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Memorial Day weekend Friday distractions
Friday, May 24 2019
Today was another unusually-busy day at work, which (I've found) is always preferable to a dull day. The only downside is that I sometimes don't get a chance to get in my non-work-related tasks, but that's more than made up for by the fact that the day seems to pass quickly and leave me excited to start the next one. Despite the distraction, I was able to complete all of the day's non-work tasks, including a run down to the Rhinebeck William's Lumber, where I bought a very specific kind of calculator battery (for my Homeland Security-branded mousepad, which includes a calculator) and two large green plastic garden pots. I also stopped at the Red Hook Hannaford, mostly so I'd have a Friday road beer, though I also got an Against the Grain vegan frozen pizza, just because it was vegan and I'd never heard of it.
As the day wound down, people were slacking off in anticipation of the coming Memorial Day Weekend. There'd come word from the head honcho that if we'd gotten what we needed done for the day, we were free to leave at 2:00pm, which I've noticed is the usual pattern for three-day weekends. Marcus, the guy who interviewed me for this job and who I no longer report to, was talking about his carpenter ant problem, with an emphasis on the pesticides he'd used in a futile attempt to eliminate them. That's the usual way people in our society talk about carpenter ants, which are a symptom of another problem (usually a roof leak) that, if dealt with, will cause the carpenter ants to leave. But your Orkin man wants to sell poison, not roof repairs, and carpenter ants living in a persistently-leaking structure can produce many expensive rounds of extermination. I told Marcus about my experience with carpenter ants, how I'd discovered them a year or more after fixing a leak, and that by the time the floor gave way beneath my weight, they'd abandoned their tunnels and warrens because they were unsuitably dry. Marcus then went on to regale the others around me with his experience with bear hunting (he's sort of a good ole boy from Georgia I think, though the one time he shot a bear was up here). Being vegan, this wasn't a pleasant thing to hear, but I did learn one interesting thing: bear fat is reportedly disgusting to eat. Also, Marcus's wife (who just had a baby) seems to have an attitude more similar to mine with regard to bears, so if Marcus does anything about the bears supposedly terrorizing his neighborhood, he'll have to do it in secret.
I ended up leaving work at 3:00pm, which was only an hour short of a eight hour day.
I was drinking a new kind of Lagunitas today on the drive from work to the Tibetan Center thrift store. It was a Super Cluster Ale, which had been "citra hopped" (whatever that means). In any case, it had that grapefruity taste I like, even if it was come by somewhat illegitimately (that is, from actual citrus as opposed to hops). At 8% alcohol, it was real drinking. Back at the house, I cut the buzz with a shot of espresso from a Bella espresso machine I'd bought at the thrift store for $5. I had to watch a YouTube video to know how to operate the damn thing, and it seemed a bit slow to do what it does. But it definitely made espresso.
That Against the Grain vegan frozen pizza proved to be a bit of a bust. It was too green-peppery for Gretchen and its crust was made from some non-wheat material, meaning it lacked gluten and other ingredients that make pizzas (vegan or otherwise) delicious. But it was good enough for me to eat, particularly once piled high with pepperoncini peppers.
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