infryq: Kitchen scene at dawn, post-processed to appear as if painted (Default)

I am off work all this week! Over the weekend I did some pleating tests for a curtains sewing project. Cartridge pleats look the best with this fabric, but unfortunately they’re a lot of work so I’m thinking about alternatives. I’m also thinking about trying to make my own header tape but that also seems pretty fussy so we’ll see. Sunday was busy: the last farmers market of the year (potatoes, apples, onions, peppers, kale, carrots, mushrooms), I got my flu shot and COVID booster, then we spent a nice afternoon with the Ws and taught them Fluxx and Scopa. Yesterday I was completely out recovering from vaccines (moderate fever, aches) and P got his booster. I did however land on the perfect ratios for Persian-style mujadara by accident; I’ll have to try it again while actually measuring.

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Last week was my birthday, and I took the day off and spent it sewing, having a long bath with chamomile, and reading under piles of blankets. I put back pockets on P’s brown wool pants, reinforced the corners on the front side pockets, and patched a rip in his twill pants.

Over the weekend I made myself a new leather thimble, sewed a snap onto a cloth pad that had lost one, and made another batch of lentils and wild rice. At the farmers market we picked up a case of cider, and she threw in a bag of fresh marsh mallow roots. I sliced them up and put them in the dehydrator. If you’ve never had them before, they’re mucilagenous like okra, and smell gently of horseradish and turnips… which is why marshmallows (the confection) were invented, since you couldn’t get kids to eat them unless you drowned out the flavor with sugar. Marsh mallow is good for dry coughs, sore throats, and urinary issues, just be sure not to take within three hours of any prescription meds, since the mucilage coats your GI tract and can interfere with drug absorption. Some sources also say not to mix with diabetes meds, but I couldn’t find one that explained why. Otherwise marsh mallow is very safe, even during pregnancy. You can also use it topically as part of a poultice, since the mucilage dries into a flexible but supportive air barrier: instant bandage! As always, don’t sub herbal medicine for seeing a doctor, and always let your doc know what you’re using.

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We’re on a hard sprint so I worked most of the weekend. P was lovely and made me another batch of lentils and wild rice, and took my list to the farmers market.

I finished Murderbot up through the end of Fugitive Telemetry, finished Magicians, watched one episode of Bakineering (too much pizzazz, not enough support, the pairings are interesting but I spent the entire time comparing it to Bake-off).

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Over the weekend I finished the second pocket on the wool pants for P, and they are complete for now. I cut out some seersucker sleep shorts (it required some piecing so I gave them a side panel with a small diagonal stripe of doubled up black voile) and sewed all the panel seams and then the center front and back. We went to the farmers market and got three kinds of apples, maple syrup, mushrooms, a new cider (still, bittered with tulsi), beans, sweet potatoes, a pie pumpkin, peppers, a tomato, and fresh onions. Had some of the cider with dinner prep and it was intense; P doesn’t not-like it but it has enough dill seed overtones that my palate immediately labels it as an inferior pickle shot. Bummer.

I had a call with my Olin mentee, and one with my GoS mentee. For the latter we resubmitted her paper to JEI, her first time responding to reviewer feedback, milestone reached!

I’ve been watching The Magicians, which is fine, and reading Not Your Average Hot Guy, which is clearly trying very hard.

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Over the weekend I spent some time remembering how to do welt pockets, and installed one into the wool pants for P. The rayon I ordered for lining them arrived, but I didn’t get around to unpacking it. P made ma’amoul, and I made another batch of lentils and wild rice. We went to the market and got apples, pears, beans, peppers, bak choy, sweet potato greens (!), zucchini, and honey. I finished watching Shadow And Bone and started alternating The Magicians with Ada Twist to counteract the gore in the former. Mood’s been shitty but I suspect hormones.

Last night I watched Twitter explode with the news that Frances is the Facebook whistleblower. We’ve lost touch, but I couldn’t be more proud of her.

