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chaise lounge in a block of snow Tuesday, March 9 2021
Today was a gorgeous sunny day with temperatures rising nearly to 60, the warmest weather this year so far. I heard a carolina wren singing the cheery spring song "Jupiter! Jupiter! Jupiter!" and it finally felt like winter was over. But when Gretchen wanted to lie in the driveway with a book, she had to lie on the asphalt, because the chaise lounge she would've normally dragged out for this purpose was encased is a pile of hard snow that had thawed and melted its way into a rocklike material.
I'd taken one of Gretchen's citalopram to see if it would have any beneficial effects on my workday. I also wanted to see if it would affect me differently on my 44th day without alcohol (since last time I'd taken it, I'd been drinking nearly every day). If anything, though, it seemed to increase my propensity to procrastinate. I cared even less about my work-a-day chores and mostly just wanted to lie down, partly because I also felt very mildly ill. By the end of the day, I had enough of a headache to take some ibuprofen. (I almost never get headaches except from hangovers, caffeine withdrawal, or genuine illness, the sort that puts me in bed all day.)
As I continued working to clean the laboratory, today I encountered a couple unopened packages that my brain had somehow turned into a single package, one containing a scorpion Grid Kit, which we'd had mailed to us after happening upon the Grid Kit factory in Oakland, California more than three years ago. But only one of those packages contained the cardboard scorpion kit; the other contained another solar panel like the one that powered the Disturbatron, one I'd totally forgotten about having ordered and received. I think that places me further out on the hoarders continuum than I had considered myself.
In an effort to digest as much of the laboratory clutter as possible, today, in addition to opening up those two packages (and finding a storage home for the solar panel), I began the process of putting the cardboard scorpion together. I'd remembered that the articulations of Grid Kit animals is done with zip ties (each joint requires two zip ties, whose heads act as flanges on either side of the penetration, allowing the cardboard to pivot). What I didn't expect was that there would be so much gluing. The online instructions seemed to suggest hot glue, but I used superglue instead, which sets nearly as quickly and forms a better bond. I was still working on the scorpion as tonight's diphenhydramine kicked in, so I left the eight legs for tomorrow.
Not wanting to cook tonight, Gretchen picked up a bunch of ready-to-eat food from Mother Earth's Storehouse's deli section. This included tempeh sandwiches and fried potato wedges.
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