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prefab waffles
Sunday, December 7 2008
It wasn't just arctic cold today; it was also extremely windy. I'm sure all sorts of new treewrecks landed across the Stick Trail, all of them too far away to serve as windfall firewood supplies. At some point I went over to Andrea's place to return her Malcolm Gladwell book-on-CD. I also brought a video card in hopes of satisfying her desire to see things in digital clarity, such as it is. (I'm sort of a klutz, I know, but I usually can't see a difference between analog and digital video even at 1600 by 1200.) It turned out that her computer didn't accept AGP cards; she had one of those newfangled PCI Express motherboards. We'd have to order a compatible video card. First, though, Andrea wanted to watch Meet the Press, where Obama was to be interviewed by Tom Brokaw (notice how Brokaw inserts a soft "H" in front of his "L"s). I was interested in watching, so I sat on the couch, and, in the space of the interview, drank two cups of coffee and ate two circular prefab waffles, each roughly three inches in diameter.
This evening we hosted a dinner party, with two visiting couples in addition to ourselves. One of our guests was our biggest celebrity visitor to date, Pεtεr Schιckεlε, whose zany adventures through the history of Classical Music are among the many unusual things I remember from my childhood (he was a staple of public radio nationwide until quite recently). He's a big Santa Claus of a man, though with more of an emphasis on the "Ho! Ho! Ho!" than on the sleigh full of gifts. Gretchen had prepared a fabulous multi-course vegan meal, while I'd cleaned the house and built up a roaring fire to hold out the chill.
Besides Schιckεlε and his wife was a couple I'll call A&B. Based in Lake Hill, they know absolutely every non-troglodyte in the area, and they also known me! B teaches with Gretchen in the Bαrd Prison Initiative and they carpool together once a week. Our habit of heating rocks on the stove for use as "heat batteries" in other parts of the house seemed to come to B as something of a revelation.
Not long after everyone left, there was a knock at the door and it turned out that A&B had experienced a flat tire two miles away up Dug Hill Road. I was all ready with an elaborate tool kit and an extra bottle jack, but the tire had been fixed by the time I drove out there. More problematic on this cold and blustery night had been trees falling and blocking the road; Schιckεlε and his wife had had to get out and wrestle one out of the way on their way over.
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