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the fragrance of warm tuna
Monday, July 19 2021
Dan, my old colleague at Mercy For Animals, alerted me yesterday via our diaspora Slack channel that he was in Woodstock visiting his sister. I'd missed that message and didn't see it until today, but he was still in Woodstock this evening. So we arranged to meet in the playground of Woodstock Elementary School. At the end of the workday (which I'd done remotely) I loaded Ramona into the Subaru and drove to Woodstock. I'd never been to Woodstock Elementary School in my life and hadn't paid much attention to it. It has a fairly comprehensive playground in its south side-lawn, and I could see Dan there with his little son L. There were signs forbidding "pets" from the school grounds, but of course I ignored them. It's not all that easy to socialize with someone who is looking after a pre-verbal toddler, but this was the only opportunity we had. The kid seemed to like Ramona, who obliging licked him in the face. But Ramona seemed more interested in the several adults also present, most of whom didn't seem all that happy when she came over with her usual bubbly enthusiasm. There was enough distraction in my conversation with Dan for his kid to have various minor mishaps like falling and hitting his head or by wandering into the arc being executed by a little girl innocently swinging on a swing. We only hung out for about a half hour or so.
Since I was in Woodstock and Gretchen and Neville had been working all day at the bookstore, my next destination was to visit them. When I arrived, the front door was wide open with Neville just inside it, apparently trusted not to wander off or otherwise get in trouble. At the time, in fact, Gretchen was upstairs, meaning Neville was the only one in charge of loss prevention. He suddenly became perky when Ramona and I appeared.
After Gretchen hand-sold a copy of her book Kind (version 2.0) to the day's last customer, she locked up the store and we went over to the Garden Café for dinner. It was the first time I'd been there since getting vaccinated. It was by now well-past time when anyone who wanted to be vaccinated should've been vaccinated, though a of the staff there remain freakishly unvaccinated, and you could tell who they were by the fact that they were wearing masks. Apparently these employees follow "alternative news sources" which have fed them misinformation, such as concerns that vaccines will somehow affect their fertility. Mind you, these employees are mostly liberal-minded vegans. Maddening ignorance and imperviousness to reason are, as this demonstrates, not just right-wing attributes.
I ordered my usual: a Omegang Abbey Ale and a vegetable quesadilla.
Since I'd moved my car over to the parking lot at the end of Old Forge Road, I took the dogs home with me. Just before getting into the Subaru, Ramona found an old can of cat wet food in a box near a dumpster, and that can was dripping by the time she climbed into the Subaru's back seat. Ramona didn't have a can opener or the fingers to operate one, so she proceeded to chew the can like a huge wad of chewing gum. In so doing, she managed to get the can open and fill the car with the fragrance of warm tuna (despite the windows being down). About half way down Dug Hill Road, Neville, who had been in the front seat, somehow got the can away from Ramona, eating nearly all of the cat good remaining. By the time we got home, there were numerous aluminum crumbs in the front and back seat.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?210719 feedback
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