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selfish superspreader at the Ghettoford
Monday, September 27 2021
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
The other day when I bought duplex outlet for the upstairs wiring project at the cabin, I'd deliberately avoided buying so-called tamper-resistant outlets. These have plastic shutters that block access to the hot and neutral connection of the outlet unless both are being penetrated at the same time. The idea here is to prevent children from sticking objects into outlets, with all the risk of shock and fire that comes from that. Gretchen and I don't have children and don't especially like children (especially ones of the age likely to experiment with electrical outlets), so why should we have to build a child-proof cabin with nanny-state electrical outlets? Home Depot still sells non-tamper-resistant outlets, so those were the ones I bought. When I was at the cabin this weekend, though, I noticed that all the outlets installed so far are of the tamper-resistant variety. Could it be that this has become a code compliance requirement since last I checked? A little research revealed that it has! This requirement actually came into force back in 2008, and, not being an wiring professional, I never got the memo. What this means for me is that I have to buy replacements for all eight of the non-tamper-resistant duplex outlets I installed at the cabin on Sunday and then I have to install them this weekend, along with the two duplex outlets in the bathroom that I didn't install because I ran out of duplex outlets prematurely.
Towards the end of my workday, I went down to the kitchen to see what I could make for dinner. The pickings were pretty slim; there were almost no beans, no tofu, no tempeh, no mushrooms, and no cookable vegetables. So I made an emergency run to the Uptown Hannaford (what we call "Ghettoford") to get provisions. While I was in the hippie section (behind the produce), I heard someone repeatedly sneezing big aggressive droplet-dispersing sneezes. Who the fuck was doing that in the midst of a global respiratory pandemic? I was immediately on guard, not wanting to venture into space just contaminated. Then I heard another cluster of sneezes and looked up to see that the sneezer was a middle-aged man with bushy grey hair and no mask. I vowed to tell him off if he came anywhere near me, and for a moment there was a danger he would (he appeared for a moment at the end of the Goya aisle while I was quickly gathering cans of beans). But then I made a beeline to checkout, hurrying through it so fast that my mask fell off and I couldn't figure out how to get it back on (it was being blocked by the temple pieces of my glasses). Once I was paid up, I hurried out of the store, passing within about 20 feet of the selfish superspreader (who was, thankfully, no longer sneezing). It's people like him who, in unwitting service to the coronavirus, will keep us wearing masks for a very long time.
My spaghetti dinner (with cauliflower) was done just as Gretchen was getting home. At that point she wondered where our Chewy order was, but it turned out it hadn't been delivered and we had no dog food for the dogs. (Gretchen had already been forced to feed our dogs beans for several meals.) Looking up what had happened online, Gretchen found that her last order had been canceled. So I made an emergency run out to Barnyard, getting there six minutes before it closed for the day at 6:00pm. On the way, I'd had to illegally pass a slow-driving SUV that was wandering all over Hurley Mountain Road. That was actually the second vehicle I'd illegally passed today; on the way to Hannaford I'd had to pass a big Chevy Silverado that, based on the way it was being driven, was piloted by a 95 year old lady with no concern for how much of her dwindling years she spends driving very slowly from one place to the next.
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