infryq | Entries tagged with fitness

Yesterday I went with D to her tai chi class, which was lovely— the
instructor gave me a really nice set to handouts on vocabulary and
technique, and I more or less just followed along as they practiced for a
routine they’re doing at a demonstration in January. Also apparently tai
chi has a tradition of competition and performance? I don’t really
understand, but I’m more of a do-it-by-yourself-on-the-beach kind of
personality so whatevs. Really energizing, I might find a class in
Pittsburgh.

Leftovers for lunch, and then I went with P and M to the grocery store to
visit the foods and tempt myself with snacks. Spent the rest of the
afternoon on the couch knitting. G made barley oxtail soup for dinner, and
I made rice with pecans and carrots, which I managed to scorch. Overate a
bit; I should start measuring ingredients.

Crossword, then more knitting and sitting and stories. Family time is good.

Yesterday I finished the last bobbin of singles for the blue and green
Romney, and started plying. I’ve started doing morning stretches again and
it is good. At work, I gave F an intro to the instructable agent project,
and then hyped up a neighboring project in HCII since what she’s actually
looking for is something chattier that shows more human behavior content.
Spent the rest of the afternoon battling LDAP, which seems to have eaten
cn=config somehow, and hangs on start if you try to enable the debug logs.
Of course.

Home, dinner, made sure all the lights were off because we have no candy
for trick or treaters, trash, crossword, bed.

Yesterday I cooked another batch of red rice, went to therapy, went to the
Indian grocery and bought some beautiful okra, made some progress on the
android app, and met with my boss. I met P to take the shuttle home, but
remembered the okra in my office just as it was arriving, so we changed
plans and walked home instead. The woods are lovely and walking in them
with P is so nice!

I fried the okra to go with dinner and it was excellent.

Yesterday I did some research on possible restaurant destinations for a
visit from F&A later this month, did some stretches, and took the bus in to
work. I almost have nested if/then statements working, although I’ve now
exceeded the very simple natural language generation system’s ability to
cope. I wrote up an email about it to clarify my thoughts. After work we
went to the final pottery class this session, and learned about throwing
bowls. I trimmed all my pieces and still had enough time to throw one
pretty darn reasonable bowl in spite of some significant trouble centering.
We lingered after class chatting with folks, and discovered J lives
literally down the street from us, so we may hang out with her and get
involved in the local studio together. Had just enough brain left for the
crossword before falling asleep.

Yesterday I flicked and carded some of the Shetland wool I’d brought to
guild in prep for more fully loading up the distaff. I did stretches for
the first time in weeks and it showed. Work was grand; I ran through my new
state machine design with F and D to check for errors and get feedback, and
it was just what I needed. Being able to talk everything through is always
useful, but getting buy-in from people outside my head, and sharing the
load of understanding a complex system turned out to be more of a relief
than I consciously expected (though subconsciously probably why I scheduled
the session in the first place).

I walked home through the park — there’s a particular aggressive plant
growing on the hillside near the bartlett end that turns out to be a dye
plant, and it will be ready soon. Once home I cooked another batch of rice
berry, which put the crossword right about bedtime even though it’s a
Monday.

Good day.

Yesterday I spun more of the Seattle blend, walked in to campus through the
park, had a good meeting with D, and converted a bunch of legacy code to
the current format. I did a nice long turn through the garden and picked
snow peas, calendula flowers, coreopsis, zinnias, blackcurrants, and
gooseberries. The peas are almost done; I should be able to rip them out
this weekend and replace them with pole beans— the fortex planting doesn’t
seem to have took. Next year I’ll plant the peas out two weeks earlier I
think.

Yesterday I spun more Romney singles, went into campus early for a meeting
with T where we made more concrete plans for the summer and the next year,
spent the afternoon learning more about grammars, and walked home through
the park.

Yesterday I carded more Tunis, spun more Romney singles, had lunch with C,
tracked my current bug to a dead end, walked home through the park, and
made some progress on Gerty’s embroidery project.

