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Pfiser shot #2
Thursday, April 8 2021
The forty-some acre parcel of land we'd bought on Woodworth Lake is just a raw parcel with a clearing for a house. It has no utilities of any sort, and the original plan was to get National Grid to run a powerline to our building site. But to do so, it turns out that they would need an easement from a neighboring parcel, a parcel whose new owner had originally wanted to buy our parcel. That owner has been completely ignoring Gretchen's emails wishing to discuss a powerline that would supply both of our parcels. The news that we would need to obtain an easement from these possibly-hostile neighbors made Gretchen suddenly interested in building an off-grid house. Given that running a powerline to our building site would require at least $20,000. With that budget, we could afford a lot of solar panels, and perhaps even a wind-powered generator. When Gretchen broke this news to me, it was the most exciting thing I'd heard yet about the Woodworth Lake property. Periodically for the rest of the day, Gretchen and I researched solar panels, consumer wind turbines, and battery packs. Unfortunately, most of the web material we found about these products was long on design and ecomarketing buzzwords and short on actual numbers (such as kilowatts). And where they did provide numbers, they were often of the unhelpful variety, for example "kilowatt-hours per month" as a metric for a solar panel. (Why not just give a solar panel's power rating in watts when exposed to direct sunlight?)
At a little after 2:00pm, it was time for Gretchen and me to go to the site of the old Best Buy and get our second injection of the Pfiser vaccine. This time we had a proper appointment, which meant we had to wait in line, kind of like going through customs at an international airport. At the door, we were directed into one four lanes (first-shot Pfiser, second-shot Pfiser, first shot Moderna, and second shot Moderna) and then gradually moved forward. Initially our lines was moving quickly, but inevitably our line became the slowest, and I turned to Gretchen and said, "I think we're in the tard line." Meanwhile, the pudgy woman directly in front of me struck up such a fast friendship with the gentleman in front of her that when they got to the front, the vaccination center staffer thought they might be "together." When she learned they weren't, she advised them to practice more social distancing. Since we were already in the database, the paperwork went faster this time. And then that was it, we were fully vaccinated. After the required fifteen minute wait (to better deal with an immune system emergency) we left the vaccination center.
We went next door to the Target, mostly to see what vegan groceries were available. One thing they had was Impossible Burger "meat" for $6.99/pack, which Gretchen said was a very good price. And we bought a great many other things, partly because we were shopping hungry. Inevitably, Gretchen suggested we go get food somewhere. But where? We'd just been to Chipotle, which was probably best-suited to our dietary restrictions and preferences. Then it occurred to Gretchen: what about Crazy Bowlz? Crazy Bowlz is located in an isolated building across the massive parking lot from Walmart, and their whole mission seems, well, crazy: they somehow specialize in both Mexican and east-Asian food. So we drove over to the restaurant, which looked abandoned, but that was only because its dining room was closed for the pandemic. We could still order online. So order we did, being sure to tell the person on the phone to leave out the egg, which is otherwise in everything they make. Fortunately, they were familiar with the concept of veganism. While waiting for Crazy Bowlz to make our food, we wandered around briefly in Walmart, marveling at how crappy everything looked. We'd just been in Target, which, in comparison to Walmart, seems like a museum of high-design. In Walmart, by contrast, the many no-name brand new stuff on the shelves looked like something you might see in a Goodwill. This was heightened by the predominantly-blue Walmart color scheme. The smell in there, which I couldn't avoid even through my gator, was of sage and rubber, a smell that makes me think of cancer.
Gretchen and I found a place to eat out respective Crazy Bowlz in a grassy strip just up a steep escarpment from 9W. It looked like a great place for a picnic table, and there actually was one, but it was a couple hundred feet away. So we sat on the ground and slurped our noodles and tofu. The food was a little weak on flavor, but it was good enough for us to maybe come back again some time. The portion size was so enormous that neither of us could immediately eat it all.
Back at the house, I sanded down the new drawer I'd made yesterday and then went to install it using "full extension side mount ball bearing" drawer slides. Such drawer slides are tricky to install, especially in the awkward place I was installing them. Part of the problem was that the sides of the steps I was screwing the rails to were not perfectly parallel (but that's probably often the case). With a couple shims, though, I got the drawer working, though not quite as well as I'd hoped.
Gretchen and me just after getting our second Pfiser shots.
Gretchen shopping for groceries at Target.
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