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a lot like vindication
Thursday, August 9 2018
location: Twenty Ninth Pond, Essex County, New York
Last evening up at the access road cellphone spot, I'd heard a loon in the distance, perhaps near Bullhead Pond (the pond with the fancy house that Zillow indicates to be worth three million dollars). The loon came closer and then kept going, though it's possible it (more likely a "he") landed in Twenty Ninth Pond. In any case, by early this morning there was indeed a loon in our pond. Hearing him startled Ramona and rousted me out of bed, and I ran down to the dock to look for him. There we was, far off in the northeast lobe, just sitting there in the water and not doing much. Evidently he had already had his fishy breakfast. I should mention that the reason I thought the loon to be male was that Twenty Ninth Pond is not suitable for nesting (it has no islands), and so this one was probably a bachelor male (or perhaps a non-breeding female). For this reason Gretchen and I always refer to any single loon we see in Twenty Ninth Pond as "Throckmorton," a musty highbrow male name chosen for its comic absurdity.
It was a windy day, and large masses of spindly pond weed kept arriving at the dock, and then I'd have to fork it out onto the shore to keep it from becoming leech habitat. When the pile became too large, I concealed it beneath a tiny spruce tree. Later, though, after the dogs had excavated an alarmingly large hole in the yard, I could use the pond weed as fill. Since they probably are a consequence of the presence of an unusual nutrient in the pond water (nitrogen or phosphorus), the blooms of pond weed likely make for good compost.
This afternoon I took a recreational 5mg dose of oxycodone and then read more from Learning React: Functional Web Development with React and Redux. I wouldn't say an opioid is a great study drug, but it is possible to absorb boring material while under its effects.
Later I took a bow saw and cleared the trail to the nearby cellphone spot, the one up the hill to the north of the cabin (which only seems to work for my AT&T-based cellphone, not Gretchen's Verizon-based one). I then extended the path further to the east, up into an area that had been logged of all its large white pine trees 15 to 20 years ago.
Tonight Gretchen and I collaborated somewhat on a meal consisting of whole wheat spaghetti, bok choy from our garden, tofu, and peanut sauce. After that, I went up to the nearby cellphone spot to check in on the diaspora of my former colleagues. A lot of news had happened today; apparently the founder of The Organization had acted to remove its existing president (Matt Rice) and his henchwoman, the General Counsel, and replaced them with the head of some other farmed animal advocacy organization. Mind you, it was Matt Rice and the General Counsel who had decided to fire me after I'd started making waves about tech decisions being made without my input. That they'd only survived two months after firing me felt a lot like vindication. To my knowledge, I was the only person to ever call out Matt Rice in front of the whole organization (in an email to Employees on the night before I was fired). Ah, the delicious schadenfreude!
At the end of the new extension of my cellphone path, I was actually able to join tonight's diaspora happy hour, though the connection was too bad to contribute much. The only other people in it were Allison and Cameron, and Cameron was the only current employee of The Organization. I asked him to forward me a copy of an email sent by The Organization's founder, but he refused.
[REDACTED]
Back at the house, I told Gretchen the news, and she was overjoyed. She insisted that I not take my old job back without talking to her first. I said it was unlikely anyone was going to be offering me any job back, particularly with the terms Gretchen would demand: that I be paid for my two months' absence.
Later Gretchen and I watched the final two episodes of the third season of Better Call Saul, the one where Chuck tries to find what was using the power being shown dispensed by his electrical meter.
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