infryq

Yesterday we went on an adventure in Ross township. First I dropped off my sewing machine at Thorntons, while P took a brief walk down to the thrift shop near there. Then P dropped me at the mall and went to Buddha Coffee to work. It is reportedly a great little place! At the mall I went looking for any handbags to beat the one I found on Etsy, a tunic-length cardigan vest with pockets, and flat or flat-ish boots. Nothing all around. Everything is made of plastic. All the knits this season are bulky openwork. All the handbags are plastered with logos. I picked up a thermal henley from ll bean on sale, and that’s it.

Home by way of pigeon (for a bagel for P) and the art store (where I found a fox tote so I can stop stealing the canvas shoppers from the car). Late lunch, crossword, and then I went ahead and bought the bag of Etsy. With the rest of the afternoon I finished felling the other inseam in P’s pj pants, and sewed and trimmed the crotch seam. I started reading Rise of the Dragons by Morgan Rice, which is alright so far if a little heavy on the “not like other girls” internalized misogyny. Dinner, Voyager, snack, sleep. Dreamt of zen packing, the kind where you end up throwing out a ton of stuff. Prescient for my office move this upcoming week.

Yesterday I slept in. After lunch we went to Sqhill for mild adventures, but 10kV was shut; I did some window shopping at Little’s but nothing jumped out at me; I looked through Avalon for boots and handbags but they didn’t have anything that suited; by then P had come up empty for seating at the coffee shop so we failed out to the grocery store for taco supplies and went home. Crossword at some point. I did the laundry and watched Voyager while P made beef filling, then I took over the kitchen for roasted sweet potato, parsnip, yellow rice, sautéed mushrooms zucchini and bell pepper, and refried beans. Cleaned the tava of all its dook from Thanksgiving and made masa. P squished the tortillas and I cooked them; there was some learning curve to stopping them from sticking and getting them to puff but we got there eventually. The beans smelled weird so we didn’t eat them but everything else was delicious. P went back to course prep and I watched Voyager, then no snack since we ate so late, and sleep. Dreamt, but they’ve already vanished.

Yesterday I made another batch of nut and seed bars, with a lower oven temperature and checking on them more obsessively, and they only caught a little at the edges. Acceptable. P and I went to Staples for envelopes and mailing labels, and also picked up a long-arm stapler I’ll be shipping back to Pittsburgh. After lunch I did all the folding and stapling and stuffing and labeling, and they were just a gram or two short of an ounce so I put two stamps on all the domestic ones in case of scale miscalibration (international first class is good up to two ounces). Walked them down to the post office and done. Very pleased. While we were out earlier we’d picked up a nice piece of cod for dinner, some pot pie and quiche for today and the freezer, and ingredients for casserole to split up and freeze. D’s been running ragged for ages and sometimes it’s nice to just dump something into the oven for dinner instead of trying to cook tired. In the afternoon I started hemming another handkerchief. Baked cod, sweet potatoes, and green beans 2 for dinner (green beans 1 were discarded for being slimy, boo), and I made a kindof weird saffron quinoa pin oat raisin porridge for me. After dinner P got the radio working and managed to pick up broadcasts from China and we think Romania. Snack, sleep. Dreamt, but they’ve already faded.

Yesterday was a repeated exercise in backing myself into corners. The whole house slept in until almost nine, which didn’t help. PT came for G, which put off baking time until nearly lunch, since they usually do laps through the kitchen. I did make the nut and seed bars: the sunflower seeds were raw, because the WF we’d gone to didn’t have roasted unsalted ones. I attempted to roast mine, but something was fishy smelling about the results. Fine, I’d bought pepitas, and I’ve done all-pepitas bars before. No wee pan for syrup, so, microwave. Forgot the honey. The whole mixture turned out dry, so added water, which made it misbehave while pressing into shape. Baked them, assuming the oven would work the same as at home. No. Torched the whole lot. Hangry by then, so, lunch. Showered and took off for the library. While arranging the spreads into a signature I realized I’d counted my spreads wrong and was one short. Made an extra spread out of small happy moments and places. The librarian was nice and let me break a twenty for the copier, though I still came up short in small bills for the number of copies I’d selected, and something must be weird with one of the rollers because it transferred bits of ghost images randomly. Is okay; is authentically DIY. But, by then it was like 4:30, and I desperately needed snack, and there were no snacks at the house, and I forgot it gets dark earlier here because we’re farther east in the time zone, and it was thunder sleeting. Wellp. Walked to the bus stop, ate the candy bar that was still in my bag, walked to WF, bought walnuts and coconut to try for another batch of bars, bought cinnamon cookies in case they flop again, then sat in the eating area and plugged in my poor abused cell phone to wait for P to pick me up. Home, dinner, scrabble, then finished looking over P’s teaching portfolio. Sleep. Woof. Dreamt I could phase through matter, which was cool, but it was chiefly to get away from a race of telepathic tyrannosaurs and their minions, which was extremely not cool. Running into my abusive ex while on a half-baked road trip was almost pleasant in comparison. Ugh.

