Author: John Paganetti

Puzzle Pieces

I really wanted to make a note of this as well before I forget.

I took great pleasure in the placement of a humidifier over an air vent in the floor. Being winter, and much of our heat coming from the wood stove, our air is really dry. When I remember, I try to run a humidifier so we’re mostly comfortable and don’t wake up in the morning with cotton mouth.

Our humidifier can run on high, but should really be placed on some elevated surface so moisture doesn’t accumulate on the ground. The general rule of thumb is that if you turn it up high enough that the water vapor starts to drop back towards the ground, it’s up too high.

The only place in the bedroom that would work is the ironing board, and no one wants to keep that out all the time, so it usually sits on the floor. This mostly means that we can’t crank it up as high as it can go, and we get less moisture in the air than we otherwise could.

Today, I placed it right next to the air vent in the floor which lets the dry air from the wood stove come up into the bedroom. I was able to turn the humidifier all the way up and watch the vapor flow up into the air. These little synergies give me great pleasure.

Behind

It’s officially been a month since I ordered the stovepipe for the bus. The manufacturer has been behind on some parts due to an increased demand, and we’re stuck waiting. Presently, we have all but one piece in our possession. That is all that is holding back the stove installation. It’s frustrating.

I’m feeling behind in many different parts of my life. I feel old, but not experienced. I feel like I’ve missed out on something essential. There are these common cultural experiences people share that are totally foreign to me. I’ve never reveled in my role as an outsider, but I don’t enjoy the mainstream either.

I keep wondering about the hair on my head. Would I be more attractive with less or more hair on my head? My face? It grows in so slow any decision is a major commitment. As it is, it’s all so unsatisfactory. How is it I still have acne while my hair starts thinning?

I’m sure a lot of this has to do with my lack of an occupation. That’s a really appropriate word, since not only do I not have a job, I’m struggling to fill the hours during the day while waiting for this last piece of stove pipe. It’s funny how a few days of doing nothing can so easily lead to weeks of it. I keep dreaming up new projects to occupy myself, but get distracted or disinterested when I realize the scope is grander than the pipe project presently paused. I guess I’m going to keep going through phases of boom and bust.

I do miss writing like this. I frequently compose journal entries while brushing my teeth, but go to sleep never writing them. Unfortunately, I’m not usually in quite as reflective of a mood earlier in the day – this is the prime time. I’m reading Cloud Atlas at the moment, along with Nishi and the other members of our book group. It is told almost entirely through journal entries and correspondence, which has (tonight, at least) compelled me to write.

From what I can tell my fear of missing out isn’t by any means unique, and it doesn’t seem like there will be a point where I’m not familiar with it. I guess I need to learn how to live with it.

Good night.

Schedule

We’ve adopted a regular schedule for the first time in years. Charlie needed structure badly, and it probably won’t hurt us either. He now has designated times to go outside, times to eat, and times to play. It’s only been a week and it’s already helped him a lot. We’re waking up earlier too, which is long overdue. Now, my phone is chiming every few hours with whichever block of time is scheduled next. I almost feel like an adult, right up until I walk into my giant garbage-fueled wheeled fort.

Rainwater

I’ve been thinking a bit ahead this morning, about what things may look like a year or two down the road. The Anne Marie will be outfitted with an incredible water filtration system, so that if need be I could fill up my tanks from a stagnant puddle and still have cleaner water than what comes out of a municipal tap. But I’d rather get cleaner water from the start, and I’ve been looking to rainwater collection.

Collecting runoff from the bus isn’t particularly easy, at least if I want to keep it mobile, so I’ve been considering other options. One method is a collapsible catchment system. It turns out that one inch of rainfall is about 0.6 gallons per square foot, which means a 10′ x 10′ structure is just about enough to fill a 55 gallon barrel with only an inch of precipitation. I’m sure a 10′ x 10′ canopy could be easily inverted to make this extremely simple to construct, and compact to store.

The Winter’s Tale

Nishi managed to get tickets to The Winter’s Tale playing in NYC. We managed to convince Ned and his girlfriend to come along. It was a pretty cool show, and a pretty unique adaptation. Earlier that same day, we caught a play directed by a friend of Nishi’s, also in NYC. Someone to Watch Over Me had a much different tone, and was pretty powerful.

A rough Friday

A few weeks back, Nishi, Charlie, and I drove out to the Finger Lakes to see Scott get married. Being so far from so many of the attendees, they made a weekend of it, with events from Friday night through Sunday morning. We decided to spend the weekend in a campground near the event, since we wouldn’t need to board Charlie somewhere, and it was about a quarter of the cost. We drove up Friday, and it might have been the toughest Friday of my life.

Two days prior, I started feeling really sick, complete with a fever and cough. I only get sick once or twice a year, and when I do, it hits me hard. Nishi was a wonderful caretaker, but I was really not feeling well.

The day before, I checked in on the little camping stove we were bringing along to cook. The fuel tank was not only full, it was pressurized – when I opened it I covered my hands in naptha, which apparently causes “contact dermatitis,” which I now know means causes blisters wherever it touches. The blisters are still peeling off my hands.

Friday morning, I took a shower in a tub that had been soaking clothes in OcyClean, and I didn’t rinse it. Apparently, OxyClean also causes contact dermatitis, or something similar to it.

With painful blisters on both my hands and feet, and a nasty cold, we drove the six and a half hours out to the finger lakes. Over nine hours later, we arrived at the campground, and set up camp by the headlights of the truck.

I had a great time at the wedding anyways, but damn, that was a tough day.

Time keeps whizzing by

It seems to be going faster and faster. I’m sure I’ve said something similar to this on here, but I think I put it particularly well in a recent email:

My favourite hidden feature of my bus is that it’s a bit like a time machine. Whenever I spend most of my days with the bus, time slows down to an appreciable pace. It’s still a construction zone, so I’m still spending my time in a real house, and it’s easy to hit a routine that just obliterates parts of a day. I tend to tuck and roll into a pattern, and time just flies by. It’s that whole “Did I remember to turn off the oven?” trope where you do things for so many days in a row you can’t tell one from the last. The bus puts up a barrier to this, and I’m able to appreciate little things each day that get lost otherwise.

A notable exception to this is construction of the bus. My days are flying by presently, even though I’m elbows deep in buswork. I don’t remember much of the last year’s worth of work on this bus, and I certainly don’t have very much to show for it. One of the things that keeps me going is envisioning relaxing in the bus during my future downtime. Even now, when I choose to take breaks in the bus, I can feel its time-stopping power. I can’t wait to have that back in my life in a big way.

Charlie

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This is Charlie. We chanced upon him at a pet supply shop’s adoption day, and now he’s here with us. He has an unbelievable amount of energy, but he’s really trying hard to make us happy. None of the toys we’ve bought so far have been able to survive him, so that’ll be fun to figure out.

Dog

We’re looking to adopt a dog. Nishi has been lonely, and longing for the constant companionship she had with Jack. We both miss him terribly, and Nishi made it clear how very much she wanted to get another dog. We’re going looking this weekend – there are a bunch of shelters in the area.

Just briefly looking online at the dogs photos local shelters have posted, it’s shocking at the amount of dogs out there. Definitely depressing.