01: Balsam Bagels - We stop at the most amazing bagel shop on our way out of Rochester.
02: suspicious sprinkle of soot - Once back in the Hudson Valley, I looked at the boiler a contractor tried to sell us an expensive cleanout on. But it looks perfectly clean, except for a suspicious sprinkle of soot.
03: voting early, 2024 - Gretchen found a place for us to vote early in an old brick gym on Broadway in Kingston.
04: too sweet for Gretchen - Gretchen gets the wrong food to go from the Garden Café,
05: endlessly failing upward - Donald Trump proves himself an authentic horror movie villain, somehow coming back from the political dead to become President once more.
06: happy to be going extinct - Intrusive thoughts about Trump's unexpected victory.
07: processing trauma - Writing it down seems to work for me.
08: detritus on the solar deck - An account of the things I've finally started removing from up there. Also, Barbara, Gretchen's ex, visits.
09: my brotheer turns sixty - A Saturday involving a jackhammer and Charlotte reacting a little too optimistically towards nearby hikers in the forest.
10: if you know what I mean - A punchline among friends on five-person dinner date in Woodstock.
11: Remote Ready - ChatGPT steers me towards enlightenment about propane fuel level gauges. And a great expansion of my bluestone library in anticipation of progress on a retiling project.
12: Newburgh and back - A rim job for the Bolt.
13: borrowing tools from the other house - My power tools all have their homes. But sometimes I need one from one place at another.
14: getting by with a toy hole saw - The damn thing couldn't even cut through a two by four. But, using a chisel, I made it work.
15: the quickest possible dinner - Microwaving some black beans with a few shavings of ghost pepper in it.
16: dens above the jumbled rocks - More places for porcupines and bears on our Adirondack parcel. Also, firing up the minisplit for the first time.
17: able to remotely turn on the generator - It's become a necessary capability in the dwindling sunlight of late fall.
18: lithium battery flashlights in the forest - If it hadn't been for the autumn moon, I might've spent the night there.
19: generically reading sensor values - My remote controller firmware is flexible enough to read analog values with nothing more than a configuration change. Also, Ray & Nancy come over for dinner.
20: the bravery of gentlemen with guns - Watch them cower in terror when you take their guns away.
21: police work solves a mystery - Specifically the one about the tenant of apartment #1L.
22: making one ESP8266 able to reboot another - Giving the cabin some of the fail-safe features of a deep space probe.
23: a double-dog porcupine quill extraction - If that sounds expensive, it's because it is. But it could've been worse.
24: dysphoria and severe acid reflux - Another day of assessing my alcohol intake.
25: a particularly bad time not to have a working refrigerator - Gretchen's parents arrive just as refrigerator's interior envionment becomes unexpectedly balmy.
26: the continued absence of Charlotte the Dog - I post on social media, make and post a poster, and going on many fruitless searches. Meanwhile Gretchen's father helps Gretchen buy a replacement refrigerator.
27: too far afield to be found by drone - After two nights in the forest, Charlotte is found alive and healthy.
28: Thanksgiving, 2024 - All our non-family guests are foreigners.
29: unexpected loss of sensor data - I give an emergency goodbye to my in-laws and then drive to the cabin, which is snowed in.
30: beaver in the winter lake - I pull the dock completely out of the water a beaver patrols her cold winter lake.