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Over the weekend, I finished clearing out the sewing room(well…enough), vacuumed, took apart the spare work table, then P helped me move the sewing cabinet back in there. I assembled the new wee desk for me to work at, and it is pretty and lightly industrial. We went to the farmers market and I meant to just get fruit since the veg drawer is packed full of squash and beans and peppers, but they had gorgeous gigantic okra and tomatillos and I managed to fit it all in there somehow.

Fried okra is unbelievably delicious. Wash, dry thoroughly, slice into rounds about half as thick as the pod is wide, then fry in a bit of oil with a touch of salt until crisp and brown on both cut sides, about six minutes total. The texture contrast of dry caramelized outside and soft unctuous inside is wonderful, and the small pieces and dry cooking method prevent sliminess.

P’s folks weathered the dregs of Henri alright, just the usual amount of water in the basement and no major damage to the house. The challenge will be electricity, since the power company is saying they won’t have everything back online for a week, and it’s meant to be excessively hot on Tuesday. They are considering their options.

I had a nice chat with A about window-shopping as a coping mechanism for cooling areas of psychological risk. Was good.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got nectarines, pluots, apricots, and peaches, melomacarona cookies, mushrooms, eggplant, broccolini, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, onions, garlic, rhubarb (!), and scallions. We ran into C and had a good solid chat to catch up, and wound up discussing commonly-misinterpreted art (Felix Gonzales-Torres, John Cage, an art installation I’ve been unable to google involving homemade bread fed on blood). Miss hanging out with C.

Home, lunch, crossword, spent the afternoon reading fanfic in the breeze from the window and taking a nap. Early dinner, then we drove over to B&S’s place north of the river for drinks and dessert. It was deeply satisfying to have so much unstructured time to tell stories and hopes and worries and triumphs and struggles big and small. Their deck is perfect. They have bats!

Home past my bedtime, but still had a snack before sleep since I’d skipped my afternoon one. Dreamt of autonomous school buses, being snowed in in a clothing shop, using math to convince a friend to stop doing dangerous shit in his unusually tall garage, something about barns and warm hay, staying dry.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got peaches, apricots, blueberries, melomacarona, mushrooms, eggplant, beans, broccolini, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, and onions. After lunch we did the crossword, and we did the laundry and hung it out on the line. I worked on some mending and started reading Dangerous To Know by KT Davies, an irreverent bit of roguelike D&D theater with eclectic cultural heritage. The villains are pretty tinny but the two main characters have substantial depth. Snack, Expanse, dinner, pulled in the clothes, scrabble (604, scored 66 with JERKED), more Expanse, snack, sleep. Dreamt of art school problem-solving, a complicated leaf table, offering crash space, and some kind of game with a weird cooking mechanic.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got mushrooms, broccolini, tomatoes, basil, parsley, cilantro, zucchini, callaloo, beans, celery, blueberries, apricots, and peaches. P got oxtail for lunch from the Jamaican place, and I arranged for case drop off today with the cider folks. Lunch, put in a forgotten load of laundry, crossword, then reading and mending until dinner. I’ve been struggling a bit with portion sizes and time, so skipped snack and cut back and had a much better after dinner experience. Scrabble (592), then started watching I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix. It’s a modern YA story about grief and rage and exclusion and coming out to yourself, told under the conceit of Matilda-like emotion-borne telekinesis. Based on comics. Recommended.

