Severe Clear

An ineffable day, but, of course I'll try. Got up in the night to finish a piece and send it, I think I did, then slept in late. All the ice is gone, the ground is a muddy mess, but it's beautiful. I watched the last of the ice, high in the stick trees explode in the early hard rays of sun. Supposed to get to 50 degrees today before steady sliding down to 5, and I'd already decided to run to town, so I just lounged around the rest of the morning, drinking coffee and rereading some sections from "The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change" and Chappell's "A Short History Of The Printed Word". I needed whiskey, I was going to run out Monday night, and I couldn't let that happen, and I wanted some more of those stuffed potato skins that I can just micro-wave and eat while I read or write. I hope they're fattening, D assures me they are. Needed to go to the library, to return some books, and to get some essays, I wanted to read some decent prose, settled on a book of Coetzee's literary essays. He's an interesting writer, and I'll grant his opinions some weight. He's quite good on Faulkner, and it's difficult to be good on Faulkner. One last gallon bucket of acorns I need to process, so I shuck them out and smash them into a coarse grind, eighth inch pieces and smaller, put them in my three gallon pot with a gallon of rain water. I have a lot of water right now. Put them on a trivet, on the coolest part of the stove-top, put another gallon of water on to heat. Stir them vigorously every couple of hours and change the water, they are both cooked and leached by the time I dry the mass in the oven and reduce it to meal. This yields maybe eight one cup baggies that I store, double-wrapped in the freezer. Enough protein to run a diesel truck for a month. My goal, currently, is to just get the house as warm as possible; when it drops to near zero, you need a plan, and the first part of my plan is to get things as warm as possible before the outsides temps start sucking heat away. Stash everything that could freeze and break, in the fridge, an ironic touch, and maybe spend a few nights in a motel, I could use a bath, my personal habits are suspect. Not even close to someone you would want to represent you.