Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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got that wrong
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Like my brownhouse:
   when you're white and know enough not to wear sweat pants
Tuesday, December 17 2019
There was only about an inch or two of snow (or sleet) on the ground this morning, which wouldn't have been such a big deal were it not also raining and temperatures were not even as high as 30 degrees Fahrenheit. On any other day, I would've decided to "work" remotely, but my attendance was required at a big database planning meeting. One of my colleagues had even been flown back from Sacramento to attend.
I don't have to attend many meetings at my workplace, but today there were actually two. The first was that database planning meeting. All it did was set some high level parameters (such as whether the database would just be an extension of an existing one or a all new design). Fortunately, it's looking like I will have wide latitude in this design. Then, just after I made a quick slushy run to Hannaford to buy black bean salad and black bean & garlic Tostitos, there was another meeting between a number of us in our company and a fellow company gobbled up by the private equity conglomerate that serves as our common corporate overlord. One of the efficiency experts had raised a question about whether or not our two companies were working on projects similar enough to be consolidated, the sort of synergy that private equity firms love, particularly when it means they can eliminate some dead weight. But in the space we work in, it turns out that differences in identical-seaming products can be profound. Also, my boss Alex had already sold the product we were building to enough customers to pay for it, something I don't think our sister company had managed to do.

This evening, Ray and Nancy had us over for a dinner party. Also in attendance were Sarah the Vegan, Alana, and one of Ray & Nancy's friends named Anne. Ray had made polenta with spicy red sauce with chunks of Beyond Beef burgers sizzled in shallow pools of oil. (As with everything Ray makes, it involved lots of oil.)
Dinner conversation lingered for a long time on the topic of the Uptown Hannaford supermarket, which we all refer to as "Ghettoford" due to the many weird and marginal people seen there, usually by Nancy. She retold all her greatest Hannford stories, including the one where a woman with no hands asked her to retrieve a jar of pickles from the shelf. Recently, she'd been present when a Hannaford employee was heard telling a coworker to pursue a man who had just stolen a bouquet of flowers. This led into tales told by two of us about self-reinforcing addictions to shoplifting back in the early 2000s (prior to 2009) and how hard it is to end up with a criminal record when you're white and know enough not to wear sweat pants to your court appearances.
There was also a surprisingly long discussion of our various pooping habits, which Gretchen kicked off by saying she could never be addicted to opiates because she "likes pooping too much." To that, I said that a low-level opioid addiction would serve me well, as it would mean that I wouldn't have to poop four or five times a day (as I presently do).
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My drive this morning on Hurley Mountain Road just north of the Dug Hill Road intersection, past those sprawling oaks in the Esopus Valley. Click to enlarge.


From farthest to closest: Ramona the Dog, Jack the Dog, and Neville the Dog on the couch at Ray and Nancy's house this evening. Ramona and Jack did a fair amount of playing while Neville mostly stayed out of it.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?191217

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