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fresh paint is molten lava Tuesday, January 21 2025
[REDACTED]
In the mid-Hudson Valley, our continentality is such that statistical peak cold happens on January 21st. This means that the average high and average low bottom out, on average, on that day every year. In other places, where the continentality is higher (such as central Siberia or Idaho), peak cold typically happens earlier, closer to the winter solstice, since there isn't as much moderating ocean or lake water to delay the effects of decreasing sunlight. Today we just happened to be at the beginning of a major artic airmass breakout, and temperatures never rose above 16 degrees Fahrenheit. By tonight, they'd fallen into the low single digits. Despite this, I took Charlotte for her usual afternoon walk (to which I didn't even invite Neville), though all we did was walk up the Farm Road and back. When Charlotte realized that was all we were doing, she immediately ran all the way home, arriving there several minutes before I did (and giving Neville and enthusiastic greeting, no doubt).
I spent most of the day repainting various color shapes on the floor of the laboratory. I'd then either find some way to keep myself and the critters from walking on those spaces (usually by using several paint cans to hold a painting canvas hovering above it) or just remember that the color I'd just painted is "molten lava" and that I mustn't step on it (a technique that requires the cats and dogs to be inactive at the time). The extremely cold air outside meant that it was very dry in the house, so the paint was drying very quickly.
Meanwhile Gretchen had spent her whole day beginning the teaching of a poetry course at Woodbourne Correctional Facility down in Sullivan County. Because of bureaucratic requirements, she had to show up hours before the class to have an ID made, but of course nobody had filed the necessary paperwork telling anyone that Gretchen would be coming to get her ID, so she had to face a of exasperated prison employees for whom her coming to get an ID was akin to the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. They grudgingly produced the necessary ID, and then Gretchen drove to Ellenville to kill time at its public library (and also charge the Chevy Bolt). But of course there was a cop behind her for the whole drive, and when she errantly made the wrong turn off of Route 52, he felt compelled to pull her over. Ultimately, though, it was obvious that Gretchen was just a normal middle-aged white lady following directions on her phone, so he didn't give her a ticket. As for the class, Gretchen only had one student (a white guy with an interest in meter), but there was some other prisoner taking an AIDS-related class nearby (a charismatic guy with a milky eye) who kept briefly joining the class and even recruiting other prisoners to do the same.
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