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sketchy people on Brewster Street
Sunday, December 13 2020
Late this morning I set out on my latest chore at the Brewster Street House. I stopped first at Herzog's, hoping they'd have the circuit breaker I needed. But they do not stock a wide variety of those, and I needed the Cutler-Hammer-style ones with the putty-colored switches handles. Since it was nearby, I walked over to the new location of Catskill Art & Office Supplies and bought a three tubes of acrylic paint (a yellow, a green, and a blue) as well as two small paintbrushes.
Despite Gretchen's decree that I not shop in Home Depot, I went there anyway looking for a Cutler-Hammer 240 volt 30 amp breaker. They only had the 20 amp, so I left the store empty-handed. Lowes had what I needed, and though $20 seemed expensive, what choice did I have? Talk about inelastic demand!
As I turned onto Brewster Street from Broadway, I saw a couple sketchy-looking guys heading towards down Brewster too. Sure enough, they were going to my rental unit. That place is a magnet for all the sketchiest people you'd expect to see in that neighborhood. Disturbingly, they walked in without knocking, suggesting that perhaps they actually live there.
It didn't take long for me to swap in the new circuit breaker and wrap with electrical tape the parts of the 240 volt outlet that had likely been shorting out. With that done, all that was left to do on this job was to paint the unpainted sections of wall. But I was still unable to find any matching paint in the basement. I managed to take a tiny chip of paint to use to reconstruct the color at a later time.
Just like fucking Columbo, the tenant hit me with an additional request as I was letting the dogs Ramona and Neville free to explore the neighborhood. She said some sort of brown gunk was coming out from around the toilet. She suggested that this should be fixed with caulk. If it was shit coming out, caulk wouldn't be the solution. But when I flushed the toilet, I didn't see anything come out. So I tightened one of the closet bolts and left, popping open a road beer in celebration.
Back at the house, I put a little work into firewood salvaging, initially bringing home a few sticks from across the Farm Road using just my arms. Later, when my big saw was charged up, I returned and cut down a mid-sized semi-skeletonized red oak and easily made a backpack load with just a few bucked pieces from low on its trunk.
Meanwhile, for some reason Powerful had gotten a bunch of takeout Chinese food from Super Bowl Cuisine, and I hadn't even eaten the leftover Indian food yet.
Late this afternoon, I drank kratom tea and lay in bed with the dogs, mostly watching YouTube videos. I've interested lately in the channel of a young man named David Bennett whose channel, David Bennett Piano, provides something of an introductory course on music theory. What makes the channel great is all the examples from popular music. (I'm not sure how he avoids copyright strikes; though the music he plays sounds somewhat different from how I know the original music to sound.) Sometimes he even illustrates his points by showing what the music would sound like if it weren't whatever it is he's showcasing (say, an odd time signature or the Locrian mode). As someone who has long been basically illiterate on music theory, it's great to finally know the difference between, say, a major and a minor scale.
Later after the sun went down, I took a bath, reading the first few pages of a book Gretchen got me for Chanukka entitled Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker. So far it seems to be trafficking in minor quibbles with Darwinian theory while not grasping the bigger truth of the revolution Darwin brought. I wonder if I will make it much further into the book.
Tonight well after dark, while our dogs were out chasing something in the woods, I heard shooting coming from down at the bus turnaround. I was so enraged that I immediately drove down there and shouted at the shooters just as they were getting in their vehicle to go, telling them I was calling the police. I ended my shouting with "fuck you!" and then I drove straight back home. The dogs returned home shortly after that; the shooting had been unrelated to them.
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