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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   the nerdiest thing that had ever been said
Sunday, August 30 2015
This morning I returned to the skeletal Chestnut Oak on the trail to Crazy Dave's cabin and bucked three more pieces out of it. I also cut up some thinner pieces of a long-skeletonized tree that might have been American Chestnut and used that to better-position the weight on my pack (in the manner described in yesterday's entry). This allowed me to cary home a 125.5 pound load in one go, and this included charging up that steep path that had thwarted me yesterday. Later I returned to the site without my saw and carried most of the pieces up that steep path one by one and positioned them in a convenient pile so I can easily bring them home in the future. Ideally I'd find a way to get them to dry out first, but that would involve splitting them and waiting for months. Normally I don't even bother with Chestnut Oak unless it is already skeletonized and dry (a process that takes many years with a large tree), but this tree had evidently taken on water subsequent to being skeletonized.

Gretchen called me from the bookstore in Woodstock asking if I wanted to have dinner over at Susan & David's place. If so, I should bring some things. So I gathered four various kinds of vegan patties from the freezer, a couple ripe red tomatoes from the garden, lettuce Gretchen had cleaned from the refrigerator, and a bag of Chicken of the Woods I'd foraged the other day from the nearby forest (specifically 41.931419N, 74.110365W). On the way to Susan & David's house, I stopped at Hurley Ridge Market and picked up a four pack of an Imperial IPA and a sixer of an unknown hard apple cider (what David likes). Normally Hurley Ridge is patronized by earthy if somewhat-upscale Woodstockers refilling their pantries, but there were enough odd-looking people there this evening to remind me of the Ghettoford. There was, for example, the youngest woman I'd ever seen with a pronounced hunchback. And a tall grizzled gentleman who looked like he ran a butchery shop whose legendary flavor comes from a certain secret ingredient. The pair of youngish women with an interracial baby speaking an unknown foreign language was a bit closer to normal for that establishment.
At Susan & David's, there was an immediate crisis after a chunk of a wine glass disappeared into the freezer, possibly into the ice, all of which had to be thrown out. Once that was behind us, I acted as a prep cook to cut up a lot (but not all) of the Chicken of the Woods I'd brought over. Susan (and, to a lesser extent David) tend to be particular about the provenance of the food they eat, throwing it out the moment it reaches the sell-by date, so I was surprised that Susan was enthusiastic about the Chicken of the Woods. She said she'd bought it once in a store. After I was done slicing it up, she took over with the frying. But she kept having problems because the mushrooms were so dry. The key is to keep adding oil and maybe wine and also salt and, when all else fails, water.
A subject that occupied the bulk of the evening was a performance by the 70s R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire (as well as the band Chicago) that was to be happening at Bethel Woods in a few days. Gretchen and Susan desperately wanted to go, but the available seats cost over $200. Still, they were content to pay such prices and Gretchen almost made the transaction until she noticed that each ticket came with additional fees of over $60. That seemed unscrupulous and wrong, and nobody wanted to be enabling such shysterism, so they then turned to Craigslist and other peer-to-peer ecommerce sites in hopes of scoring a ticket. It was looking like the best they could do was get a place on the Bethel Woods lawn, but even there, the nickel-and-diming is horrendous. No food can be brought in, and after things like parking and shuttle service, one finds oneself spending $100 in unanticipated costs. Gradually, the idea of attending the concert transformed from a must-do to a wouldn't-that-be-nice to a it's-completely-impossible. Meanwhile, Susan was playing an Earth, Wind & Fire cd on the stereo. At some point I said to Gretchen that there should be a Earth, Wind & Fire tribute band called "Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron,...(continuing through all the known elements)." She replied that not only was that the nerdiest thing I had ever said, but that it was certainly the nerdiest thing that had ever been said.


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http://asecular.com/blog.php?150830

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