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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decay & ruin
Biosphere II
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dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

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Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

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   brief doggy crush
Friday, May 7 2021
I saw the first hummingbird of the year today buzzing around near our hummingbird feeder, which has been empty for probably eight or nine months. I filled it up with fresh sugar water, but nobody saw any hummingbirds for the rest of the day.
This evening Gretchen took Ramona and Neville for a walk with Nancy, Ray, their dog Jack, and Hurricane, the little terrier they often dogsit for Ray's brother Kym (much like they did for Bruce, Kym's pitbull, back before he died). The place they went to walk was some park west down Route 28 near Veggie Oasis, where they would get dinner. I didn't go because I wanted some precious me time and I'd done enough walking-and-talking in a forest yesterday. One of the things I did was remove yet another piece of unnecessary two-by-four under the topmost step of the steps up to the laboratory deck, thereby making even more room for a drawer I want to put there. The board I removed today was held by screws entering it from the wall-side of the steps, meaning the only easy way to extract them would've been to remove the steps entirely. But I didn't want to do this. Instead I used an oscillating saw to cut through what screws I could and then I cut the two by four in half in place, a task made difficult since I was working within a recessed rectangular space. I considered using a chainsaw for this, though that probably would've destroying more wood than intended. What ended up working was using a spade drill to create a large hole reaching from one 1.5 inch face to the other 1.5 inch face 3.5 inches away. And then I attacked the edges of the hole using the oscillating tool and a side-cutting bit on a Dremel. It's amazing how little wood it takes to preserve the structural integrity of a piece of dimensional wood, but eventually I'd cut the necessary amount, and then I could extract the accursed piece as two jagged fragments. The whole thing felt like a crackhead project, partly because I was jacked up on pseudoephedrine at the time.

I ate some cannabis and grabbed a beer and was planning to do my usual solitary hangout thing down in the greenhouse. But then Gretchen and others returned, and Gretchen said Ray and Nancy wanted to see me. So I joined them in the living room for a big cardboard fire with finger foods and drinks. All the dogs were there too, including Hurricane. It seems Ramona has grudgingly admitted Hurricane to the pack, though she did growl at him when he jumped up on the couch beside her. The discussion was brisk and happy, partly because we were all socializing again indoors for the first time in a year, and partly because the stress is off Ray and Nancy financially since they moved to a cheaper Obamacare health insurance that is saving them $1000/month. In order to qualify for it, Ray needed to work fewer hours, so it's been something of a win-win. Gretchen has been concerned about Ray's moods at various times in history, but today she was convinced that the good old Ray was "back."
Conversation inevitably turned to Blake Bailey, the author of the definitive Phillip Roth biography, and how copies of that biography are being pulped after it came out that Bailey groomed underage girls for sex. (Gretchen scooped up two copies of that biography the moment she learned.) I'd heard this story twice already and didn't want to hear it again, so I went up the laboratory, joined by the dogs Jack and Hurricane. Hurricane was particularly excited, because he'd never been upstairs in our house before. As happens with everyone, Hurricane was particularly struck by my laboratory. And when his little legs weren't quite enough for him to climb the steps out to the laboratory deck, I gave him some assistance. It blew his mind to be about to go from the laboratory out into the darkness, looking down at the dark mysterious woodlands. Up until then, Hurricane had seemed indifferent or ambivalent about me, but after seeing my laboratory, he seemed to think I was the coolest human in the entire world. He stretched out on the laboratory Ottoman (normally Oscar's habitat; all the cats had fled) and took a nap while I sipped scotch and did whatever on my computer.
Eventually I rejoined the small gathering downstairs, and when I did, Hurricane did too. But now, instead of ignoring me, he lay at my feet. Eventually, though, the honeymoon between us waned and he went back to hanging out mostly with either Jack or Nancy. At one point I tried to catch his eye to rekindle the friendship we'd started in the laboratory, he gave me a dismissive glance. Fickle is the heart, even among participants in platonic trans-species friendships.


Nancy with Hurricane in the living room this evening.


Ramona being pretty.


The couch this evening. From back: Ray, Ramona, Neville, Jack, Gretchen.


Hurricane, when he briefly thought I was the coolest, in the laboratory this evening.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?210507

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