Yesterday I finished the cutting and pasting for the now New Years letter. E went on an adventure to Tangiers, the middle eastern market. I had a bit of executive function trouble and was compelled to look at all the things, which was soothing. P had a ma’amoul and some Turkish coffee. We got olive oil and a nice black tea, and looked for straight-sided glass teacups for D but came up empty. Home, I did some hemming for quiet alone time, then came downstairs and offloaded all my accumulated “how to recover from illness-induced disordered eating and reach your calorie goals” knowledge. For dinner, P and I made tortillas. This time we added water just until it started to stick to the inside of the bowl, about an extra 50% of what the recipe said. Kneaded the ever loving snot out of it in the process. Worked great! I got a bunch of them to puff on the griddle, and they stayed soft and supple through the meal. D handled reheating the leftover fillings. I employed more restraint while eating and felt better for it afterwards. P and I played scrabble, then I went to bed. Dreamt of getting lost in the bus system, and of coming into a personal stylist shop during an unexpectedly busy time. Social anxiety on top of social anxiety is not my favorite.

Yesterday we went on an adventure to a latino grocery, and found dozens of them on Park St. the first one we went into was unexpectedly small and dim and full of big dudes and it was clear we shouldn’t be in there. The next one we picked was huge and bright and full of the right kind of vegetables. We got maseca for tortillas, cabbage, bell peppers, cilantro, limes, chipotles in adobo, and beans. I thought about but did not ultimately go for nopales. Home, snack, then I had some alone time with a new book and more hemming. The book is completely constructed out of tropes, and not in an ironic way, and I do not want to spend any more time with the characters, and so I shan’t.

For dinner D roasted potatoes, carrots, and squash, M made tortillas, sockeye, salsa, crema, and guac, and I made cumin peppers and green beans, saffron rice, and refried beans. It was a spectacular spread. Ate too much but no ultimate regrets.

D had the idea and P executed it to put the wedge cushions from the couch in our bed so I can have a better sleeping angle. Worked great! Dreamt of various psychic powers, long slides, circus acts, diplomacy, and episodes out of order.

Yesterday I finished cutting out the second couch seat. I mixed herbs for sleep sachets, filled them all, and whip-stitched them shut. NPCs continues fabulously hammy. After lunch we went on an adventure to Handmade Arcade at the convention center downtown. It was glorious, though a lot of walking on cement I’m not used to. I found holiday cards, stickers, pottery, and some nicely turned holly wood. I looked for but did not find a mostly-wool hat nor acceptable hand salve. Home, dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, sleep. Long involved dreams about Olin, muddy flooded corridors, swimming in Hawaii, picking pins out of the carpet, and writing some sort of contact improv curriculum.

Yesterday I slept in, and my period arrived. Normally that would put me out for the day, but for whatever reason I felt like going for it, so P and I went on a Monroeville adventure. I went to the vegan food expo, and P went to Udipi and then Barnes & Noble. The expo was great fun, about 40% food stalls, 30% CBD oil, and the rest split between bath and body, clothing, and home improvement vendors. I got a cookie from my favorite bakery, a cinnamon roll from a new-to-me bakery, some really nice lip balm and salve, and some pajama pants from a lovely woman who just moved here from Boston.

Home, then I started another moon embroidery. Early dinner, crossword, Elementary, snack (the cinnamon roll is life changing and I regret not getting their name), more Elementary, more snack, sleep.

A package I was expecting has gone missing. I started a support ticket with the company; hopefully it was insured.

Yesterday I finished the hem, sewed and felled the back yoke seam, and glue-basted the placket in place. Lunch, crossword, then I dithered around on the internet while P went to the store. Finished October Man. I like the alternative magic notation and hope he keeps up the thread. Started Monster In My Closet, the first book in the setup series for the Harlequin series on djinn I was reading earlier this year. Hokey, but entertaining enough.

