vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Feel Free, Zadie Smith. This is a mixture of really beautiful writing and analogies and just straight-up misconceptions and misrepresentations, in a way that I find peculiarly agitating. (For bonus points, I always worry that I'm finding minor points of fact to critique in order to give myself permission to disengage from hard & worthwhile insights... and then on the other there's the concern of, okay, but if you're this wrong about things I do know my stuff on, what about the stuff where I don't? Like: the Penzance line washes out at Dawlish every time there's a bad storm; it washing out at all is not evidence of increasingly severe weather, it's the frequency. And: that's... really not how social media works, either interpersonally or in terms of engineering. I want to relax into it; I want to be able to trust the author's insights; it's not, I think, that I want to be "lazy", that I want to read uncritically and without thinking, but that I'm scared the underlying axioms are sufficiently wrong that engaging with the ideas as presented will be futile and also pointless. Which, hey, at least means I'm getting some therapy out of reading it.) (... oh good grief, the chapter on social media finishes with a Witty Reflection on the Comic Obsolescence of LiveJournal. No, I am definitely not the target audience for this one.)

Watching. Orphan Black. A is saying "oh no" a lot; we have finished season 4 and watched all the extras; we're both deeply disconcerted by Tatiana Maslany dressed (approximately) as Sarah, sounding (approximately) like Beth, talking about things she did while playing Alison or Cosima or Beth.

Utterly charmed by Ferdinand's actor having mixed up Alison and Rachel's names while shooting a scene, apparently to the very great amusement of everyone else on set.

Cooking. I continue to (tentatively) improve at how-to-bread! it is good. (Specifics: getting the hang of making an offering around breakfast time and then getting the dough started after lunch; yeah okay, it wants to sit in the fridge overnight, ish, if I'm going to be overnighting it, if it's this warm.) Adventures in the Instant Pot, this week: finally getting around to using up all the julienned leek in the fridge (!). Advantages of Instant Pot soup: I get to just not think about it and it's completely fine to leave it to sit and keep warm indefinitely because! it won't burn! it's pretty great.

Having cleaned up the ice cream maker and Acquired Cheap Apricots from the market, I am now finally starting to make my first experimental batch of Ruby Violet's apricot-and-soured-cream ice cream. (Note-to-self: 560g apricot (pitted), 220g granulated sugar.)

Growing. The tomato seedlings progress at home. At the plot, I've dug up half of a middling raised bed in order to better extricate the carpet thereunder; I've also got up one of the Mysterious Buckets. I begin to believe I might actually ever get to the point where I've got a usable bed there again, much as I resent uprooting all of my topsoil and its structure.

Observing. DEERS that BORK. There was some v loud yelling going on at the allotment on Tuesday evening; we wandered down to the end and observed some tails flashing off into the undergrowth.

Foxes.

We've set up a bird feeding station on the picnic table, and A is seriously considering the merits of a proper bird table. (We have not yet successfully coaxed any serious visitors, but they are Contemplating, I think.)

Poking. New Sinnoh-region Pokémon out this week! They are ridiculous shapes! I am pleased. Also had a tolerably successful Community Day.

Comments

[vass]

(... oh good grief, the chapter on social media finishes with a Witty Reflection on the Comic Obsolescence of LiveJournal. No, I am definitely not the target audience for this one.)

Thank you for the information! *rules out reading this one*

[kaberett]

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK, NO LESS.

:headtilts:

[fyreharper]

Comic??? Obsolescence?? (Comic???)

Mysterious buckets are very mysterious and I’m going to have to scroll back and see if I missed a story :p

(Condolences on your topsoil)

Re: :headtilts:

[kaberett]

I don't think you did! The deal with my plot is mostly just that, inexplicably, there were a lot of buried or half-buried buckets, for some reason that passeth understanding.

Re: :headtilts:

[ewt]

Root containment for mint plants but they messed up and didn't include drainage? Water garden that got thought better of?

Re: :headtilts:

[fyreharper]

O_o

[sfred]

Deers! :-)

[cesy]

Birds!