Miscellany

Thank you all for the offers to be couriers for my mother -- she ended up shortly afterwards sorting something out herself, so I shall not need to inconvenience any of you (or your guests). <3

• Feathered dinosaurs were even fluffier than we thought: feather anatomy and distribution.
  
• Inside the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns: how tracing firearms works in the USA.
  
• Eat Well on $4/Day: free cookbook, haven't looked at it in detail, trying desperately to close tabs.
  
• Kashk-e bademjan, i.e. I should actually start using the whey leftover from cheesemaking, probably. (Aaaand then some research happened; nothing much seems v keen on giving useful recipes for sour whey, alas.)
  
• eta lock-picking resources: bullshit masculinity, locksport international, MIT guide.
  

On a slightly more personal note

(1) I thought Easyjet had somehow, inexplicably, through considerable application of effort, lost the clothes guards off my wheelchair -- to the extent that I actually did the lost baggage form-filling. I then went to have one last forlorn look at the baggage carousel, stood up temporarily, and they... clattered??? out of the back of my chair??? I have NO IDEA HOW but it's much less grim than I expected.

(2) To my mild surprise, I am just about managing competent interactions in French, to the extent that I'm having to interpolate a lot and very sheepishly ask people to repeat themselves more slowly. This includes "explaining that my clothes guards vanished", "enquiring politely about having a place in a restaurant for dinner", and "explaining what the fuck we're even doing" as polite smalltalk to the airport assistance.

(3) I have spent a lot of today either asleep (in a cozy slopy-ceiling nest) or sitting on a sofa watching snow fall on the Alps and reading short fiction. I have done some physio. It is all very pleasant.