We went over to the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts to watch T put the soda into the kiln, and hung out for a bit. It’s amazing to see the kiln mid-fire with your eyeballs instead of on video; everything is glowing orange in a way that somehow isn’t quite captured on camera. Also, since everything in a soda kiln gets wadded anyway, you don’t bother with shelf wash, the refractory stuff that usually stops drips of glaze from sticking to the kiln furniture. So everything from all the previous firings is all drippy from the underside of the shelves, too, glowing the same color orange. Very compelling. The soda is soda ash (Na2CO3) not baking soda (NaHCO3) as I’d assumed before. You basically open all the ports, then spend an hour walking around the kiln spraying ten seconds worth of slurry into each port in turn while steam rockets out of all the others. Breaks for water and standing in the comparatively cool 87-degree heat outside the shed. Once that was done, she added some prepared sections of wood, which had been soaked overnight in a soda ash solution and then coated with a paste of soda ash and calcium carbonate. Closed all the ports, tightened the damper and put the kiln in reduction. The wet wood burns more slowly than the sprayed solution vaporizes, giving the soda more time to circulate inside the kiln. A half-hour’s worth of reduction to pull the oxygen out of the glazes, then pull out the damper to rocket the temp up to cone 10 and make sure everything is vitrified, then shut all the ports and dampers and turn off the fire and let it cool for a couple of days. We’ll have stuff Tuesday night at open studio.

Afterwards, popped back to the house to pick up P’s laptop, then to Sqhill to put me in the library with my embroidery for an hour and P at Commonplace so he could get internet (for some reason his laptop turns its nose up at library wifi). Home, dinner, scrabble (atrocious; 497), Legends, snack, sleep.

P away, family health

Yesterday I felled more of the back yoke seam, and had to switch to a
hemstitch to cover the end of the placket. Definitely leaving longer seam
allowances next time. I burned the oatmeal. Walked up to Forbes and Murdoch
to catch a 61B to clay; forgot my tools. Did call P while waiting for the
bus; that was nice. The bus driver was at the end of her shift, and drove
me an extra two blocks to drop me right in front of the library. Super
nice. Clay was good; I cleaned up the bottoms of all the bowls and put some
carved patterns into the slip. Dunked the mugs in a red/orange/turquoise
flashing slip; lost the requisite sacrificial handle (of course not the
goofy one); squished it back on real good and hoped for the best. Fixed P’s
mug whose handle had gone the same way. Afterwards, realized I’d forgotten
my phone is having trouble with data lately, and had to make do with
offline trip planning to figure out where to go to catch a bus home. Picked
the wrong side of the street, got on the wrong bus, waited too long to ask
the driver for clarification, and wound up waiting another half hour at the
North Braddock shopping center for the right one. Bought some chips and
turbinado. Debated whether to walk from Murdoch or take the shuttle home;
the timing was right for the shuttle so I stayed on to CMU. Chatted with
the shuttle driver for a bit on her break before learning she was actually
the A/B driver and the PTC departs Moorewood at the 15 on summer weekends.
Oof. Got on a 61C and walked home from the stairs.

Made chili for dinner, and a scoop of the pea-protein powder has been going
well in oatmeal so added some of that. Bad idea. The slight change in smell
threw me all the way off. Ate sunflower seeds and apple chips for dinner
instead. Flash is done, so started Legends. Dishes, no snack, sleep.

Moonlight continues excellent.

Update on G: his heart is not great, but that’s not unusual for the surgery
he’s had so they’ve got it covered. He’s in whatever is one step down from
ICU, which is noisy again so he’s not sleeping as much as he should. M goes
home today, and some other relatives are arriving to help.

health, P away, tv

Yesterday I sewed the back yoke seam, trimmed down the seam allowance, then
remembered I was going to fell the seams. I felled the first edge by
machine and started hand-felling the second. Next time I’ll make the seam
allowance on the back panel wider, or maybe I’ll fell it in the other
order? The placket makes the seam a bit weird.

I finished Midnight Riot. I like that his best tool seems to be getting
people to talk about themselves.

At work I redid how slots are generated and that fixed the inference
caching issue. Next is figuring out what’s going wrong with deletions; they
should be cascading but the slot tails are sticking around. I went to a
meeting with F and M, and we got through enough stuff that M will be
working on a pytorch implementation of the backward-chaining equations for
next time. I should probably do a tutorial or two as well so I’ll be able
to read her code.

I went to sqhill after work since it was gorgeous out. At geagle I got
emergency cumin, cheese, gf pretzels, and some sesame crisps that looked
interesting. I walked home via pocusset. It had been a while, so I forgot
Phillips connected earlier than just following wightman to the end of the
line. Ah well. Saw some great gardens.

