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maximum amount of reticulation
Friday, May 5 2017
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
This morning Gretchen and I loaded up the car with various things (including a memorah, both dogs, and dozens of cupcakes) in preparation for today's drive to Pittsburgh. There'd been a minor disaster in the refrigerator at some point and a cardboard box full of cupcakes had been sitting in a puddle of pickle juice (from a jar of Bubbies kosher dills). We picked out the cupcakes that didn't stink of pickle and managed to have enough for tonight's pre-bar mitzvah party.
Instead of immediately getting on the Thruway, we drove south down US 209 and busted a right at Mettacahonts so we could drop the dogs off at Carrie & Michæl's place. Ramona and Neville would be spending the weekend with their good friend Penny the Dog, as well as a number of cats (and, occasionally, the two dogs living with the seed library guys). There was some coffee in a pot, which came as a very welcome addition to my neuropharmacology.
For some reason Google Maps directed us from US 209 to I-84 through a series of tiny backstreets, one of which was closed by a gate. From there, though, it was pretty clear driving to I-80 and then to I-99 (which must be a new interstate; I don't remember it from the last time I went this way). Our final approach to Pittsburgh was on about 80 miles of US 22, which was mostly interstate-like but occasionally featured traffic lights and long commerical corridors. We'd stopped at a Burger King somewhere along I-80. Burger Kings are always grow in skeeviness as one leaves the big highways, and this one was about a mile out and pretty fucking gross, though at least there were no obvious puddles of hawked loogies veined with snuff.
Unpleasantly, it rained during most of the drive. Unseasonably-cold conditions were being exacerbated by an even colder airmass from the arctic.
For most of the drive, Gretchen continued dealing with unfinished business from the Brewster Street house. It turned out that the idiots who had come to lay carpet yesterday and then immediately left had never returned. Mike, the guy from the carpet subcontractor who had hired them, was at a loss explaining what had happened, and sounded a little like a version of Sean Spicer who had run out of excuses. Gretchen wasn't taking any shit from him, asking why he wasn't at the house laying the carpet himself if the guys he'd hired had flaked out this badly. (My theory was that they'd needed methamphetamines before they could begin but had been arrested while trying to score some.) Later in the day, the carpet guy floated the idea of perhaps having William, the son of the new tenant, lay the carpet. He is himself a contractor and he'd impressed Gretchen with his overall aura of competence and shit-togetherness, though of course we wanted to be sure he was good at laying carpet before having him do it.
Not far from their son in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, Gretchen's parents have an apartment in a big ugly boxy building surrounded by smaller dreary gothic 19th century duplexes, most of which are also boxy but feature the sorts of architectural details one could imagine ravens perching on. Up in Gretchen's parents' apartment, Gretchen regaled her folks with tales of our recent landlord travails. At some point I realized that the bag of my nice clothes I'd thought Gretchen had added to her own had actually been left back at the house. This forced me to wear a shirt and jacket loaned by Gretchen's father. He's a little smaller than me and has a different body, but for some reason one his dark grey-green shirts looked really good on me. I added one of his pinstripe jackets, and if the sleeves had been a little longer, it would've been perfect.
After somehow getting all the cupcakes and display equipment into the car, we drove over to tonight's event, a pre-bar-mitzvah party at Gretchen's brother's house. I'd never been to this particular house; it's something of a stately mansion with something like nine bedroom. Everybody who was anybody in Gretchen's brother's life was there, including Gretchen's childhood friend Dina, Dina's brother (as usual, always talking into his cellphone), three of the Greeks who had sailed with us in the Galapagos, and too many people to possibly list. There were about fifty people there in total, all gathered to celebrate the auspicious occasion of my nephew's bar mitzvah. Food had come from a local Chinese restaurant and was, with one small eggy exception, was entirely vegan. Horror of horrors, the food was running out just as Gretchen and I reached it in the line of people hoping to eat. I'd long been aware that the worst thing possible for Jews hosting an event is running out of food, so I joked to Dina that this was something of a Jewish nightmare. But not to worry, another order of food eventually arrived, and this time the egg rolls were extra greasy and enormous. Meanwhile, there was plenty of wine and beer, none of which ran out. (According to Gretchen, having enough booze is usually not a priority for a Jewish function, partly because Jews generally aren't a hard-drinking people.)
At some point as the meal wound down, there was some singing in Hebrew led by the cantor (the same guy who had come to Hurley for our wedding and sung there) and followed by further singing by a group that included Dina, Gretchen, Dina's brother, and Gretchen's brother. Then Gretchen's brother said some things about the occasion, giving particular notice to his wife's father, who has been dead for about fifteen years. In a nod to the late patriarch, a tray of little plastic shot glasses filled with scotch was produced, and we were all encouraged to partake. Since my young nephew was becoming a man, he took one too. He'd never had scotch before.
There was more singing and such, most of which I sat apart from, and eventually it was time for my nephew to open my bar mitzvah present to him: the reticulated menorah. It looked even more beautiful than I'd remembered and seemed to dwarf my skinny little nephew with its steam punk gravitas. Like his father, the kid is totally into being Jewish, and to have such a handsome Jewish artifact, one that seemed to confer the notion of adultness, genuinely seemed to delight him. I of course had to say something about it, so proceeded to hold forth on the subject of reticulation, saying this menorah had the maximum amount of reticulation for the grid defined by the fitting size I'd used.
Later we toured the basement, which was a cluttered but wonderful space. Gretchen's brother had painted white the joists, pipes, wires, and subfloor overhead, and it looked great. Not only did it make the space brighter, but it tied together the chaos that normally reigns overhead in a semi-finished basement.
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