Changed my mind. The reader for Paladin’s Grace is a perfect foil for the angst and fluff of the character relationships. His dialogue voices are 💯.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, peaches, blueberries, strawberries, asparagus, broccoli, rhubarb, biscotti, mushrooms, cilantro, lettuce, summer squash, garlic scapes, and basil. I did the laundry and hung it out on the line, and made strawberry rhubarb sauce with a few stray blueberries and sour cherries thrown in as well. We did a Zoom call with P’s folks, who are all doing well. I squeezed in a snack, watched the season finale of Lucifer, then dinner. P made pasta and pesto with the garlic scapes and basil, and some of the California walnuts I’d stashed in the freezer. I picked the rest of the snap peas from the garden. After dinner I started watching Pose, a series about drag balls in 1980s New York City, which is in turns delightful and heartbreaking. Snack, sleep. The heat rode the edge of exhausting all afternoon, which was rough. We’ll see if it turns into an AC day today.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, asparagus, rhubarb, broccoli, hard cider, brioche hotdog rolls, melomacarona, mushrooms, cilantro, lettuce, spinach, and strawberries. Lunch, then I made the strawberries and rhubarb into glop, had a meeting with my high school mentee, and started the lima beans par-cooking. Crossword, tossed the limas with oil, and set them to roasting. Went out to the garden and picked the rest of the snow peas, and cut the vines down to make room for the new pole beans. I picked and cut down the rest of half the snap peas as well, on the south edge. The other half are still going quite strong and aren’t too much in the way of anything so I left them. I planted lima beans, Mexican sour gherkins, picking cucumbers, and hyssop, and watered everything in. I came back in and stirred the limas, reduced the heat, and made a snack. Wiped off, then snacked over internet while the limas finished roasting.

The storm moved in after that, and it was a big one — the gusts shook the house, and one of the old casements left open downstairs slammed shut and shattered itself all over the front porch and yard. We covered it with plastic for now. The rain was so heavy at times I couldn’t see across the street, and there was some scary hail maybe half an inch in diameter. We lost power a couple of times, but nothing persistent.

The storm had largely passed before it was time for dinner. We ate, then played scrabble (741!, 1 bingo), then more internet and sleep.

Also for anyone picking up KJ Charles on my recommendation (I see you on goodreads)— they are excellent but also intensely, and with great enthusiasm, sexually explicit. Fair warning? Audible did find a terrific reader for them though, not everybody can voice-act scenes like that.

Discovery continues beautifully, with better communication than I remember. There’s still stuff they should be telling each other, but it’s largely stuff they avoid telling themselves, so that’s less itchy than it would otherwise be.

Names

Jun. 7th, 2021 06:21 am
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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, hard cider, mushrooms, sea beans, parsley, radishes, lettuce, pea greens, strawberries, smoked trout, asparagus, and zucchini. I did the laundry and hung it out on the line, I diced the mushrooms fine and sautéed them until deeply brown, and we did the crossword after lunch (no clue what the title was supposed to mean). Internet, snack, then I started watching Nobody’s Looking, a Brazilian comedy (Ninguém Tá Olhando) about what happens when angels discover no one is at the helm. It’s starting to bring back a pile of Portuguese, which is fun. I also had a good chat with my mentee about the frustration of fixing other people’s mistakes, not repeating mine in grad school, and what being a research programmer is like.

Dinner, scrabble (653, 1 bingo), more internet, snack, sleep. Dreamt of weird passport requirements, decoding microcultural accordion notation, color-matching crochet threads with grandma Y, encoding proofs in fillet crochet blankets, and summer camp for construction and civil engineering (what yes please).

noooooo

May. 31st, 2021 07:51 am
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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, asparagus, rhubarb, hard cider, a basil plant, mushrooms, baby bok choy, spring mix, and lettuce. P deep-cleaned his produce drawer when we got home, then lunch, rhubarb sauce, and crossword.

I took the back off the cordomatic, reproduced the missing connection, but maneuvering the board out of position so I could get to the contacts must have wiggled whatever it was back into place. My least favorite fix. I squished the connections a bit harder in case something had been loose, but they were pretty firmly stuck in there, so 🤷🏼‍♀️. Put the board back, connections still worked, put the case back together, connections still worked, so... I guess it’s fine now?

Snack, then watched a Netflix series from the UK called Feel Good, a substance-abuse -flavored coming out comedy which cut off rather abruptly at the end of its too-short first season. Nertz.

Dinner, scrabble (635, no bingos, sloshy vowels), then I found A Discovery Of Witches on Amazon. Matthew is a bit weirdly-cast maybe? Though he is meant to be Occitan so maybe it’s more that my brain is bad at casting from the peninsula. I’m worried they’ll screw up some other stuff trying to shoehorn the story into a live-action format, since her inner voice was such a vibrant part of the books. But, we’ll see.

