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coltsfoot flowers in force
Friday, April 18 2025
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
It being Friday, I had a light workday in the usual remote Friday workplace (which I perform in the laboratory). My homemade bracket system to support my work-issued laptop didn't really work as hoped, mostly because a USB-C extension cable had some sort of bandwidth limit that made the video rendered on my big 4K television (the one used as my main computer screen) blocky with some lower-resolution version of the signal. But presumably I can fix this.
At the end of the day, Gretchen and I loaded up our supplies and dogs in the Bolt and drove to the cabin, this being the first time Gretchen would be going there since November 2nd of 2024. We took the usual route through Middleburgh, and, as we often do when it's both of us, we stopped at Love Shine Tea in Schoharie, which surprised us somewhat by still being an ongoing concern. The only other customer there while we were there was a fit-looking woman with prematurely grey hair who sat by herself. Somehow we spent over $70 there getting various treats, bread, a complicated flatbread with numerous toppings, and oat milk espresso drinks. While these things were being prepared, we discussed with the owner such subjects at the Broome Animal Sanctuary (which we pass by south of Middleburgh) and the many other animal sanctuaries in the nearby region.
Though temperatures were in the low 60s as we rumbled down Woodworth Lake Road, there was still some old snow in places in the roadside ditches. There was no snow at the cabin, though, and yellow coltsfoot flowers had started popping out of the ground in force. (I'd seen a few last weekend as well.) There were also some phoebes flitting around, likely because they have decided to again nest beneath the screened-in porch.
Temperatures in the cabin were in the 60s, so I didn't make a fire until later this evening. There being relatively little to do, I immediately did some work on my east cabin switcher ESP8266, which needed a new firmware (as the one I'd installed last weekend had neglected to include a configuration to read data from its INA219 power sensor.
Then I fixed myself a boozy drink and went up the beanbag in the loft to watch an episode of the latest season of Black Mirror on my laptop. The episode I watched this evening, "Hotel Reverie," was a rather weak one about a contemporary actor being substituted into an old movie via an immersive virtual reality system in which the other actors are all apparently sophisticated avatars powered by artificial intelligence. I'd taken 150 mg of diphenhydramine, which often affects my ability to remember things if I am also drinking booze. So I do not remember how the episode ended. Later I staggered downstairs to bed and Gretchen wanted a plot summary of how the episode had gone, and I somehow managed to tell her something without her noting (as she normally would) that I sounded extremely fucked up.
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