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knowledge that others lack
Friday, March 6 2015
It wasn't such a bitterly cold morning, and I got up late after the fire in the woodstove had mostly died out, with just a few live coals. So I took the opportunity to remove the ashes after 31 days of use. It had been our coldest February (and, indeed, our coldest month) ever, and I'd paid attention to the woodshed before and after this particular 31 days. Objectively looking at the wood, we'd burned through about three quarters of a cord during that time. Yet the resulting ash was only 12.25 pounds, a low figure similar to last month's. Using the estimated ash-to-wood conversion ratio, that 12.25 pounds of ashes represents only 0.245 cords, when I know the figure should be closer to 0.75 cords. So why am I producing only a third of the ash that I should? Perhaps dry, extremely-seasoned wood and hot fire temperatures is causing more ash to be sent up the chimney. I just don't know. All I can do for now is keep collecting data.
Time
period | Number of days | Ash
weight | Est. firewood burnt | Est. firewood/day |
| Nov 14-Dec 19 2013 | 36 | 13.5 lbs | 0.27 cords | 29 lbs |
| Dec 20 2013-Jan 22 2014 | 33 | 20.5 lbs | 0.41 cords | 48 lbs |
| Jan 23-Feb 19 2014 | 28 | 24 lbs | 0.48 cords | 66.23 lbs |
| Feb 20-Mar 20 2014 | 29 | 16 lbs | 0.32 cords | 42.63 lbs |
| Apr 21 2014-Aug 16 2014 | 118 | 10.6 lbs | 0.21 cords | 6.94 lbs |
| Aug 17-Dec 12 2014 | 118 | 20.8 lbs | 0.41 cords | 13.62 lbs |
| Dec 13-Dec 26 2014 | 14 | 5.8 lbs | 0.116 cords | 32.02 lbs |
| Dec 27 2014-Feb 2 2015 | 38 (31) | 13.75 lbs | 0.275 cords | 27.96 lbs (34.27 lbs) |
| Feb 3-Mar 5 2015 | 31 | 12.25 lbs | 0.245 cords (actual firewood burned closer to 0.75 cords) | 31.12 |
[REDACTED]
Figures in red limit the calculations to days of actual firewood heating.
This evening Gretchen and I met Susan and David at La Florentina, one of our favorite restaurants. As always, we ordered the sformato calzone ("purple pie") for everyone but David, who ordered the linguine with artichokes. Soon after we arrived, the guy working the oven saw us eyeing one of the beautiful steam-filled breads as he pulled it out, and he immediately gave it to us.
Strangely, the sformato wasn't quite as good as it usually is; this time it seemed a bit dry, as if the oven had been running too hot.
Dinner conversation lingered for awhile on the subject of my troll Suzy's latest meme outrage, which poses the question "Which kind of slavery is worse?" above two photographs, one of a woman crying as she applies lipstick labeled "1. White Slavery" and the other depicting a number of 19th Century slaves posing in a cotton field for a photograph. It's labeled "2. The Good Kind of Slavery." Both David and Susan thought it was subtle and clever, but not Gretchen. She doesn't like it when my trolling becomes too similar to the material it is mocking. (This tracks coherently with her discomfort in movies and television programs when some of the characters have knowledge that others lack.)
Later we talked at length about David's problem with an erstwhile friend named Joe, whose many psychological manipulations and put-downs led to David breaking up with him a few months ago. Joe still sends emails hoping to mend the relationship, but David doesn't answer.
Back at the house, I watched the grand finale of this season's Gold Rush, the fakest one ever. The last line of the season was Parker Schnable referring to a claim he hopes to mine next year. He referred to it as "my empire of dirt," a Johnny Cash reference (if it had been the Trent Reznor reference, it would have had to have been bleeped).
I stayed up late drinking & smoking pot and occasionally communicating with Sara Poiron via Facebook private messaging. She kept sending me disgusting photos of aborted foetuses that she'd found on anti-abortion Facebook pages, where they are displayed to prove that foetuses are not "just blobs of cells." They were so gross looking that I would type nonsense words that sounded like puking noises to scroll the pictures out of view. The pot was making me more imaginative than usual, and it helped to be communicating via writing. Occasionally I'd copy things I'd just written and put them in my ideas.txt file. These included:
- ET lowered expectations about humanoid forms. (This might account for why pro-lifers think aborted foetuses are so cute.)
- [Gretchen] doesn't like that some people don't get that [Suzy the Troll] is fake. But for me that's a feature, not a bug.
Later I watched a number of Youtube videos, including April Wine's Sign of the Gypsy Queen, a few live performances by Heart. Though I loved Sign of the Gypsy Queen when I was a young teenager, I was disturbed by the ubiquity of hair perms in their video. It reminded me of something that has occurred to me before: the more natural one's appearance, the more timeless it tends to be. I confirmed this by watching the clip of the Moody Blues at the Isle of Wight performing "Tuesday Afternoon," and sure enough, their look didn't look dated at all. They had longish hair, but they wouldn't be out of place on a stage today. April Wine's look, by contrast, reeked of 1981, and not in a good way.
I should mention that "Tuesday Afternoon" might just be my favorite song of all time, though it actually might be "Evening, Time to Get Away." The line "Toiling has bought too many tears" just kills me (not so much for its lyrical content, but for what is happening musically at that moment).
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