setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
Today marked the end of my third month working at this company that I have been working for. It's not a great job, but days are relatively stress-free and I have a good enough work environment. If I must spend all day sitting in front of a computer, something I mostly would be doing even if I didn't have a job, it might as well be here. But the work I've been given is often poorly-described and has large open-ended aspects. Like many people, I tend to be overwhelmed by such things, since it's cognitively difficult to focus on something that is inherently out of focus. My brain needs frequent relief from these conditions, and typically my response is to procrastinate. On a modern networked computer, there are many ways to do this, especially when my brain is full of ideas for my ESP8266 Remote Control system, a platform where development is rapid and easy. (I built all of it and understand it completely.)
Today the CEO seemed concerned about all the time I was spending on a legacy system deployed at Los Angeles International Airport. But this time had been necessary for a mortal like me to ever come to an understanding of it. We had a meeting about it, and I seemed to immediately put the CEO's concerns to rest; I'd figured everything out that needed figuring out and it was now on the client to decide what to do about what turned out to be a minor data anomaly.
That felt like a minor triumph, so the day ended on something of a high note as I strode out of the air-conditioned office into the parking lot, where temperatures were in the upper 90s.
Back home in Hurley, I found that Gretchen had closed all the doors of the house to trap the cool inside, a strategy that kept temperatures low indoors even without running the air conditioning. Charlotte was eager for her walk, though I was surprised that Neville seemed excited to go too. And he remained so even when we went out into the unpleasant outdoors. We marched straight to the puddle at the bottom of the Chamomile Headwaters Trail, and there Neville took a nice soak, getting his entire body wet by splashing around. From there we went up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail and then cut over off-trail to the Stick Trail as I often do. By the time I got back to the house, my teeshirt was drench in sweat. So I took it off, rinsed it out, and eventually put it back on again, letting its dampness cool me off.
When Gretchen got back from the bookstore, she made us a dinner mostly of old stuff in the refrigerator: bok choy, kale, lettuce, and a bag of tiny injera fragments.Gretchen had accidentally eaten a piece of slug today and was very careful as she washed off lettuce that had come from our garden.
I hadn't bathed in awhile, but the weather wasn't compatible with a hot bath. So I started with a lukewarm soak, staying in the water long enough for it to cool down enough to be a little uncomfortable. At that point I turned on the hot water, which felt good under those conditions.
