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crap from old projects
Sunday, January 17 2021
This morning while setting out down the Stick Trail to get another backpack load of firewood, I encountered our new downhill neighbors coming up the Chamomile gorge on their way to the Farm Road. They were en route to the waterfall on Georges' property. They had another couple with them, and that couple had some sort of designer dog with a docked tail who was on a leash and barking at me ferociously. As the rest of their contingent continued up the gorge, Neil hung back and I gave him a crash course on what tree was what. He only knew them as, for example, "the one where the bark peels off in big chunks."
I needed to get provisions in Kingston, but the slow leak from the rear passenger tire on the Subaru had rendered the car so undriveable that I would have to inflate that tire in place. So I went looking for the tire-inflation adapter for the garage air compressor. Last time I'd used that compressor, it had been to weld a handle back on a plastic measuring cup. I'd taken the inflatation adapter off and put it somewhere. But where? The garage is in a heightened state of untidiness these days, and it was possible the adapter had fallen into a mote of leaves that had blown in through the garage doors. Or maybe it was hidden among some ceramic tile scraps I really need to get rid of (they're a legacy from retiling the front entryway of the house, something I'd done something like 20 months ago). But the adapter couldn't be found. From past experience I know that if I'm looking for something and not finding it, chances are good that the area that I am searching is too small. So I went further afield in the garage, looking under random accumulations of cardboard, finding a few things I'd lost along the way, but still not finding the tire inflation adapter. At one point I picked up a blue five-gallon plastic diesel tank containing fuel oil from the Brewster Street oil tank decomissioning of late spring, 2017, and of course some of that sloshed out of the nozzle and onto my leg, forcing me to launch an immediate cleanup I hadn't wanted to do. As I chaged into the house, of course Diane the Cat was in my way wanting to do stupid cat stuff and I yelled at her, though I immediately felt bad.
It turned out that all this while, the tire inflation adapter had been on the laboratory's air compressor (a smaller unit I mostly use for cleaning out the laboratory urinal system). I'd put it on there when I went to pump air into the well's pressure tank and forgotten all about it. This meant I could inflate the flat tire on the Subaru and go run my errands.
First I drove myself and the dogs out to Lowes to get much-needed new chainsaw blades as well as parts to reseat the Brewster Street rental unit's toilet, which I hope I really don't have to do. Next I crossed 9W and looked in Michæls for supplies that could be used to hand-paint a blank coffee cup as part of a birthday present idea for Gretchen, who will be turning 50 on Tuesday. I found some suitable paints, but for an actual blank coffee cup, I had to to Bed, Bath & Beyond, where I was briefly mesmerized by an island full of so-called "smart home" gadgets (such a lightbulbs with IP addresses). My last errand was at Hannaford, where I needed bread, beer, and beans. Yesterday Powerful had bought a loaf of white bread specifically for making crutons, and I'd subsequently eaten nearly all of it in the form of peanut butter and cheese-mustard-and-lettuce sandwiches, so I thought I should get another loaf.
Late this afternoon I got a second backpack load of firewood, this time from a staging area not far west of the Farm Road.
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