New Hire

Phillip wants to move back to the area, but there's no work. Out in the county, unemployment is over 20 percent, the poor rob the poor as a matter of course. I can't believe the shitty job the AC people did installing the new roof-top unit for the theater. Hands down, the worst installation of anything ever. It's functional, is the best that could be said. They had to get a freon line and a thermostat wire from the roof to the basement, so they core-drilled the concrete floors and ceilings and just ran the lines down in the corner of the rooms. Black foam insulated one-inch copper tubing with the wire zip-tied to the outside. Completely exposed. As ugly as anything you've ever seen. I can't believe it. It's like something a five-year old would do in the corner of a tree-house. It's the most appalling travesty of 'finish' work that I've ever seen in my life, like something you might trick out in a tent in the middle of the Gobi Desert., when you were hungry and very thirsty. Andrew and the alley crew still have five window wells to form up and pour with concrete, but they're making good headway on that; the truth is, the story of my life, it'll look like nothing has been done. 85 thousand dollars and we almost have the alley re-paved. Glad I'm not holding book on this. When I wasn't consulting today, I rounded up trash and debris for a few runs to the dumpster tomorrow. A ceiling to paint, so I'll take in a set of disposable clothes and a dead baseball hat. I hate painting ceilings. D still down in his back and went home early, I had to run the alley crew out of the basement after five, and thanks to DST was still able to buy a few groceries, a little nip bottle of brandy, drive in the long way, following Upper Twin Creek the entire trip. There's a lot going on. Where Upper Twin Creek Road turns off the river road, the elevation is probably a little over 400 feet, my tar-paper shack, on the ridge, is at 1380 feet. It's cool to watch the progression of a given season up the creek. My drainage here, Low Gap Hollow, is the absolute beginning of Upper Twin Creek. The crest of the road, right at my west line, the exact same road, is called Upper Twin, to the east and south, and Rocky Rock (another stream, that flows into Ohio Brush Creek), going west, which drains hollows, and they are countless, between here and Cincy. Not countless anymore, the 'Raven' map, and they are the best makers of maps ever, is quite clear. From this map, new to me, I treated myself for no good reason, I can roughly approximate the acre-feet of drainage. I do recreational math because it interests me. How much water is flowing over the spillway? How many acre-feet does that creek drain? How many turkeys in that flock, working a harvested corn-field close to the road? The early bulbs, in town, are ready to bloom, which means that the daffodils, which define abandoned home sites, are ready to explode; the river road is going to be very beautiful for the next couple of months. I assemble my spring-time kit, a plastic petrie dish with cover, long tweezers, a minnow dip-net (which is my signature tool), a very good LED small flashlight, and my magnifying glass. I always carry my foam pad and a couple of Kroger plastic bags stuffed in my pocket. You never know what you might find. Three or for times a year I bring home dried animal shit, to figure out what it is, and to figure out what it's composed of. This time of year, I also carry a plastic mesh bag Key Limes came in years ago, because when you harvest morels you want to spread the spores far and wide. I attach the bag with a carabineer to a belt-loop on my right side, and it brushes me, whenever I take a step. Tommy Morel Spore. You call me that and I will kill you. I stir-fried a third of a pork tenderloin, sliced very thin, against the grain, with some fingering potatoes and kale. It was very good. I can cook better on a one burner hot-plate than most people could cook on a six-burner stove. I'm just saying..There should probably be a filter in here.You would turn what I would say into meaning. I have to go, we'll talk tomorrow.