infryq

health

Yesterday I finished the back yoke seam, felled the side seams, tested out
a few approaches to a rolled hem, and hemmed the back. I’m using a 4mm
rolled-hem foot, staystitching in the hem allowance. It’s not magic but it
seems to work out okay if you pay attention and go slow. For future
iterations I’ll probably hem them before doing up the side seams.

I went to the farmers market and got asparagus, cauliflower, cabbage,
shishito peppers, parsley, and coriander, and a sourdough salted dark
chocolate cookie.

Home, cut the cauliflower into planks, roasted in the oven for a half hour
at 375, flipping once. Had brie and sesame crackers for lunch. Did laundry;
clothes and towels. Surreal folding a load of only my clothes. Cleared off
the back porch in prep for the masonry guys tomorrow. Found a bunch of olla
demos and red clay, an abandoned mouse nest, a much more pleasant and very
cozy abandoned nuthatch nest, trashed a bunch of stuff. Don’t let me clean
your place exhausted unless you’re interested in a more Buddhist way of
life. Cookie for snack; was really pleased with past-me for that.

P called; I made dinner out of Priya’s new book, sorta, worked out well.
Mustard seeds and curry leaves, turmeric, ground coriander seed, and winter
squash was the base, but I added red lentils for protein, chopped prunes to
replace the caramelized onions, and some of the roasted cauliflower. Enough
leftovers for a couple lunches.

Finished Moon Over Soho and started Whispers Under Ground. He’s getting
better at writing women.

G update: everybody’s tired. He’s off the opiates, which is good, but still
coughing, which hurts, not so good. T and M just came up for the afternoon,
not to stay. Some of D’s folks might come up later this week to help.

Yesterday was kindof a lot.

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Yesterday P helped pin the other bust dart and side seam. At work I figured
out how to log what database queries were being run, and it turns out using
ORM objects was generating a huge pile of extra individual queries. I
stopped that, and query time dropped to 0.04 seconds. Nice. I went to a
meeting with F and her new summer intern M, whose project will be to
integrate an external neural prolog / soft unification system (sPyrolog)
with F’s common-sense reasoning module.

It was gorgeous outside and the next shuttle wasn’t for 45 minutes so I
walked home through the park. 🍃P met me at the trail exit for the final
leg. My speed is pretty slow, so the shuttle passed us on Schenley Drive,
but that’s fine.

Dinner, crossword, and then we spent a little bit organizing some house
maintenance work that’s growing overdue and figuring out what we have the
budget for this year. The flue and brick repointing are probably top
priority, followed by the back patio, and then the ground floor windows.
The roof is coming, but probably not this year. Haven’t done the math yet
to figure out what we pay cash for vs getting a home equity loan. I tend to
keep too much liquidity around.

Flash, snack, sleep. Raven Tower is faaaaaabulous but completely spoilery
and I’ll definitely be going directly from the last page back to the first
to reread it.

Dreamt of church, socks, antique sales, roasting potatoes in the ashes of a
wood fire, camping, stargazing, fireworks, getting lost with friends.

Yesterday I started sewing in the second pocket on the sturdier pair of P’s
pj pants. Hallowed continues with extremely low density. I don’t know how
she makes ~werewolves low-stakes, but she does. I looked for the artwork I
did about gardening with grandpa but only found the studies in my old
sketchbook. I think the final must have been larger format, which means
it’s either in a portfolio somewhere or folded up in a binder.

At work I looked at the second round of fixes for the config package, and
whaddya know, it works! Good job, maintainer guy. B had sent out a draft of
his senior thesis, and I marked it up for him. I went to therapy and made a
connection between my general good mood and suspiciously good appetite and
the unusual levels of capsaicin I’ve been eating. Endorphins don’t joke.
Also, sunshine. Spent the rest of the afternoon trying a few ways that
didn’t work to fix the python version issues with wsgi.

Home, unpacked the new bowls, did the crossword with P, sent P off to class
and discovered the plates had arrived in the meantime. The plates fit great
in the dishwasher but the bowls don’t (though that’s no worse that our
current bowls so). Dinner, Flash, P came home ebullient— his students are
going to knock the client’s socks off. Decompressed with P, snack, sleep.

Yesterday I finished the hems on four handkerchiefs and wrote up my process
in my design book. I finally unpacked the spare small plates and bowls and
put them through the washer; we’d been down to three bowls and two
minimally crazed plates for months. After lunch we did the crossword, and
then I made another batch of Katie treats. This time I grated some dark
chocolate over the top while they were still hot, which seems to have
worked. “Recipe” such as it is, to fill a 1 1/2c glass container: 1/4 c
rice syrup, somewhat less butter, melt in a pan. 1 1/4 cup puffed whatever
(millet is nice) in a bowl ready to hand, with 3T protein powder (I use
Unjury unflavored, which is nice but does strange things to mixtures so
ymmv). Line container with parchment. Stir melted mixture until emulsified,
then add 3-4T nut butter and stir just until streaks are evenly
distributed. Working quickly, dump pan contents on dry ingredients,
stir/chop with a spatula until everybody’s coated, then press lightly into
container with spatula. Compress tightly with the bottom of a measuring
cup.

