Greetings from a tire sculpture in Minnetrista

Hey friends,

Hope you’re all hanging in there. We’re eight days away from our aspirational Season 8 premiere date. Will we make it? I truly have no idea. Stay tuned!

I’m writing this on my phone in a sculpture garden slash mini-golf park in Minnesota — I’m here for Sylveon work, except for the mini golf part, which is a “my friends’ kid needed an activity” thing — and you will be shocked to learn that I’m having difficulty concentrating.

Photo ID: A sculpture of some kind of dragon or lizard person, made out of tires.

I’m trying to think of something fun or useful to tell y’all but we’re really in a mid-production blur:

• We’ve got four interviews recorded (plus the three from the live show) and two more scheduled for later this week.
• We’ve still got SIX spooky-adjacent designs in the merch shop (featuring vampires, a skull, a cowboy, mothman, and multiple ghosts) available through the end of this month ONLY. 
• We’ve got like 380 grant applications in and who possibly knows how many more coming in before the end of the month!!! (We're looking for additional donations to help cover increased judging costs, but no presh no presh, you're all already doing so much.)

I’m not sure what else to say here without ~spoilers~ and I’m trying to save those for a bit later down the road. Rest assured that Jules and I are both working very hard and also trying to sometimes not work. But I'm bad at knowing what to do when I'm not working, which is why I watched Breaking Dawn last night, or, excuse me, I mean The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One, and why I'm now next to this tire dragon situation.

~~

OK, here’s something, now that I’m back on my laptop: I read this article about New York’s 65,000ish delivery workers a month ago and I’m still thinking about it so I guess I’d recommend it to all of you, if you’re up for a long read. (Did you know that e-bikes weren't legal in NYC until last year, despite them being necessary for app delivery workers to keep their jobs??? Why is everything so hard for no reason.)

Also, have you been keeping an eye on the IATSE contract ratification vote? The John Deere strike /chaos? This Dollar General unionization vote? It’s a really exciting time for labor in this country, and boy howdy I would love to see even one single good thing come out of all this.  

That's it for this week, I think. But hey, thank you so much for being here. We wouldn't have a grant program without you, or a show, or a merch store with limited-edition t4t mothman shirts. You're the best.

Here's your weekly Rhubarb.

xoxo,
Yr resident gender detective