ten good things//don't be afraid to sing
Jan. 18th, 2015 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett1. I had a lovely leisurely breakfast with my mother this morning, sat watching the birds on the feeders and the patio. Zitronenwasser and croissant and conversation and restful watching of tiny terrifying dinosaurs.
2. I successfully socialled! I had pleasant conversations with station staff (initiated by them) at several stations; and I made it to an unfamiliarish part of London for a friend's birthday brunch and didn't do an awful job of imitating a human.
3. I have made great strides with Rosemary and Rue (copy - and the next three - acquired courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghoti and cjwatson) and am enjoying it. I expect to get through them as my reading-while-columns-run material this week. I am not loving it as much as Indexing (yet?) but am smiling at several points.
4. Relatedly, I had a Moment over the point at which it was mentioned that the ash tree is associated with balance in some symbologies. I had already been toying with the concept of making "Ash" a nickname/another name I answer to (also gender-neutral; in my current social milieu there are more Alexes and fewer Ashes than in my previous; it mushes up the sounds in "Alex" quite nicely while retaining the first letter; Stuff About Fire; misc hippy shite). Insert here a bunch of woo about who only by moving can balance/only by balancing move, I conceive myself in motion, &c.
5. I have learned how to approximate my platonic ideal of pasta bake, viz, the kind of remarkably chewy and astonishingly cheap horror you get at Clowns (link is to FB because that's apparently their excuse for a webpage). The key, it turns out, as I'm sure lots of you already knew, is don't cook the pasta first. This time I had liquid about 2/3rds of the way up the baking dish and did 'em at 160; I think next time I will have slightly more liquid and a higher temperature (or idk maybe just try drying it out in a warm oven post facto?) and see if that gets me closer. (Things that are great: dumping garlic, capers, olives, crushed chilli, black pepper, tomato passata and pasta in a baking dish, sticking it in the oven while you do other chores, and having FOOD emerge at t'other end.)
6. I accidentally left my breadpet in Cambridge over the New Year period. My baby brother utterly failed to deal usefully with my SMSes asking him to freeze it (once I realised), so it languished unfed at room temperature for Quite Some Time before my mother got back on New Year's Eve and stuck it in the freezer for me. I thawed it out yesterday, slopped off the alcohol, and gave it a feed; fed it again this morning and this evening; and it appears to have survived. HURRAH.
7. I am back in my high-ceilinged room in my double bed with the trains rattling by outside. I have been living here for a year. It is the longest I have lived continuously in a single place since 2008; it is comfortable and comforting and a joy. There is bread on for tomorrow morning and food enough for tomorrow lunch, and I spent some of the evening flomped on my sofa.
8. I have an ATM card for my US bank account again!
9. I continue making progress with GuiltKnitting! Soon it will be done and then I can do FunKnitting (including making myself a Möbius cowl out of some lovely teal-ish stuff largest smallcousin got me for the holidays).
10. I popped into work this afternoon/evening and was very productive in ways that will make tomorrow much less unpleasant (long chemistry day), and I wasn't reckless with HF (which says good things about my mental state!)
-- and tomorrow night I get to flomp on facesfriend post-lab, which will be very nice. I am threatening to stand him up FOR SCIENCE but I don't think that'll actually happen this week. Yes. Good. Sleep now. BED BEFORE MIDNIGHT GO ME.
2. I successfully socialled! I had pleasant conversations with station staff (initiated by them) at several stations; and I made it to an unfamiliarish part of London for a friend's birthday brunch and didn't do an awful job of imitating a human.