Yesterday was fair day! I did three passes: once for fleece, once for
fiber, and finally for yarn. It turns out the shepherd I talked to on
Friday is the very one who manages SmithAnn, the sheep whose fleece I so
enjoyed spinning two years ago. So that was #1. #2 was a Gotland I
regretfully passed on last year; excited to process it. If it spins up
well, it will be a vest. There was a Shetland x Cormo that was the perfect
color, but cormos are big sheep and I don’t think I could’ve processed and
spun it all before losing it to the m*ths.

It started raining on my way back for a second pass, and by the time I hit
the first barn it was crowded inside. I picked up a pound of an extremely
soft Shetland-? blend, a pound and a half of a nice medium brown mystery
wool, and some Romney-Mohair in a lovely teal. Longmeadow Farms is sadly
doing substantially fewer batts, and they had them tucked in a back corner
blocked by crowds so I passed by. A few other incidentals, including a 3D
printed Turkish spindle to go in a care package I owe an Oliner. By the
time I was done it was sunny again, so I walked the outdoor stalls, and got
smitten with a dark grey alpaca fleece that insisted on coming home with me.

[food] Met up with P, and we looked at baskets but didn’t find any, and at
dryer balls (for juggling demonstrations) and found perfect ones. Went to
lunch at Local Roots, which is back to freshly assembled food again. P had
coconut rice with red beans and cabbage, and I had chapati with roasted
vegetables. Very satisfying. In the basement we found a sugar bowl to
replace our broken one, and I also picked up some honey puffed corn
(basically popcorn without the bits that get stuck in your teeth,
excellent). Food in general was much better to me yesterday as I remembered
how to portion control when faced with normal-American serving sizes.

After lunch we did the crossword and chilled in the room for a bit, then I
went back to the fair for a look at the yarn and some of the other stuff I
missed for crowds. Picked up some nice Shetland at Ross Farm, some really
lovely Romney at Longmeadow, and found a stash of blankets at Jehova Jireh
that both P and I had missed — he’s looking for one big enough to wrap up
in as an emergency blanket. These are alpaca, warmer than wool, lightweight
and machine washable because of the acrylic in the warp, woven down in
Ecuador. Found colors he liked, and done.

Took a quick look at the rabbit barn, which was pretty empty (right before
dinner). One rabbit was out on the tables, circulating amongst several
people to make sure he was being evenly petted :) but most were in cages,
many in alarmingly small cages, particularly the English ones. They’re big
rabbits to begin with, and then they’re extremely fluffy, so it was just a
cage with fluff sticking out. Sadmaking.

Waay more walking than I’m used to; I will feel it for days I think. But a
very satisfying show even though many of my past faves didn’t interest me.
Changing interests, changing markets.

The night before, we were awoken by creature noises coming from an air
vent. On further investigation in the morning, it turned out to be a bat!
Very smol. Making a nest. Of course with the holiday weekend nobody was
available to take it, so it’s just been cardboarded over until Tuesday.
That seems to have muffled the sound well enough, because I slept
comparably great.

[food, nausea]

Yesterday was uneven but ultimately good. Breakfast was oatmeal with
blueberries and granola, and a scone, and I ate too much too fast and
whipped up a series of nauseated panic attacks. I was okay enough by 11 to
go out for a walk, and we visited the Irish imports store also run by the
innkeepers and had a nice long chat about how they wound up choosing this
place, and about Irish politics. Went to the used bookstore and picked up a
detailed needlework manual, something for P, and several woodworking books
on toolmaking and old houses. Back at the room we did the crossword, and
then P left for his solo adventure to pick up an ebay purchase— a
treadle-powered sharpening wheel slated for installation at the teaching
garden for sharpening shovels and other tools. I hung out and smacked
intermittently, went for another wander through a gift shop or two, then
headed down to the fairgrounds. Fleece judging was listed on the event
schedule, but it turns out that very few people ever come, and those that
do are usually shepherds with fleeces in the show. Not knowing this I felt
pretty awkward to find no audience provisions and what was clearly a judges
meeting, but I spoke with a couple volunteers who were putting away
paperwork and got straightened out. They did a new thing this year where
about half a dozen handspinners took a six month training course in fleece
judging, and this was their first real show (they did a mock one last week
with some ringer “problem” fleeces to make sure nothing egregious got past
them). I was the only spinner who showed up to watch, but a couple of
shepherds came too — one raises Shetlands and Icelandics, and the other
Jacobs. I swung back and forth between picking people’s brains, talking
about what I like in a fleece/what matters and what doesn’t, and feeling
overwhelmed and just listening. The judging was quiet, and decentralized,
and both more and less involved than I anticipated — none of the fleeces
were unrolled, but they all test-washed a few locks of each fleece! With a
spray bottle of water and some Dawn, very clever. I didn’t stay till the
end since I got hungry and P had come back from getting the sharpener, but
it was quite educational regardless. Would do again!

