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rainy first day of winter
Friday, December 21 2018
Torrential rains flooded my windshield on my drive to work this morning. Before getting there, I stopped at the Red Hook Hannaford for a few provisions, mostly store-brand dry-roasted peanuts and a sixer of Little Sumpin' Sumpin'.
I spent the morning doing some satisfying light refactoring of my Electron App, getting (for example) the Angular frontend so that it could directly read a configuration file also used by the Node.js backend. Since that configuration file had to be in Javascript, not Typescript, this meant I also had to abandon some newfangled syntax I'd used in it. The syntax possible in modern Javascript/Typescript is nearly as hairy as C#, and meanwhile I'm not really clear on how any of the (say) post-2008 Javascript syntax actually works. I'm forced to mostly just copy from working examples and do experiments to determine what doesn't fail for a given scenario.
While I worked on these things, I got a Facebook message from Gretchen saying there was flooding in our basement from near the pressure tank. I knew from experience that this was just what happens in our house when the ground is saturated by heavy rains. It finds its way into the conduit carrying power to the well and water back from it, and with no drain in the floor, it accumulates to a depth of as much as a half inch before leaking out through a crack along the north wall of the boiler room. It's never fun to learn your house is flooding while you're at work, but at least this was within the known realm of what is possible.
At noon today, the head honcho treated the entire office staff to a holiday dinner at Savona's, the Italian place at the south end of Red Hook (the same place where we celebrated John the Developer a few days before his departure for greener fields in Boston back in November). I carpooled with the young folks in the office, riding in a car belonging to Andrew, the new support guy who really seems to be doing a great job. His car was immaculate and looked like it might be brand new. I mentally compared it to the two cars Gretchen and I drive, which are various combinations of rattles, scratches, dents, and popped-out panels secured with Gorilla Tape. Not blowing an appreciable fraction of our income on non-embarrassing vehicles is part of our recipe for the comfortable life we now enjoy.
At Savona's, most of us ordered various beers. Savona's isn't especially hip regarding veganism, and so it's no surprise that they don't have many options (or knowledge) about IPAs. When I asked what IPA they had on tap, the waitress said something about a fruit concoction (which I'd had at John's departure party) and "Sierra Nevada." "Toahpehdthoah?" I asked, pronouncing "Torpedo" in the Spanish style. But then I immediately corrected myself by pronouncing the word the way an American might. She had no idea what I was talking about and insisted unconvincingly that "Sierra Nevada" was an IPA. "Do you mean Pale Ale?" I asked. She then repeated that it was an IPA in the manner of a teenager trying to convince an expert that he is wrong on some matter of his expertise. I shrugged and accepted the Sierra Nevada, whatever it was. It might've been the Pale Ale, and if so, it really is pretty close to being the sort of accidentally-citrusy IPA that I like.
Early in the meal, the head honcho asked if I was vegan (he'd probably seen all the propaganda bumperstickers Gretchen puts on our cars). I said that indeed I was. He then wondered if I would find anything to eat. "They have a veggie burger," I said contentedly, "though I'm going to try the spaghetti marinara and see what happens." I ended up ordering that with a side of fries, and the spaghetti was pretty good (though not quite as good as what you get at the Plaza Diner in New Paltz). The fries, though, were a bit disappointing, as they were those flaccid brownish things that fancy restaurants serve as an indication of their fanciness.
At the table, I was seated between Jake, who kept futzing with Pokemon Go on his phone, and Support Dave. Somehow I got to talking about firewood with Support Dave, and told him, Andrew, and Jon (the older Delphi developer guy) about the way I gather firewood using a backpack in the nearby forest. Later I found an opportunity to rant against the clutter and kludge of modern Microsoft interfaces, culminating with my admission that I do what I can to make my computer look as much like Windows 2000 as possible. In another part of the conversation, I was talking about the rising real estate prices in Kingston and Jon predicted that one day there would be skyscrapers in East Kingston, which is an isolated neighborhood along the Hudson now famous for its rickety houses and incidents of domestic abuse. Jon said that if he had the money, he would buy property there and sit on it, though of course, he allowed, one would have to buy above the level the Hudson will rise to should the global warming lie prove to have actually been the truth. Jon also said that when the Russians finally pull out of the Manhattan real estate market (an event that might be precipitated by the denouement of Donald Trump), all the hopes for Upstate real estate riches might be dashed, as the pressure to buy here may well collapse.
After lunch, that was it, we were free to leave and not return until boxing day. I drove directly to Home Depot to buy some fittings for the refrigerator's water line (one of which I'd been forced to cut off for that tricky in-wall routing described yesterday). While in the neighborhood, I got some boozy gifts for Gretchen at Miron Liquor and then went well out of my way to swing by the Tibetan Center thrift store, where I bought yet another parabolic makeup mirror (for starting fires!?) and a plastic hook for hanging garden hoses.
Back at the house, Colin the cabinet installer was puttering away. At some point I saw him standing up a cabinet that reached to the ceiling, but to do that he'd had to cut a narrow triangle out of its back bottom (otherwise it would've hit the ceiling as he raised it). Meanwhile, my only real chore was to take care of any lingering flooding in the basement. I went down there with a shopvac and managed to slurp up about a quart of water. The flooding was over and the rest had drained away on its own. That isn't to say there wasn't plenty of rainwater rushing around. I went into the greenhouse at some point and saw water had risen up to nearly the top of the the basement floor's support girder. Water had probably been that high during Tropical Storm Irene, but I don't remember ever seeing it that high. I should mention that by late this afternoon temperatures had risen into the 60s, and it was feeling more like a humid day in September than the first day of winter.
This evening when Gretchen came home from her various errands, I was napping in the bed with Diane the Cat, who mostly only cuddles with me when I nap during the day.
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