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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   don't work from memory when dealing with measurements
Monday, June 13 2022

location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY

After I got up this morning, I started a laundry of the pillow case and socks into which I'd spilled my beverage last night. Then, to deal with other potential unwanted fluids, I carried Neville out into the yard to get him to piss. I didn't want him languishing in bed until late in the morning and then deciding it was easier to just piss in the bed instead of getting up and doing what a housetrained dog is supposed to do.
Somewhat surprisingly, I managed to get both dogs to come with me on a brief walk up the Farm Road and back. But Ramona was walking especially gingerly, and I'd left all the dog medication (asprin and CBD oil) up at the cabin. Gretchen told me the CBD oil place was on 9W north of Mother Earth's Store House, but somehow I processed this as being north of Adam's Fairacre Farms (about another mile further north). So at lunchtime when I went looking for the CBD store, I drove well past Van Kleeck's Tires without seeing any store that that might sell CBD oil. At that point I tried to use Google Maps on my phone, but (as always seems to be my luck) the few times I need something from my phone, it fails me in some infuriating way. This time it seemed like its GPS wasn't working. So I had to use that old technique from before GPS: driving somewhat slowly and looking at everything carefully, which is a good way to have a car accident. In so doing, I actually managed to find a place that sells CBD oil north of Adams, which indicates how common such stores are becoming. It was a windowless warehouse with a sign saying something about organic rolling papers. The door was locked, so I thought it might be a cannabis speakeasy or something. I rang the doorbell and then went to look for another entrance. Someone finally came to let me in, and I could see it was a big space not set up for retail but full of things like bongs and what not. The only people there were an Indian couple, two tiny earnest-looking brown people. They indicated they had CBD oil, but not the kind for dogs. I asked where I should go for that, and they indicated the place that Gretchen had probably tried to steer me to. By now my GPS was working, but it kept wanting to make me take a big complicated U-turn, so I went to Hannaford to get groceries instead.

Meanwhile up in Fulton County, Gretchen had gone to Kadco, the dock-supply place that recently moved from Gloversville to Johnstown, in hopes of buying a floater for the hinged section of dock I'd built last weekend. I'd given her the specs for the desired floater: 48 by 36 by 12 inches. While at Kadco, Gretchen discovered they didn't have any of the three-foot-wide floaters I'd designed for. At that point, cocksure as ever and working entirely from garbled memories of things I'd said that hadn't much interested her at the time, Gretchen gave the very-helpful dock whisperer measurements that were, as it happened, completely wrong. No problem, he said, and he proceeded to sell her a floater that was 48 by 24 by 12 inches. Such a floater would require a completely different structure from the one I'd spent hours building last weekend. As she drove back to the cabin, Gretchen called me to report this floater news that she thought would delight me. I quickly realized the floater she'd bought (and was now hauling) would be useless to me and told her she should immediately return it. Something that seemed too obvious to have told her earlier was something that I then told her: please don't work from memory when dealing with measurements, particularly on a project you haven't been paying extremely close attention to.
On the drive back to Kadco, Gretchen made a right on a red stoplight at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Perry Street, an intersection where there is a sign posted saying this is illegal, a sign we have actually discussed in the past. Sure enough, she got pulled over by a cop while on the phone discussing the floater fiasco with me. Fortunately she got off with a warning. This time.
The dock whisperer at Kadco didn't have any good three-foot-wide floaters in stock, but he had one that might be repairable that measured 24 by 36 by 16 inches. This had 33% less buoyancy than the 48 by 36 by 12 inch floater I'd originally wanted, but it turned out that that was about 36% more buoyancy than I needed (according to the dock whisperer's calculations, which may have come from Gretchen's bogus measurement memories). The question now is whether the floater he found is fixable (he will attempt to do some plastic welding to fix it). If it is, Gretchen will be picking it up on Friday, and I might have a working hinged section of dock by the end of next weekend.

It's nice to have alone time here in Hurley, but as long as Powerful is here, it's not something I actually get. True, he spends most of his time down in his room either sleeping or recording raps (a thing he does that makes him seem even more like a lazy teenager). But sometimes it's nice to go down to kitchen without wondering whether he's going to be there or if he's going to shuffle and grunt his way up the stairs while I'm there. As an introvert, I enjoy the certainty of knowing I'm not going to have to spend any energy on extemporaneous socializing.
Today Powerful was up in Albany for most of the day. While preparing myself a dinner of pre-packaged Indian curry with reheated injera odds and ends, I talked to him briefly this evening and he said he'd had a job interview in Albany today that had gone reasonably well. It would be for a position where he'd be helping a local Catholic charity steer juvenile delinquents out of a life of crime and violence.

Well before dark after my usual Monday evening bath, I carried Neville outside to make sure he'd peed before snuggling into bed for the night. Hopefully he will unlearn his bad habits if he is denied any ability to demonstrate them.


Neville on his walk this morning. Ramona is in background as a black dot. Click to enlarge.


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