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snake on a wooden floor, tryst in the park
Sunday, April 9 2017
The new cat Charles seemed kind of bored at around noon, so I carried him into the laboratory and set him down. He's not an easy cat to carry, tending to stiffen up and then become increasingly squirmy (unlike all our other cats). He also didn't seem to like suddenly finding himself in a brand-new visually-complex environment. I squatted low and walked around at random, yowling the way he had when the crazy cat ladies first released him into our bathroom. He clearly didn't want to go through the ordeal of acclimating to a brand new alien territory. So I picked him up and put him back in the bedroom. But I left the door open to allow him to find his way out into the teevee room. He'd explore it for a time (and even venture part way down the stairs) before something would frighten him and he'd scurry back to the bedroom. It made me feel better that he seemed to now regard the bedroom of his base.
Meanwhile Celeste the Cat (aka "the Baby") had captured a garter snake (the first reptile I'd seen in 2017 outside of Mexico) and brought it into the house. It was fairly warm outside, particularly in the sun, but in the shade an exotherm such as a snake would have difficulty escaping and endotherm like Celeste. After quarantining Celeste in the laboratory, I used a dust pan and brush to sweep up the snake (I didn't want the thing to bite me), but he soon slithered out of the pan and made for the door with reasonable speed (though his traction on the wooden floor wasn't great). Once outside, he quickly disappeared beneath the leaves.
[REDACTED]
Due to the nice weather, Gretchen was able to take Neville to her Sunday shift at the Woodstock bookstore for the first time this year. At around 3:00pm I drove there with Ramona to pick him up (so he wouldn't have to spend the whole day there). While there, I had Gretchen buy me two books with her employee discount: The Catskills: A Geological Guide Expanded Edition by Robert Titus (and his wife Johanne Titus). I have an earlier, thinner edition of this book, but Sandor had shown me this new version with its color plates and I had to have it. The other book was the Hidden Life of Trees, which I'd heard about in one of the many podcasts I listen to.
On the way home, I stopped at the Tibetan Center thrift store and managed to buy a few odds and ends: an electric clothing depiller (mostly for Gretchen), a beautiful miniature USB keyboard, and an LED-illuminated yo-yo. (I remember having a yo-yo at some point in my adulthood, but I can't quite place when that was; the closest thing I had to such a toy as a kid was a spinning button on a loop of string, a toy my father taught me how to make.) The person working at the Tibetan Center thrift store this afternoon was an older woman with a jaded affect who doesn't often work there. Today to one of the customers (perhaps the one who had just been complaining about the grating Tibetan music) she noted in dismay the large number of printers they now have. (They also have a number of VCRs and other audio/video components that nobody ever seems to buy.) Some guy went into the thrift store's bathroom (near the electronics area that I frequent) and made such a stink that the older jaded woman casually said something about needing to "go back there and spray."
It was such a beautiful day that I stopped a second time on the way home to run the dogs in our usual loop through West Hurley Park. Despite the beautiful day, there was only one other vehicle there. The people associated were a man and woman who looked to be in their thirties who couldn't keep their hands off each other. I figured they were there on some sort of extracurricular tryst.
This evening, I painted a small (three by three inch) picture of Charles. This might be a record for the shortest amount of time between when we got a new household member and when I painted him or her.
Charles the Cat.
Later (also on Sandor's recommendation, though one that he made weeks ago) I watched the first part of the documentary I Dream of Wires (Hardcore Edition). It chronicles the rise of the analog modular music synthesizer, a subject about which I only knew a few incidental things. (I hadn't actually been aware that "modular synthesizer" is a class of things.) Being into electronics and tinkering, I naturally found it all very interesting, even if I don't actually like the sort of music generally produced by analog synthesizers. (I hate Depeche Mode, for example.)
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