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limited free charging
Tuesday, September 7 2021
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
My ass was in trouble today. I was at the office and I had to keep getting up to go to the bathroom I prefer to shit. I prefer shitting at home, where I can blast my ass clean with a jet of water. (Because of a scary possibly-recluse spider just under the brownhouse toilet seat and the hose in the upstairs bathroom, I've pretty much stopped shitting in the brownhouse.)
I let my Bolt charge at the Red Hook Town Hall until 1:00pm before going to get it, but the charging had already ended. Evidently the chargers (which charge for free) only allow for a three or four hour session before stopping, because the car only had a charge capable of getting it 130 miles (a full charge being about 200 miles). I drove directly to the vicinity of Bubbie's so I could then eat one of their burritos across the street (next to a multi-ethnic table of young men; at another sat the homeless man I'd seen less than a week ago; he would occasionally mumble to himself in the way that homeless men often do).
After work, I drove to Home Depot on the way home to get supplies to fix our household plumbing. Our well pump runs all the time and its pressure relief valve and the PVC fittings connecting the well's pressure tank to the household plumbing seem to be leaking, so I bought a new pressure tank and relief valve. Tonight as Gretchen was preparing dinner, I thought I'd take another stab at trying to fix the old pressure tank on the chance that it was indeed fixable. About a year or so ago, I tried pumping some air into its air bladder (the thing against which the well pump pushes so as to pressurize the household plumbing system). That hadn't worked very well, and I'd assumed that a lack of pressure in that bladder hadn't been the problem. Tonight, though, I pumped in a great deal more air, allowing my little compressor to force air into it for several minutes as it pushed water out of an open faucet. The effects of this effort were immediate and better than I expected. Now household water pressure is much more consistent and no longer fluctuates five or six times a minute (which is how often the well pump had been kicking on when a faucet was open). Another interesting result of the refilled air bladder was that it seemed to have fixed all the little leaks that had been happening whenever the well pump turned on. This leads me to suspect that with a deflated air bladder, the pressure produced by the well pump actually peaks well above the target pressure of 40 psi, causing leaks to appear in connections and fittings whose specs are momentarily exceeded. The air bladder cushions against such peaks and gives time for the pressure-sensitive well switch to do what it needs to do.
Meanwhile Gretchen had made two different dishes for dinner, one involving an Indian simmer sauce and one involving a Chinese faux beef. We ate these while watching an episode of Jeopardy! and The Other Two, though I felt full after just eating the Indian dish.
A tabby cat at Mac's Farm & Garden World in Red Hook.
A sticker on a Subaru at the Chocolate Factory in Red Hook.
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