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tiny cubes of glass in the door of a microwave
Saturday, November 29 2025
This morning Gretchen decided to make blintzes for her parents. She'd evidently never made them before, as I didn't really know what a blintz is. She explained that it's a traditional European Jewish food made of crepes wrapped around some sort of cheese in concert with a sweet fruit filling. Because of that cheese component, they are rarely (if ever) vegan versions of them. But Gretchen apparently had a soft homemade cheese she thought would work. Gretchen's parents also wanted BLTs, which at this point is something that I am in charge of making. The problem was that Gretchen was taking up a lot of room on the kitchen island with her blintz operation, and there wasn't much room for me to work. I managed to make that room, but then there was a more psychological problem I had to overcome: Gretchen's tendency to provide helpful advice or to chide me when I am doing something she disapproves of. (This is one reason I mostly oly cook when Gretchen is not around.) I have, you see, a genetic aversion to such feedback. (I say this because my mother was infamously sensitive to such remarks when she was working as well.) So before I began to make the BLTs, I told Gretchen in the gentlest way possible that I would prefer if she not make comments as I work. In the past this might've precipitated a fight, but suprisingly Gretchen agreed not to make any comments. (Although at some point she did ask if I'd eaten anything yet today, which is a coded way of asking, "Why are you being so cranky?")
The BLTs were a success, as they always are, though I thought maybe the bread I used was a little too healthy. Gretchen's blintzes were good too, though I prefer breakfast items that are bit more savory.
Gretchen's parents were driving back up to Albany today to catch a flight back to Dulles International Airport. On the way there, the plan was to briefly visit our cabin in the Adirondacks. The cabin really isn't "on the way" of course, but it is closer to Albany than it is to Hurley. In earlier plans, Gretchen thought maybe we'd be going with them to the cabin. But the weather up there was cold and snowy and doing so would've eaten up five hours of our day, so Gretchen's parents borrowed a key and did it on their own.
Meanwhile Gretchen and I did our usual cozy weekend thing on the couch in the living room. As the time came when Gretchen's parents (traveling the scenic route through Middleburgh) should be arriving at the cabin, I started watching the video feed from the surveillance camera. But somehow I missed them; Gretchen got an email from her father showing us the cabin under an inch or so of snow after he'd left and hed never appeared on the camera.
Somehow I pissed away the entire afternoon even after eating 120 mg of pseudoephedrine (which is supposed to give me initiative). Just before dark I managed to rally and bring back a backpack load of firewood rounds lying near where the Woodshed Path meets the Stick Trail.
I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I really like the feeling I get when I am on pseudoephedrine and then take diphenhydramine. The former makes me want to stay awake, and the latter, instead of making me want to go to sleep (its normal effect), it just makes me enjoy the feeling of staying up late, even if I have nothing really to do. I was also drinking kratom tea, which provides yet another usually-pleasant effect to the cocktail. After I'd microwaved another another cup of hot water in my kratom sludge, I went to get the cup out of the microwave and it slipped out of my hand, bouncing into the glass front of the microwave door, which immediately shattered into an array of cubes, like an automotive windshield. (The ceramic cup was undamaged.) The cubes all stayed together in a matrix, so I covered them in wide strips of packing tape to secure them in place. Since the metal mesh that keeps the microwaves from escaping the oven wasn't affected, I felt confident we could go on using oven. Gretchen was initially skeptical, wondering if there was a chance it would now give us cancer, and I assured her that even if waves were escaping, they were non-ionizing and would not affect our DNA. All they could do was heat us up, as they purportedly did a candy bar in the pocket of the guy who invented the microwave oven.
Later this evening a I continued to enjoy the light combination buzz of the substances I had taken, I had ChatGPT help me figure out the technology of a cheap Chinese WiFi tracker that I'd bought long ago on eBay and never figured out how to use. We determined that it does have GPS electronics and probably WiFi (via an ESP8266) but that it probably doesn't use cellular technology. I also learned that, despite its exposure of a .bin image in a mounted drive when plugged into the USB port of a computer, it's unlikely I would be able to flash it with an open-source firmware.
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