Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



links

decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

fun social media stuff


Like asecular.com
(nobody does!)

Like my brownhouse:
   slightly in one character
Thursday, April 14 2005
Waking up on the futon in Mary Purdy's apartment is nothing like waking up in a house in rural Hurley. You go to lift the blinds and instead of trees, sun, and sky, you're treated to a view of fluttering pigeons and slightly crumbling brickwork going high up towards an inaccessible square of blue. Mary will soon be subletting her place and moving to Seattle to pursue a second life as a nutritionist. Just about everything she does these days is about closing down her life's New York City chapter. Watching her run around excitedly doing her chores, always the actress, slightly in one character or another, I wondered how she had such energy without the benefit of caffeine. Last night I'd read a few paragraphs from Caffeine Blues, which I'd found on her bookshelf. The book attempted to argue that caffeine is bad for you and confounds one's thinking, but despite my open mind I'd found its arguments weak and unconvincing.
Out on the street, New York City was having another fabulous April day. As usual for April, the air was just a little too cold but the sun was strong and one wanted to be sure to walk on the sunny side of the street. I got myself a coffee and then we ordered burritos at the Upper West Side's Burritoville outlet. These we consumed by the edge of a pond in Central Park. A couple Canada Geese came up to us to beg for a minute or two but then when they didn't get anything they gave up on us, waddled down to the water, and swam away. Later I saw them successfully begging from a young Asian woman who seemed to have come to the park specifically to share her lunch with the geese.

Back at our place in Hurley I immediately resumed work on my ditch project. Before we'd left I'd managed to remove the last of the asphalt from the walkway. Today my main task was to remove as much of the soil as I could from where the asphalt had been. I want to strip the ground down to bare bedrock so that my new walkway, which will be paved with bluestone, will sit on a solid, well-drained foundation.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?050414

feedback
previous | next