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Vicodin and retail sales
Sunday, August 20 2017
It was a beautiful sunny day, and I thought I should check on the operation of my solar hot water collector, since I remembered running out of hot water last night while taking a bath, something that should not've happened. Sure enough, the pump was running, but the hydronic temperature was about 150 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the panel and something like 80 in the basement, meaning the fluid was not moving. I knew from experience this was caused by a bubble high up in near the panel, something I easily corrected by adding about two quarts of fluid into the topmost draincock. I have a big special-purpose funnel I've made for this purpose from the brass base from an old floor lamp. Still, the funnel doesn't have much capacity, so today I began the process of adding yet more copper flashing to it to increase its capacity. It would be nice to have a sealed add funnel at the top of the system and just add to it occasionally, but that would be bulky and difficult to make.
Gretchen went off to work her Sunday shift at the bookstore today without Neville, though after she'd left I noticed he wasn't around (though Ramona was) and I'd assumed Gretchen had taken him. Neville returned from wherever he'd been at around 4:00pm; presumably he had been off by himself in the woods somewhere for hours after Ramona had returned.
Meanwhile, Gretchen's continued back problems caused her to take half a Vicodin (hydrocodone with acetaminophen), which she unthinkingly swallowed on an empty stomach. She though of the need to eat soon thereafter, but it was already too late. She started feeling first nauseated and then woozy. Some woman asked where the poetry section of the bookstore was and Gretchen went to show her, saying she was feeling just a little...
The next thing Gretchen remembered was lying on her back seeing faces looking down at her, talking as if through muffling layers of fabric. She could hear them and process what they were saying, but she couldn't move. Her dress had fluttered up around her hips immodestly. They were wondering what to do and if she was the only employee in the store. As Gretchen regained her abilities to talk and move, she tried to get them not to call an ambulance, saying that her insurance wasn't very good. But the paramedics had been called and they soon arrived. They took Gretchen's vital signs and proclaimed that it was rare for them to encounter someone so healthy. Gretchen had fallen backwards into a bookshelf and hit her head without even a reflexive effort to break her fall, but the only consequence was a smallish bump on the back of her head. She would not need to go to a hospital, and so she resumed her workday. She wasn't 100% by any stretch, and when the bookstore owner found out, she kind of freaked out. But Gretchen sold well over $2000 worth of books today, which is pretty good even given the ongoing uptick in independent bookstore sales. Later Gretchen went out to dinner with some newish friend who had been at Oberlin while we were there (but whom neither of us had known). I didn't know Gretchen's dinner plans, so I made a big pan of my usual bean glurp, the kind used for filling burritos. I would've made rice too, but I couldn't find the aluminum pot that goes in our rice cooker because our tweaker house sitters had put it in an unusual place.
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