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chicken soup weather comes to Albany
Monday, October 16 2017
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
A little after 6:00pm, after finally getting some success with a non-me remote user of The Organization's VPN, Gretchen and I drove up to Albany in preparation for tomorrow's surgery at St. Peter's Hospital. We drove directly to our hotel, the drably boxlike 9-story Ramada Inn, whose main selling point was being essentially across the street from the Honest Weight Food Co-op. As we checked in, Gretchen joked with the woman at the desk about how I wasn't really her husband and... well, she (the woman at the desk) could probably tell better stories than that. The woman agreed that she could indeed, and then said several times that the sudden change in the weather (it had become much colder) had her craving chicken noodle soup. Somehow Gretchen held her tongue, and didn't turn this into what would've been an unnecessarily confusing opportunity for vegan evangelism.
[REDACTED]
By now it was a little after 8:00pm, and we wanted to go to the Honest Weight Food Co-op before it closed. That co-op is our new favorite grocery store in Albany (for years, you'll remember, we took advantage of trips to Albany so we could fill our car with shelf-stable items from Trader Joes). Honest Weight really was almost across the street, though we did have to go a short distance eastward down Watervliet Avenue. As we rounded a corner near Motel 6, Gretchen realized her laxatives were working a little too well, and she was forced to relieve herself next to some bushes. She then spent about 20 minutes in a bathroom at Honest Weight cleaning herself and her clothes. Meanwhile, I shopped for pre-made foods: a falafel sandwich, seitan buffalo wings with cauliflower, an Indian chickpea and cauliflower salad, and, most exciting for Gretchen, vegan linguine with meatballs. Of course, Gretchen's surgery regime meant that she couldn't eat anything tonight except broth and jello, but she hoped to have enough appetite for the linguine after surgery. While at Honest Weight, I went over to the kombucha taps and sampled a few flavors. The mulled apple cider flavor was so great that I tried to get Gretchen to try it (kombucha being a liquid she actually could have) but she doesn't like kombucha at all.
I wolfed down the falafel and a good bit of seitan back in the room while Gretchen was down in the hotel breakfast room, talking to one of her former prisoner-students on the phone. Watching me eat on an empty stomach would've been unbearable.
Later Gretchen watched a little on-demand programming on our room's television, including the first two hilarious episodes of White Famous, which is a comic exploration of the racial issues a black actor faces as he cultivates his fame in Hollywood. I wasn't watching too closely, preferring to read an eBook on my phone. I'd downloaded Cathy O'Neil's unfortunately-named Weapons of Math Destruction, which documents how opaque, improperly tested proprietary algorithms make our society less fair, less rational, and less equal.
My asshole was sore from a problematic bout of diarrhea some days ago, so it would've been nice to take a bath. But Gretchen had to use the toilet so many times due to her laxative regime that the bath proved an impossibility.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?171016 feedback
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