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a moment of nice weather Saturday, December 11 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Last night we'd initially tried to sleep in the new king-sized bed in the upstairs bedroom, with me joking that we were sleeping in the extra king-sized bed in our extra house. But eventually the dogs had found us, so we'd relocated downstairs to the bed with a set of doggy steps. But later in the night when Neville was fucking things up by being on top of the blankets while Ramona devoured all possible leg room, I returned to that bed and experienced some amazing sleep all by myself.
It was rainy and unseasonably warm this morning, with significant fog produced as warm air came into contact with soil that had already frozen solid.
Our typical morning routine included a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread that had been languishing uneaten back in Hurley. My dad used to buy me such loaves when I was kid, and I eat the whole thing all by myself. But I've lost such habits over the subsequent decades and had been ignoring that loaf as it sat on the counter. In the cabin, though, it looked appealing as breakfast. Gretchen suggested I put vegan cream cheese on it, and that proved to be a great idea.
Later Gretchen started hanging art, which is something I always hate. This is because if I let her do it, she'll use the wrong hanging hardware which I will have to redo. But if I help out, it always turns out that she has some little problem with what I've done, which I then have to change. This results in additional unused holes in the wall, which drives me crazy. This all played out in exactly this way as we hung a beautiful painting of a bird-filled tree above the wood rack, and after that I said I was done hanging art for the day. But there I was, helping hang the very next piece. Things went better after that for some reason.
Next Gretchen opened up a flat-pack composter that had come from Overstock.com. The design was ingenious; assembled, it would form an actual octagonal drum with two separate chambers. But unfortunately a very important piece hadn't been included: the central axle. Gretchen thought Overstock might be able to ship that to us separately, so I went ahead and assembled everything else while Gretchen had a long conversation with her childhood friend Dina in Tel Aviv.
After that, I switch from caffeine to kratom and managed to nearly recreate that feeling of mild euphoria I'd experienced a week ago. I think the key to this is the transition for caffeiene, as I've never had it happen from anything else.
Late in the afternoon, Gretchen was having luppertime hunger pangs, so she whipped up a quick "salad" of kidney beans, corn, and green beans, all from cans. It wasn't up to her usual standards, but that ended up being our dinner.
At around dusk, we fired up the generator for the first time today and I went down to the basement to begin installing outlets in the central stairs area. The idea was to put two outlets on the west side of the stairs, two on the east side of the stairs, and one in the closet under the stairs between them (a closet that has already been sheetrocked). None of this was particularly difficult to implement, since I had all the right tools for the job and plenty of romex cable.
I came upstairs at some point and went outside to piss. At that moment, the rain that had been falling all day had finally stopped and the air was freakishly warm and still. I told Gretchen this and she wanted to go for a walk, but couldn't because she had scheduled a phone date with her old girlfriend Barbara. And I was on a roll in the basement and didn't want to break my momentum. That was too bad, because the glorious period of calm warm weather was fleeting. Within an hour the rain had resumed, quickly becoming torrential. And then the winds began to howl, reminding me that we really should install a wind turbine just to see what it can do for us on such occasions, which seem more common on this knolltop than back at our mountaintop home in Hurley.
Though intense, this storm system was relatively gentle compared to what it had done in Kentucky and Illinois. There, tornados had cut swaths of destruction hundreds of miles long and killed dozens of people.
With the wiring all installed, I could then proceed with my plan of installing plywood on the wall east of the stairs. The reason for this was that it would provide a solid surface for me to hang other things on without having to worry about the location of studs. Amusingly, I'd tried to bring that plywood down the indoor stairs, but that quickly proved impossible and I was forced to bring it in through the Bilco doors. Plywood is a tricky wall material, because it is both difficult to cut and difficult to repair, two characteristics drywall does not have. Fortunately, the holes I cut for the outlets, switch box, and kickspace heater all were in the right places. The only mistake I made was measuring the first stud in alignment with the edge of a stud instead of its middle, a mistake that was poised to throw everything off until I cut a 3/4 inch strip off the next piece of plywood. I ended up installing all three pieces of plywood, and by the time I was finished and came upstairs, Gretchen and the dogs had all gone to bed. I fixed myself a gin & tonic and kicked back in a chair, satisfied with having completed such a big chore. I'd taken a mild recreational dose of cannabis too, and it contributed to my pleasant buzz, tinged though cannabis buzzes always are with a melancholy note of disease.
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