still unpacking, folks

August 30, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's going to really be a short one this time around 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayWe're still putting the house together and I'm still contemplating taking a brief hiatus while everything settles down [hollow chuckling]. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to calculate the runtime of the back catalog, but I'm sure there's a few hours' worth for you to enjoy while I think about it!!The Traffic Safety Commission reports that you should probably go to our Apple Podcasts page and leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review or risk being trampled by an elephant. Their words, not mine.Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberI'll be honest: I don't know if the Delta variant has fucked our plans for November 11th's return of Instant Band Night. At this point I'm assuming everyone reading this has gotten their shot, so what's left to do but wait, cross our fingers, and also run through the streets forcibly vaccinating everyone we can get our mitts on? I'll see you out there.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook+ + g e t   y o u r   s h o t   / /   l e t ' s   d o   t h i s + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We've moved into the new house and there are still a lot of boxes, but every day some nonzero amount of progress is made and that's what counts, dammit. I was going to put a whole timeline here detailing the reasons why we had to move before I realized it wasn't all that interesting; basically it boils down to 

  1. The person who owned the house we were renting died (she was very old)

  2. Her family wanted to sell the place

  3. We couldn't quite afford it/The price was honestly too expensive for what it was

So we found a new house to rent exactly a mile away, still within quite reasonable driving range of Quentin's preschool, and we're settling in. I can tell you that anchoring furniture to the wall is maybe my least favorite part of moving despite my growing skill at it.Last week I requested updates from you on whatever you wanted to tell me, of whatever length felt appropriate, and every response I got was an absolute delight. If you didn't get around to it before, good news: there's no deadline!! Also, if you want to do that again, BY ALL MEANS feel free! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin complained of an intermittent sore throat (it seemed to mostly strike him at night) and got a bit of a runny nose yesterday, so we took him in for a covid test whose results we're still waiting for this evening. I will say that if it turns out he does have the rona, it's remarkably mild -- today he was back to his old self with absolutely no hint of any kind of discomfort -- so I guess we'll just wait and see? In the meantime, of course, we've kept him home from preschool, so that's been a thing. There's a tiny park nearby with a little sand-filled area that he discovered today, and I think some digging toys are going to figure into his future based on his enthusiasm for building what he called "sandcastles" which were really just mounds of dry sand full of sticks. Whaddaya want, he's 3. They were delightful!!! 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.I gotta level with you: there's basically nothing here. Every week I build this section exactly the way corals accumulate a reef, by reading about two dozen newsletters a day (out of sheer habit by this point) and throwing anything I find interesting in here. Because of the move and the unpacking, I have had zero newsletter-reading time, so this section will be essentially nonexistent.The only thing I have for you is a rare interview in the New Yorker with John Swartzwelder, the famously close-mouthed writer of some of the hands-down inarguable best Simpsons episodes ever aired. Did you know he's been writing a series of humorous detective novels?? I feel like I gotta try at least the first one, right?! I will say his cover aesthetic somehow fits the persona I've built for him in my head. (Interview) (Amusingly barebones book website) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumGood Hair Day, Lost in a Strange Garden 

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't.