infryq

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.

Yesterday I made another batch of nut and seed bars, and washed the towels and half the regular laundry.

I cleaned the stitch length face plate, first with regular sewing machine oil and then with fast orange, and wow does fast orange brighten things up! It looks nearly new now. I cleaned the stitch length control pins and the plate they’re mounted to, then removed the plate to reveal a ton of black crud caking the ratchet and cams. Cleaned that, and the knobs turn a bit more easily now. Cleaned and oiled the spring for the reverse lever, still quite stiff but less sticky now. Re mounted the control plate and moved on to where the throat plate mounts. It is sticky for some reason? I did a pass with oil and one with fast orange but I’m not sure I got it all.

I ran out of podcasts and switched to music. Yesterday was lemon jelly, today will probably be Air. Mellow electronica with acoustic samples and heavy refinement in production. Anything you might imagine for a Sesame Street interlude from the 70s.

In the afternoon I got email inviting me to join an effort in my department working on crowdsourced predictions for the COVID-19 pandemic, with permission from T for this to replace my regular work. I said yes, and will be starting meetings for that later today.

Meals were all good, I’m obeying my eat alarms. After dinner we did the crossword, then I watched DS9, had a snack, and went to sleep. Dreamt of secret messages, upstairs/downstairs dynamics, a ghost scullery powered by a half-broken submarine, cucumber plants, and nearly falling off someone’s balcony.