Bolilers

Dennis, the boiler man, finally got to the museum today, and I spent a good part of the afternoon with him in the basement, plying him with questions. I have a little bit better understanding of the system now. M and C brought Ron's pieces upstairs this morning, and the ones that are unwrapped are stunning. We need to hang that show next Tuesday and Wednesday. Then start preparing for the big fundraiser. I have about a dozen things, and the list grows, to research before I give my talk. I want to be sure I'm accurate about insignificant details. Then the girls come, for Thanksgiving, a lot of cooking and eating and drinking decent wine. I'm glad they want to stay in town, it's difficult for me to be 'on' 24/7. Besides, they can't live without running water, and I need a serious bath, so this is all working out. I should be able to get in a shower-bath-shower, before they even get here, that Monday they check in, before Thanksgiving, when I'm paying for the room; and be set for a year; mostly just a matter of scrubbing off dead cells. I need to pick up a luffa sponge, and some lotion to re-hydrate my seriously dry skin. When I get up to pee and go outside, in the frost, the back deck is slick with ice. You have the dew point, then you have freezing temperatures, and you end up with black ice. I hobble about, with a cane, that third leg, mostly so I can poke at things. I'm staff at the museum again today, and next week, because the rotation has come down to one. It's cool, because I can read in a warm place, but a little bit strange, the way responsibility is shared. I try not to ask anything of anyone. Damn phone is out again, finally just went to bed. Windy this morning and it was raining leaves. In places on Mackletree the road was completely covered. TR met me at the museum and we went over to the pub, D joined us a few minutes later, in town to pick up the pieces of his photography show, and we all bitched and moaned about various slights. We were very funny and Christine pretty much hung around on the other side of the bar and laughed at us. Loaded D up and shipped him out, TR, at the desk, had a conversation (set up ahead of time) with a young guy, Ben, who is planning to major in museum studies. I retreated to my garret, and read about the Renaissance. We closed up and both drove to Kroger, he pointed out the Zinfandel he had mentioned and we both got a bottle. I needed whiskey and food to last until Tuesday. I got a pound of bacon, a dozen brown eggs, a pound of butter and a back-up bag of frozen shredded potatoes. I have some great jams. I figure to just kick back and eat breakfast four times in the next two days. Bacon. I haven't had in months. There were three older women in today, I gave them a tour, and they really dug it, that I'd take them through the museum. One of them was a retired Art History professor, and we argued about several things, much to the delight of her friends. On the way home I had to stop, one rock maple had dropped all of it's leaves (some trees release all their leaves at once) and it was a pool on the road at least a foot thick. Shifted into four-wheel drive, because I thought the bottom layer might still be frozen. It was, black ice under an insulating layer of leaves, and I got up the hill fine. Home, alone, I disconnect the phone, better to not be interrupted.