Before bed I was checking alerts for work and it turns out my machine on campus is down AGAIN. With today a holiday I’m comfortable popping into campus to power-cycle it again, but ugh. Sucks.

Dreamt of Christmas in an art studio with H and B, playing some fascinating games with generative pattern glazing, something about cookie recipes, and reading under covers in a tent in the backyard. Dreamt separately of a nanobots puzzle with species-specific heads-up displays in outer space that turned out to be an origin story for the Borg.

I finished Flight Of Magpies and started Jackdaw.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, hard cider, rhubarb, asparagus, mushrooms, parsley, pea blossoms, and lettuce. After shuttling foods home, we went over to C’s. We visited briefly indoors to see the progress on their new kitchen, then P went off to pursue other errands and D and I retreated to the porch to lay out a more detailed plan for what has to happen to stand up what essentially amounts to a data warehouse before the RFP goes out on the national epidemic tracking and forecasting center. It’s a lot, but we can do it if we don’t wait around. P came back and got a tour of the garden from C, a bit of additional chatting then we fled for lunch.

I did the laundry and hung it out on the line, made rhubarb sauce, and made roasted broad beans (six hour soak, 45 minute poach at 180F with salt but no bsda, better structural integrity but no clue if they’re too hard).

The latch on the screen door to the porch has been flaking out more and more often, and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I fixed it. All the parts were encrusted with forty years of paint, but one of the early layers was shitty paint, which made the whole stack pretty easy to peel off with a razor blade. Sliced between the metal parts and the wood to cut everything free, cut the paint out of the slots in the screws. Needed pliers to get the set screws out of the doorknob, but it succumbed eventually. Inside the mechanism, the spring had started to go brittle, but I had extra springs from the grease wicks for the White, and one of them fit perfectly. Had a minor moment when the little cam thing fell out and I wasn’t sure what orientation it was supposed to go back in at, but I figured it out eventually. Everything went back together nicely, and now the latch works perfectly. Very pleased.

Dinner, brought the clothes in, watched a couple episodes of Trinkets, snack, sleep at like. 9. I did a lot of stuff.

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Yesterday we went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, asparagus, rhubarb, marigolds, mushrooms, fiddleheads, mushrooms, chives, spring mix, and a fig balsamic vinegar. There’s a new seller there of hard cider called After The Fall that I’m excited to try in a future week. After we got home I set a bunch of last week’s mushrooms to cook, then went out and planted the marigolds in the garden. Lunch included some asparagus, which was delicious, then I set the rhubarb to cook while we did the crossword. Packed up the rhubarb, then went to work on the White. I hooked up the terminal block, then reinstalled the whole power assembly into the desk and marked where the main power switch should go before running out of steam. Snack, brief call with my mentee, Lost In Space, dinner, more Lost In Space, snack, sleep. Long dreams about iteratively shopping at an Indian grocery store for ingredients and equipment as if it were a Zarf-hard game, then finding all my high school friends had got really into knitting-based RPGs and had a huge forum online discussing patterns, materials, and character sheets. As you do.

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Yesterday we ran out of oatmeal, so I made grits for breakfast. I did a bunch of research on screw thread pitch gauges and ordered a set, as well as some other tools I’ve been missing (a steel bench block, a scribe, a more-different pin vise). I went to clear out the oven mitt drawer to make room for the new ones, and discovered some old mouse droppings 😕 and put off dealing with that for the rest of the day. P discovered the iPad is still under warranty, and arranged to ship it back to fix the dead row of pixels. I shipped the gifts to my folks. The new oats arrived. A lovely card from C&R arrived. I’ve started thinking about an abbreviated New Years zine. P did the errands; Dylamato’s is shut until the new year so he went to the coop and got carrots, peppers, mushrooms, vegan butter, gf flour, half and half, a soft-ripened cheese, mozzarella, fresh pasta, pizza sauce, green onions, poblanos, string cheese, bok choy, a nice baguette, and some other sundries. It is always rough when he has to go to a larger store for things; there’s always folks who don’t believe in social distancing. We submitted the vegetable order for Thursday. I cut out two more dish towels and started hemming over SG-1. Dinner, no scrabble, SG-1, snack, sleep. Dreamt of a community effort to develop ocean-friendly soap recipes.

