infryq

On Thanksgiving, we did a Zoom with P’s folks and M & A, which was lovely. A mostly chill day, and late afternoon started prep for popovers and a stuffed pumpkin. We are both out of practice; the popovers didn’t pop and the pumpkin was still not bubbling after an hour, but we ate anyway (I had extra stuffing going on the stovetop) and everything was delicious. Called my folks after for a nice long chat, played some scrabble, a very relaxing day.

For the pumpkin: use a small pumpkin or squash meant for eating that sits nicely with the stem at the very top. I used a UFO squash, dark green shell and dry rich flesh something like a buttercup squash. Take the top off the pumpkin and clean out the guts. 1/3 cup each lentils and wild rice, soak in 2 cups boiling water with a healthy pinch of saffron. 2T each chopped marcona almonds, red bell pepper, mushrooms, and dried cranberries, and sizzle in olive oil until the mushrooms brown. Mix everything up, add thyme and sage. Use a measuring cup or tiny ladle to fill the pumpkin no more than half full of solids, then top up with liquid to a finger thickness short of the bottom of the cap. Bake uncovered at 350 until boiling (I did not uncover for this step and that was a mistake; squash is an excellent insulator), then cap and bake 30 minutes or until liquid is absorbed, wild rice is beginning to split but not curl, and pumpkin is soft. Meanwhile, simmer remaining mixture on stovetop 30-50 minutes until wild rice is done. Reduce away any remaining liquid. Serve to normal people with crispy garlic and shallots or to Katies straight up.

Yesterday we ate leftovers (the stuffed squash made great soup) and puttered around. I transferred the pattern for the gearbox to a sheet of brass and started learning how to/how not to drill holes in it (do put something behind it; do use a power tool; do back off frequently; do drill more sizes of pilot holes than you think you need). We went through the FedCo seed catalog, and started looking online for missing bits (we want to grow rue so we can try some of the ancient Roman recipes from one of the historical cooking channels we watch). I finished Avatar and started hemming another dish towel. A good day.

!markdown

Yesterday I went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, apples, zucchini, eggplant, buttercup squash, turnips, mustard greens, bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms. I did the laundry and P and I hung it out on the line. After lunch I roasted the turnips and the squash, and had a call with my Olin mentee. I practiced with the saw and clamps on the basswood, and used an exacto as a sortof free plane to get the rough-sawn edges down to the cutlines. Pretty proud of the results. Dinner, crossword, Tales of the City, early sleep. Dreamt of chemistry class and building paper mache globes.

Trials of Koli continues excellent; the additional narrator is enriching.

!markdown

Yesterday I turned the furnace on. 65 is my limit as far as interior temperature goes. I took apart the naked-seeded pumpkins and roasted the resulting pepitas with olive oil and salt. They puff themselves up pretty good in the oven, and they’re delicious— definitely will grow these again. P and I did the laundry and hung it out on the line, and I opened packages from the jewelry supply and modeling supply places. The tubing I had sized so carefully didn’t fit, and P was headed in to SqHill anyway for wine, so he picked up a couple better options from the art store. I started practicing with the new tools. I found a bunch of ways that didn’t work to center punch on a rod, but eventually got a hole started. The mini bench vise was a very good call. The pin vise is difficult to clamp on straight. I might look for a better one, or for bits with a constant-diameter shaft. 0.5mm is too small to practice with. I was able to get a 0.7mm bit straight enough to give it a try. I was able to drill a hole through the rod! But I was so surprised when it worked that I broke the bit. Welp, that’s what practice is for.

Spent the rest of the afternoon watching Umbrella Academy and continuing to hem the linen dish towel. Dinner was slightly different (zucchini green beans carrots cranberries lentils, oregano and smoked paprika), then brought in the laundry, did the crossword, finished Umbrella Academy but not the hem, snack, sleep. Weird dreams of distant family, shapeshifters, sprinklers, a robot controlled by the temperature of its power pack, then a morbid turn of death notice after death notice.

Yesterday I put in an order to nuts.com and got polenta, rolled oats, pecans, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins, spelt flour, and roasted fava beans. I ordered more dried cranberries from SistersFruit too, since they’ve been quite nice. I started reading The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco. I baked the nut and seed bars, then made lunch. I did a turn through the garden and weeded, watered, and planted another round of snow peas since I think the germination was poor on the last bunch. Late but we’ll cope. Snack, shower, washed hair, and tried a thing where I twisted it up in a pillowcase to dry. Helped P with a naming problem, then crossword. Early dinner, DS9, snack, DS9, sleep. Dreamt of dance classes and ready-made garden sheds and FASHION and ordering drinks at a bar and children playing pretend with toy cars on some kind of college campus (Western I think?) and extremely weird takes on classic sandwiches.

Yesterday I made more tarts, with nuts, half with just the butter tart mixture and half with just mincemeat. Higher oven temp. The butter tarts came out amazing; the mince ones were too boozy, possibly needed more time in the oven.

After lunch P drove me in to Oakland for a therapy appointment, which was good; downloaded all of the holidays and family stuff. P drove me back home, then we did the crossword before he left again to go meet up with A. They ate at Yuva, the Indian place on Craig, with much rejoicing. She wants him to be more confident and assertive in his application materials, but I think he will wait on that until it more accurately reflects his actual approach to teaching. I finished the final seam on the final couch seat cover, and installed them both in the couch. Everything you sit on in the living room is now purple. The ottomans will wait until I’m no longer tired of purple canvas. Finder continues grand.

Did some dialogue diagramming for my Villanelle test project, then dinner, Voyager, snack, and sleep.

Yesterday I banged pretty hard on a behavior-tree AI authoring tool developed by C’s lab. I wish I could have spent more time on the higher-level capabilities of the system, but an IDE without copy, paste, or comment syntax turns out to be excessively hard to use.

