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dysphoric soldering
Tuesday, September 1 2020
Often when I drink kratom tea, it has little or no effect. Sometimes, though, I drink enough to experience a substantial increase in my sense of well-being. Whenever that happens, what usually follows is a dysphoric crash that can last for an hour or two. Today I was wise enough to stop drinking the kratom soon after the euphoria commenced. I went out in the woods with my camera and walked as far as the stone wall, repairing a couple minor collapses, where rocks had been dislodge from the top, probably by squirrels. (Judging by the debris on top of the wall, squirrels like to eat acorns up there.)
The dysphoria did eventually arrive as I was trying to solder together parts of the plumbing I want to use to create a common spigot for the hot and cold water in the new bathtub. Usually I am able to make good solders between fittings that weren't really intended to be soldered together just so long as they fit roughly together. So when the hex-shaped middle of a quarter-inch-to-quarter-inch compression adapter seemed to fit inside a half inch sweat fitting, I thought I could solder it there. But one of the little D-shaped voids between a hexagonal edge and the half inch adapter refused to take any solder, and I ended up ruining both the pieces. I gave up on soldering after that as my dysphoria worsened. What eventually helped was to take a nice hot bath while reading about the battle for mass-market color television in Tube, David E. Fisher's history of television. (Opening that book to just about any page always takes me to something fun to read, even if I've read it before.)
Meanwhile Gretchen spent much of the afternoon and early evening talking on the phone to various Carries: first the one in Mettacahonts and then the one in Hood River, Oregon.
A red eft south of the wall. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?200901 feedback
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