Transcripts for Everyone!

Celebrating. RAIN. MULTIPLE PROPER DAYS OF IT.

Reading. I have given up on Weathering (Ruth Allen), in that I had struggled through only a little of the first post-introduction chapter when it autoreturned to the library a second time, and by this point I'd taken several screenshots to send to people for yelling purposes. ("To put therapy in a replicable, familiar, closed box of a closed room, in a clinical environment, is to say an individual thing got broken and now must be shut away to get fixed ... Therapy has no echo in nature when you see it behind closed walls, sealed in to medicalised or clinical environments, disconnected from the messy edges of the encroaching world"!!! THE COCOON METAPHOR IS STARING YOU IN THE FACE.) It has had its second chance; I think alas it is not for me.

HOWEVER. I am back on my EatYourBooks indexing bullshit! And have thus read Jams with a Twist (Kylee Newton, National Trust), which I will be keeping, at least for now; and I am most of the way through Notes from the Jam Cupboard (Mary Tregellas), which I will ALSO be keeping, because in addition to the fine Brythonic surname she............. has a Mitteleuropäische family history of the form "her mother moved to Devon from Czechslovakia, For Love", followed by spending a fair bit of time in Austria as an adult, and I am finding her very soothing company. Not quite finished this one (I have yet to actually read the final chapter on breads), but aaaaalmost! Almost. I swear the next book will be one I am going to actually give back to the charity shop--

And meanwhile, in another part of the forest, I have also made a start (thank you the library) on Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (Laura Spinney). I have thus far greatly enjoyed the introduction and a good chunk of the first chapter (on Proto-Indo-European's own parent language); there are many excellent Language Facts and also many excellent facts that are not directly about language; I am Having A Good Time and Do Recommend.

Listening. We've wrangled a whole pile of potions for the upcoming last event of the year! We have therefore also listened to a bunch more Hidden Almanac! We're just edging into summer 2017. Georgina is being Threatened but has not yet Arrived...

Playing. More Color Bus Trip, and also Tukoni: Forest Keepers!!! Or at least our first run through; there are 9 Steam Achievements we have not yet Achieved so we will be doing at least one more in the relatively near future, and it is just as soothing and delightful as the prologue and does a really good job of incorporating but largely not repeating the material from the prologue. V v v happy about this.

Cooking. The veg box brought us multicoloured beetroot, so, a variant on the caramelised onion and butternut squash tart, with rings of sliced beetroot in Colours Various and also rosemary in the custard. Since I was making pastry I made a double batch and turned the other half into approximately apricot-pistachio squares, with some figs in addition to apricots; this time I did double the frangipane, or rather all of its ingredients except the sugar, and this was very satisfactory. Will attempt to remember to do again in future. (Hi, future Alex who is looking for notes on this topic!)

I have also made Fig Soup, by which I mean Approximately Fig Jam But I'm Working Myself Up To Boiling It Up Some More. Alas I do not think half sugar to the weight of fig is sufficient for my textural purposes so plausibly I will just... empty everything back into the pan and add... another kilo of sugar. (And then I desperately need to repeat the process with the rest of the figs...)

Eating. FIGS. Strawberries. More of my mother's beans. A has been making akuri. Generally it is a season of abundance and feasting that I am greatly enjoying.

Making & mending. Iiiiii need to actually tie off the ends for patch #1 and move on to patch #2.

Growing. DID I MENTION THE RAIN.

I have furthermore sown some kohlrabi and some fennel. We Shall See.

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Encountered this weekend peering out of a cherry tomato container, one forelimb grasping the rim:

Reading. I am not quite at the point of admitting that I'm giving up on Weathering (Ruth Allen) but I have also... not made a great deal more progress on it, and it will wing its way back to the library in approximately three days...

Cooking. I... have been resorting to quite a lot of Sad Pasta.

Eating. SO MANY BLACKBERRIES AND FIGS. Sadly very much not my preferred microspecies of blackberry, but still. Munched cheerfully on my way to and fro.

Exploring. Forty Hall!!! We visited the beaver enclosure!!! I did not personally see a beaver; I saw ripples from one passing, heard the slap of another's tail, observed many chewed trees, and also saw FOOTPRINTS and TAILPRINTS in the MUD. We got there in part via a section of the New River Path I pass on the way back from the gym and had been wanting to poke my nose down, which was also very satisfactory.

We also visited Anglesey Abbey today for lunch, and greatly enjoyed the dahlias (very early but extant!) and the rose garden and the hummingbird hawk-moth :)

Making & mending. I have Removed The Embroidery Hoop and now just need to actually tie off & tidy up patch #1 on trousers #1.

Growing. Tomatoes! Mostly! Though chillis continue and last I checked no more things at the allotment had died...

Observing. Creatures include: SEVERAL flavours of bat; Evidence Of Beaver; lots of deer (mostly or entirely muntjac?); foxes; rabbits; a bird of prey of some ilk (at the beaver enclosure); red kites (in Cambs); many other birds including a chiffchaff that was wheeking away to itself incessantly; hummingbird hawk-moth (poss. two separate); at least three kinds of dragonfly.

Roses and dahlias. Poppies inna field. MOON. Yes. Good.

1. nice bike autistics fixed the gears and the problem was not at ALL where I had been looking (poke me if you want more details)
2. OVERHEAD PRESS VICTORY (25kg, 3x5, 60s rest between sets, NOT a grindy trashfire)
3. SO MANY BATS
4. takeaway curry
5. cleeeeeeen hair

nonetheless, some good things:

• lifting: the only reason getting 24kg of water (as two flats of 24 500ml bottles each) from the doorstep into the house was at all awkward was that I hadn't quite registered the extent to which those bottles will crumple under so much pressure as a stiff breeze, and as such it's better to pick them up by the plastic that's wrapping the whole lot (and distributing the force much more evenly) than by, you know, picking them up
• lifting: bench.
• the next batch of refrigerated migraine meds showed up within 15 minutes of the start of the delivery window, thereby both validating my decision to cut gym session short (i.e. do all my main lifts but skip the pull-up progression) to make sure I was home in good time (i.e. five minutes before the start of the window) and skipping on the Multiple Hours Of Horrid Waiting (And Resentment) that might otherwise have featured
• wom milk
• I have successfully made someone very happy by trading them a brand new notebook that wasn't quite exactly what I wanted for... their slightly older notebook that IS exactly what I wanted (they are insisting on covering all of the postage and also bunging me fifteen quid for A Treet. I do not object.)
• having looked up how much panniers cost, I successfully shook eBay until two 5cm by 5cm samples of heavy-duty cordura-style nylon fell out, which will HOPEFULLY enable me to PATCH the problematic hole usefully for £3 instead of, like, £50! we shall see.