A real team with a slack and everything

Yesterday I made another batch of nut and seed bars, and washed the towels and half the regular laundry.

I cleaned the stitch length face plate, first with regular sewing machine oil and then with fast orange, and wow does fast orange brighten things up! It looks nearly new now. I cleaned the stitch length control pins and the plate they’re mounted to, then removed the plate to reveal a ton of black crud caking the ratchet and cams. Cleaned that, and the knobs turn a bit more easily now. Cleaned and oiled the spring for the reverse lever, still quite stiff but less sticky now. Re mounted the control plate and moved on to where the throat plate mounts. It is sticky for some reason? I did a pass with oil and one with fast orange but I’m not sure I got it all.

I ran out of podcasts and switched to music. Yesterday was lemon jelly, today will probably be Air. Mellow electronica with acoustic samples and heavy refinement in production. Anything you might imagine for a Sesame Street interlude from the 70s.

In the afternoon I got email inviting me to join an effort in my department working on crowdsourced predictions for the COVID-19 pandemic, with permission from T for this to replace my regular work. I said yes, and will be starting meetings for that later today.

Meals were all good, I’m obeying my eat alarms. After dinner we did the crossword, then I watched DS9, had a snack, and went to sleep. Dreamt of secret messages, upstairs/downstairs dynamics, a ghost scullery powered by a half-broken submarine, cucumber plants, and nearly falling off someone’s balcony.