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what happened to that wooden bowl
Sunday, February 26 2017
Yesterday's storm had left cooler air in its wake, though conditions were no worse than typical for this time of year, with highs in the low 40s and lows in the 20s. I had some catching up to do in the documentation of my life, so I ground up 25 milligrams of time-release amphetamine salts, dissolved them in water, and quaffed them. ("Quaff" is a word I picked up while playing Rogue on a networked VAX 750 in 1987.)
At around 4:00pm Gretchen called from the bookstore in Woodstock to say she was still feeling poorly part-way through her bookselling shift and that she didn't want to go to our friend Jeff's birthday celebration tonight at Huckleberry Tavern in New Paltz. She thought that I should go as an emissary, but that I'd have to get going soon to be there an hour late (that was beginning at 4:00pm). Gretchen also said something about hoping I'd made progress installing the door and pet door in her office, though I'd done no work at all on either one. So I dropped everything I was doing and went down to the basement and proceeded to measure and notch (for hinges) the blank replacement door for the secondary library doorway. But, being jacked up on amphetamines, I was working in the manner of a crackhead, and bad things started happening. I had the door in the opening when I went off to get something (a pencil perhaps) and of course the door proceeded to fall out of the opening, slamming into the wall and a nearby bookshelf, leaving damage I then had to correct. And once I had the hinges attached to the door and hung it in the doorway, it was a little too high and would not close. Bloody hell! I unmounted it from the doorway, leaned it against the wall, and headed for New Paltz, drinking a beer (a Live Free or Die IPA) on the way so I'd have a base non-stimulant buzz going.
Jeff and Alana were at a table at the top of the stairs with our friends Nick and Chrissy. I was the only vegan there, so the only thing that came to the table I could eat was french fries. I was in a mood for telling stories, so when someone asked about my recent trip to Mexico, I talked about how dopey our housesitter had been. Before leaving, I'd handwritten an addendum to the housesitting instructions telling what to do should leaking from ice damming become a problem. I'd explained that when there are ice dams on the roof (and that it looked like there are), there can be leaking from the top of the window near the piano, particularly if it gets warm. If that is noticed, I'd said, she should put out a container to collect the drips. That all seems pretty straightforward, right? So after we'd been in Mexico a few days our housesitter sent an email to say that indeed the ice dam dripping was happening. She wanted to know what container to use to catch the drips. That seemed pretty dopey right there; anyone with a child's understanding of the nature of how the universe is put together and the equipment readily available in our kitchen would surmise that a cup, bowl, or jar might do the trick (depending on the nature of the leak). When we returned from Mexico, the housesitter had done a good job and the house was intact and the animals were okay. And when I looked at where the ice dam should've caused drips, I didn't see evidence that there had ever been any. The only weirdness was that the wooden bowl we use to collect our compostable refuse had vanished, and we couldn't find it anywhere. So Gretchen sent the housesitter an email asking about it. It turned out that she'd put it outside under the roof to collect water dripping from the roof, which is not at all what I meant by ice damming. What did she do with that collected water? Dump it down the toilet? Was she really so stupid that she didn't know I was referring to a leak inside the house? The assembled at Jeff's birthday celebration were suitably delighted to learn such dopeyness exists in the world.
Another of my memorable contributions to the conversation was my articulation of a scene in the otherwise-execrable movie Bad Moms in which Kristin Bell's character described sex with her "neverhard" husband. There was that bit about folding a penis in half like a balloon animal and shoving it in there, sometimes with the balls (because they're one of the few things that are firm). "We're definitely gonna get kicked out of here now!" Nick exclaimed.
Gretchen had a book for Jeff for his birthday, but it was still with her at the bookstore, so I'd wrapped up a painting I'd made of an octopus in tin foil and given it to Jeff, and he seemed to like it. I know he's a collector of art and other fine things, and I figured it would look good in the place he shares with Alana in Saugerties.
I stayed for two beers and a second round of donuts I didn't eat. A couple more of Jeff's friends showed up. And then we in the first wave headed home, leaving Jeff with the the new arrivals.
Despite a lack of perfect sobriety, I drove capably on the way home. I took Route 32 instead of the Thruway, mostly because it's closer to Huckleberry Tavern.
Back home, I focused like a laser beam on Gretchen's library. I soon had her secondary door successfully hung and then I made quick (and surprisingly accurate) work of installing the latch and doorknob (that task that involves a 2 1/8 inch hole saw and 3/4 inch spade bit; I never need to use a jig). When all that was done, I moved on to the pet door project. Gretchen wanted a pet door in her primary hallway door so the dogs (and perhaps cats) could come and go as they wanted. All I managed to get done tonight was the removal of the bottom of one of the door's two panels (a piece of wood 13 inches tall and 9 inches wide) to make a hole similar in size to the one for the pet door that goes through the house's front door (or to the pet door that allows access to the greenhouse upstairs). As always, I used the oscillating tool to do all the cutting.
As usual when I've taken amphetamines, I stayed up late into the night drinking and goofing around on the internet. Our Verizon DSL and landline were still dead, so I was forced to connect via a tethering app on my smartphone. I'd given up on Barnacle Tethering and was now using a tethering app called Data Sharing that was proving quite reliable.
At the very end of the evening, I took an ambien, which resulted in a barely-coherent Facebook post.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170226 feedback
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