After lunch we went to Target for CO2 and vegan butter and came up empty on both, though we did get a pile of snacks and seltzer for me, and a set of wire shelving to start organizing the third floor closet. We hit geagle for the butter-like substance, did not find any maseca but did find an interesting aged Mexican cheese, and clementines. BB&B had the CO2, then home. I spent the afternoon finishing the long piped seam in the first couch seat.

I finished Gideon the Ninth. It gets pretty gory by the end but the characters treat it as sufficiently normal/instrumental that it’s possible to stay above it. A+++, would read again, would read more by this author.

Dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, sleep. Dreamt of helping M with a tricky emulsified marinade, sleeping in a cozy loft, pine martens, my brother as a teenager, and putting away laundry between houses.

Yesterday I started pulling apart a linen skirt from the rag pile in prep
for making it into handkerchiefs. I finished Gentleman Jole; it makes me
want to hunt the other books for clues. Very satisfying ending too.

At work I built a quick webpage documenting how we preprocessed freebase
for a paper a couple years ago, since we’ve started getting questions about
it. I finished fixing the NELL website, wrote it up for the wiki, and
notified the list. I set some other backups running and spent the rest of
the day on the LIA parser paper. P stopped by and gave input on the parse
tree visualization for the examples, which helped a lot. I should see if I
can pull C in soon as this thing is almost starting to make actual sense.

Lab meeting was just a round table update. A asked excellent questions; I’m
sure some of it was thesis fatigue but it’s a professorly trajectory I want
to see more of.

Home, made dinner, and P got home in time to eat together, which was nice.
Dishes and direct to sleep.

Yesterday I ironed the paler flannel, laid out and cut pattern pieces, and
sewed it all together. All that’s left is the waistband and hem. I’m
getting better at this sewing stuff. Except. I totally spaced on pockets. I
might insert some into the side seams.

P went to a pruning workshop at the teaching garden, and tweaked his back a
bit.

I assembled and submitted all the seed orders for this year’s vegetable
garden. Imma fill one of the fallow beds in the main yard with sunflowers,
it’s gonna be great.

Barrayar is now at extremely compelling status. CN for discussion of rape
and rehabilitation of rapists.

I delivered a practice run of Monday’s talk to R, and got excellent
feedback. I’m glad we decided to do that — it gave me a chance to work a
bunch of the self-conscious-ness out of my system. Reorganized a few slides
and added a new pivot.

Went down a giant rabbit hole of dental care on Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, and
Amazon.fr. I would like, please, fluoride, and not mint. That is apparently
a difficult request. The France connection is because of a recent 99pi
episode about recycling. Toothpaste tubes cannot be recycled because they
have two materials bonded together, but tooth powders and solid toothpastes
that come in reusable/recyclable tins are common in France. Alas, Amazon.fr
has, like, 1000 customers. The biggest number of reviews I saw was 14. The
powders they carry are either fluoride-free woo or had pans like “made my
gums bleed” “gave me mouth ulcers” so. No.

Crossword after lunch. Snack and bed after the practice talk.

Dreamt dad-but-not-dad was cheating with a woman in the Pixies (???) and my
cousin R was visiting but totally ghosted me and also my grandparents’
house literally fell down due to soil subsidence. Yesterday was the day of
the estate sale in real life, so I’m probably having some feels about that.

Yesterday I sorted through the fabric stash and found two plaid flannels,
which was a pleasant surprise since I thought I’d only bought one whenever
that was years ago. I trued the ends of both and sewed them together for
washing. Finished Plastic Magician, and recommend it even if you don’t read
the previous books — it works great as a standalone exploration of what
academia (plus sabotage drama) looks like with an interesting magic system.
I started The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, but the reader is not a
good voice actor. The words are good, but even the best words drone if it
sounds like you’re reading them off a page. Podcasts for a bit.

I WFH to avoid dealing with the snow, and got through the last setup bug
before starting in on the historical unit tests proper. Wrote up a progress
report for T. I had a session with R and scheduled a practice talk for
Monday’s thing. I’m probably in the spot that should be familiar by now, of
not quite believing I know what I’m talking about, because surely the state
of the art is better and sturdier than the feels-like-it’s-made-up stuff in
my head, only to find out (again and again) that no, remember? everything
is made up. It might be *carefully* made up, but it’s made up. Having made
something up doesn’t inherently make it inferior. You just try your best to
be careful and listen when people find stuff you missed. So. Getting over
that again.

Dinner went better, trash, crossword, Heart, snack, sleep.

Yesterday I gave up on the drafting tutorial I had been using and switched
to the one in How To Make Sewing Patterns, which is much better. I finished
the front sloper and inked it. I need to buy some new drawing pens; my old
brown set is nearly dry.

I worked from home most of the day due to the -20 windchill. Had a baked
potato for lunch, and had a good session with R mostly focused on
terminology from the deductive parsing paper. Polished the draft ontology.

Bundled up thoroughly and then P took us to campus so I could meet with my
boss and P could get some walking done indoors. Meeting was good; F joined
us and we talked through the implications of switching LIA over to Theo.

We went to the grocery store on the way home and got potatoes, apples,
green pepper, garlic, slivered almonds, nutritional yeast, tomato sauce,
and cookies.

Home, dinner, trash, crossword, and then I started watching Good Witch.
It’s basically a half step back from a soap opera about the virtues of
holistic alternative medicine, but their research department is almost
criminally negligent; e.g. it’s a bad idea to dose a teenager with FUCKING
VALERIAN in their morning smoothie. Much like soaps though it sucks you in.
I finished casting and slicking the button I’m working on and started
rounding. Took me about ten tries to get the spokes arranged the way I want
them.