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junk drawer on wheels Thursday, December 9 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Without dogs, lights, other humans, or any noise, I slept unusually soundly on the couch in the cabin's great room, and when I awoke, I didn't initially remember where I was. At that point it was a little after 6:00am and still dark outside. I wanted to be home before the work day began, so I gathered up my work-issued laptop and went out to the car. It didn't initially start because of a chronic loose terminal on the battery. But then it came to life. I'd thought I might have to do a little shoveling of the three inches of dry, fluffy snow before I could make it up the initial slope in the driveway, but the Subaru climbed it without any difficulties. It was almost entirely downhill from there all the way to Johnstown, so it was looking like the drive home would be incident-free. The sun started climbing above the horizon somewhere just west of Albany, and I made it home at about 8:30am.
I monitored the cabin's temperature remotely throughout the day and at some point the generator seemed to have produced a temperature spike, so it was looking like things would be good there until at least this weekend.
It was looking like we'd be replacing the 2004 Subaru Legacy Outback with the Forester tomorrow, so one of the things I did today was to begin moving all the clutter out of the Subaru so it could eventually, after some organization go into the new car. The old Subaru was something of a junk drawer on wheels, with mix of tools, fasteners, household wiring equipment, and plumbing. I'd used it as my preferred landlording vehicle, and it had accumulated a fair number of things like antique doorknobs and romex connectors. But the origin of some of the things in there dated as far back as the Toyota pickup we bought back in 2002 just before moving upstate. It was common when replacing cars to take all the stuff out of the old one and put it into the new one, often without paying too much attention to what it was. And the Subaru Legacy inherited its role from another Subaru Legacy Outback, which inherited its role from a Honda Civic hatchback, which inherited its role from an earlier Honda Civic hatchback that Gretchen totalled, which inherited its role from a briefly-owned 2005 Toyota Prius, which inherited its role from that Toyota pickup (and it's possible I'm missing a car in that list of begats).
In addition to the clutter inside the Subaru was the pair of horizontal roof-rack rails that go from passenger side to driver side atop the car. These would have to come off, because I would be needing them on the newer Subaru (otherwise we'd only have the rack rails that run front-to-back over the doors, which is insufficient for securing most loads to the roof). These rails were custom units I'd bought online and were secured with a key. Finding the key was a bit of a challenge, but sometimes I'm more organized than I give myself credit for. And then, of course, I had to lubricate some of the locks with WD-40 due to the accumulated rust and grime of the past five and a half years.
This evening Gretchen made a dinner comprised mostly of leftovers and things (such as faux turkey paddies) that had been languishing in the refrigerator since a previous era of vegan food. There was brown rice containing a few red kidney beans, a mushroom gravy, and a lot of salad, some prepared with cucumbers and sweet pepppers for Powerful and me (since she doesn't like them). We even ate in the dining room family-style. It had been back before Powerful left for Albany, had acute heart problems, and gotten a heart transplant when we'd last done that.
Later Gretchen and I watched one of the episodes of the Jeopardy!'s professor championship followed by a conventional episode that had been broadcast on November 30th and that we'd skipped over. It was one in which champion Amy Schneider withstood a strong challenger named Pamella Schoenberg whom the fans had supposedly hated for sexist reasons. But no, after seeing Schoenberg's performance, Gretchen and I agreed that she was unpleasant by any standards. She had a flat rapid-fire way of answering questions that anyone would find irritating.
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