Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   mostly just unafraid
Thursday, July 15 2010
The weather has proved particularly hot this summer, and many weeks ago I'd noticed that my Subaru's air conditioning had stopped working sometime over the winter. So today in the mail today I received an automotive air conditioner recharge kit (after shipping it cost nearly $60). It's a generic kit that should work for any car made after 1994. The instructions were a little vague, particularly the part about rotating the can between three and twelve o'clock as it is dispensing its coolant. In what dimension should this rotation be occurring? But I managed to get the coolant mostly into the car. At the end of my first can there was still some fluid sloshing around that wasn't coming out, so I had no choice but letting it discharge into the atmosphere. In the process it showered my engine and windshield with an oily substance that proved almost impossible to clean up. It was a dirty job, but it was worth it; after about a half hour of work my car was once more a transportable pool of refreshing cold air.

Today I had a work-related phonecall where I got off and felt like I had more, not less, work to do. I hate phonecalls like that. Still, as always with work-related phonecalls, though I might have felt like I was slacking going into the call, the apologies were all from the other side. And the truth of the matter is that it's been very hard to work on this project. I've been interfacing with a Dutch team, and they've shown themselves not to have a particularly American work ethic. It's also possible that they've been distracted by Holland's recent adventure through the bowels of the World Cup (of soccer).

This evening was another in which people came over and dined with us out on our east deck. In this case it was Penny, David, and their little spud Milo, joined later by Deborah. Gretchen made a sort of mac and "cheese" with corn fritters and also kale. At some point in the meal young Milo put a fork in his mouth in a manner not unlike that of someone using it as an eating utensil. This delighted his parents, of course, as it was just another of his many firsts. This scene caused me to pose the question of whether perhaps there was a time soon after the invention of the fork when adults found themselves bewildered and amazed at how quickly the children of the new generation were taking to using forks while they themselves felt rather clumsy with them.
Later P,D&M went home and Gretchen and Deborah stayed up watching a movie on our massive new television. Deboarh's huge dog Juneau was with her, and though at times he can express a bit too much interest in new cats, he seemed to sense that Nigel was a cat around which one must steer clear. The fact of the matter, though, is that Nigel is not a cat around which one (even a dog) must steer clear. He doesn't act unafraid because he is a tough guy; he's mostly just unafraid, at least in the conventional feline sense.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?100715

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