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Deborah to Olive Bridge
Saturday, October 1 2011
I had actually neglected to make two copies of the largest truss for my new shelving project, so this morning I cranked out a second copy using simpler mitred joints (as opposed to the interlocking mortises I'd used for the other trusses). I then added two diagonals to each truss so as to keep them square.
Since the completed shelving unit was going to be too big to fit through a door, I had to make it modular. It could have been modular at the scale of the trusses, but I wanted the modules to be independently stable. So I decided to make the shelving unit as two separate modules, each containing two adjacent trusses connected by a few spacer bars and a stabilizing diagonal. Once completed, the two modules could be placed in their intended space and shelving planks could be lain into the skeleton.
At noon, Deborah called to tell me her moving convoy was en route to her new rental house out in Olive Bridge (she'd been living in Woodstock since her little cottage at the mouth of the Esopus flooded in Tropical Storm Irene). I'd told Deborah I would help unload at the new place.
So I drove out to rural Olive Bridge with the dogs and beat the moving convoy by a good ten minutes (they were held up by rain-related road maintenance somewhere on Route 28A). The new house is bigger than Deborah's normal rental units, though the yard is so shady that it looked like she'd be having issues with mosquitoes in the warmer weather. There were a number of junky outbuildings that looked like places where a cannibal might stable a number of fat children. It's in a remote area and I wondered how much more driving this was going to add to Deborah's life.
Deborah's moving party included Nancy (of Ray and Nancy) and a guy named Jim I know, as well as two strangers. One of the strangers assumed I was the house's owner and started interoggating me about what town we were in, and he must have thought I was really dumb when I said I was only 90% sure we were in Olive and not Rochester.
I surprised by how good the inside of the house was. Its layout was a little chaotic (having been awkwardly enlarged through the years). But there were hardwood floors, a cathedral ceiling, and, best of all, a woodstove.
The move went quickly, particularly after we formed a bucket brigade to get the many HDPE bins of stuff into the house. By the end there I was having a bit of a blood sugar crash from all the work and not having eaten much, so when I was offered a donut, I pretended it was vegan. And I pretended the one I ate on the way home was vegan too.
Meanwhile Gretchen had driven all the way down to the prison because she'd been invited by the Hispanic Society to read some poems. But, as always seems to happen with such events, it didn't turn out to be at the advertised time. So Gretchen ended up wasting three hours at the Ellenville Library, and even when she finally got into the facility, there wasn't enough time for her to read anything at all. She was so pissed off and exhausted that she couldn't partake in any of the social stuff I'd be doing tonight. Oh yes, and she had some sort of Planned Parenthood event to attend in Woodstock.
So I met Nancy at 6:00pm and she and I went together to KMOCA for this month's first Saturday opening. I can't say anything much about the art, but it was good to see some of the people who were there tonight. Later Nancy, Deborah, and I all went to the Armadillo and had dinner at the bar. When I ordered a burrito and told the bartender to make it vegan, he warned me about the green sauce I was dipping my corn chips in and asked if I knew about the Garden Café in Woodstock. He said he loves that place and he's not even vegan.
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