Home, did a turn through the garden and picked snow peas and NZ spinach.
Dinner (was great, did a tarka of curry leaves and whole cumin), Flash,
snack, sleep.

Txted with P throughout the day — G’s surgery went well, no surprises. Now
it’s just trying to heal as intensively as he can so they can investigate
the next thing. P and M have been switching off cooking; P made chicken
tagine on Thursday and M made pasta sauce last night.

Yesterday I finished P’s pj pants and they are glorious. We went to my
passport application appointment and it went off without a hitch, in spite
of last-minute anxiety about not having photocopies and this place is small
I thought they did photos but what if they don’t and oh shit the state
department doesn’t take credit and I’m out of cheques... it was all fine. P
had a Homestead adventure at Steel Valley Coffee and also found a legit
german immigrant bakery where I hope to remember to get streudel come apple
season.

Home, and I was totally wiped out. Late lunch, didn’t bother going to
campus for carnival things, instead finished some embroidery from last year
and made a scent pillow out of it with lavender and tansy.

Dinner, crossword, Flash, snack, sleep.

Yesterday I flat-felled the inseams and crotch seam. I finished Paper
Magician and started the sequel, Glass Magician. Very extremely alarmed
about ethical violations! Don’t date your apprentice! When you notice
yourself crushing, get them transferred to someone else! Leaving things out
of police reports so your crush won’t worry is not okay!

I WFH because of a mid afternoon doctors appointment. I’m working on
getting the old set of unit tests to run as a sort of tdd thing, as it
should tickle most of the places the model needs to be updated. I wound up
down a rabbit hole of the python data model and metaclasses in order to get
a lazy-initialized class attribute to work, which should probably have been
a signal I’m doing it wrong. Sticking with it anyway. Fixed a bug in pytheo
that wasn’t initializing KBs properly.

P drove me to my appointment, and went to have lunch next door. Except, the
doctors office was still closed for flood repairs, which was weird since I
would’ve expected a call from R about the substitute location. So I grabbed
P, who switched to a to-go order, and we went off to Edgewood to the other
clinic. Except, the auto sign-in machine didn’t recognize me, and the
receptionist couldn’t find my file in the pending stack. So she took my
info and went to search on her computer in the back. Turns out my
appointment is for March 15. No idea whether I flubbed that one or R did
when we rescheduled my original appointment last week. It’s not a leap year
so all the days of the week are the same Feb/March. So. That was an
adventure. I’m just glad P was with me. If I was on my original public
transit plan that would’ve been miserable.

Dinner, crossword, Heart, sleep. I installed a new puzzle game I’m liking
called Tiny Bubbles. It’s very chill, with some adorable components.

Yesterday I started planning this year’s vegetable garden. Beans, snow
peas, tromboncino, herbs. Might try tomatillos as something new.

Spent the day surly and self-absorbed; the hormones don’t help.

We went to open studio and I trimmed and handled two of the mugs; the third
was still way too wet to hold its shape under pressure. I’m trying out a
slab-based handle technique for these.

We stopped at Lowe’s to see about replacing/repairing the parts of the
laundry tap, and got excellent help from the guy in plumbing and a couple
guys in tools. None of the parts they had were going to work, so they sent
us to a hardware store in Duquesne called Schink’s. He had eeeeeverything,
a real old school place. Shined up the stem to make sure it was okay, dug
out the broken screw with an ice pick, fixed the threads with a tap, and
sent us on our way. Reminds me of Harvey’s. Miss that place.

We went to Target and got granola bars (the almond-butter filled ones from
Kind are good), bunny snacks, and P snacks.

Home, and my pajama pants test fabric had arrived early! I had a late/early
meal and then prepared it for washing. Also started preparing the sateen
shirting I bought for interfacing/underlining. Watched more of the pants
fitting craftsy/bluprint class while I worked. She doesn’t take a rise
measurement, which seems super weird, but we’ll roll with it.

Dinner/snack, crossword, Heart, sleep. My neck was tweaked, so no buttons.

Very involved dreams. Robotic beehive, planeshifting, gravity manipulation
gone wrong, sleeping it off under the stars, glass going selectively dark
for those affected, skyscrapers, three-story apartments, people curious as
cats, cocktails with surprise savory ingredients, Christmas trees with a
single present under them.

Yesterday I pressed the bottom seam on the hem band, and started pinning
the mauve layer to the bottom of the body of the skirt starting at center
front.

