infryq | Entries tagged with gifts

Vacation log part two!

Tuesday I finished the hems, and we played the best damn game of scrabble of our lives to date with a board score of 822.

Wednesday P went out for a last grocery run before Christmas.

Thursday I made two more attempts at butter tarts, the second successful. They need a little bit of blind baking, just not as much as I did the first time. Cornstarch makes for a better texture than roux.

Friday we did a porch swap with F&A to relieve them of some mistaken lamb and chicken wings, and got bonus cinnamon pastries. We opened gifts (Rejected Princesses from P, a nice marble mortar and pestle from D, the best hoodie I’ve ever worn from M; the socks for P were a hit).

Saturday we did a video chat with P’s folks, then with mine, and P made fesenjan (a sour Persian meat stew with nuts). T sent me progress photos from the infinite lizard torus puzzle so that seems to have been a win as well.

Sunday I woke up with mega neck pain, so spent most of the day propped up on pillows, doing gentle exercises on a timer. I made a start at the annual zine.

Monday was better. P helped me make another batch of lentils and grits, this time with a parsnip thrown in, an excellent addition.

I started a workout plan on the 20th called “Couch to Crushing it” and it’s going well so far.

I’ve been reading Kill The Farm Boy by Delilah S Dawson and Kevin Hearne. It’s a bit like Shrek in its frenzied comedic tone but otherwise standard D&D theater. Enjoyable enough to finish but I wouldn’t bother recommending it unless you are hard up for lesbian representation in sword and sorcery.

Yesterday the aggregations were totally horked. Ultimately it turned out I never did submit Thursday’s stderr updates to the server, but it took us all day to be confident in that and understand a couple other weird components (some of the worst diffs had their old value approximately equal to their stderr, and the new stderr 10x larger, which seemed very suspicious). Meanwhile, decided on Slack to release only the new deaths and cases signals at noon and push the combined signal to next week. Met with indicators, and A and I delivered our plan for release schedules and task management and got no objections. Group meeting was very efficient, and A gave a slightly quicker version of the spiel there too. Met briefly with RR and R to figure out what to do about the 7-day trend indicator for the deaths and cases signals, and decided to disable it for this release. Lunch, somewhat abbreviated. Went to M’s thesis meeting; we’re still debugging why we can’t seem to get this model to overfit. Spent an hour running variations of the validation code on aggregations; each run takes 8 minutes so in the gaps I built up git issues for the next release, set milestones, and organized labels based on the new rules for releases. Finally had some overlap with T’s free time and gave him a call — I’ll be staying with Delphi for the summer. I despise being poached but these are special circumstances. Can’t really tell the pandemic to hold off for a month or two while I train a replacement. Went to team leads meeting and finalized the details of all the approval processes. Finished up planning with A for the next release and called it a day. Should largely be a weekend off.

Dinner, crossword, DS9, snack, sleep. Dreamt of shabby bazaars, dysfunctional local government, gameified DIY duplication of dream-world popular fast food franchises a la Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, murder mysteries, steam trains, drag races.

Network Effect continues excellent.

We received the gift basket from R: pears, nuts, crackers, and cheese. The pears are gorgeous, P will take care of the crackers and cheese, and I get the nuts because cashews.

Yesterday the taxi picked us up at 8:30. I took my meds, we had an uneventful two flights. I read some of Gideon the Ninth and made a bit of progress on the final handkerchief but mostly napped. I troubleshooted a bit with F some problems she’s having with the user study environment, but it’s not fixed yet so there’s more to do. We got home to our correct house with correct silverware and correct pots and stove and oven and correct bed and it is good. I put together a shopping list and we went to geagle. There were many packages waiting for us, as I’d told the post office to hold our mail and deliver it all on the last day. There was a nice card from F&A, along with a fun book on historical playing cards. The calendar from grandma arrived, along with a pile of cotton yarn for dishrags. A shipment of apple chips, which I need to put a stop to until I start eating them again. And.... a mixed case of wine from my folks! I can’t believe it both made it through PA nonsense and that FedEx dropped it off (when? who knows! & nobody stole it!) without the required signature. It’s all CinqCellars stuff, mostly 2015 vintage. Very exciting.

Early dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, more Voyager, more snack, correct bedtime bathroom routine, sleep, on correct pillows and correct Monster and everything. I love seeing P’s folks but it is so so soothing to be home again.

Yesterday was a very chill Christmas. We had breakfast together, M and P took their traditional excursion to Dunkin Donuts to tip the workers heavily, M and D went for a walk. I finished a handkerchief for T. In the afternoon we all played scrabble, board score 496, very respectable for four players. M’s A had sent two embroideries to give out, and I delivered the sachets. Extended family has sent a very nice holiday lap quilt and some molasses cookie packed in marshmallows. M and P put a fire in the fireplace. Dinner was lamb shanks and couscous for them, and red lentil pin oat stew for me. More fire and family time with nibbles afterwards; P and I played the type game until we got stuck. I played a round of Paperback while M let the fire burn down. Snack, sleep. Dreams about conditioning drills, roasting potatoes in home ec, an underground tunnel complex subverting the security of a vault, a mischievous pair of children.

Yesterday I mixed herbs and filled the linen sachets, and whip-stitched them all shut. After lunch P drove me in to therapy, and we talked about all the things that are going great, so it’s no mystery why my mood has been good in spite of some food and seasonal difficulties. Home, then I made another batch of nut and seed bars, and started tabulating things for the winter letter I want to send out this year. I finished NPCs, and want more of the story even though the ending was satisfactorily ended. There are more but I guess I didn’t think to look? Because I started rereading Gladstone instead. Dinner, P did laundry, crossword, Voyager, snack, sleep.

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 was Christmas! P opened his hilariously large gift from me, an
epic bathrobe. So warm, so fluffy, very enjoyed. Also a book on
pottery-as-cookware.

I trued the ends of the canvas I bought for hem stiffening and washed it
along with the white voile that didn’t get washed last time around. I laid
out the center front and side front panels on the wool flannel, and
attempted to pleat the remaining fabric onto the side back pattern piece,
but it turned into a huge geometry pain in the ass. I opted to make a
proper pattern piece including pleats instead, and spent the rest of the
afternoon learning that fan pleats are legit trickier than standard
parallel pleats. I have a two-pleat version that looks alright, but I’d
like to try a three-pleat version for the same length and flare of fabric.
I think I’m going to have to do it with math instead of origami.

There was an extremely spherical rabbit hanging out in the front yard most
of the morning. 😍

I made a Persian lentil rice dish for dinner that turned out fluffy and
separate — the opposite of mujadara but similarly delicious. I bailed on
the potato tahdig for solanine reasons, and the rice version was
unpleasantly hard; crunchy but not crisp. Lessons for next time.

P made a loaf of part-whole wheat bread, and pizza.

P found a rogue gift for me that turned out to be a really lovely book on
Islamic geometric design, with a focus on compass-and-straightedge
construction. Very absorbing!

T was super enthused about the Snarky Puppy — apparently he already knew
about them but didn’t have this particular album yet, and is seeing them
live next spring. Success!