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hyperbolic rat maze comparison
Tuesday, January 8 2019
[REDACTED]
The guys (including Colin) who were supposed to install the floating shelves and the butcher block on the kitchen island today didn't come today for whatever reason, so the kitchen remained as we'd left things on Monday night. Meanwhile, a thought had occurred to Gretchen: she didn't actually need Central Hudson to come out and hook up the ends of the gas line I'd installed. The only thing we needed for that job was a licensed plumber; the only reason I wasn't doing it was my lack of experience with piping gas and any liabilities that might introduce should things go badly pear-shaped (as Colin might say). So Gretchen managed to track down an actual plumber, the only one we'd ever invited into our house, and he'd said he could come by to do the job tomorrow. So it looks like we'll be getting our stovetop working very soon.
Another thing Gretchen has been pursuing is the replacement of the kitchen window. Currently it's a perfect square divided into two smaller rectangular windows that can be hinged outward to let air in. Gretchen thinks the eight-inch-wide post dividing the two halves occludes too much of the incoming light. She also thinks having openable windows in that location is unnecessary given that she almost never opens those windows. So she's been having guys come out to give her quotes on replacing it all with a single fixed-pane window. One guy from a local window installation place quoted her $1200 yesterday, but today a woman from the Home Depot came out and quoted a figure of only $600. I think the whole idea is an unnecessary and wasteful, but Gretchen seems pretty adamant about it, so she'll be getting her way. I was a bit dismayed to learn the replacement window would be vinyl, given that it would be replacing one made of wood. I compared this to tearing down the old Beaux Arts Penn Station to replace it with the existing modernist rat maze, and Gretchen thought this was gross hyperbole.
Unusually for this time of year, tonight there was a thunderstorm. It was too warm for thundersnow, though a little later a good downpour started. The sound of thunder was so alien at this time of year that I went out on the laboratory deck to look up at the sky. With Donald J. Trump in office, one never knows if the thunder one hears is really the end of the world. It definitely seemed in keeping with his overall sense of drama that he would start a nuclear war during the middle of his first speech ever from the Oval Office, in this case a naked attempt to instill fear in Americans about the phantom threat of bad people slipping over the border. Increasing that fear will be necessary if there is to be any hope that they might support him in his ongoing showdown with Congress. We're in, you see, day number eighteen or nineteen of a government shutdown because Donald J. Trump is refusing to sign any budget that does not include money for a linear monument to his personal racism. The problem for Donald J. Trump is the same problem that confronted the Boy Who Cried Wolf (though, in our Trumpian version of the story, a wolf never actually materialized).
I'd been drinking kratom tea and it was making me feel better than it usually does.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?190108 feedback
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