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a quick drive past North Korea
Sunday, May 11 2025
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
We awoke to another beautiful cloudless day in the Adirondacks. Conditions were so warm that I didn't even bother starting a fire (though I'd run one last night). I was up first, followed eventually by Gretchen, and the two of us played Spelling Bee collaboratively, getting to two words shy of Queen Bee before our guests came down the stairs to join us.
After we'd had our morning snacks, tea, and/or coffee, it was time for me to prepare something of an early brunch. The plan had been for me to make vegan BLTs, but we'd already pretty much run out of bread. So Gretchen baked some small sourdough buns that had come pre-made from somewhere and only needed to spend ten minutes in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Using those, I could make us two BLT sliders each. I cooked up a pan full of mushrooms, onions, and tempeh bacon (definitely not my preferred form of "bacon," but it was all we had), sliced up a tomato, and sliced up an avocado. All of the sliders were the same except for Gretchen's, which lacked avocado. In addition to the mentioned ingredients, they all contained lettuce, vegan mayonnaise, and sauerkraut. If the buns hadn't formed a tooth-breakingly-hard crust, the sliders would've been amazing. Fortunately, nobody broke any teeth on them.
We ate our sliders out on the screened-in porch, and while we were eating them, an unusual bird showed up on a tree branch not far away. At first I assumed it was a Baltimore oriole, but when I got a better look at it, I realized it was a rose-breasted grosbeak, in this case a male. (The females, I later reminded myself when I looked them up, resemble plump sparrows.) A male grosbeak is a pretty spectacular American bird, so it was great that Kelly and Brian got to see him. It wasn't clear why the bird was there, though later I would see him again, and this time he would fly down to the ground under the bird feeder to eat fallen seeds.
Eventually we all walked back down to the dock, again with Gretchen going first and then, somewhat later, me with the guests. Neville ended up coming with us in the second contingent.
The sun yesterday had been enough to give Kelly a light sunburn on her face, though apparently I'd had enough base tan to avoid this. At some point I'd had enough of hanging out with the others on the dock, so I grabbed a kayak and went for a paddle in the outflow bay. I'd put a couple beers in the little brook that enters the lake near the tree dock, and I took one of those with me on my kayak adventure and gave the other to Brian, who was surely thinking by that point that the experience he was having would be nicer if he had a drink in his hand.
Soon after I returned to the dock, Gretchen impulsively decided to go for a swim. But the water was so cold that it hurt to be in it (something I'd experienced with my feet), so her swim only lasted about fifteen minutes.
I ended up returning to the cabin before the others, and, after seeing the first Adirondack hummingbird of the season, I decided to sit in the Adirondack chairs out in front to see if I could photograph one. (On Thursday I'd bought a high-end hummingbird feeder at the hardware store in Accord for the cabin, but then thought it might still be a little early for hummingbirds at the cabin.) While I was sitting there sipping some orange juice spiked with gin, a bluejay showed up, and I got a few good photos of him or her. And then that rose-breasted grosbeak returned, though wouldn't pose for a photo.
After the others returned, Gretchen heated up some cream of broccoli soup she'd made earlier this week, and we ate that as a lupper out in the screened-in porch.
Once Kelly and Brian had cleaned up the kitchen and I'd done a little cleaning up elsewhere, we loaded up the car and began our drive back to Hurley at around 5:00pm. We wanted to show Kelly and Brian what Albany looks like without actually taking any time to drive into Albany and get out and walk around. So we opted to take the I-87 north to I-90 and then I-787 along the side of downtown Albany, allowing out guests to see some of the beautiful European-style buildings as well as the blocky brutalist monoliths of Empire Plaza, looming like something despotic and North Korean over downtown.
As we drove, we listened to a cinema-related podcast that Brian likes called Unspooled on the topic of the movie Office Space. I found the whole thing interesting, though Gretchen started grumbling about one of the hosts, who she found to be a blowhard. At some point she started fast-forwarding through his commentary, which I found obnoxious. I told her to stop and reminded her, "You're not the only one listening!" I actually knew most of the meta-story about Office Space, so tangential comments somewhat unrelated to it were perfectly fine to me.
Back home in Hurley, I needed a little precious downtime, which I'd had very little of while at the cabin. But at some point I went downstairs to take another stab at trying to make Gretchen's printer more reliable and that point I got sucked into the ongoing socializing. Gretchen had decided to make spaghetti for dinner, a dinner that was now in addition to brunch and lupper. We took our food upstairs and Gretchen played us the first episode of the first season of Strangers With Candy. Then she played the first twenty or so minutes of another comedic classic: Team America: World Police. At that point I realized I hadn't filled out my timesheet for the past week of my job, so I went off to do that and went to bed soon thereafter, electing not to watch Airplane! with the others.
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