Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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decay & ruin
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dead malls
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Irving housing

got that wrong
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Fractal antenna

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Like my brownhouse:
   like the Mid-Hudson Buffet
Monday, March 22 2021
The springlike weather continued today, and it would've been a great one for dining in the outdoor garden part of the Garden Café, but our plans were dashed by a mild veterinary emergency. Somehow last night Ramona had managed to get a four or five shallow lacerations in her right foot from the heel all the way to the side of one of the toes. By this morning the foot was swollen and Ramona seemed in pain, so Gretchen set up an appointment at the Hurley vet (and I gave her 375 milligrams of amoxicillin). That appointment was scheduled for 5:20pm, after a day of tax importing madness in the remote workplace.
The Hurley vet is still exercising the strict pandemic protocol that has customers wait in their cars and communicate with the front desk via cellphone, and eventually a staffer comes out to take your critter in to do whatever needs doing. My problem with all this is how terrible I am with my cellphone, which I use almost exclusively as an internet-only device. Nobody knows its number (not even me), though I tracked it down today so Gretchen could give it to the Hurley vet. But then there's its awkward setup; it uses a Chinese offshoot of Android known as Miui (mostly setup in English, though some apps are entirely in Chinese), and there are things about it that are unreliable but can be worked around (such as whether files can be offloaded via the USB port) and others that are complete mysteries (for example, whether or not the sound settings will permit it to audibly ring when a call comes in). Because the ringer refused to ring (even though I had switch the Sound setting to "Regular" meaning "All sounds will work normally"), I kept missing calls from the vet, and when I'd try to call back, I just kept being dumped into an answering service. I figured out how to send SMS texts (something I almost never do, since I prefer internet-based text communication), though I found the process needlessly awkward, and I kept being distracted by the dogs erupting in squeals and barks at other canine patients in the parking area. Eventually though Ramona got her visit, and was prescribed yet another antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory drug. The vet was as puzzled by the injuries as I had been. If she'd been attacked by another animal, the injuries would be on the face and front paws. Maybe she'd gotten caught in some wire. The vet jokingly suggested attaching a GoPro to her to see what trouble she gets herself into. As for the bill, it came to just less than $100, which is a steal at the Hurley vet.
Back at the house, Gretchen had taken a bunch of random food out of the freezer and other places and piled in on the kitchen island to be eaten tonight as leftovers. Last night's chili was too fresh for this endeavor and went into the refrigerator, where there was now presumably more room. I decided to make a wrap with some old vegan meatballs Gretchen had bought with great excitement at an Ikea and then promptly forgotten about. I could taste the freezer burn on them but soldiered on anyway. Gretchen wondered if I knew what she was thinking of when she was thinking what tonight's meal was like. "Mid-Hudson Buffet?" I asked. "Oh my God!" she shouted, "that's it!"


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http://asecular.com/blog.php?210322

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