|
|
|
loaner couch and refrigerator
Friday, October 15 2021
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
The code I'd made earlier this week was performing so well today when tested by my boss Alex that it was giving me real job satisfaction, making me feel productive and competent, at least with regard to my day job, for the first time in months. By the end of the day, I was working on front-end Angular code, the stuff that takes ten minutes to compile, and that had me feeling a little less amazing, but overall I went into the weekend feeling better than I've gone into a weekend feeling in a long time.
When Gretchen got back from her overnight in New Jersey, we immediately began packing the Bolt for a weekend in the Adirondacks, Gretchen's first visit to the cabin after not going there for two weekends.
On the drive up, we had to stop at the ElectrifyAmerica charging station in Albany because, well, Gretchen had just depleted the Bolt driving back from New Jersey. While waiting for the car to charge, we went to the TJ Maxx so Gretchen could find out how much was left on her gift card (a little over $4) and to get yet more supplies for the cabin. We didn't bother to go into the Walmart at all.
I was doing all the driving, and the competence I was feeling professionally was challenged by a couple occasions when, on two different occasions, unseen cars coming up fast behind me were forced to swerve out of my way as I made a leftward lane change in front of them. I used my turn signal and looked, but somehow they appeared out of nowhere anyway. People who pass other cars at extreme speeds in the left lane and don't slow for turn signals must not have much driving experience, because the likelihood of experiencing a driving-style-altering crash is high. Similarly, most of the people you see with supercars or other aggressive sportscars are driving them very sedately since by the time you see them, they've already racked up an insurance-doubling number of tickets. If you do see someone in such a car driving like a maniac, chances are good they just drove the car off a dealer's lot hours or minutes before.
The cabin was a bit of a mess when we arrived, with boxes strewn about the great room and a fair amount of trash in various piles. That chaos increased as Gretchen unboxed a couple mid-century modern chairs, which I then attached the short stubby legs to with my impact driver. Intermingled with that, I went around putting the glass on all the ceiling lamps and wall sconces. Gretchen meanwhile was organizing all the trash, separating the cardboard from the plastic and trying to consolidate it all so it wasn't taking up so much room. She also pealed up the protective cardboard from the floor, since all the construction was finished. We even had a working toilet, suggesting the landscaping on the septic field was also done (yet more soil had been added, and graded to a surprisingly smooth finish).
In addition to the toilet, the cabin now had most of its appliances and larger pieces of furniture. There was now a stacked washer & dryer in the first floor bathroom, a stove, microwave, and refrigerator in the kitchen (though the refrigerator was actually a loaner due to supply chain issues). We also had a big ass couch, though it was also a loaner and Gretchen found it comfortable but ugly (part of the ugliness came in the form of dozens of big rivets). Loaner couches have uncertain provenance, and Gretchen thought this one "smelled of poverty." She described this smell as being a mix of cheap cleaning products, cigarette smoke, and grease from discount meats, particularly chicken necks. It's a smell familiar from her time as a union organizer, back when she was trying to get minimum-wage hotel employees unionized in the Milwaukee area.
For a mid-October in the Adirondacks, the evening was decidedly balmy, though there were occasional rain storms that were making the new soil (which had been added to the yard on all sides of the house) especially sticky and gross, suggesting it had some clay content (previous loads of soil seemed to actually just be sand). Temperatures were actually so pleasant that we could sleep out on the screened-in porch, where I'd left the futon at the end of last weekend. We'd turned the generator off for the night, so Gretchen was forced to read by a battery-powered light.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?211015 feedback
previous | next |
