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trying to work from the cabin
Monday, December 20 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
I woke up around 8:00am, started a fire in the woodstove and switched on the generator. The solar installation guys would be coming eventually, though I wasn't sure exactly when that would be. After firing up my work-issued laptop and starting another doomed tax import, I went out the Subaru to begin the process of bringing in all the furniture (something that was easy for me to do all on my own). At some point, a single old white Subaru Forester arrived, but its driver stayed inside with the engine running for at least a half hour as he waited for the others in his solar installation team to arrive. It was cold, with temperatures in the 20s, but the sky was clear and it wasn't too windy, so it wasn't a bad one for installing solar panels. The main problem was that the roof had about two inches of snow on it, and it was a crusty snow, the kind that results when freezing rain falls on snow. (The trees were glazed with a thin layer of ice as well.)
Eventually the other guys on the solar installation team showed up and I talked to the main guy. I asked what he was going to do about the snow and he said "shovel it off" like I was stupid for even asking. This made me think he might be a bit of a dick, but he was reasonably nice on all the other occasions I interacted with him. I showed him the basement so he'd know where the wires would have to run and that sort of thing.
Meanwhile my boss Alex was having a meltdown about the tax build I was supposed to be doing. He was upset I'd decided to do it from the cabin and seemed to think the cabin was the reason I was having trouble. But I was doing the whole build on my work-issued laptop in a way that didn't even require a network connection. I'd even installed the appropriate version of SQL Server as an additional instance on the laptop so the .bak file would be compatible with the client's computer. Alex kept communicating with me every half hour or so in a way that made it hard to focus on my workplace work, let alone the the things I might've wanted to do at the cabin. At some point he told me I absolutely had to come into the office tomorrow, which meant I wouldn't be able to be at the cabin for a second day of solar installation. By that point, the solar guys had called it quits for the day. They'd shoveled off what snow they could and put chemicals on the rest and then they'd staged all twelve panels (200 square feet of surface area) on one of the decks.
So I did a little cleaning up and organizing and then, at a little after 4:00pm, climbed into the Subaru and began driving back to Hurley. To make things interesting, I took Route 67 from Johnstown all the way to Ft. Johnson instead of doing what Google always recommends, that is, forking off Route 67 to take Stoner Trail to Tribes Hill and then eastward on Route 5 to Ft. Johnson. On this new way, I passed several large solar farms. Further on, the road became a bit twisty-turny, which is probably why Google never sends me that way. I would've been perfectly happy to drive on such roads, but of course I found myself behind some overly-cautious Boomer (one assumes) unwilling to get out of the way for us (relative) young'uns.
This was a lot of driving to be doing in just two days, and I hadn't really had enough sleep either, so on the ride home I kind of had to force myself to stay awake. It definitely helped to be listening to more anti-MLM YouTube content.
Back at the house, there was nothing I really wanted to do except take a bath. Driving home this point, Oscar the Cat kept trying to jump into my lap every time I sat down, something he never tries when I'm covered with water. Gretchen was surprised to see me back home already.
The solar installation convoy today, viewed from the upstairs bedroom's west-facing window. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?211220 feedback
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