vital functions
Aug. 23rd, 2020 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher. On the one hand, this didn't quite hit my id as square-on as I'd been hoping; on the other, I stayed up far too late finishing it in one go, and have promptly sorted it into the Comfort Rereads category on my e-reader. (Which is deliberately very carefully curated.) Nicely set up and executed, yes good.
Minor Mage, T. Kingfisher. This was sufficiently creepy in the middle that I (... once again...) stayed up Rather Past My Bedtime to finish it -- partly this was insomnia anyway and partly I needed the resolution in order to calm down enough to sleep!
Skin Folk, Nalo Hopkinson. I wasn't sure how I felt about the prose while I was reading these, for the most part, but I'm finding that they're all incredibly vivid in memory. I'm a little discomfited by the Bluebeard retelling: I think I remember the bottles-in-the-tree, but none of the rest of it seems particularly familiar, and if I had read it before it was prior to 2011 (which is when I started logging all the books I'd read). I got this via a Humble Bundle lo these many years ago; thinking back over the fisherman and the cockatrice and so on and so forth I'm increasingly sure I'll come back to it.
You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay, Alyssa Wong. I'd sorted this under "to read" on the new e-reader, because I couldn't recall if I'd previously read it and I didn't want to get up and check my booklog; I started it to see if I recalled it 'coz it was short and would be easy to knock out, and pretty rapidly realised I did remember it but wanted to finish the reread. My notes from 2018 were that I thought I was into the worldbuilding but overall was a bit enh on the story, and might enjoy something longer more in this universe; this time through I was going "ooh I like this... and this... and this..." and then I hit the final five (or so) paragraphs and ended up once again going "... I don't think I understand at all what just happened there."
The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern. I continue very happily rereading this very slowly and rolling around in echoes and mirrors. (Is the dilapidated cottage in the woods that The Girl enters the library via... the same one that, in another world and in a better state of repair, someone else inherits? How cool is it that the opening framing pirate-story takes place underground, where the sea is audible and the stars are invisible? How carefully is this whole thing constructed? MORE THAN THAT.)
Up next:simont has me itching to reread the Craft Sequence, but as I just borrowed On The Come Up (Angie Thomas) from the library on a whim, probably that!
Watching. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; now up to S01E06. So far I'm low-key endgame Valencia/Rebecca-with-her-shit-together (optionally +Greg-with-some-self-respect). As I summarised in a chat elsewhere: obviously we're not getting "and here's how people eat their breakfast", and we are getting a carefully-chosen sequence of events, but it's a curated series of interactions that bear witness to people's complexity and inconsistency rather than Defining Their Characters For All Time (As Archetypes). I really like that this show is so consistently giving us "... I can see how you got there but this isn't actually okay", and some of the *consequences* of Going With Your Worst Impulses. And I am really interested in the perspectives: in how I'm increasingly Over Josh on account of what we actually see him do even as the narrative continues to frame him as The Best Thing Ever; in how while Valencia's behaviour isn't great it's also completely understandable given what we know about her background; in Paula's horrifying enabling of Rebecca's terrible behaviour.
I needed to seek some specific reassurance about how some things play out (in addition to the general "it's really good"), and I think I need to ration myself to at most one episode a week, but I... I can probably talk about this a bunch more if prompted.
Playing. Mrrgh horn. Playing more still results in better everything.
It's been a slightly ridiculous week in terms of PoGo: I wild-caught a 100% IV Snover, a 95% Purrloin and a 98% Murkrow in one afternoon, and also a shiny Skorupi, which I think I actually quite like. The afternoon before: 96% Lotad plus 98% Lillipup. From research I finally got a Deino worth evolving; from raids I got a 98% Genesect and a weather-boosted 91% Heatran.
I am very slowly sneaking up on reading the instructions for Hanabi, so that might happen at some point this week.
Cooking. Ooh, let's see. A acquired some avocadoes for me, so we did another round of sushi; I have Learned that sushi rice cannot usefully sit in the fridge for longer than about 24 hours while remaining usable.
We've been making a lot of fresh tomato sauce, using allotment garlic and chilli and Feo di Rio Gordo tomatoes and sometimes allotment onions, and it's great.
Another round of Ethiopian food, which I'm sure surprises nobody. Misir wot still not turning out terribly red, and I'm wondering whether to fix this with More Paprika; fasolia very good with bonus tomato. I've still not got the hang of injera at all consistently; I had to let the batter out a whole lot more than I started out feeling comfortable with, and even after 48h on the side it still wasn't actually active enough. I eventually got somewhere with applying bicarb to the problem, but I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the way to actually do this is to make all the curries/stews in advance, and then set the injera batter going, and then actually eat everything at the point the injera batter is ready. (If anyone has tips on how to make this work I would be delighted.)
