|
|
|
dogs react to 'Dogs'
Thursday, March 28 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
The weather would supposedly be sunny this weekend at the cabin, so the plan was to drive up there with the dogs today. I waited until after Gretchen had taken Charlotte for her morning walk and we hit the road at about 10am. As always, we took the scenic route through Middleburgh, with a stop for provisions at the Hannaford in Cairo. But I didn't feel the need to buy as much food as I have at earlier such stops. As I approached the cabin on Woodworth Lake Road, I saw that the snow that had been as much as twelve inches deep last weekend was now down to around three or four inches. This was shallow enough for the Subaru Forester to easily blast through the hump of snow blocking our cabin's driveway and then climb the relatively gentle grade up to the top of the hill above the cabin. At that point I parked the car, not wanting to strand myself if I couldn't make it back up the steeper grade down to the cabin. Unfortunately, the only shoes I had were my Crocs, so I had to make an unpleasant walk through heavy four-inch-thick snow to the cabin, scramble over the pile of snow shed from the south-facing roof (which was entirely snow-free) and into the cabin. I then started a fire, got the boiler going, and checked the temperature. It was 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Happily, Charlotte came into the cabin with Neville immediately and didn't play that stupid game she'd played after our last cabin arrival.
After putting on some proper boots, I could go back to the Forester to get more things from it. I also shoveled all the snow off the entrance deck, as my slipping while going down those steps was memorably one of the things that had seriously set back the healing of my injured left shoulder back in the Fall.
With all that out of the way, I could resume work on my remote control system. I was eager to install the latest version of the NodeMCU firmware on the microcontroller in the basement. But before doing that, I had some software bugs to work out.
I did this in the loft while listening to a soundtrack of Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial, the Moody Blues' Seventh Sojourn, various songs from Catherine Wheel's discography (I've been particularly enjoying the grunge-inflected Happy Days) and the long Pink Floyd song "Dogs" off their album Animals. That song has recordings of actual dogs layered into it, and this would periodically set off Ramona and Charlotte, who recognized the sounds of fellow canines despite the MP3 compression (which targets the frequency range of human, not dog, ears). (The reason I was listening to any Pink Floyd at all was that I could hear distinctive Pink Floyd influences in earlier songs by Catherine Wheel.)
I'd been eating guacamole with chips and habañero sauce, but later this evening I used the cabin's small InstantPot to make myself some rice, which I combined with a pouch of mediocre pre-made Indian food. This InstantPot had a completely different interface from the one back in Hurley. It was so different in fact that I didn't really know how to use it. So I started 12 minute pressurized rice-cooking regime and then interrupted it about halfway through. This seemed to make almost perfect rice. (It was perhaps a bit too sticky.)
At around sunset, I took the dogs for a walk out to Woodworth Lake Road on the driveay and then back through the woods on our neighbors' properties. Click to enlarge.
Charlotte gets very excited when a walk is about to happen. Click to enlarge.
Sunset through the trees, viewed from the lookout rock about 200 feet west of the cabin. Click to enlarge.
The cabin is on a high plateau, where the landscape is merely rolling. But to the northwest is a substantial ridge. Viewed from the lookout rock. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?240328 feedback
previous | next |
