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behavior at 80 degrees
Thursday, December 7 2006
I had a housecall in Woodstock today, the first time I'd driven from the house on my own in well over a week. Strictly speaking, I wasn't alone; I'd taken the two dogs with me. They'd have to wait in the car.
After the housecall I drove to Lowes to buy some planks for building a tea shelf in the laboratory. (Gretchen got me a great variety of tea a few weeks ago and I need to organize it.) On the way out of the store the Lowes checkout woman wished me a "Merry Chistmas Holiday," evidence of some sort of compromise language designed to demonstrate where Lowes stands in the Global War on Christmas. I wasn't impressed.
When I returned from my errands, I found Gretchen freaking out because two signed Dennis Stock photographs, each with a market value of two thousand dollars, had been in the backseat of my car and she'd need to take them as auction items to a Catskill Animal Sanctuary benefit taking place down in Manhattan this evening.
It had been Gretchen's last day of teaching for the season at the local community college, but since she'd be working her ass off at this benefit, she didn't have an opportunity to celebrate. With her gone for the evening, I took the opportunity to celebrate on my own, breaking one of my two ongoing vice fasts. I drove with the dogs down to the Hurley Avenue Citgo and bought a pint of some sort of fudgy Ben & Jerrys ice cream and a forty of Old English Malt Liquor. Back at the house I ate all of the former and then drank all of the latter.
I enjoyed my malt liquor "investment" while watching Brokeback Mountain on the Tivo. For some reason I'd expected the movie to be more of a romance than it turned out to be. If this was intended to be enlightenment for bonehead fundamentalists about the nature of man-on-man action, they'd be left with the impression that it's more violent than anything else. Outside of prison, does a first butt fuck often come without any sort of foreplay? Or is foreplay only necessary when dealing with a vagina?
Meanwhile the fire in the wood stove was blazing with such intensity that the thermostat registered eighty degrees Fahrenheit. In the past I've noticed that this particular temperature marks a threshold for the animals who (in this season) gather near the fire to bask in its heat. Below 70, they're usually curled up in tight little balls on the couches, chairs, and Ottoman. But as the temperature reaches 80 they gradually stretch out longer and longer. At 80 they come down from the furniture and stretch out on the floor. Evidently they still like the heat despite its uncomfortable intensity, choosing to stay near the fire as opposed to fleeing to cooler rooms of the house.
Today's living room heat wave caused both Julius and our new elderly cat Marie to stretch out next to each other with unprecedented proximity. I snapped a few pictures before Julius finally rolled over and grabbed Marie, causing her to flee.
Gretchen returned with our neighbor Andrea (with whom she'd carpooled) carrying many cases of leftover wine. I used a little red wagon to move most of it indoors. By this point the weather had turned brutally cold, a misery made considerably worse by a howling wind. This marked the first arrival of true winter weather for the season.
Marie (left) and Julius (aka Stripey). Without flash in a dark room. Click to enlarge.
With flash; see how much it sucks!
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