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anything but blister packs
Tuesday, October 9 2018
Last night I had a dream that there was a forest fire happening in the trees just outside the house (the same house where Gretchen and I have been living now for sixteen years). Small clusters of flame had appeared on the roof and clapboards, and there was also a moderately-big fire raging in the woodshed. It seems the fire had started from embers blowing out of the house's chimney. I immediately grabbed some source of water (it must've been the magical kind that is only available in dreams, as it was small, easily available, and accurately shot a surprisingly large blast of water). As I was responding to this emergency, Gretchen was on the phone, oblivious to the world (as she always is when she is on the phone). I hollered something about the fire, but it was mostly suppressed by the time she was able to help me with it. There wasn't much damage in the fire's aftermath, but one of the copper pipes supplying hydronic fluid to the rooftop solar panels had dropped away in a hallway (one that doesn't actually exist between the teevee room and the laboratory), and the floor was flooded with hundreds of gallons of think greenish fluid (much more than the entire household hydronic system contains).
At some point in the night Oscar tried to wake me up by reaching into the air hole through the blanket that reaches my nose and mouth (otherwise I am usually completely covered). I felt his claws raking my cheek and threw him off in annoyance.
It was another fairly good day in the workplace. I had less I definitely needed to do, and yet I felt competent and useful doing the things I did. My work involved edits to an important import script (the thing I'd started writing on my first day at work in Python) and debugging a tricky database issue.
At around 1:00pm, I went to that burrito place I like and sat down in the dining room and ate my burrito all by myself. I eat quickly, but I try not to draw attention to my gluttony. Still, when your hands are covered with salsa and things falling from disintegrating burrito, it's hard to keep up appearances.
I left work a little before 5:00pm and got off Route 199 just across the Hudson at Route 32, which I drove down to the Frank Sottile Blvd., which I mostly use as a non-9W route to get between Lowes and Home Depot. I don't know that I'd ever been on the south end of Frank Sottile before, but it's not far south of the traffic lights at its junction with Miron Lane (a street that shares its name with a liquor store I patronize). I mostly was in this part of the world to get diphenhydramine from ShopRite, which sells them loose in bottles. I much prefer getting pills out of bottles than fighting to liberate them from blister packs (which, additionally, are a composite material that cannot be recycled). While there, also got a gallon of cheap white vinegar (for use in the laboratory, not kitchen), a half gallon of Mr. & Mrs. T "Fiery Pepper" bloody mary mix, some lime-flavored corn chips (for drive-time consumption) and a sixpack of Sierra Nevada Torpedo. After crossing 9W, I dropped into Miron's liquor to buy supplies for the laboratory liquor cabinet: a half gallon of cheap gin and a $25 750 mL bottle of single-malt speyside scotch.
I'd like to go off on a momentary tangent about types of liquors and how I came to like the ones I do. As a kid, my family only ever stocked two species of hard liquor: some sort of brown rum and some sort of brandy. That was in. My parents didn't really believe in clear spirits, and never drank anything containing vodka or (God forbid) gin. My father disliked scotch, saying it tasted "too medicinal," and that was probably the problem with gin as well. Initially I assumed that I had the same tastes that my parents did. After all, I had the same politics and the same views on religion. I understood there to be a strong nurture element to this, but there might've been a nature element too. According to my diary, as late as April of 1987 (when I was 19 years old), I still assumed "rum and coke" was my favorite strong drink (it was actually my mother's).
But at some point I started drinking vodka, perhaps just because it was generally cheaper than the rums my parents bought. I also drank brandy, mostly just from the inertia of that having been in the liquor cabinet throughout most of my teenage years and young adulthood (not that I really raided my parents' liquor cabinet until after college). But at some point, probably while I was in California in my early 30s, I realized I didn't actually much like the slight flavor that is present in vodka (particularly the vodkas I could afford). So I switched to gin, and I have been drinking gin ever since. As for brandy, eventually (probably after moving to Hurley in my mid-30s), bourbon became my preferred brown liquor. But cheap bourbon has its own issues, and by the late 2000s, particularly after getting a partial bottle of cheap blended scotch during Hurricane Irene (in 2011), I decided I preferred scotch, the peatier the better. The problem with blended scotches is that they tend to be less remarkable in every way, including peatiness. So this is why my go-to brown liquor these days is cheap single-malt scotch. As Ray has said, "as long as it is single-malt, scotch is going to be good [enough]."
Back home, it was a warm evening for this time of year. Eventually I took a couple 50 mg diphenhydramine gel caps (what I'd bought a bottle of today at ShopRite), took a bath, and then, after watching a few American Music Awards performances, I climbed in bed.
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