vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. I continue with The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkein. I am just about into the Quenta Silmarillion, and then went back and took notes on what all the names are and how they're related to each other (and might yet go back and do that some more).

I have also been reading... a lot... of fountain pen blogs.

Watching. CXG S03E05. I really liked what they did with the straight-into-the-opening-credits here, which was extremely Oh Yeah There's Gonna Be A Lot, and was pleased also by the traditional No Closing Credits Music. Cornelia was brilliant and I am very glad she got the hell out of there. Darryl is... something.

And I am still so, so into Naomi doing her best, and her best being terrible.

Cooking. I had another go at a (significantly tweaked) version of the Ottolenghi confit tandoori chickpeas. It's still not quite right, but I think it progresses in more-or-less the correct direction.

We also had another go at jollof rice, which again wasn't quite right but was also an improvement, so that is Nice.

And! to use up both the bananas and some of the rhubarb everyone at the allotment site is begging me to take away! Banana bread (my usual recipe), with rhubarb chunks mixed in, plus cardamom glaze.

Creating. I spent a nontrivial amount of time, earlier this week, on The World's Worst Craft Project, followed by The World's Worst WordNumbersearch. Specifically, Patino et al. (2000) provide a supplementary data table in pdf format, that is 36 pages long -- six by six -- with column and row headings only along the top and leftmost edges. Of the entire thing.

So I printed most of it out (blessedly I don't care about the last six pages, but if you want a taste of my despair you can just scroll straight to page 36 and stare in horror), two pages to a side, and then spent some quality time on the living room floor with a guillotine and some sticky tape and, eventually, my highlighters.

I have almost finished working out to the best of my ability where all the damn numbers in RU_CAGeochem come from, with heartfelt thanks to the amazing Rutgers librarians who are looking into digitising a 2006 MSc thesis for the purpose.

I have also been playing around a bunch with My New Pens, and am starting-I-hope to get the hang of the stub nib I got myself. I was also, er, successfully baited by an art shop e-mailing me to tell me they'd got TroubleMaker Inks in stock, but talked myself down to only (!) buying the Starry Night Blue, and not also jumping for Copper Patina, on the grounds that the Mountain of Ink review made it look like it was going to be too pale to provide acceptable-to-me contrast between text and page.

I subsequently hunted down a load more images and convinced myself that maybe it wouldn't be after all, and only then (having still not bought it) did I register the extent to which I Am A Parody Of Myself, namely in that the next two fancy notebooks I am going to be using very happily, er, dark blue with gold and verdigris and gold...

Making & mending. Continued fiddling with bike, including taking it to a bike clinic being run by the council for free on Saturday afternoon. Short version: I had got the brakes to "usable" myself, but getting someone who knew what they were doing to have a go at them was Reassuring.

... so! I have a working bike! And I learned how to replace an inner brake cable myself! So that's exciting. (If you're me.)

Growing. Quinoa and fennel (first batch) in the ground; tomatoes (mostly) potted up. I have sown SEVERAL SQUASH, on the better-late-than-never principle.

I have also finished excavating another bed! The bin is very happy! There is a lot of work to be done but I am also doing it!

At home: the figs are swelling up, as are the blueberries. The thyme and chives are both in exuberant flower, which is lovely. The aubergines and several peppers need... dealing with, i.e. removing from the warm box and putting in pots (or possibly the other warm box).

And I found the basil seeds! So I have sown another few pots of basil, and with any luck I'll manage to keep this lot alive.

Observing. GOSLINGS, in town on the way back from the bike clinic, at various stages of done. Ducks! And a sleek glossy rat.

The squirrels have grumpily given up on the New Improved Bird Feeders, which I am a little sad about -- not but enough that I want to A to resume providing them with a buffet. To my utter delight the new feeders are also big enough that the coal tits will eat from them several at a time, instead f queueing up!

And, of course, the bat. :)

Comments

[fyreharper]

Ooh, the troublemaker inks are nifty!

[kaberett]

AREN'T they. sciatrix put me on to them!

[sporky_rat]

I am assuming you're aware of Feather Summarizes the Silmarillion?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/feather-index-27107983 is the index.

[kaberett]

Yup! Podcasts aren't generally great for me so I think that's probably a second-line attempt rather than a starting place :)

it is possible this entire reread is so I can read Feather's fic

[cesy]

I have been successfully following it by reading the transcripts

[booksarelife]

I was just going to recommend the transcripts!! There’s also an old and only partial original text based version on Feather’s dreamwidth but I’m not sure how far it gets

[sporky_rat]

Between the transcripts and her being very clear and enunciating, I've done pretty well.

(I love that she has such clear diction and speech pattern, it is a glory for my audio processing issue)

[lilysea]

Hurray for bats! ^_^

Do you know what type of bat it is?

[me_and]

We're fairly sure they're common pipistrelles, but I'm not quite confident of my wrangling the bat detector to distinguish between common and soprano pips.

[lilysea]

I looked them up, and they're SO VERY SMOL

THOSE ARE SOMEONE'S FINGER TIPS!



The fact that the bat you most commonly see around Australian cities is the Grey-headed Flying-fox which is 23-28 cm with a wingspan of over 1 metre may have warped my view of bat sizes...

[kaberett]

yup! we discovered the local bats by dint of me ACCIDENTALLY ALMOST PICKING ONE UP, and then having to go back to ACTUALLY pick it up once we'd found a box to put it in...

[vass]

Tolkien Gateway is useful for checking things like names. (Although it is... a bit unreliable at remembering to symlink names without diacritics to their diacritic forms. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.)

I want to try jollof rice, but I can't quite bring myself to make it for myself without knowing how it's meant to taste, and I haven't found any restaurants nearby that serve it, since the African diaspora around here is mostly East African, not West. (Which is great when I want Ethiopian food, though.)

Congrats on the bike! And the continuing excavation!

[kaberett]

<3 I mean I now need to take a week off cycling and let my knee recover enough I can actually do my balance work reliably >_> BUT.

[lunabee34]

Which blogs are you reading?

[kaberett]

Mostly "whatever shows up on google", but this is including a lot of Mountain of Ink, some Gentleman Scholar, occasional reddit and The Art of Manliness, ...

[lunabee34]

I would also recommend The Well Appointed Desk (they do a Wednesday link post) the Pen Addict (they do a Sunday link post and have a podcast if you are interested in that).

[mindstalk]

Names: did you notice that there is an index/glossary of names in the back, along with family trees of particular families as well as All The Elves?

[taimatsu]

Hello! Have you posted info about your New Improved Bird Feeders anywhere? We have bird feeders and also enthusiastic squirrels and though our squirrel baffle mostly baffles them we have had a Super Acrobat Squirrel recently which is sometimes able to defeat the baffle and get some seeds.

[kaberett]

Ah! I have not! They are Gardman brand -- e.g. https://marshallsgarden.com/products/gardman-heavy-duty-squirrel-proof-peanut-feeder-80505342

The squirrels have now been back several times sort of speculatively and have continued to fail to get into them. (This is possibly why they are now regularly waking us up by YELLING at 4am...)