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worst inclinations for impatience
Monday, January 7 2019
A year ago on this day, I burned through the last of a second tranche of firewood in the woodshed, the only tranche I'd been burning that heating season. This left me me with only a single tranche (about the same as a cord) for the rest of the season. There was also the annex, should I have needed to use it. But I only managed to need slightly more than a cord for the rest of the season, indicating that early January is when the middle of the heating season fell, at least for the winter of 2017-2018. Since "peak cold" happens about two weeks later, the second half of "climatic winter" (which is bisected by "peak cold" and runs from early December to early March) must require less heating due to several factors, including increased sunlight and (perhaps) human acclimation to winter.
At work today as I migrated scads of methods, I listened to audio-heavy YouTube clips, as I have for months now. Today I listened to a particularly engrossing interrogation of Russel Williams, a colonel in the Canadian Air Force suspected of a series of break-ins, thefts, rapes, and murders. It was just the sort of thing my brain could follow fully while also doing routine Javascript coding. The clip was full of drama and suspense, though it also ultimately provided the satisfaction one requires of such things (and which we rarely get in the real world).
At around noon, I drove out to the Red Hook Hannaford, mostly to get workplace snacks such as peanuts, mixed nuts, and crackers. Though I also got a couple pre-made Simply Asia noodle dishes (unfortunately, the teriyaki is the only one without shrimp in it). At the time, the weather was windy and brutally cold, and it was unpleasant just crossing the Hannaford parking lot to get to the spacing in the parking lot I'd managed to find.
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On the way home from work, I visited the Home Depot, mostly to get quarter inch flexible copper pipe to replace the piece of plastic hose supplying the boiling-hot hotwater tap. I wanted to do that because the water is coming from the hot water supply, and there is a potential (particularly in the summer) for that water to be too hot to be carried in that sort of plastic. While at the Home Depot, I also bought a bunch of 3/4 inch copper fittings for a chandelier I intend to build to replace the "space ship" fluorescent light in the center of the kitchen. The chandelier is to consist of six bulbs in a simple row, hanging downward like an upside-down menorah. Since the light sockets will have to be attached to this somehow, I looked for brass fittings that would be able to neck down a half-inch copper fitting small enough to accept an eighth-inch nipple, the size that certain kinds of light sockets are designed to screw onto. But the Home Depot itself had no such fittings in brass, iron, copper, or even plastic. So I drove to Lowes to look at what they had. They had precisely what I needed, but this shit gets expensive when there are six of something that requires three or four components, each costing two to four dollars. As it was, Lowes didn't have enough of the parts I needed in stock. Later when I got home, I looked at how I had done things when I'd made the chandelier for Gretchen's first floor office. I saw that I'd cheated: I'd just drilled a hole in the side of a half-inch copper fitting to accept the set-screw for that place in its the ceramic light socket's ass where an eighth-inch nipple would've gone, allowing me to attach that socket directly to half-inch copper tubing, no multiple fancy brass pieces required.
Back at the house, Gretchen had decided the grey paint we'd used to paint the kitchen was too lavender, and had gone out to buy a grey that looked a lot more like light sage green in comparison. Colors in that family seem to be what Gretchen always ends up with. Unfortunately, she'd been a bit sloppy with the paint, getting it in lots of places it shouldn't've been. She rolled right up the ceiling with the paint rollers, getting splotches on that, and she'd mowed right over the light switches and thermostat. She'd also managed to roll beyond some of the masking-tape boundaries I'd carefully put on the fancy new maple-wood cabinets. Though she finds it dull and repetitive, Gretchen is normally pretty good when it comes painting, but I think this particular kitchen project is bringing out her worst inclinations for impatience.
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