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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   triangle kit
Thursday, August 25 2022
Most of the bluestone walkwalk at the Adirondack cabin is done, though there are a few triangle-shaped holes here and there as well as generally ragged edges along both sides. To fill these voids in will require a large assortment of various-sized triangular pieces of bluestone. I could try to break bigger pieces into such triangles, but breaking bluestone often produces unpredictable results, and cutting it tends to make edges that are too straight for the organic-looking results one generally wants. So it's best to find pre-existing triangles, ideally ones that are unlikely to break into smaller pieces. The best source for small tough pieces of any sort of rock are creek beds, where the repeatedly pounding of water and rocks tends to produce a stony bed of random shapes that are difficult to break down any further. But my first foray in search of convenient triangle-shaped bluestone was to micro-quarry about a quarter mile down the Stick Trail, a place from which I've retrieved a number of nice flagstones. Evidently that site had been mined in the past because the rocks in that area tended to crack in a way that produced rectangular pieces, with the result being that there were few triangular-shaped pieces worth taking. So on a subsequent outing, I followed the Chamomile downhill from its closest approach to the Farm Road, and managed to find a number of acceptable pieces. But I didn't really find a good selection of triangular pieces until I was driving home from a landlording chore and stopped along Englishman's Creek about a quarter mile up Dug Hill Road. Owing to the drought, the creekbed was completely dry, and, though there were a lot of small flat pieces of various shapes, most were not triangular. But I gathered all that I could see that were either triangular or long and skinny, quickly filling a shopping bag to the point of being a bit too heavy to carry gracefully.

About that landlording chore: the tenants at the Brewster Street House had complained that the dryer wasn't drying their clothes very quickly. So I went over to investigate. As I approached the house, I could see a jolly bunch of Hispanic gentlemen re-roofing the house to the immediate south. They'd blocked off access to the alleyway on one side of the rental, so I was forced to knock on the front door to have the tenant let me in (her big old brindle mutt Frank barked at me initially but the quickly decided I wasn't a threat). Some tests in the basement confirmed that the dryer was working perfectly. It was blowing very hot air out of the back and the air into and out of the drum was reaching very high temperatures. The problem seemed to be with the vent hose, so when I went out into the alley (in a treacherous area full of scaffolding and guys overhead joyfully firing nail guns to the beat of loud Hispanic music), I found the end of the vent was barely pushing out any air at all. Evidently it was plugged at that end. So I redirected the heater vent hose into a void beneath a separate adajacent part of the foundation (for an addition that had been made to the back of the house) and told the tenant to see if clothes would start drying faster. I'm not going to try to unclog the vent at the outside of the house until after the jolly Hispanic roofers have finished their project.
I had a real hankering for a trashy electric-flavored energy drink, but the Sunoco gas station only sold energy drinks containing "zero sugar," and I cannot stand artificial sweeteners. So I opted for a Starbucks Nitro Brew instead, and that scratched the itch okay.


The triangle kit I assembled today. My foot is for scale. Click to enlarge.


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