P picked up a sandwich for dinner and I had more K-kibble (this year it’s
Kix, raisins, banana chips, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds), then we
played an excellent game of scrabble (>600 points group score!) and went to
bed.

Yesterday I had a follow up appointment for backing my Zoloft dosage off
for summer hours, which went fine. I picked up some incidentals (wet wipes,
blister care, butterfly strips, antiseptic spray, vegan butter-like
substance) at geagle and walked home. Had lunch, packed for Wooster, did
some spinning, sent P off to the teaching garden, had an early dinner, then
walked up to sqhill to get my legs sugared. P picked me up, had second
dinner, crossword, and bed. Good day.

Yesterday I spun more grey Gotland, had an early meeting where L went over
how the current system works, wrote up my notes into the beginnings of a
design document, had my meeting with W rescheduled for next week to make
room for a late paper by some other students, walked home through the park,
did a turn through the garden, and some stitching before bed.

Yesterday I did no crafting, just more experiments and meetings. Walked
home, had a bit of a moment on the last stretch but pushed through it. Made
more rice, made lentils. Did the trash.

Yesterday I spun more grey Gotland, ran more experiments, researched how to
programmatically extract data from the protobuf format tensorflow uses for
memory trace logs, resolved an AWS issue where some silent account setup
phase hadn’t been completed, went to my boss’s farewell reception, walked
home, and put in some more french knots and split stitch on Gerty’s
embroidery project.

Dreamt of my upcoming meeting with my boss reporting experiment results.
Looking forward to after this paper deadline; I’m working way too much.

Yesterday we were both up early, because (me) birds and sunrise but also
(P) early final and even earlier catering pickup. I got in plenty of
spinning and a good set of stretches before work, and P returned home just
as I was packing up to leave. Final went great, I walked in from dinosaur
park, and broke in my new summer sandals, complete with blister. Normal
Tuesday meetings, including scheduling the marathon git merge and conflict
resolution session that’s been overdue since September, and dithering a bit
on whether we’ll make a workshop deadline on the 18th or slip to a less
relevant one on the 23rd. Embroidery after dinner. Finished book three in
the Charm of Magpies series, and still love them so I hope there’s more.

Yesterday I put in the knitting needle order, including a couple of books
and some cotton yarn for dishcloths and skein ties. A little bit of
spinning, a long slow grind through the tensorflow api at work (I wound up
needing things like ‘gather’ and ‘dynamic partition’), some one-off
meetings. Walked home through the park. Embroidery in the evening.

Yesterday I carded some more Tunis, started spinning some grey Gotland
roving from last year, set the plied yarns to soak in cold water (normally
I do hot but I’m trying a new technique), and did stretches. Had lunch with
C, good day at work with experiments and analysis and fixed a couple bugs.
Walked home through the park, then watered in the new seeds from Saturday.
In the evening, P had a phone interview that seems to have gone well, and I
assembled my new embroidery scroll frame and started attaching Gerty’s
dresser scarf project to it. Very excited to start stitching!

Yesterday I spun more red brown alpaca, flipped the hat onto the bottom of
a large jar to finish blocking, did some stretches, knit some more sock,
and flipped between watching fiber vlogs and listening to Lirael, which is
lovely.

Yesterday I spun more red brown alpaca, knit some more sock, and walked
home through the park. It was windy, but glorious.

Yesterday I spun some more red brown alpaca, finished up some preliminary
experiments and plots and sent them over to my boss, got skipped over by
the shuttle and walked home. I watched two episodes of the new Queer Eye
over knitting, and so far they are fighting toxic masculinity wherever they
find it, which is wonderful. The apparently-nc touching in ep 2 was a
little off putting, though by the end it was voluntary & spontaneous, so
maybe there was consent going on behind the scenes? Wishful thinking? I can
hope.