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Charlotte and Neville at the Kingston Point dog park
Thursday, March 13 2025
We had the cleaners (there were two this time, including the woman who had recently house-sat for us) coming over in the early afternoon, so to get out of their way, Gretchen and I and the dogs went to Midtown in Kingston and, while the dogs waited in the car, Gretchen and I had lunch at small Indian-style café called Calcutta Kitchens. I say "Indian-style" because the woman working the front was just some white lady, and it wasn't clear at first that real Indians had anything to do with the food. We ordered a chickpea pancake smothered in a pea-based curry, though the peas in this case were not like the kind you find in America. It came with a side of slaw and some sort of spicy pickle and was very good, although the potato-kale soup we also got was kind of meh. While there, Gretchen bought a jar of spicy pickle, which we opened immediately, and some dosa batter.
To burn more time, we then drove to the dog park at Kingston Point, though initially nobody was there except for us and our dogs. Eventually an older woman with a peppy young boxer mix named Lotte arrived, and Charlotte was delighted to frolick about with this new friend while her mom told us her whole history with various dogs. At some point Lotte started humping Neville, and then Lotte had a minor aggressive moment with Charlotte, and after that the Lotte mostly stayed away from our dogs. As we were getting ready to leave, another woman arrived with her collie, and Charlotte lost her mind that a new dog was arriving, jumping high up against the fenced "air-lock" through which one enters a dog park. After that, though, she was well-behaved with the new dog, though Lotte seemed mildly aggressive in a way that put the new human on edge. This had been the first dog park experience for Lotte, the new dog, and, as far as we knew, Charlotte, though not for Neville.
As we walked from the dog park enclosure to our car, I could see a couple of other dogs recreating in nearby fields that are also part of the park. One dog was running around pulling a parachute, which seemed to be an effort to give the dog more exercise than he or she would otherwise get.
When we got back to our car, a guy rolled up with three rescue dogs in a Kia EV6, a car that interests Gretchen since it is an EV with all-wheel drive (and could theoretically replace our Forester). It's also the car driven by the two households we're closest to in Rochester. So Gretchen marched up and started peppering the driver with questions. He said that he loves his car, but cautioned that it is best to drive EVs under a lease arrangement, since the technology is changing so fast. He then mentioned solid-state batteries, and how they fix all the problems with EVs. He claimed such batteries are already appearing in some cars on the road. (I didn't say anything, but I doubted that was the case.) Gretchen always takes in anything said by a stranger as the known reality, so I always feel the need to debrief her after such conversations. I told her that I was pretty sure that driving a car under a lease is the most expensive way to possess a car and that there are no cars yet on the road with solid-state batteries. She did some quick math to challenge my first assumption, but I think the givens in that math were wrong. Car companies always have to cover both depreciation and a high interest rate when leasing a car, and I don't ever want to pay interest to anyone if it can be avoided.
On the way home, we went a little out of our way to buy some dog food at Petco.
This afternoon, I did some more work on the Chamomile Wall, building a successful flying buttress in a place in the wall where top was supported by essentially an arch of stone, that is, with wall beneath the top edge that was steeper than 90 degrees. This looked precarious to me, so the flying buttress was to stabilize the wall and keep it from moving northward, movement that would eventually cause it to collapse. Once I had the buttress in place, I built more wall to its east, trapping yet another substantial void in the wall for the use of the local wildlife.
Meanwhile back in Virginia, time is ticking on my mother's old property, which will soon be sold to fund my brother's special needs trust. I've been looking to find someone to move the Shaque over to Don's parcel so I can stay in it when I visit him. But I haven't been able to find any business willing to move it. It seems all the businesses that move trailers are leery of moving anything that was built in place. So today Don took the initiative and talked to the people who live in the hillbilly enclave surrounded by property belonging to my mother's estate. (Former residents of that enclave include a man who had been placed on a sex offender registry for inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor and a nurse who successfully manipulated over $100,000 in loans from my mother and then, according to her, paid my mother back with lottery winnings, something my mother's dementia made impossible to confirm — it doesn't get more hillbilly than that.) The woman half of the pair now living in the enclave drives a school bus and her son is a mechanic. Don called me later today and said they knew a guy who could do the job and would be coming out tomorrow to look at it.
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