Admittedly

Nov. 23rd, 2020 07:02 am
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Yesterday P went to the last market of the year and got Bulgarian pastries, apples, potatoes, fresh and dried chiles, mushrooms, bok choy, napa cabbage, a wee butternut squash, and kale. I did the laundry, made some lavender mugwort incense, cleaned the third floor toilet, and turned half the kale into kale chips. We did the crossword after lunch, which was very tricksy. After dinner I watched Avatar and did more dish towel hemming. Snack, sleep, creepy dreams of people disappearing one by one at a research event, and some kind of surrealist Rube Goldberg device for waking up and making breakfast. Eugh.

Enchanted is finding its voice, and while it’s wallowing more than I’d like in a sadistic hopeless situation the protagonist’s got into, we now have three whole excellent characters who are not men, and at least one flat one.

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Yesterday I went to the farmers market and got Bulgarian pastries, sweet potatoes, kobocha squash (why did I get more squash, we have the kraken squash at home), eating apples, cooking apples, mushrooms, rye bread, napa cabbage, kale, carrots, peppers, and winter radishes. Home, then P walked to Pigeon for a bagel sandwich and I made my lunch. Lunch these days is mushrooms, polenta, carrots, peppers, peas, and cranberries, cooked up as a sortof pottage. It’s good. We did the crossword, then stripped the bed and flipped the mattress. I had a call with my mentee, then made kale chips. Meanwhile, the weather picked up, and the power went out. That is the one unbeatable argument for keeping the gas cooker; it works when the power is out. P went to campus to finish grading, and I cut out some dish towel blanks. I read some of the inkmaking book P got me for my birthday, and when the light started fading at 5 I started mujaddara for dinner, since it wouldn’t involve opening the fridge. I miscalculated how quickly it would get dark in the kitchen and wound up doing most of the prep by candlelight. Throwback to my first week in the efficiency when they flubbed the transition paperwork and it took ages to find a notary and get the electric company to turn the power back on. Anyway the power came back midway through cooking, and I left enough for P and then watched Protector under covers. I don’t think I can hem dish towels and still read subtitles so that will have to wait until I’ve finished the series. Snack, sleep, dreamt of a recipe that was also a puzzle.

I finished Planet of Exile and started City of Illusions.

Too much

Nov. 13th, 2020 06:27 am
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Yesterday I had an early meeting with C and S on how to make Asana fit our desired use cases. It’s a lot of square peg round hole, and we’ll want to spend December doing a similarly in-depth study of some other tool before we decide to satisfice. I went to team leads, had some one on ones, had a short Engineering design meeting, and lurked in the modeling meeting. In the cracks I fixed the Makefile for the mini alert system, worked with B to fix a deployment problem with the new claims indicator, and set it up to run automatically in production. Release complete.

Dinner, crossword, submitted the vegetable order. I started watching another Turkish fantasy drama, Protector, which is alright so far. I finished A Study in Brimstone, and considered continuing the series, but they’re kinda candy stories and I have other books I haven’t read yet. Started Rocannon’s World by Ursula K Le Guin instead. Snack, sleep, dreamt of ceramics and unwanted suitors and unlikely DIY carnival rides and old movies digitally altered to remove one or more characters. Surreal.

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Yesterday P went to the market and got Bulgarian pastries, apples, zucchini, mushrooms, bok choy, leeks, butternut squash, peppers, and carrots. I did the laundry and hung it out on the line. The epoxy from Saturday had cured, so I widened the hole in the gearbox to accept it, cut the second axle, a second spacer, and dry-fit everything including the gears. It seems to work, though the axle on the speed control is not as concentric as it appeared on Saturday. We did the crossword, I roasted the butternuts, I finished The Gift while knitting dishcloths, and started the 2020 bake-off season. Dinner, P brought in the laundry, then I darned some holes in socks over more bake-off. Snack, sleep, dreamt of quarantine dorms and car-less grocery shopping and piano recitals.

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