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good wood is lighter
Thursday, January 12 2023
There was a beautiful dusting of snow on everything this morning at the tail end of a short-lived blast of almost-normal weather for this time of year (that is, cold). But throughout the day, conditions warmed up well into the 40s and eventually a series of strong rain showers passed through, and these lasted well into the night.
But between the snow and the rain, I was able to collect some firewood at noon today from that shoulder in the landscape south of the Chamomile ravine. The wood I gathered today was nice and dry, something I could immediately tell because of its weight. Very dry wood makes for a much easier schlep homeward, and that wood is far more valuable.
I've discovered that the non-skeletonized red oak I'd gotten from west of the Farm Road (which probably fell down in the summer during one of the severe wind events) is definitely not suitable for burning even after hours spent atop the woodstove. I can tell by how heavy the pieces still are (red oak should be noticeably lighter than the chestnut oak that I mostly burn in Hurley). And, when I make the mistake of putting them in the stove, it's not long before water startls boiling out of their ends with a loud hissing noise. That's always bad, since steam escaping up a chimney carries away much more heat than smoke does.
As is often the case on the day after taking pseudoephedrine and allowing myself to drink, I'd drunk a bit too much and it left me with a mild hangover. But this didn't hamper my ability to do work. Counterintuitively, I've found that a mild hangover is often good for productivity. Today's work didn't produce much in the way of results (it was more of a fact-finding nature). But at least I did it.
In other news, Oscar the Cat seems to be doing better a couple days into his course of antibiotics. His breath is no longer as terrible, he's no longer drooling pus, and he seems happier. I've started feeding him more wet food, as now that I've been paying attention I see that he avoids eating dry food (or anything that requires chewing). His dependence on wet food is probably why he's become a bit of a beggar in recent weeks, demanding to lap up the leftover oat milk in my cereal even before I've finished with it.
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