Yesterday I played with nltk, wrote up book and video recommendations for the 2020 letter, found the maximum amount of popcorn that will fit in one of the sauté pans, and watched a pile of SG-1. Dreamt of repeatedly cutting an art class of all things. Finished Raising Steam, which was lovely.
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.
Yesterday I went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, maple syrup, apples, zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, wee butternut squash, bok choy, a leek, and wee peppers. Lunch, crossword, then I did the laundry and put it through the dryer, had a call with my Olin mentee, watched more Dragon Prince (Deaf friendly! Positive examples of lesbian and gay relationships! Quite chuffed), and cut and planed some more wee pieces for the basswood prototype of the knee lever gearbox and started drilling holes. Dinner, Dragon Prince, snack, asleep on time for the first time in months. Love standard time. Dreamt of owl handling and magic modular dishwashers.
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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.
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Yesterday the JHU signal fell over pretty hard, and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon dealing with it. Irritable about it. I did however unpack the week’s mail, including a frame for the saw blades I intend to use on the brass. Assembled and tried it out on some spare tubing, with great success. Got some more practice with drilling tiny holes, made a copy of the pattern, and glued it to some basswood to practice. Dinner, crossword, started watching Hollywood, fixed a hole in a sock, snack, sleep. Finished The Book of Koli, started the sequel, The Trials of Koli.
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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 went to the team leads meeting and cleared up a bunch of hiring questions. I spent most of the day writing code to let API queries grab multiple signals at once, and monitoring progress on the data versioning release. I submitted another two job descriptions to send to Recruiting, and wrote up two hiring freeze justifications to resubmit since we neglected to ask for multiple hires for the stats developer position, plus I want to hire K for a part-time version of the external relations PM. I met with Engineering, good progress all around. We did the code push for data versioning on time, and everything looked good until Automation tried to do the direction update — turns out all the Docker tests use the default version of MariaDB (10.x) instead of the version we actually run in production (5.5.x), which only supports a subset of SQL syntax. Annoying, but directions aren’t exactly mission-critical. Then, the meta cache update essentially hung; in staging it took fifteen minutes but in prod we were sitting at an hour+. Late last night it turned out to be a file write error, which seems rill bad considering this is a cloud machine, but I’ll know more when I review B’s update. Things we haven’t done before; things we’re rapidly learning how to do better.
Late dinner, crossword, submitted the farm order, did some more reading about triacs, sleep. Dreamt of rambling B&Bs, iterative murder mystery games, shower curtain opinions, bamboo mats.
Finished my second run through of Wicked As You Wish; delightful. The only thing I can’t recommend about it is that it was only published back in March so there aren’t any sequels yet.
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 a final batch of butter mince tarts, this time taller to fit in nuts, mince, and plenty of butter batter, baked forty minutes 400/350, and they are very close to perfect. Soft fruit, crunchy nuts, sweet caramel, buttery crust. Caramel got a touch overbaked; probably too hot oven temp and/or too much cornstarch (1t, to 2T each brown sugar, vegan butter, and coconut cream).
Washed the socks; did the crossword. Finder continues with a touch of, I suppose it’s not deus ex machina exactly since it was reasonably thoroughly set up, but still an unlikely bit of suspension of disbelief. Hopefully it’s part of the meta arc and will be carried through sequels.
Finished my Villanelle exploration project, packaged it up and sent it off. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed programming in my time off so much, so thanks due to C 🙏
Dinner, Voyager, snack, sleep. Dreamt of being unable to find my high school math teacher for a test I was supposed to take; getting lost in the shuttle bus system; some dude trying to get change for a fifty from me; confusing collaborative messaging software.
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 made a first attempt at mince pie butter tarts, and they were good! I triangulated from about ten different gf pastry recipes and wound up at 3:1 (bob’s ap gf) flour:(country crock almond plant) butter with a pinch of salt and enough coconut water (the thin liquid from a separated can of coconut milk) to come together. Warmed the coconut solids with brown sugar, more butter, and cornstarch for the butter tart mixture. Parbaked the shells, filled with mince, topped up with goo, baked thirty minutes or so. I gave P one of the nine and ate the rest of them two at a time throughout the day. Next time I’ll add nuts and try baking a bit hotter.
Took another look at Villanelle with the assistance of the entire syntax guide, and got a lot farther. Submitted a pile of questions to the project.
Sewed the piping to the top/bottom panel of the final seat cushion, ready for the zip panel.
I’ve been reading Finder by Suzanne Palmer, and so far it is engaging, if perhaps a little smug.
Dinner, crossword, Voyager, snack, sleep. Dreamt of waiting interminably for Chinese takeout while repeatedly overheating and overchilling IRL.
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.
