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Sadie-Hawkins phone swap
Tuesday, October 5 2021
Gretchen thought she'd have to drive up to the cabin today to be there to receive a furniture delivery, and since her phone doesn't work at the cabin, we'd agreed to swap phones for the day (which I was — perhaps errantly — referring to as "pulling a Sadie Hawkins"). I'd added her profile to my Gmail setup, but, because Facebook doesn't allow multiple accounts per phone, she would have to be communicating with me as me and I'd have to be communicating as her in Direct Messages (our preferred communication method). There was also the issue of her contacts, all of which would be with me. I'd have to look up a few of those and send them to her. I also wondered what would happen if I needed to deal with two-factor authentication.
But by late morning, Gretchen had arranged with John Jr., the "stoner plumber," to sign for the delivery, since he would be there anyway installing the toilet and stubbing out cold and hot water for the sink. That meant Gretchen no longer needed to drive to the cabin. With her day suddenly open, she immediately filled it with a plan to visit Powerful at the hospital down in Westchester. An ablation surgery on Thursday had gone smoothly, but hadn't improved his heart function. So now doctors were installing a "balloon pump," which is a sort of pedal-assist for the heart. It's the sort of thing that is done when a heart isn't up to the task of circulating blood in a person even when he or she is at rest. I suggested to Gretchen that she could stop by the office on her way to the Taconic (which she usually catches via I-84) tyo swap phones. She thought that was a good idea and suggested we could meet for lunch too and swap cars (I was driving the Bolt and she was driving Powerful's Prius).
So a little before 1:00pm, I collected the Bolt from where I had it charging behind the Red Hook Town Hall and drove down to Rhinebeck. We were, of course, having falafel in Rhinebeck. As I was entering Aba's, Gretchen passed in the Prius with Ramona and Neville. I'd said the dogs could hang out with me for the rest of the workday.
We ate our falafel out in front of the restaurant, soon joined by Cathy and Roy (Aba's owners), talking mostly about Powerful, but also about how Cathy is now a grandmother. Cathy was icked-out about an abandoned surgical mask on the sidewalk near one of her tables (they kind of resemble discarded maxi-pads in this form), and went to get rid of it the moment the nearby table cleared. "It's a whole new way for things to be gross," I remarked. Cathy noticed a rash that had developed on Gretchen's right cheek, a possible a result of mask wearing, and asked about it. Gretchen had no idea where it came from or what to do. She had also developed what she was referring to as a "boil" on her forehead, though that might've been unrelated.
As we ate at the little outdoor table, I was delighted to see a little dark-grey vole scurrying about between his or her nest beneath a raised bed (from which he or she had dug out some soil) and a hump of wet leaves against a fence. I don't think I've ever seen a living vole before. All my exposure to them up until today came in the form of corpses harvested from cats. Voles don't move very quickly and don't have eyes one can see, so they probably make easy prey for a cat who happens upon one.
Back in the office, the dogs were very well-behaved, but this was more or less wasted on the two other people there today, Scott and Jason, neither of whom seem to like dogs. People who like dogs make fusses about them. Unless they're assholes, people who don't politely ignore them.
At the end of the day, I got another bag of unmodified thinset (for completing the floor tiling job begun last weekend), along with various thick pieces of steel framing hardware that might prove useful with dock building. I have a bunch of hardware for the floating part of the dock, but I'm still finding my way with the stationary parts.
I then drove on Albany Avenue to the Uptown Hannaford ("Ghettoford") to get a few provisions. I would've gone to the Hannaford on 9W, but I wanted to get a canvas from Catskill Art & Office Supply, which is now near the Cornell Extension in the Kingston Plaza (the place where the Ghettoford is). But CA&OS is, it turns out, only open until 5:00, and by then it was closing in on 6:00. So I got a half gallon of gin specifically for the cabin from JK's instead. It would nice to have some hard liquor to sip on at the cabin instead of having to bloat up on Hazy Little Things.
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