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warm enough for chipmunk mining
Sunday, February 5 2017
Usually in cold weather, the dogs don't stay out much longer than the person who walks them does. But today was a little warmer than it's been, and the dogs remained out in the forest for over an hour after I'd returned to the warm indoors. I checked on Neville's position using the Whistle Tracker he was wearing, and it showed him off the Stick Trail about a quarter mile from home, probably with Ramona. My concern was that he/they didn't seem to be moving with each update. Was he stuck somewhere? If he was, maybe I needed to rescue him. So I walked to about where the dogs should've been, soon discovering that they were atop the bluff just to the west of the Stick Trail. Trying to scale the bluff on the melting crust of snow proved both impossible and dangerous; I kept falling and then sliding down the slope until I could somehow catch a tree. Periodically I'd yell for the dogs while staring at my hands. They were pink and numb from repeated contact with the snow.
At some point during all of this I heard a strange noise and saw two mountain bikers going north on the Stick Trail below me. They were all outfitted in electric colors and tight-fitting black body suits. Later when I looked at the tracks they'd left in the snow, I saw the tires must've three or four inches wide and covered with a half-inch grid of knobs. I don't know if the cyclists were ever aware of my presence, but the Ramona and Neville must've heard me because they soon appeared at the top of the slope, a perplexed look on their muddy faces (apparently it was warm enough for the construction of an elaborate chipmunk mine, and that was why they hadn't been moving on the Whistle map). The dogs soon took an interest in the tracks left by the cyclists and began to follow them, though they'd taken the trail that goes down the Chamomile ravine and were long gone.
At some point Ray and Mark were dropped off to pick up the car I'd borrowed last night. I would've liked to have done enough work on the basement project for them to help me install the door. But I wasn't even done rerouting the electricity. In the living room some powerful pot was smoked (well, it may not've been powerful, but I've been smoking really marginal stuff). When Ray saw Gretchen's reading glasses, we discussed the various prescriptions we have as well as the best ways to obtain cheap prescription glasses. (I always advocate EyeBuyDirect.com, though that's without knowing their level of corporate evil.) The eyeglass discussion led into one about the age-related deterioration of our eyesight generally. I described all the floaters that appeared in my eyes in 2007 right around the time I began needing glasses for seeing clearly in the distance. "My eyes turned to mush, I guess," I said, to Mark's horror.
Smoking pot leads to other cravings, and though it was barely afternoon, beer seemed in order. I only had two Little Sumpin' Sumpin's left, so I split them three ways and we drank them in the laboratory, which is a better place for three guys to hang out than the living room (where we'd been). At some point I showed some of my drone videos on Youtube, which neither Ray nor Mark had seen. And then I remembered I had three ancient beers down in the greenhouse. So we ended up spending a good amount of time in its basement, marveling yet again at the massiveness of the hole I'd excavated beneath the floor. Normally Mark would've been riding me about all the things I should be implementing in the greenhouse (and perhaps clumsily trying to do a few things), but not today. I'd told him that I absolutely had to get some work done in the Gretchen's library before she returned from Portland or there would be hell to pay. That seemed to be enough to chill him out so he could relax in the space without nattering endlessly with his half-baked greenhouse ideas.
After Mark and Ray had left, it took me awhile to unstone and undrank myself. I was feeling too chilled to work in the basement, so I took a nice hot bath. But then I felt sleepy, so I napped until something like 9:00pm. After that, though, I found it in me whatever was necessary to finish up the electrical work in the basement library project.
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