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avoiding polyurethane fumes
Friday, October 8 2021
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
At the end of the workday, I finished loading up the Chevy Bolt and then drove with the dogs up to the cabin. I'd considered stopping at the Walmart in Albany to top-off the battery and get some groceries, but it was easier to stop at the Price Chopper in Johnstown, which is more on the way than the Walmart. While there, I got some lettuce and two loaves of something similar to french bread. The only other Price Chopper I've been in was the one in Saugerties. I don't think it's painting with too broad of a brush to observe that there's an all-pervasive white-trash vibe to Saugerties, and a supermarket with a mirrored façade would seem to concentrate that spirit. That definitely seems to be the case at the Johnstown Price Chopper as well. Few shoppers were wearing masks, even though Fulton County is something of a hotspot for coronavirus in Fulton County. I should mention that the evening was perfect in the Price Chopper parking lot, with balmy breezes and a thin fingernail clipping of crescent moon setting in the west, not all that far behind the sun.
As I neared the cabin, I was listening to a WIZR, which was something of a classic rock (or perhaps classic pop) radio station. But whenever it broke for news or ads, it was all geared towards right-wing listeners. The news featured a "poll" that showed that most Democrats "trust 'the media'" (whatever that is), whereas most Republicans and independents do not. And the ads were about things like investing in gold or buying products from My Pillow. (It takes a special kind of paranoid stupidity to invest in gold!)
When I arrived at the cabin, it was all lit up from inside. Our friend Eric was there to do more painting and, more importantly, to polyurethane all the unpainted wood (such as the steps and the trim). I was amused (and a little disturbed) to see empty cans of Hazy Little Thing IPA crowding the kitchen countertop. Apparently he'd decided this was his beer of choice too, and it was helping him get through his day. (For some reason Eric always breaks off the aluminum tab from the can, which means he then has two things he has to recycle where otherwise he would only have one.)
After exchanging a few pleasantries, I went to work drilling a hole through the west basement wall near the southwest corner so I could run a fat cable to supply power for charging the Bolt. The wall is made of concrete, and it turns out it's nine or ten inches thick, so it took a long time to get through it. And then it turned out my bits were a too small for me to get 3/4 inch conduit through the beautiful hole I'd drilled.
When Eric and I were done working for the night, I brought out a bottle of Gary's Good Gin and made us gin and tonics (I even had ice). Eric has a bunch of holes in his life experiences, and he'd never had gin before. "It's an acquired taste," I warned him. But, I suppose because it was alcohol, he seemed to think it was great.
To avoid the fumes from all the drying polyurethane, I dragged the futon I'd been sleeping on out into the screened-in porch. I'd brought the comforter from the bed back in Hurley in case we had a chilly Adirondack night, and this allowed me and the dogs to sleep well. As for Eric, he spent the night in his Honda minivan.
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