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post-pandemic thruple dinner party
Sunday, May 30 2021
It was another cold, rainy day much like yesterday. I had to run the heat in the laboratory to stay comfortable, and that's on top of the waste heat from two desktop computers.
While Gretchen was at work, I got the Subaru out from behind the Nissan Leaf and loaded up the dogs. (The Leaf was finally clean and the dogs would never again be riding in that.) I drove out to Lowes in hopes of getting more of those planters designed to be balanced on top of a deck railing. But there were none; evidently my buying two of them yesterday represented part of a run on them. I should note that about half the customers and nearly all of the staff at Lowes are still wearing masks, though it seems like the rule is no longer enforced. I wore mine and will continue to wear it when in enclosed spaces full of people of dubious coronavirus hygiene.
Over at Home Depot, I never actually needed to go into the building to find similar planters, the kind that go atop deck railings. These were smaller, cheaper, and dark brown. I bought six of them, along with a couple sacks of MiracleGro garden soil, which is probably full of suspect chemicals.
After getting my usual selection of hard liquor (in this case cheap gin and mid-price tequila) at Miron, I drove out to Adam's Fairacre Farms just get plants: two poblano peppers, a jalapeñ pepper, yet another basil, an oregano, eight seedling collards, and a mystery hot pepper that supposedly resembles a tomato. It will be great to be surrounded by fruiting plants out on the east deck.
I was in the bath when Gretchen got home from the bookstore, and shortly thereafter our dinner party began. Gretchen had invited over a group she jokingly refers to as "the thruple." It consists of our friend Mary Ann (who used to live with her now-exwife Jasmin in Germantown), Jasmine, and Jasmine's new wife Moore. All three of them now live in the hamlet of Greenville up in Greene county, the same Greenville Gretchen and I drove to last week for that radio station benefit. I joined the dinner party shortly after it began, though I brought my socks with me so I could put them on while I continued to socialize. One early topic of conversation was the news that the Thruple will all be moving to Rochester, NY at the end of the summer. This is a move so they can all benefit from cheaper housing prices there. Jamsin and Moore will be living together and Mary Ann plans to be living next door. It is apparently their shared fate to live near each other regardless of which two of the three people share a marriage.
Gretchen had made macaroni and "cheese" with cutlets of marinaded tempeh, but of course there was a soup course first. It was little cold in the dining room, so we moved back to the living room, where I'd built up a hot fire of actual firewood in the stove. Gretchen mentioned that she'd been tormented all last night by the Tiffany song "I Think We're Alone Now" (after having heard it on the radio on the drive to Waterbury on Friday). Someone in our party suggested that the song was actually a cover. I was doubtful, but a Google search proved that the original version came out in 1969 and was very similar to the Tiffany version (though without the frantic 80s robot-drum fills).
As always these days, at some point I gave a tour of the laboratory, which also now always includes a demonstration of the state of the largest Oscar hair ball, now nearly 3.5 inches across.
We all hugged at the end, because in our social circle, the pandemic is functionally over. Meanwhile, over 400 people a day still are dying of coronavirus every day in the United States. Nearly all those people didn't bother to get vaccinated even after it was available to them.
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