A week or so ago I'd bought a couple of 55 gallon HDPE barrels on Ebay for the purpose of rainwater collection. This morning the Hurley Post Office called saying the barrels had arrived there and were too large to put in the vehicle that does the Dug Hill Road mail route. So I drove down there to pick them up myself. I found it was a simple matter to tie both of them securely to the roof of the four door sedan. Indeed, I could have fit a couple more up there without difficulty. This is good to know, since 55 gallon barrels frequently become available within driving distance in New Jersey (though they probably were used to store toxic waste).
Later I was out running errands that took me, among other places, through the checkout line at the ShopRite on 9W. The guy who handled my groceries decided for some reason to randomly tell me a fact he'd just learned. "Did you know that Hannah Montana earns one million dollars a week?" he asked. In the context of the situation, all I could think to say was something about how it would nice to have that sort of disposable income. And then to twist it a little, I suggested I might not be able to survive the coke habit I would inevitably develop. The cashier didn't seem the least bit alarmed by this, though I don't think he was really listening either. For whatever reason he just thought I should know about Hannah Montana and her huge weekly salary. Mind you, I don't really even know who Hannah Montana is.
Rain punctuated the day, but at some point this afternoon Gretchen and I went to the tail end of the Hurley Corn Festival, spending most of our time at the Hurley Library, where we each bought several cheap used books. We went into the shed holding the children's books, mostly for the possible nostalgia of seeing books we'd remembered from our childhood. Two from mine were Andrew Henry's Meadow and the Story of Babar.
Gretchen drives us to the Hurley Corn Festival and we encounter a few turkeys along the way. The intersection at the end of this clip (Dug Hill Road and Hurley Mountain Road) is the place where Gretchen had the accident that totaled our first hatchback.
Back at the hole where my greenhouse will one day be, I found it had collected a puddle of orange water several square feet in size. This puddle proved useful as I worked, since it seemed to represent a plane about twelve inches beneath the surface of the surrounding landscape. It became larger and shallower as I continued digging this afternoon and the muddy water flowed into the new depressions as I excavated them.
