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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got that wrong
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   number three
Wednesday, January 20 2016
My morning routine was displaced slightly by N, Q, and their young dog Coach Eric Taylor, all of whom came over this morning to walk with Gretchen and our dogs in the forest. At the time, I was doing some last-minute straightening up, clearing the dining room table of all the stuff I'd removed from under the sink back when I began the sink replacement project. I was dressed in my long-johns, which would be the only trousers I would be wearing until this evening. (I spend entire days in either snow pants, pajama bottoms, or long-johns, and am able to do everything while dressed this way, including salvaging firewood in below-freezing conditions.) N was astounded to happen to look down our stairs into our basement and realize we have essentially a whole additional house down there. So Gretchen took N and Q on a brief tour down there, long enough for Coach Eric Taylor to find a hot spot on the scrap of wall-to-wall carpet Gretchen has been clinging to in her library. He dribbled enough urine on it to completely throw Gretchen off her game, and I had to tell her to let me worry about that so she could get to the task at hand: walking in the forest with our visitors.

Later this afternoon, I salvaged the last good pieces of the windfall, which took the form of two large pieces from near the roots. With a few additional small pieces from a much smaller tree, today's load came to 129.75 pounds.
Since it was still Gretchen's birthweek, this evening we celebrated with some close friends at the Garden Caé in Woodstock. Carrie and Michæl were both there, but Susan was there without Dave because the latter had received last-minute storyboard work. Also in attendance were Sarah the Vegan and both Nancy and Ray. I ordered a sort of bean soup that needed a lot of salt and hot sauce, though fortunately Carrie had brought me a little bottle of Dave's Total Insanity Sauce all the way from Los Angeles (even though it was Gretchen's birthday, not mine). It was the hottest sauce I had ever tried. Just one tiny drop in the mouth was an unpleasant experience, and a few in my soup was enough to make my brow sweat as I ate it. I thought the soup was great after doctoring it up this way. I also liked my falafel wrap, though it was a lot harder to spice when the Total Insanity couldn't simply be dissolved in a liquid.
As always, our table was a setting for many storm fronts of mirth originating from all corners. Gretchen got up at one point to go to the bathroom and Ray asked, "Number one or number two?" I responded, "Number three?" And Susan asked, "What's that?" "I don't know," I replied, "An abortion?" By this point, Carrie was laughing heartily and then Michæl chimed it, "That's a clogger!" This led me to conjecture that someone who does number three in their toilet would perhaps keep a steak knife next to it like a plunger. "Or maybe an immersion blender," Michæl added helpfully. "Yeah," Nancy agreed, "that would be classy!"
I love this crowd, but I felt bad for our waitress, who had to keep the restaurant open late to accommodate how long we sat their talking, joking, and laughing. The waitress told us we were free to stay as long as we wanted, but the nice thing would have been to leave when, for example, someone started mopping the floor. Then, of course, there was the problem with the long lingering goodbye (Sarah the Vegan being the worst offender) down in the parking lot, which is not a fun secondhand experience on a cold night in late January. But it wasn't my birthday, so I shouldn't be complaining.

Back at the house, I little nightcap of vodkatea, the first time I'd dropped a tea bag in vodka in years. The tea in this case was a bag of Good Earth Original Sweet & Spicy. The resulting vodkatea tasted a lot like a dissolved atomic fireball.


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