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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   cutting glass is difficult
Sunday, June 28 2020
I haven't tidied my laboratory since 2017, so there are piles everywhere of dead devices, partially-completed projects, and other things arranged only in ways that I understand. There are still large pieces of shattered glass leaning against my a set of plastic drawers from the incident in late 2018 when a strong wind destroyed half the glass panels of the big homemade solar panel up on the solar deck. I've managed to cut a useful (if small) piece of glass from these fragments, which I used to protect the tiny camera on my weatherbot from the elements. Today, as a thunderstorm threatened, I did what I could to cut a larger piece for a similar purpose, to protect a spybot cam on the solar deck that I've been using to take time-lapse photos of the garden. That camera is somewhat sheltered where it is (beneath a balcony rail, which is in turn below the large handmade solar panel), but in a wind it can get blasted by rain. The piece of glass I needed had to be six and half inches wide (to reach from one baluster to another) and about eighteen inches long. I've never had much luck cutting glass with a glass cutter, and this time was no different. I'd score the hell out of the glass and bang the score with the little ball-hammer at the other end of the cutter. But then I'd go to snap the glass apart and the crack would appear a half inch from the score and then casually meet up with it. Still, I managed to get a piece roughly the shape I needed. I then drilled holes in it so I could attach it to the balusters. Of course, when drilling one of the holes, I managed to overheat and crack the glass, but fortunately it was in a part of the glass I could dispense with.

Powerful had gone to Woodstock with Gretchen when she went to her bookstore shift. When they came home, they had burgers and fries from Shindig, a restaurant on the main corner in Woodstock that we'd never gone to. But they have the Impossible Burger, and Gretchen wanted to see how good it was. I thought they'd done a somewhat better job than Yum Yum, though the fries were all cold and rubbery by the time I put them in my mouth.
Before Lowes closed for the evening, I drove out there with the Leaf to pick up a brand new lawnmower Gretchen had bought online. (Not only did the dogs come along for the ride, but Powerful did too.) Gretchen had been wanting a battery-powered lawnmower because she found cord logistics too complicated with mowing with a 120v plug-in lawnmower. After some research, I'd decided that the $450 80 volt Kobalt model was the best device to buy, partly because its batteries would be interchangeable with my 80v Kobalt chainsaw. I'd forgotten my mask, but fortunately Gretchen had left three in the car. The lawnmower box was so big that we had to fold the bigger of the two rear seats forward, which meant Ramona had to ride home atop that folded-down seat beside the box. Still, there was somehow enough room for everyone even with that massive cargo.
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