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projects executed by special education students Tuesday, April 23 2013
It was so cold this morning that I had to make a fire in the woodstove, and not just sugar high cardboard fire either. I burned real wood, top-of-the-line seasoned chestnut or oak that has been drying for two or three years in the woodshed annex (a truck camper attached to the back) as well as a huge chunk of hickory I could barely fit into the firebox (for some reason I have real talent of cutting pieces that are shaped in such a way that they will fit in the firebox, but only just).
Ray and Nancy came over with their puppy Jack for another walk in the woods. He's changed a lot since I first met him only a couple weeks ago. Back then he was shy and reserved, and growled at non-human animals. Now (at least when he's visiting) there's a bounce in his step and he's curious about everything. For example, his relationship with Clarence the cat has reached a tipping point; in the past Clarence was much more interested in him than he was in Clarence, but now the opposite is true. Indeed, Clarence seems a little nervous about his newfound puppy energy. It seems, though, that Jack is unusually conservative for a dog (and by that I don't mean reactionary; most dogs are quasi-fascists at heart). He doesn't like unfamiliar places or experiences. Now that he's been in our house a few times and has only had fun here he likes it, but Ray says he still dislikes riding in the car.
At some point today I found myself boxing up the two motherboards I bought recently on eBay (but which are incompatible with my spare Core 2 Duo CPU). At first I was going to just reuse the USPS Priority Mail box one of them had come in, but there are messages all over it about how it can only be used for Priority Mail and that it actually belongs to the US Postal Service. That might not have been enough to stop me, but I remembered once Gretchen reused a Priority Mail box, even wrapping it in a layer of brown paper. But somehow that paper tore and the underlying box was revealed, at which point some douchebag postal employee ordered it returned to sender.
Not having any properly-sized boxes anywhere in the house, I found myself folding and taping my own custom cardboard boxes. This is something I seem to remember doing a lot of when I was younger, but what I don't remember is what a terrible chore it is. And the results, which typically look like craft projects executed by special education students, are depressingly unsatisfying. I actually only needed to fashion a box for one of the motherboards; all I needed to do with the other was cover the box it came in with in brown paper and write an address on it. But for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to turn a brown grocery bag inside-out and somehow cover the box with that. The resulting lumpy, wrinkly object was so hideous that I'm sad I didn't think to take a photograph of it.
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