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into the trench behind me
Friday, July 14 2023
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
A little before noon, Gretchen and I loaded up the dogs and the stuff we'd need for the weekend and began driving to the cabin. Gretchen did the driving so that I could continue simulating being at work using the Teams app on my phone, at least during the part of the drive that wasn't during my lunch hour. Once we got to the cabin and moved most of the stuff in, Gretchen headed down to the lake while I tried to focus on my remote job. But I was back to trying to diagnose some tricky condition with that sprawling mapping app I've been cursed with, and I just couldn't make myself do anything. [REDACTED]
When the weekend arrived at 5:00pm, I very happily went under the decks and started shoveling out more sand along the east wall.
In this stage of the project there was now a lot of excavated trench behind me that already had its insulating sheets of styrofoam installed, meaning I could use that part of the trench to dispose of some of the sand I was now excavating. Since this meant I didn't have to lift the removed sand out of the trench, it made the ditch digging go faster, and after not more than an hour of digging, I had another space available to set a sheet of styrofoam, my fifth along the east wall. By this point it had started raining and Gretchen had returned from the dock. But the rain didn't last long, and once it had passed, I could the styrofoam. As with the other recent sheet installations, I had to cut the sheet in two to fit it through the necessary space to get it in place, and I had to bring those pieces in from the north, since the south end of the ditch is partially blocked by a set of steps up to the deck.
Once I had the new sheet in place, I took off my latex gloves, grabbed an Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout, and headed for the dock all by myself. I paddled around down there in the big inner tube, heading south along the lakeshore south of the dock to see what Ibrahim's dock looks like these days (it hasn't changed much). Meanwhile, there was some activity over at Pyotr's dock involving kids jumping into the water. But they were only using a tiny part of the lake.
The sun was still in the process of going down when I hiked back to the cabin. I ate some leftover orzo with fave beans and made myself a stiff drink while Gretchen does what she mostly does when in the cabin: reading a book on the couch while snuggling with one or more dogs.
The dock today.
Click to enlarge.
The dock seen from atop the large granite boulder nearby. Note the patches of cleared lake bottom where bluegill sunfish have nests they guard.
Click to enlarge.
A mushroom near the dock.
Click to enlarge.
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