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ephedra and a short lap pool
Tuesday, July 4 2017
This morning I saw a brilliant red bird flying around the yard. Initially I assumed it was a male cardinal, but its plumage was almost luminous, leaving a persistent burn on my retina, even when I closed my eyes. There were some hawks circling at the time, so I went to get my camera in hopes of photographing them. But I got lucky and photographed the red bird as well, which I'd already identified as a male scarlet tanager. I've seen these before, but not near the house. They're usually a creature of the interior of mature forests.
Male scarlet tanager in our elderberry bush. Sadly, the flying hawk pictures weren't so great.
Early this afternoon, Andrea, Gretchen, and I were joined for lunch by Eva & Sandor, who'd brought over a new, inexpensive vegan nut cheese they'd found at Mother Earth Storehouse ("Mother Fucking Earth"). Gretchen had made pasta with a cream sauce and there was also a salad. Vinho verde was the alcoholic beverage, and we did all our eating and drinking out on the east deck. Happily, nobody had had decided that a good way to spend July 4th was by monotonously firing a gun down at the bus turn around. It took awhile for our conversation to get interesting; everyone but me seemed to want to spend an inordinately long time talking about food preparation and the state of vegan cheese in America today, subjects for which I have few useful contributions.
At some point as we ate, my friend Mark (the guy who occasionally shows up at random) decided to pop by unannounced in the middle of what pretty obviously was a small brunch gathering. I'd known he was in town, and Andrea had even met him a couple days ago at Ray & Nancy's house (she'd been disgusted by his cornrows and his saying how "ghetto" they were). I managed to dispose of him quickly by saying that I couldn't get away. "Have a nice summer," Mark replied, somewhat snarkily.
After a long, leisurely lunch, Eva, Sandor, Gretchen, the dogs, and I all went for a walk in the forest, executing a loop that took on down the Gullies Trail and back to the Stick Trail with a shortcut that avoided the Canary Overlook Trail. For some reason the conversation in the forest was mostly about television shows, though periodically I'd try to bring it back to nature, introducing Eva and Sandor first to the tiny plant wintergreen, and later to the identically-flavored black birch. At some point Eva heard the sound of the peewee flycatcher ("pee-a-wee!), which she pointed out. She's familiar with them because a pair has been nesting on her & Sandor's house. I wondered where a peewee would nest out in the middle of the forest, but according to Eva, that's the place where they're usually found.
Eva and Sandor left shortly before Gretchen and I had to go to the next thing: a visit with our friends Jenny & Doug (now archnemese of Eva & Sandor) at a house they'd rented for five days near Red Hook.
It took Gretchen and me over 30 minutes to drive there, but the place was a nice modern house with a small semi-heated lap pool. Judging by the freshness of the cut into an adjacent hillside, it had all been built recently. And not especially well; parts of the back deck were already falling apart and there were some safety issues with the railing on an indoor sleeping loft.
This evening there was a bit less vegan/animal-rights content in our conversations than there had been earlier in the day, even once Amy (another animal rights regular) showed up.
Food consisted of various patties and such grilled somewhat excessively on the barbie. I didn't have much of an appetite, mostly because of the ephedra tea I'd been drinking most of the day. (I'd gotten it yesterday directly from China; evidently ephedra is still legal for use "in traditional Chinese medicine.")
Meanwhile the dogs were mostly getting along. We'd brought Ramona and Neville, and they got along fine with Sophie, the three-legger from Puerto Rico. They also got along with Marty, an aging pit bull (though we did have to tell Ramona several times to stop with her growling). Jose is Jenny & Doug's problem child; he's had a history of all sorts of terrible things, one of the more benign being fighting with Eleanor. He mostly had to stay either in the house (when we were all outside) or in a room (when we were all in the house). Ramona and Neville took the opportunity to explore the local environment, though they never wandered far, even though some kids were audibly playing at someone else's pool nearby. Thankfully, nobody set off any fireworks in the neighborhood.
I was chilled when I got out of the pool, so then we sat inside for awhile. Doug handed me a Miller Lite, the last alcoholic beverage I would drink tonight.
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