- Starting 2022 with spicy Korean soup in my stomach (but, this time, not on my shirt).
- The grocery store cashier’s almost cyborgian wrist brace and latex fingertip getup.
- The wide range of quality in snow shovels. You want one with a good scoop capacity, bucket strength, and striker durability.
- The flavor of the salsa at our local burrito joint, which changes subtly but noticeably every week.
- Painting over the old plastic bathroom countertop at the studio.
- The cats spilling a mason jar of tiny beads sometime around 7 AM.
- Basil turning around to head back inside the moment he feels the howling winter winds. “Nope.”
- The second-floor apartment with a green fingerpainted tree (ish thing) in its window.
- Peering inside our walls with Jason’s new borescope.
- Stepping outside barefoot when Basil has to pee in this freezing weather, in solidarity.
- Buying smoked salmon at Hagen’s Fish Market with Sammy, one of Chicago’s oldest school, family-owned smokehouses.
- The only way not to waste time (in the long run) is to waste time (in the moment).
- Sam Learner’s River Runner and Drumset projects.
- The breathing-like hiss of our gas meter.
- Casey’s birthday!
- This awesome clip of The Pretenders “rehearsing” “Brass in Pocket”. [Via Dad.]
- Sewing a button back on to my pants. My first time sewing since kindergarten. [Update 2022-01-15: It’s kinda coming off again :/ I didn’t sew it well enough.] [Update 2022-05-09: I re-sewed it a month or so ago and it’s holding up, but this time it’s a little too tight!]
- The harmonic sequence emanating from my electric razor.
- Feeling anxious and sad regarding the hostage tragedy at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.
- Sammy and me walking on oceanfront rocks, getting shooed away by the (self-appointed?) guard of an abandoned resort beyond the rocks. (Sammy had read online that this guard is known to hit disobedient tourists with a stick.)
- The beginning of Sky Blue Sky Festival. Drinking too-strong resort margaritas with Liam, Sima, and Macie by the ocean! Rehearsing!
- The lizard hanging out in our hotel shower skylight.
- Playing a set with Ohmme in scorching sun, to mostly shirtless, happy people in wading-height lagoon water.
- Playing the Beach Stage at Sky Blue Sky with Dad, Sammy and the gang.
- A beautiful band dinner.
- Reading Wikipedia articles about warplanes till the wee hours of the morning. On “accident.”
- Learning that the designs we think of as the epitome of modern war machines (namely, “semi-monocoque fuselage[s] with a large-cantilever, shoulder-mounted wing” like that of the F-15) were introduced in the 70s. Who knew!
- We have spent so much fucking money on these things, but I’m not convinced that that’s wrong…. I don’t want contractors to rob the country, but I also don’t want to be vulnerable to insane, belligerent nations. The depressing, violent pickle we’ve been in for a century. (How about we spend more money taking care of each other at home in addition to maintaining strong defenses? The money is there for both. And leverage Boeing, Lockheed et al. into charging less?)
- Stephen Malkmus singing “Cut Your Hair” with Wilco!
- The semi wet sand that nicely crumples beneath your feet.
- The sound of the tide tumbling dead coral pieces over each other.
- Walking to a patio restaurant in the rain as a family. The tourists eyeing us with pity when we arrived, soaking.
- Learning from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s I Asked For Wonder that writing is better with beauty, color, metaphor, and that it needn’t be any less intentional or precise when it has those qualities. (In other words, I’m still unlearning philosophy degree “unstyle” style.)
- The moonlight shining on the ocean. All-time classic!
- Swimming in the ocean right before dusk.
- The tiny pool of toxic-looking, crusty seawater.
- The ruby red sea urchin in the rocky shallows.
- Recording, diarrheaing all day.
- An amazing show by Lucky Cloud (solo), Lia Kohl, and Gerrit Hatcher at Constellation. Lia, playing cello plus keyboards (with her feet) plus modified radios, in an utterly unpretentious marriage of tech and melody.
- The occasional gurgle of the humidifier.
- Sammy fooling me with an iPad shaker simulator app.
- The drips of purple liquid in the alley snow.
- The humongous electrical grounding stake in the earth beneath a beloved Chicago studio.
- Two rehearsals and a haircut (a la two turntables and a microphone).
- Mixing a song while Mom and Basil watched TV on the couch together.
- Buying sheet aluminum at Metal Supermarkets. The stern but ultimately friendly employee who helped us.