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where the birdsmouth needs to be
Wednesday, May 30 2018
Diane the Kitten now has three patches of some sort of scabby rash on her body. The largest is the size of a dime and is above her right eye. Then there's a patch near her right wrist and another near her right elbow. Not knowing what the problem was, a few days ago I began treating it as a fungal infection. I applied some salve designed to treat athlete's foot (with active ingredients of clotrimazole and betamethasone). By today, the rash was noticeably reduced, though this might've been the effect of either the clotrimazole or the betamethasone, the former being a fungicide and the latter being a topical steroid). To know for sure, I'd need a medication with one or the other ingredients, and possibly more kittens. In discussing this with Gretchen, she'd used the term "double-blind study." And she loved the idea of needing yet more kittens with skin problems.
By today, I was in the phase of the screened-in porch project where I needed to start measuring for the cuts to be made in the sixteen foot two by sevens I would be using to make rafters. Each rafter would need three cuts: one at the top end so the sloping rafter would butt nicely with the vertical rafter attachment plate already bolted to the side of the house. Another (called a "birdsmouth") for where the rafter would rest on the north-south girder at the side of the porch. I could've worked out on paper what all the angles needed to be, but it was easier (and, given subtle differences between theory and practice) more accurate to figure out the measurements with a rafter clamped in a position close to where it would end up. So I clamped the two by seven about an inch and a quarter above where it would eventually run (once the birdsmouth was cut), and this allowed me to very precisely mark where that first cut (the one where it met the plate along the house's wall). I didn't actually make that cut yet, but when I do, then I can re-position the rafter again and work out precisely where the birdsmouth needs to be.
This evening I loaded up the dogs and drove out to Woodstock to meet Gretchen (as well as Susan and David) at the Garden Café. I actually saw Gretchen far in the distance as I approached downtown Woodstock from the intersection of Routes 212 and 375 and thought I recognized her gait. I also knew she'd worn an olive green dress to her bookstore gig, so the picture checked out.
Because of the dogs, Gretchen set us up at a table in the back corner of the Garden's outside dining area. This meant we had to pass lots of other tables on the way there. On the way, people at all the other tables we passed fussed over the dogs (even though they weren't being all that well behaved). They settled down quickly once we were at the table, though a couple little kids nearby (who happen to also live with pit bulls) kept wanting to interacting with them.
For dinner tonight, I ordered an eggplant parmesan special instead of the panini I might otherwise get. It was a lot of food and surprisingly good. I also had two drinks: a Southern Tier 2X IPA and glass of pinot grigio (the latter being a generous pour).
Topics of conversation tonight included Susan's recent fascination with siamese twins. She wanted us to look at images of a particularly fucked-up pair that will soon have their own reality show, but I averted my eyes from David's phone when he handed it to Gretchen; I had an appetite to maintain. Another subject was the recent flameout of Roseanne Barr, who is now blaming ambien for a recent racist outburst on Twitter.
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