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a clock against which to race
Friday, December 6 2013
Today was a completely unexpected social day. Susan the artist and her companion David rented a Zipcar and drove up from the city to look at an overpriced house in Olivebridge. (How do I know it was overpriced? It was in Olivebridge, it wasn't a palatial estate, and the asking price was $425,000.) Then they joined a lunch party at our house, already in progress. Others at our lunch party were Deborah, her dog Allou, Michæl, and his dog Penny. Susan and David also brought their puppy Pit Bull Darla, though they left Olive back on the Upper West Side. (One of the reasons Susan said that they can't buy a place in Olivebridge is that Darla will get jealous and demand to know why they don't also buy a house in Darlabridge.)
In the course of the day, Michæl took a break from our party to go to the dentist and get his gums scraped. After I'd described what I've been doing in the greenhouse basement, he wanted to see. So I showed him both the flooded excavation as well as the new jackhammer, which has still never been so much as plugged in. Michæl is one of the few people who can appreciate the pure æsthetics of digging a hole (most other people think I'm nuts). He's totally into the idea of digging down to wherever the next layer of shale is and then digging horizontally, prison-escape style.
Normally I don't come along when there are walks in the woods with guests, though for some reason I went on the two different walks that happened today (once before Susan and David arrived, and once while Michæl was at the dentist). It's a little unnerving to be in the forest during deer rifle season (which ends Sunday), but enough of us were wearing orange that we didn't look like an extended family of Black Bears.
Watching tonight's episode of Gold Rush, I had increasing difficulties suspending my disbelief in the continuity (which, as with every reality show, is made, not born). Today, for example, the episode had the Dakota Boys starting to fill in the massive "glory hole" at Porcupine Creek when Melody (the one non-boy regularly on the show) made a discovery of huge nuggets in the gravel at the bottom. This is the discovery they've been digging towards for years, but for some reason Fred Hurt was unconvinced and kept dumping dirt back in the hole ("for safety"). It made no sense. Why would there be a hurry to fill in the hole? And why would you keep filling it if suddenly it seemed it might really contain big nuggets of gold? It was as if the filling of the hole was stage-managed so as to provide a clock against which to race.
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