Dogs

The down side of having a dog or two is that they run everything else away. A sterile world. No rabbits, no fox, no deer. The trade-off is having someone to cook for. The opossum stir-fry, is good, but not that good, and yet the dogs are very excited. Hard not to share their enthusiasm. Like controlling the flow of liquor at an opening. An odd place to find yourself. When D came in with Carma he assessed the situation, immediately stepped in, I was already gone, having bartended beyond my mandate, wanted to flirt, had the music not been so loud, barring that, just wanted to go home. The drive itself was not a problem, the things I thought about were merely hurdles, but I did wonder why I was jumping when I did. I'm always suspect when I go on a late night rant. Falstaff. It's true, that I pretend, no excuses, simply what I find in front of me. After the incident in the night I finally got back to sleep. Up this morning with a sling-blade, clearing a path to the outhouse. Breakfast and coffee, then switch to clippers, working until a late lunch, sweating like a race-horse. A severe thunder cell moves through, dumping an inch of rain in 15 minutes. I take a shower in it and get chilled to the bone. Lose power, the automatic relays switch on and off a couple of times, and still the power is out, which means Adams County Rural Electric (I get my power from the next county east) will have to send a person to the sub-station to flip the breakers manually. I know from long experience that if a pole had been hit by lightning or a vehicle, the lines would be down, and I'd never have seen the flash that the automatic relays cause, ergo, power should be restored with an hour. Which it is. The display of lightning was impressive. Whenever I watch such a thing I always think about capturing the energy generated by even a single storm cell. Billions of volts of electricity and temperatures approaching that of the surface of the sun. No small thing. Containment is the problem. Then, of course, attachment, which is always another problem. And it all happens so quickly. Need some sort of a passive system, either a very large battery, or something to store the heat, so you could charge a battery later, or run a turbine to run an alternator. I just think about these things, the same way I might design a house in my head, on a whim, some quirky idea I might have. In the back of my mind is the idea of putting together a installation of staircases. I keep dismissing the idea, because it would be difficult and involve a lot of hard physical labor; but I like it, because it would be so cool. Pegi would have to be equal partner, and the show would have to be in summer, when her students would be out of school, because every day, at a certain time, they would slither through the treads and around the railings. This would be a good show, I see it in my mind's eye. I'd need a significant grant, and don't want to do it, but could. If you know me well, you know I usually speak the truth. Interesting that I never learned to lie. I stay awake nights, thinking about that. If I'd only learned to lie. Napp, water over the dam, is a clear indication of flow, sometimes I venture out on the slipway (spillway), to measure the actual flood. I'm anemic and have balance issues, but still want to know. If I measure the depth of flow and the distance across, I can estimate how much water over the dam. Numbers are important to me, they carry information. I'm just trying to make sense of the world. I saw I great mushroom today, a Russula Emetica that was vibrant orange against the leaf litter, and I poked it with a stick, to spread the spores. I do what I can.