infryq

Yesterday I made another batch of wild rice and lentils. 20 minutes is still too long, though there were fewer overcooked grains this time. I got a call from the sewing machine repair place saying could I please pick up my machine that’s been there since March, so that’s what we did after lunch. Very civilized pandemic-compliant curb service. On the way home the engine overheated; there seems to be something wrong with the fan. We got enough advice from our mechanic to make it home, barely— while there was plenty of coolant when P checked it at the initial stop, the engine had drunk it all by the time he checked again in our driveway. Thankfully the mechanic is all downhill from our house, so P topped up the coolant and will drop off the car there early next week.

I finished my slides for today’s talk, then we ate dinner. Mom called to catch up and report gift status, then we opened the box from them — highlights are kelp sprinkle and pickles, 3D-printed cookie cutters and impression molds, knifork-spoons and straws for the travel kit, and a pretty great shirt of women in science history.

A wretched game of scrabble, then a cursory snack and sleep. Dreamt of crocheted lace, maidservants, hot chocolate, some kind of group problem-solving effort that required a lot of hotel-hopping and living out of suitcases, an invasive freshwater tortoise.

I finished Making Money and started Snuff by Terry Pratchett. The older I get, the more I seem to like Vimes.

Yesterday I finished the basting on the pink pair, remembered how to sew the three-layered piecing as an inside seam on the orange pair, and started basting the remaining edges of the crotch panel there.

I had therapy at noon, and ate my boxed lunch at a vacant outdoor table on Craig st. This worked surprisingly well, so I’ll probably stick with that whenever weather permits. Therapy was a big fat ball of working through all the frustrations from work, and all the things I’ve been doing to process them. She is more apprehensive about the eventual need to talk to my boss about them than I am, which is a bit weird, but it’s possible she just had the empathy gain turned up too high.

Work was mostly fine; I gave myself the day to try and revise the AWS monitoring script to see if I could make it answer the questions N actually has, ie who is running experiments and how much grant money is left. In theory I was supposed to go to the first meeting of a new committee of SCS technical staff at 3, but my brain repeatedly told me it wasn’t until 4, so I missed all but the last ten minutes. Feel shitty about that. I partially made up for it by taking point on setting up a share folder for us on google drive. There are several of us who seem capable of filling the leadership vacuum but no obvious pick, and there seems to be some low key bitterness about the possible time commitment for this group in an intersecting set, so it’ll be awkward turtle for a bit until we figure out what we’re for and what work is both necessary and sustainable. I do wonder how many other members have been on new committees before, or if my Olin experience makes me a resource there.

Home, sat for a bit, dinner, crossword (ugh wretched trick, even the hint didn’t help until were nearly done), DS9, snack, sleep. Dreamt of acquiring a property way out in the sticks on which the previous owner had bafflingly installed a beautiful personal miniature golf course. Also of creating robots that could do watercolors.