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mental ease of socializing with cats
Saturday, February 7 2009
It was 46 degrees Fahrenheit when last I checked last night, a temperature that would be possible on an August night in this climate. This and the electrical heat tape eventually melted a deep valley through the southern ice dam on the western roof, ending all leakage for the time being. There was a trace amount of leakage still from the northern ice dam (over the half bathroom), but I'd done almost nothing about that one.
At 10am Gretchen and I picked up a friend at the Hurley Mountain Inn and then we carpooled down to Eastern Correctional Facility to attend the graduation of the latest crop of students in the Bard Pr!son Init!ative. For the first time at Eastern, there were two graduates from the Bachelor of Arts program. And for the first time ever, Gretchen got a shout out in one of the valedictorian speeches.
After the ceremony, all of us (prisoners, family, faculty, and family-of-faculty) went to the mess hall for the post-graduation meal. As always, it featured huge pans of food, and also as always, I took a cube of the industrial-strength lasagna, which always looks better than it smells, and which always smells better than it tastes. Somehow I ended up a table talking to a professor in the program who had a surprisingly limited set of social refinements. I was quickly abandoned to my fates by Gretchen, who was in full-bore social butterfly mode. By this point I'd grown was weary of following her around and standing uncomfortably by her side as she talked with one person after another, so I remained where I was, tucking into my lasagna and fish and making the best I could of an less-than-ideal social situation.
Later Gretchen continued on to the post-graduation party (held for the staff in or around Bard College itself). But I stayed home, watching teevee and savoring the mental ease of having my only social interaction be with the cat (or two) on my lap.
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