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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   raven dance
Friday, October 14 2022

location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY

Gretchen would not be going to the cabin this weekend, but I would. So after the morning scrum standup in the remote workplace, I loaded up the dogs and what I would be taking with me (this included yet more bluestone, most of which I'd gathered earlier along the Farm Road) and began my drive to the Adirondacks. Along the way, I peed twice into a handy container, though in both cases I made such a mess of things that my trousers were soaked in a sludgy mix of kratom powder and urine. I was able to superficially clear up using napkins, but even so, my ass was still wet when I went shopping for some basic necessities at the Johnstown Price Chopper, though I could tell myself that it just looked like I'd had the misfortune of sitting in a puddle.
As per usual, I stopped at the Burger King across from the Walmart at the southeast end of Gloversville to get two large orders of fries and an Impossible Whopper without mayonnaise. This time when the employees saw dogs (who were both crammed together in the front passenger seat) they offered a couple treats they apparently keep on hand for such occasions.
At the cabin, I saw that our houseguests from last weekend had indeed been through, though they supposedly hadn't spent the night. They'd mostly been there to lock the front door. But they'd also done other things, such as strip the beds in the two bedrooms where they'd slept on the night they did sleep over. People think they're doing us a huge favor when they strip the bed after using it. But if the people using the bed are lesbians who slept in pajamas (which these all were), we don't see any need for the bed to be stripped and the sheets to be washed. We'd probably only do that if some teenage boy spent the night, and maybe not even then.
At the end of a fairly laid-back workday, I walked down to the lake without the dogs and kayaked around it counter-clockwise. The water was calm and mirror-like, and there were few signs of non-human life. (The only humans were with dogs doing something near Pyotr's boat house.) The lake was noticeably deeper than it had been last weekend, and had begun to cover the second stone step up from the lake at the our dock. As I paddled along the lake's east shoreline, I could hear the rush of water from the lake's largest tributary, which had been silent all summer and, when it's running, enters via a series of cascades. From the lake, you can only hear the cascades, but I was able to find a stream of fast-running turbulent water entering the lake through a four-foot-wide channel cut through the shore vegetation. Later, as I paddled towards the outlet bay, though, I saw a pair of ravens flying in front of me. They were doing an interesting ritual in which every ten seconds or so they'd both fly steeply upward for about ten feet and then continue along. I wondered if this was some sort of raven-specific dance or a move to evade pursuing hawks or perhaps gunfire.
I'd eaten a nugget of cannabis before I'd gone to the lake, and it was kicking in nicely by the time I returned to the dock in the kayak. I sat on the dock and looked out across the lake feeling very peaceful and relaxed.


Woodworth Lake as it looked this evening. Click to enlarge.


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