Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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Like my brownhouse:
   starch and fire
Thursday, November 4 2010
I'd hoped to maybe retrieved the salvaged firewood at the staging spot along the Stick Trail today before the rain came, but they began in the night before I awoke, so by the time got up it was the sort of lost cause for which my only recourse was to petition St. Jude. So I gave up on firewood today. This wasn't much of a setback; that wood had been rained on for perhaps sixty years out in the forest, though it had still become perfectly seasoned. That's the difference between woods like oak and chestnut and woods like pine. Left lying on the ground in the forest, a pine trunk actually accumulates more water than it had when alive. This is why pine tends to rot but not crack when left in the forest, whereas old oak in the forest, while reasonably dry, is usually too full of cracks to be usable for anything but firewood or decoration.
This morning when I took a swig of Trader Joe's version of V8 Juice, I felt something sort of give in my esophagus and from then on, throughout the day, I had that weird esophageal clenching issue that periodically comes back to torment me. It's a mild discomfort, but it can be distracting. It also seems to affect my ability to determine when I am hungry and when I am full.

At some point today I went into town to get provisions for a man's monthly needs (in my case: tea and booze) as well as a modest 60 pound sack of concrete to help with pier building in the greenhouse. I will need one or more additional concrete piers as a foundation for the lumber decking that will eventually form the floor of the greenhouse's eastern half.

Today, after seeing a brief reference in a Jon Stewart segment, I downloaded the classic gangster movie The Untouchables, and I watched it this evening. It was a little hokey and the comedic touches seemed to hit a few sour notes, but it was perfectly watchable. I thought Robert De Niro's Al Capone made for a memorable comic-book villain.
Next I began watching The China Syndrome, but only made it about a quarter of the way in before Gretchen returned from a dinner date at the Indian restaurant with Deborah. So it was time to watch Jeopardy. Gretchen had gotten me an order of vegetarian jalfrezi and had told told the guys at the restaurant to spice it up "like the way they have it in India." She'd told them this once before and it had been hot, but this time it ended up being the hottest food I have ever attempted to eat. Sweet Jesus, I was covered with sweat and had to keep running downstairs for water. The only way to work with food that hot was to dilute it with plenty of rice, but this caused a different problem; because of my esophageal issues I couldn't really tell how much I'd eaten until it was too late and I was nearly sick from overeating. I had to lie down and wait for digestion to make its way through all that starch and fire.


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