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limits of available time
Saturday, July 25 2009
We don't have yard sales at our house, but (like everyone else) we have accumulations of crap that, while too good for the dump, is useless for us (at least within the limits of our rather colorful imaginations). We had been piling it all up in the garage, combining it with crap from the lives of other people (particularly Penny and David) into an increasingly difficult-to-negotiate mountain. Today Gretchen planned to take the whole thing to the Ulster County SPCA so they could sell it in their yardsale. We loaded up the Subaru and Gretchen planned to drop the load off at the SPCA on the way to catching a bus into Manhattan. But as often happens, Gretchen pushed the limits of the time available. As she hurried out to the car, I pictured her standing forelorn beside it, a cloud of smoke pouring from its overturned carcass in an Esopus corn field. So I offered to drop the stuff off at the SPCA myself. Gretchen was delighted, and puttered around the house for another half hour, doing things like checking her email again and practicing her guitar, again pushing up to the limits of available time. Meanwhile I'd abandoned an obsessive search for the Subaru's other key, which had included a remote unlocker button.
This evening I met up with Ray and Nancy at Cucina, a new Italian restaurant at the corner of 375 and 212 in Woodstock. The parking lot had almost no available spaces, indicating the crazy popularity of the place. I'd heard its praises sung by several, although Gretchen remained skeptical, having found its already-legendary French fries somewhat disappointing and its pizza (which can be made vegan or with a topping of veal) lacking in both sodium and chloride ions.
Ray and Nancy were with Nancy's sister Linda and Linda's husband Adam, as well as thin egretlike woman named Erica. The place was full of the kind of hip young people more appropriate to Brooklyn than Woodstock, indicating that this was mostly a summer weekender crowd. The prices confirmed this suspicion. I don't know what this says about the restaurant, but it's interesting to note: the waitress dress code was white shirts and denim miniskirts. As for the pizza I ordered, it was underwhelming. Also, the waitress tried to pass it off as something I might order only as an appetizer. That's a little too much like a hard sale for the kind of restaurants that I prefer.
Ray and his people had rented a house in nearby Saugerties township for the week, so I went back with them to hang out. It was a pleasant timber-framed cabin on a dead end road (42.048321N, 74.023669W). There was even a hot tub. After I'd a few Miller Lites (it's what Ray is drinking these days) I went and soaked in the tub on my own, naked (because I hadn't brought any other sort of swimming equipment). I was kind of drunk by the end of the evening, so I ended up sleeping on the floor, using a few pillows as cushions. Erica the human and Eleanor the dog (I'd brought both of mine) got each of the couches respectively. Like me, Sally was perfectly happy sleeping on the floor.
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