You can sub maple syrup but it will need more boiling to thicken. You can
sub corn syrup but it’ll be sweeter and you can’t really reduce the amount
as the sugar is structural in this application. Same with honey. A pinch of
salt is fine but I find I like it better without.

After treats I cleared the packing materials and mail trash off the dining
room table, then made a deep dive into vintage stoneware internet to see
about finding some plates and bowls that might last a little longer. With
P’s input decided on Dansk “brown mist” plates, and Noritake “painted
desert” bowls since the dansk cereal bowls are goofy and the non-goofy
salad bowls are rare and expensive. We’ll be eclectic, it’ll be lovely.

Dinner, Monday’s crossword, Money For Nothing. Body was extremely confused
about whether it wanted food or not-food so I wound up with a fragile
evening.

Yesterday I finished felling the crotch seam, did up a topstitched hem, and
delivered P’s pj pants with much pride and excitement. They were extremely
well received. I also finished the pile of shelf liners and installed them
in the linen closet.

We went to open studio and I trimmed three bowls, three flower pots, and a
bud vase. Everything is now on the drying shelf for bisquing and I’ve
nothing else under plastic. We got our whistles back; a pierogi and a bird
for me, and two potatoes for P. On the way home we went to Target for a new
shower curtain rod, matching rings, and snacks. P was fading fast so went
through geagle with a list while I stood in line. It worked out perfectly,
since by the time I realized I didn’t know where the car was and went to
wait out front, he’d made it through checkout.

Home, midafternoon meal, I washed the shower curtain with a buncha towels,
then the rest of the towels in the hamper, a late dinner, crossword, sleep.

[food] Earlier this week I’d cycled in some frozen butternut squash into my
usual rice+stuff stew thing and found it extremely bland, so I tried again.
This time I used double spices (coriander cumin turmeric) plus cinnamon,
fenugreek, a touch of chipotle, palm sugar, and almond butter. Absolute win.

Yesterday I waxed and pressed a bunch of lengths of thread, then
flat-felled two seams while watching Bernadette Banner on YouTube. Slight
crush; she’s delightful.

We went to open studio and I flubbed three bud vases before giving up and
trimming my slightly-too-wet work from last week instead. The flower pots
are great; we’ll see about the trays.

Late lunch, saw C off to his new digs, dinner, P very kindly fixed a clog
in the third floor toilet so I didn’t have to, crossword, vacuum cleaner
research (there’s now a Shark RV370 on hold for us at BB&B), a new-to-me
show called Money For Nothing, bed. I overspiced dinner and spent the
evening pretty fragile.

Yesterday I transferred markings for the back pattern piece, which
elucidated why it was binding a bit at the back calf; everything is
narrower at the side seam and practically vertical from the knee down.
Contemplating whether/how to adjust the centerline so the biases are more
symmetrical.

Finished Brothers in Arms, with...resonances to my own life. If only not
being believed were always so easily resolved.

At work I finished a pile of tests and committed them to the repository.
Deletions were a doozy but I figured it out.

Home, dinner, crossword, Flash. P finished building the chair and built the
new coffee table, which fits much better in the space.

Yesterday I sewed the French seam on the other side of the pj pants, and
hand-felled the raw edges on the pocket openings. They’re now ready for
waistband and hem. Vor Game is in intrigue land, which I like better.

At work I successfully separated some of the hard-coded ties I identified
on Thursday, learned about proxy models in Django, and made Reference
dereferencing work. I went to therapy and had a short session since
everything is going pretty well. We did remark on how different my hobbies
are from my day job even though I live both. I hypothesized that this
contributes to my continued grad school allergy. I resist the passionate
pursuit of a single topic.

P is stressed and hackly about Problematic Student, but we were able to
recontextualize some of it through talking about it. They’re struggling
with everything, not just his class; it isn’t personal.

The last seed order arrived, and some additional swatches from Nick of Time
arrived (late, but they’re uninteresting so that’s fine). Some replacement
parts for the chair arrived too but they’re the wrong ones. I quickly went
through all the seeds and I somehow ended up with large packets of peas and
beans but only a small packet of elka poppies, instead of the other way
around. It matches the packing list, so I’ll have to check the order email
and maybe re-order the poppies.

Dinner, crossword, Heart.

Dreamt a fascinating black woman had designed my grandparents’ house.

Yesterday I finished the waistband and hemmed the pj pants and they are
soooo comfortable I can hardly wait to wear them. Gotta wash the chalk and
oil off them first though. Got most of the new glassware into the
dishwasher. Plastic Magician is darling.

At work I submitted a question about Django test databases to a tutorials
forum and started a slide deck for Monday’s talk.

I went to therapy and unloaded all the stress about cleaning and gross
things and winter and food being difficult but not insurmountable. We also
talked about how bizarre depression is, that it feels simultaneously bad
and normal, nothing anomalous about it from the inside. Sneaky bastard.

Home, cooked a batch of red rice, sat with P for dinner before he left for
class. Sorted all the old glassware into a box, and got all the new stuff
out of the dishwasher to dry properly. Dinner for me was difficult and I
spent the rest of the evening in bed feeling precarious. Heart. Crossword
with P when he got home. Sleep.