Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

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Like my brownhouse:
   last day of 2021
Friday, December 31 2021
I've been having trouble getting Ramona and Neville to follow me outside, maybe because they don't want to end up in a car for two hours riding to the cabin in the Adirondacks. But late this morning I got them to come with me on a walk on the Farm Road. I brought my electric scooter (which I haven't used in a month or two) so I could bring home a slab of bluestone I'd pre-positioned yesterday.
To better get the fumes from our cabin's boiler away from the house, I would need two inch PVC and some fittings. I had a piece of pipe, but the only fitting I could find had been partly sawn off. So I decided to make another trip out to the Home Depot. On the way I stopped at Beer World in hopes of finding an imperial stout (which are hard to come by in supermarkets). I ended up getting some sort of ale by mistake, mostly because it, like many imperial stouts, had been brewed in a whiskey barrel. I also got some sour beers for Gretchen on the chance that she might want one tonight, the last night of the year.
At the Home Depot, I got the PVC I wanted as well a bunch more fittings and valves for use with PEX. I want to have everything I need when I build out the plumbing for the upstairs bathroom. The dogs had happily come along with me, evidently sensing I wouldn't be driving to the cabin. To reward them, I let them sniff around the Home Depot parking lot as a light rain fell in. Sometimes they find chicken bones and remnants of sandwiches, but not today.
On the way home, I went out of my way to visit the new home of the Tibetan Center thrift store, which I used to patronize all the time but haven't visited in nearly two years. The new place is down the hill from the old place, closer, that is, to Kingston. And it's a lot less chaotic, as there has been a lot of time for curation. I found an old sewing machine ($15) and a cheap carbon monoxide detector (something us landlords are always needing to replace), so I bought both of them. Later I had to improvise a power cord to test the sewing machine, as it had a non-standard connector and didn't come with a cord.
Gretchen returned from the cabin early this evening, bringing with her not just a big Sicilian pizza from Little Anthony's, but also three burgers from a new vegan burger joint in Albany called Wizard Burger. Gretchen also learned the Little Anthony's is about to close permanently due to some intrigue in the family that owns it. Fortunately, the one member of the family with rights to its name and recipes isn't an asshole and he may sell these things to someone, which would allow the pizza joint to continue in some form somewhere else in Albany. But if Gretchen hadn't gotten the pizza she got today, we never would've known and would've been deeply disappointed the next time we went there.

This evening at around 9:00pm, Gretchen suggested we (that is, her, Powerful, and I) play a game of Scrabble. And so we did. Powerful actually has a lot of experience with Scrabble, as it's a common game played in prison. So he knew all the rules and all the two-letter words. Unsurprisingly, Gretchen ended up winning, Powerful came in second, and I came in last. By the end there it was tough going, with a whole quadrant of the board walled off by letters to which nothing could be added.
Unlike last New Year's Eve, tonight the three of us stayed up and were together for the beginning of the New Year. We were in the living room with a raging fire but not music just talking about things like the fact that my boss Alex is going to resign on Monday. ("Way to bury the lead!" Gretchen said, since this was the first she'd heard of it.) Gretchen had put a bottle of "California champagne" in the refrigerator, but we never actually opened it. I had a 16 oz. can of New Normal IPA (brewed in nearby Catskill) and Powerful had a bottle of that Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale.


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