fluid coming out of skin on my thigh? My god my god this is probably the grossest thing I’ve told you since the all-poop edition of GMHHAY.

If and when I do it next year: 1) at least a week or two earlier. It’s too cold in the morning now, and I am constantly getting brained by falling acorns. 2) Shorter list, or no list. No goals, just direction. 3) Not the week of Jane’s party. Lotta conflicting chore impulses going on here with Jane’s party happening tomorrow.

It’s weird no major news outlet has reported on Trump talking about men’s asses all the time, right? I didn’t know he did it. Emma had to explain it to me, show me some Instagrammer who was compiling it. And, like, if he went to every rally and talked about women’s asses, I’m sure the Times or someone would have covered it by now. But not men’s asses. Very strange. So much men’s ass talk.

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 new Chelsea Wolfe this morning. I shoulda gone and seen her I am dumb I regret that. Will I go see Julien Baker next week? We will see, we will see. I do love buying tickets to shows and not showing up. New Chelsea album is called The Dark. It is appropriately named. Broody and moody. I like it. I might buy it. This is what I consider modern goth not all that techno remix stuff.

Chelsea Wolf’s Wikipedia page informs me that at the age of 9 she wrote an album of “Casio-based goth R&B songs” and boy would I love to hear that. Numero Group, get on it.

New music Friday fun let’s see if Apple Music can tell me about new albums this week. Oh good, the feature is back. New music from Dodie, Caroline Rose, Fenne Lily, Shabazz Palaces, Hot Chip, yeah this looks like a promising week. Oh shit there is a new Wolfgang Press. Very exciting.

Finished Slow Horses last night. As with every other season it was excellent and terrible at the same time, just maddeningly disappointing in its level of spycraft and plot intricacy but Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas are both so good I keep watching. I guess the guy who plays River is up for James Bond, which will be hilarious because River is probably the stupidest secret agent in the world and it will be hard to not project that on to Bond. I actually suspect he will not get the role for that very reason.

Sometimes I can rationalize how dumb everyone is (except Jackson, of course) because they are in Slough House, but a) Flyte ended up being so dumb this season and she is not in Slough House and that pissed me off, b) they are dumb in ways that have nothing to do with the actual plot of the show and really just feels like bad writing.

I suppose it’s just my problem. I want it to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and it’s really just Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated or something.

Slightly off topic but I kept wondering it: look at that photo up above of the way River’s Granddad stored his dishes. Is this… useful? Good? Wouldn’t the dishes just get dusty? Does it protect them from chipping? I feel like I would chip them more? Why would you go to all that effort to build a plate storage system like that? It’s in a working kitchen, not a guest-inhabited portion of the house, so I don’t think it’s purely decorative? I am confused.

HEY. The moon is awesome. You know this, right? Do you ever stop and think about the incalculably infinintessimal odds of our moon being exactly the size and shape and distance that it is, perfectly thus so we can have full solar eclipses? No one else has this! Just us! And also we don’t know where the moon comes from! No one knows!

Some days I think that maybe the moon is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. I don’t know how, exactly, or why, but it is inarguably a thing that is unique about our planet that does not fit into the Fermi paradox. Seriously what are the odds of having such a perfect moon. The Fermi Paradox, as colloquially verbalized, goes on about “one in a million planets” this and “one in a million planets” that, but I’d wager the moon is way more unique than one in a million. What if you need a moon like our moon to stir up that primordial ooze just right and our moon is one in a trillion? One in ten trillion?

Put my marker down on this answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Along with “well, it’s stupid to go to space, you have everything you need on your home planet.”

Jane has been pretty good last two days. Though this morning I did count fourteen times in a row I said something to her or asked her something where she responded with absolute silence. Really is maddening. She does this to me a lot. Not just in the morning. We are working on it, we are working on it.

We learned about the Jesus and Mary Chain this morning, she likes “Head On” and “Happy When it Rains,” though she says Garbage’s “Only Happy When it Rains” is the better Scottish song about happiness in rain. Guess she takes after her mother there.

I have started doing French in Duolingo because I am done with Yiddish, I get it, and I’m never gonna speak it so why keep going. Could go back to Spanish but if I’m gonna go back to a language, may as well go back to one you’ve actually successfully spoken in your life. So we do it in the car in the morning and Jane is doing it along with me and picking it up pretty quick. This was not the plan, but we are enjoying it.

Her birthday party is tomorrow. It will be nice. Lotta friends come by and I am excited to see them. It is space themed. Jane and Emma made a black hole portal. The decorations are pretty over the top.

I will not get tanked on weird fruity malt beverages this year like I did last year.

Even though that was kinda fun.

No playlists today. Here have a full live set from Agriculture. My god, they are so good. Best metal band working today. I am a bit worried about their future. Two of the people in the band have put out solo albums, and I follow Dan on the internets and he seems to have left Cali and moved to Italy. Can a band like Agriculture work as a long-distance project? Does he love traveling back and forth? TBD. Fingers crossed.

All right. Again, sorry about yesterday. Now. BACK TO CHORES.