3. I have made great strides with Rosemary and Rue (copy - and the next three - acquired courtesy of
ghoti and cjwatson) and am enjoying it. I expect to get through them as my reading-while-columns-run material this week. I am not loving it as much as Indexing (yet?) but am smiling at several points.4. Relatedly, I had a Moment over the point at which it was mentioned that the ash tree is associated with balance in some symbologies. I had already been toying with the concept of making "Ash" a nickname/another name I answer to (also gender-neutral; in my current social milieu there are more Alexes and fewer Ashes than in my previous; it mushes up the sounds in "Alex" quite nicely while retaining the first letter; Stuff About Fire; misc hippy shite). Insert here a bunch of woo about who only by moving can balance/only by balancing move, I conceive myself in motion, &c.
5. I have learned how to approximate my platonic ideal of pasta bake, viz, the kind of remarkably chewy and astonishingly cheap horror you get at Clowns (link is to FB because that's apparently their excuse for a webpage). The key, it turns out, as I'm sure lots of you already knew, is don't cook the pasta first. This time I had liquid about 2/3rds of the way up the baking dish and did 'em at 160; I think next time I will have slightly more liquid and a higher temperature (or idk maybe just try drying it out in a warm oven post facto?) and see if that gets me closer. (Things that are great: dumping garlic, capers, olives, crushed chilli, black pepper, tomato passata and pasta in a baking dish, sticking it in the oven while you do other chores, and having FOOD emerge at t'other end.)
6. I accidentally left my breadpet in Cambridge over the New Year period. My baby brother utterly failed to deal usefully with my SMSes asking him to freeze it (once I realised), so it languished unfed at room temperature for Quite Some Time before my mother got back on New Year's Eve and stuck it in the freezer for me. I thawed it out yesterday, slopped off the alcohol, and gave it a feed; fed it again this morning and this evening; and it appears to have survived. HURRAH.
7. I am back in my high-ceilinged room in my double bed with the trains rattling by outside. I have been living here for a year. It is the longest I have lived continuously in a single place since 2008; it is comfortable and comforting and a joy. There is bread on for tomorrow morning and food enough for tomorrow lunch, and I spent some of the evening flomped on my sofa.
8. I have an ATM card for my US bank account again!
9. I continue making progress with GuiltKnitting! Soon it will be done and then I can do FunKnitting (including making myself a Möbius cowl out of some lovely teal-ish stuff largest smallcousin got me for the holidays).
10. I popped into work this afternoon/evening and was very productive in ways that will make tomorrow much less unpleasant (long chemistry day), and I wasn't reckless with HF (which says good things about my mental state!)
-- and tomorrow night I get to flomp on facesfriend post-lab, which will be very nice. I am threatening to stand him up FOR SCIENCE but I don't think that'll actually happen this week. Yes. Good. Sleep now. BED BEFORE MIDNIGHT GO ME.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-18 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-18 11:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 12:02 am (UTC)Ash is a nice nickname.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 12:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 12:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 01:36 am (UTC)please elaborate?
ash is nice but not something I'm likely to call you for simple virtue of my brain has poured concrete around your names at this point. you are "kabs" or "the first alex" in my head, though you are certainly not the first alex i have ever known. brains are weird. um. i don't know the point of this remark anymore. i rather like ash! i hope you would not be sad if i failed to call you that.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 07:21 am (UTC)I absolutely will not mind at all! If I do acquire it it will be a name-in-addition rather than a replacey name. Also aaaah <3
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 10:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 05:07 am (UTC)In your chair? I found station staff always chatted when I was using the chair for Worldcon, but never before or since.
Inspired me to dump chopped tomato and random herbs on a couple of lightly toasted pittas and ping them in the microwave for a minute, as opposed to just eating the pittas. Considering I'm not doing cheese at the minute (due to the whole pancreatitis low/no fat diet thing) I may actually have found an acceptable pizza substitute.
It just took me an embarrassingly long time to realise this didn't involve someone actually standing....
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-19 05:10 pm (UTC)All of these are good; Ash has particular resonance with me thanks to the common description of Yggdrasil as an ash-tree.
Soots you
Date: 2015-01-20 08:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 01:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-20 05:10 pm (UTC)guiltknitting can be such a pain. good luck getting to funknitting!