Sweet foods: a batch of vanilla ice cream, with one-third too much (demerara) sugar, which A nevertheless appears to be enjoying; another five jars of blackberry jelly, which I had the very devil of a time getting to set -- I eventually resorted to Packet Pectin. I think I have resentfully concluded that the lemons I'm growing are better for jam-making than supermarket lemons. (Or maybe I just included more seeds from the allotment lemon! Who knows! Not me.)
Exploring. We went to the tip! It was out of the house and not an allotment or a testing site! We got rid of some of the grot we'd been steadily accumulating! Progress: made.
Making & mending. Fixed the tablet. Learned several things about how Apple constructs Stuff, and met a couple of types of retaining clip I hadn't, previously. Still not got the hang of getting screens up from the plastic bezel without causing any damage to either, sigh, and still annoyed about adhesives in general, but -- the screen works! the wifi works! job's a good 'un.
I have not resumed Doing Art on the coffee table because I've moved a Kenwood Bit that needs dismantling and cleaning over. That's a job for maybe-this-week.
Growing. Gosh the heavy rain this week did a number on the plot. Old fennel suddenly very sad; artichokes all suddenly in full flower but also clearly sulking; first set of pea plants attempting to mould. I have set aside to dry the peas for planting next year, though I hope to get a few more.
We've had something like getting on for 4kg of tomatoes this week, which we've been eating roasted-with-thyme (the cherries) and in salads (cherries and plums) and as they come (all of them) and in cooked tomato sauces and also Ethiopian food (mostly the beefsteak). We also had enough Cosse Violette beans to turn them into a small quantity of fasolia (see above/yesterday), another handful of onions, and some more chilli. Off the patio at home, in addition to the here-tomatoes: another couple of figs! And a third coming ripe.
In terms of growth: the various root veg are actually coming up, somewhat to my surprise, albeit patchily; I think I need to drag myself out to the plot on an overcast day so I can "thin" them by, uh, transplanting them further down the row to where seeds didn't take. The yellow beetroot have visible yellow stems; I've no idea which of the various Umbellifera are the root parsley versus the parsnip versus the carrot, which'll teach me to write things down, maybe. There's a fruiting flower on one of the loofah, which may or may not set, we'll see; there's a third (third) cucumber coming along, and I have some thoughts on how to do them better next year; the peppers are doing better for being in bigger pots and will hopefully keep fruiting.
To sow this week: onions (to overwinter), winter spinach, and probably some pak choi.
Minor Mage, T. Kingfisher. This was sufficiently creepy in the middle that I (... once again...) stayed up Rather Past My Bedtime to finish it -- partly this was insomnia anyway and partly I needed the resolution in order to calm down enough to sleep!
Skin Folk, Nalo Hopkinson. I wasn't sure how I felt about the prose while I was reading these, for the most part, but I'm finding that they're all incredibly vivid in memory. I'm a little discomfited by the Bluebeard retelling: I think I remember the bottles-in-the-tree, but none of the rest of it seems particularly familiar, and if I had read it before it was prior to 2011 (which is when I started logging all the books I'd read). I got this via a Humble Bundle lo these many years ago; thinking back over the fisherman and the cockatrice and so on and so forth I'm increasingly sure I'll come back to it.
You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay, Alyssa Wong. I'd sorted this under "to read" on the new e-reader, because I couldn't recall if I'd previously read it and I didn't want to get up and check my booklog; I started it to see if I recalled it 'coz it was short and would be easy to knock out, and pretty rapidly realised I did remember it but wanted to finish the reread. My notes from 2018 were that I thought I was into the worldbuilding but overall was a bit enh on the story, and might enjoy something longer more in this universe; this time through I was going "ooh I like this... and this... and this..." and then I hit the final five (or so) paragraphs and ended up once again going "... I don't think I understand at all what just happened there."
The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern. I continue very happily rereading this very slowly and rolling around in echoes and mirrors. (Is the dilapidated cottage in the woods that The Girl enters the library via... the same one that, in another world and in a better state of repair, someone else inherits? How cool is it that the opening framing pirate-story takes place underground, where the sea is audible and the stars are invisible? How carefully is this whole thing constructed? MORE THAN THAT.)