P drove us in via the art store to pick up a special order of a pile of
sketchbooks for his students, and I picked up a couple clay tools. R is
struggling. I hope things get better.

At work I started reading the seminal paper on Theo to get a feel for what
to expect next week. Once that got to be too much I switched back to
deductive parsing. That got easier as I went, which is always satisfying.
By the time brain was starting to mutiny it was time for shuttle, very
convenient.

Dinner, crossword, Lucifer, bed.

Yesterday I sewed the pleats... inside out. I could leave them that way
without much ill effect, so I might do.

We went to the Strip! Mon Aimee for chocolate (not the same Hu brand as I
was looking for, but some others the proprietress approved), PenMac for
cheese, speck, yeast, eggs, mint candies, and some unexpected Katie treats
(gf gnocchi! lentil pasta!), WFH for Thai red rice, rice berry, rice bran
oil, some sesame sweets, and an enormous carrot. P got lunch at the Polish
deli.

After lunch I reassembled the vacuum and finished cleaning up the third
floor and the upper staircase.

Dinner put me a bit off, which sucked. Crossword (excellent theme), sleep.

Yesterday I finished packing up the box for my folks, including a short
letter. I had some executive function troubles, and drowned them in
finishing the embroidery on the wee owl and adding a bound loop to make it
into an ornament. After lunch we went to Sqhill, shipped the package, and I
wandered through Ten Thousand Villages while P had a coffee. I spent the
rest of the afternoon watching gbbo master class and knitting. I finished a
second owl body and then knit a tiny hen.

Some trouble with post-prandrial nausea; I probably need to cut back on
quantities and add more snacks.

Crossword was excellent and full of puns.

Yesterday we went on adventures: to the Braddock library to pick up P’s
phone, to the Waterfront geagle for edamame and bunny snacks and
incidentals, I had a therapy appointment, and then home for a very early
dinner/absurdly late lunch. Spent the rest of the day wrapping things for
my folks and perusing the fedco catalogue.

I cleaned the upstairs toilet, step 1 of getting my bathroom as clean as
D&G’s because that was remarkably pleasant.

We tested the crazing on some of P’s mugs, and no luck, it sucks up food
coloring like whoa. P’s running them through the dishwasher to see if it
comes out but I’m not sure that will mean they are safe?

Crossword, bed.

Yesterday we went on an adventure to find rose petals. P called around the
local middle eastern groceries but came up empty; I googled for herbalist
supply shops and got a hit in Bloomfield. Very woo, but very well-stocked.
There will be a lot of extra that I’ll probably send home and use for bath
tea or something.

We also went to the Italian bakery and got ricotta pasticciotti, a small
domed filled short-crust pastry that substituted nicely for the big ricotta
pie they were out of. Also got a large cherry tart, which the cashier
assumed had food coloring (“I don’t understand why you *wouldn’t* put food
coloring in it”) but which P didn’t react to on taste test so maybe not.

Spent the rest of the day reading and knitting and chatting. Lunch was
difficult; dinner was easier. G put a fire in the fireplace, which was
nice. M got another pizza from another local place. I think he’s trying to
work through them all before he goes home on Sunday.

Yesterday I sewed two tucks in the petticoat; they take me about an hour to
do so I’m eight hours or so away from being done.

After lunch we went on adventures! I went to Queer Market in Bloomfield,
and P went to Artisan for coffee and atmosphere. I bought a really lovely
photograph, plus some cards and stickers for A, and a hair flower for me.
I also went to Gluten-Free Goat and got a cookie and a rugelach for later.
After that we went to the coop and got toothpaste, a bunch of lip balms to
try, lentil pasta including a new-to-me brand, edamame, okra, banana bread,
and crystallized ginger.

P made Thai beef with okra, and I made coriander pasta. Crossword and then
I started another owlet while watching gbbo Master Class.

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Entries tagged with adventures

An archivist for the important finds

Cumin and smoked paprika

We’ll crib from Fogel

kristen schaal is a horse, plus boxcutters

What can I get you my friend

some weird magic eye scrying thing

I’m starting to miss ttrpgs

Vegan athletes don’t joke

Meant to put the protein bars in the freezer

Dreamt of bad costume changes for stage

Both the 61A and B go to Braddock

Just ugh

Dreamt of very weird job interview

Papalo is possible too

Wretched dreams about mosquitoes and movers

Epic Good Place dreams

Weird lgbt secret society dreams

Librarians are always cool

Rice day today

Excellent Sunday