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").



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Like my brownhouse:
   hen so friendly
Saturday, May 23 2009

Penny and David got up early to go yard saling in geater Woodstock, and it was only a little past eight when they came by to pick me up. They'd called me to give me a heads up, and I was only just finishing a pathetic dog walk down the farm road. Luckily, however, I'd also managed the preemptive birthing of a one-legged armless brown baby.
We'd done very little saling before making our customary stop at Bread Alone for their Bagelworks sandwich (which, for me, is vegan except for the smoked salmon). From there, our visits to various yard sales had the random impulsive quality of a series of Star Trek episodes. Here was a recently-divorced woman selling her house in a ticky-tacky Woodstock development and doing the hard sell on some ugly art (though the ultra-small sleeping bag was a good deal at $10). There was a Czech gentleman at the top of a steep driveway selling everything in his house before moving back to Prague. That latter sale wasn't getting much traffic due to poor signage and its out-of-the-way nature. By this point one of us really had to use the potty, so a purchase was made of a non-descript Dutch oven with pealing red paint as a way of smoothing the deal for the bathroom request. "Sure," said the Czech. He was a generous guy and even invited us to come to a pool party he'd be having later. His house was magnificent, with a pool looking out towards Ohayo Mountain. He sold me a beat up old Porter Cable circle saw for $15 and it's now one of the highest-quality power tools in my possession.
There was another yard sale high up on that same ridge. It was remote farm with a big rambling house and all manner of outbuildings (ranging from large barns down to tiny squirrel boxes). One of the buildings had evidently once housed a well-stocked carpentry shop. It was so full of supplies it was like a hardware store, albeit one from a previous decade that had been completely looted of its tools (all purchased in previous yard sales). There were a number of chickens wandering about the premises, including a hen so friendly she didn't mind being petted. Penny was nervous at first, wondering if the hen would bite, but I demonstrated that she was as gentle as a housecat.
Penny and David had been tasked with letting a dog out at a friend's house, so the end of our saling had a hurried quality. Eventually we were in such a rush that we began to ignore the sales, particularly along Route 28, where the professional yard salers live. We'd gone through the mountains and come out on Route 28 fairly close to Phoenicia. (According to Wikipedia, there are 381 people in Phoenicia, whose population is 0.26% African American and 0.52% Native American. If you do the math, that comes to one black person and one Indian. There are also ten Latinos and one Asian.)
Back at the house there was a message from Gretchen (who was still in Vermont with Susan) saying that our friend Deborah had experienced an agonizing night last night at the hands of her kidney stones. The pain was such that she couldn't drive or anything, and she'd had to have a friend take her to the hospital. So she'd arranged to stay at our house for the next few days to be closer to the hospital and to have someone to drive her should she suffer another relapse.
After Deborah and her huge dog Juneau had settled in and begun watching a DVD, I drove into town to get some supplies, particularly treated 2X4s with which I plan to fabricate low towers for my fifty gallon rain barrels, raising them up closer to the gutter so they can provide more water pressure.


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