Up next:
simont has me itching to reread the Craft Sequence, but as I just borrowed On The Come Up (Angie Thomas) from the library on a whim, probably that!Watching. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; now up to S01E06. So far I'm low-key endgame Valencia/Rebecca-with-her-shit-together (optionally +Greg-with-some-self-respect). As I summarised in a chat elsewhere: obviously we're not getting "and here's how people eat their breakfast", and we are getting a carefully-chosen sequence of events, but it's a curated series of interactions that bear witness to people's complexity and inconsistency rather than Defining Their Characters For All Time (As Archetypes). I really like that this show is so consistently giving us "... I can see how you got there but this isn't actually okay", and some of the *consequences* of Going With Your Worst Impulses. And I am really interested in the perspectives: in how I'm increasingly Over Josh on account of what we actually see him do even as the narrative continues to frame him as The Best Thing Ever; in how while Valencia's behaviour isn't great it's also completely understandable given what we know about her background; in Paula's horrifying enabling of Rebecca's terrible behaviour.
I needed to seek some specific reassurance about how some things play out (in addition to the general "it's really good"), and I think I need to ration myself to at most one episode a week, but I... I can probably talk about this a bunch more if prompted.
Playing. Mrrgh horn. Playing more still results in better everything.
It's been a slightly ridiculous week in terms of PoGo: I wild-caught a 100% IV Snover, a 95% Purrloin and a 98% Murkrow in one afternoon, and also a shiny Skorupi, which I think I actually quite like. The afternoon before: 96% Lotad plus 98% Lillipup. From research I finally got a Deino worth evolving; from raids I got a 98% Genesect and a weather-boosted 91% Heatran.
I am very slowly sneaking up on reading the instructions for Hanabi, so that might happen at some point this week.
Cooking. Ooh, let's see. A acquired some avocadoes for me, so we did another round of sushi; I have Learned that sushi rice cannot usefully sit in the fridge for longer than about 24 hours while remaining usable.
We've been making a lot of fresh tomato sauce, using allotment garlic and chilli and Feo di Rio Gordo tomatoes and sometimes allotment onions, and it's great.
Another round of Ethiopian food, which I'm sure surprises nobody. Misir wot still not turning out terribly red, and I'm wondering whether to fix this with More Paprika; fasolia very good with bonus tomato. I've still not got the hang of injera at all consistently; I had to let the batter out a whole lot more than I started out feeling comfortable with, and even after 48h on the side it still wasn't actually active enough. I eventually got somewhere with applying bicarb to the problem, but I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the way to actually do this is to make all the curries/stews in advance, and then set the injera batter going, and then actually eat everything at the point the injera batter is ready. (If anyone has tips on how to make this work I would be delighted.)
Sweet foods: a batch of vanilla ice cream, with one-third too much (demerara) sugar, which A nevertheless appears to be enjoying; another five jars of blackberry jelly, which I had the very devil of a time getting to set -- I eventually resorted to Packet Pectin. I think I have resentfully concluded that the lemons I'm growing are better for jam-making than supermarket lemons. (Or maybe I just included more seeds from the allotment lemon! Who knows! Not me.)
Exploring. We went to the tip! It was out of the house and not an allotment or a testing site! We got rid of some of the grot we'd been steadily accumulating! Progress: made.
Making & mending. Fixed the tablet. Learned several things about how Apple constructs Stuff, and met a couple of types of retaining clip I hadn't, previously. Still not got the hang of getting screens up from the plastic bezel without causing any damage to either, sigh, and still annoyed about adhesives in general, but -- the screen works! the wifi works! job's a good 'un.
I have not resumed Doing Art on the coffee table because I've moved a Kenwood Bit that needs dismantling and cleaning over. That's a job for maybe-this-week.
Growing. Gosh the heavy rain this week did a number on the plot. Old fennel suddenly very sad; artichokes all suddenly in full flower but also clearly sulking; first set of pea plants attempting to mould. I have set aside to dry the peas for planting next year, though I hope to get a few more.
We've had something like getting on for 4kg of tomatoes this week, which we've been eating roasted-with-thyme (the cherries) and in salads (cherries and plums) and as they come (all of them) and in cooked tomato sauces and also Ethiopian food (mostly the beefsteak). We also had enough Cosse Violette beans to turn them into a small quantity of fasolia (see above/yesterday), another handful of onions, and some more chilli. Off the patio at home, in addition to the here-tomatoes: another couple of figs! And a third coming ripe.
In terms of growth: the various root veg are actually coming up, somewhat to my surprise, albeit patchily; I think I need to drag myself out to the plot on an overcast day so I can "thin" them by, uh, transplanting them further down the row to where seeds didn't take. The yellow beetroot have visible yellow stems; I've no idea which of the various Umbellifera are the root parsley versus the parsnip versus the carrot, which'll teach me to write things down, maybe. There's a fruiting flower on one of the loofah, which may or may not set, we'll see; there's a third (third) cucumber coming along, and I have some thoughts on how to do them better next year; the peppers are doing better for being in bigger pots and will hopefully keep fruiting.
To sow this week: onions (to overwinter), winter spinach, and probably some pak choi.