Yesterday

[Squeech]

sucked.

Drove up to New Hampshire (2 hours) to connect with her family. Then we got in her brother's truck and drove another 2 hours to Vermont. The ultimate destination was a firm that sells recycled home renovation products and architectural salvage, to pick up this stuff Mrs. Squeech had bought her folks: a quantity of insulation made from recycled blue jeans. It looked like bales of dryer lint, and the shop resembled a jumble sale in an old mill building. They had shelves full of old sinks, racks of old windows and shutters, stacks of sliding doors, staircases standing around leading nowhere, old woodburning stoves, etc, plus some used and/or remaindered tools (we briefly considered a stone-cutting table saw for $1100, because we're currently planning to install stone countertops). But since I don't share Mrs. Squeech's vocation for architectural design, I was bored shitless.

The one good thing we did was dine in Brattleboro: we blundered into a Chinese restaurant that turned out to be phenomenally good. We're also pleased to support a community that just passed an impeachment resolution.

And then when we got home, at 10PM, our oil burner had failed, so now we have no heat, so I'm waiting for the furnace dude to show up-- and my chilly fingers are making even more typos than usual. I would say :grr: except that those little digitized flames are hopelessly inadequate...

[stellanoir]

1. I will tell you what I tell all the kids. . .

"Boredom is a sign of lack of creativity and intelligence. . .neither of which is your problem." Now troddle on along and get creative.

No seriously I do love Brattleboro and used to live just North of Putney.

Years ago I was intending on making a sundial in the blueberry field and had accumulated all sorts of tile scraps. They are all different colors of marble and even some lapis lazuli. I was told that the blades are required to cut stone were really exorbitant (diamond tipped) and you have to go through a lot of them to create such a thing. Dumb question: Is that true of the stone cutting table saw???

Hope you have a much better day today and warm up soon.

[murielm99]

3. When my kids told me they were bored,

I would act all disappointed and ask them if they had no inner resources. I made them figure out for themselves what inner resources were.

I also put them to work if they were bored. All three of them learned quickly that it was risky to admit to boredom.

[Squeech]

4. Thanks

I think carborundum will do if you can't get diamond. The saw also had a seriously massive motor.

The upshot was that we did eight hours of driving to see ten minutes of Brattleboro, and half an hour of superannuated windows.

The real excuse was for Mrs. Squeech and her brother to talk about the icky sort of hypotheticals that are no longer quite so hypothetical: my mother-in-law is 84 years old, cancer survivor, diabetic, faculties failing albeit slowly-- but what do we need to be ready for and how to respond. But I was pretty much a third wheel.

[In_The_Wind]

2. Good vibes ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Squeech and Mrs. Squeech!

I hope you'll be warm again soon.

[Squeech]

5. Thank you too

Mrs. Squeech will be warm soon enough; she's going to work in half an hour. I'm stuck waiting for Furnace Dude.

I really should bake something, just to turn the oven on; I wonder if there's anything suitable in the freezer...

[Squeech]

6. Update

Yeah, we'd let the tank run dry: took 257 gallons. (March was colder than I'd thought.)

Because of which, the filter in the fuel line is clogged. So Furnace Dude just left with the tanker truck and is coming back in the repair truck.

And I'm baking corn bread, which is minuscule help.

[Squeech]

7. Heat!

Soon I'll be able to take my coat off.

Furnace Dude thinks this year might be time to replace the furnace; he doesn't like the motor noise. Shit.