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lb_leeminoanmiss, AKA Ny, AKA my friend who died earlier this month, is having a fanfic commentathon thrown in her honor for June. If you want to participate or know details, please check out https://www.tumblr.com/rubybweekkaberettReading. Preeeeetty much just progressing further through the She's A Beast archives, and continuing to develop opinions. I... think that's it? I think that's it; it has been A Busy Week.
Writing. Words Go Up: over 9.5k. Two more subsections titled. I continue to chew things over.
Listening. More Hidden Almanac. Technically up to May 2015, but I'm going to be going back over most of 2015 on account of Tragically, Some Dozing. (It is Car Noise, you see, and we have been. Travelling.)
Eating. A lot of food made for me by a variety of other people, notably including dosa + thali by Chai Station Chester, hot chocolate from [Knoops] in Chester, bread/cake/cookies/waffles by the Jaunty Goat and petits fours by Biscotti di Debora. Petits fours AMAZING; further thoughts possibly to follow.
Exploring. Southport Botanic Gardens, which struck me as much more of a park and rather less of a botanical garden than I'd quite expected based on the name, though perhaps this is because the fernery was closed by the time we got to it; very much enjoyed THE AVIARY.
Minimal exploration of Chester Zoo, once again culminating in staying in the bat cave until kicking out time.
Little bit of poking around Salisbury, feat. excellent tulips, excellent irises, FREE BLUE AGAPANTHUS that someone had divided, excellent bee doorknocker.
And then finally we made it HOME.
Making & mending. Progressed A's second glove some more! Stalled when I got to starting increases for the thumb gusset on account of my additional stitch markers were in the roof box and ... no.
Growing. Kept the lemongrass alive through The Travels. Acquired, as mentioned, a chunk of agapanthus. Unshockingly, the aubergine I sowed immediately before leaving has not sprouted, but hey, I'll turn the propagator back on. Nothing else seems to have died while I was away, hurrah.
Observing. MOON. The Dog. Creatures, including A having an excellent time Experiencing Bats (and also Flamingoes With Wings, A Rhinoceros, some grey-crowned cranes, and Monkeys).
umadoshiscruloose and I decanted some spices from bags into jars (including the cinnamons and chai spice baking blend replenished from Silk Road* since the last time we batch-prepped for banana bread) and then did a round of bagging up dry ingredients for nine quadruple batches of my breakfast banana bread while actually baking a tenth batch. It's only the second time we've done it, and having the dry ingredients bagged and ready makes such a difference, but the prospect was more exhausting than it had any right to be. (Actually doing it was fine. This time we [reversing how we did it last time] went with me reading off the amounts for each ingredient and rotating the bags while scruloose did the actual measuring and dumping ingredients in.)
mdlbear Not a bad week, though not nearly as productive as it should have been.
(I know -- I shouldn't should
myself. But still, some
stuff needs to get done.) I have noticed that my brain doesn't
distinguish well between work and health-care-related stuff like
appointments. And to be fair there have been a lot of those.
Explanation, not excuse.
Part of the problem may be that writing and music aren't getting done because they're prioritized behind tax and other business paperwork, email, phone calls, and similar unpleasant and sometimes difficult things. So while I'm "busy" not doing those, the more pleasant things aren't getting done either.
I did walk six out of the seven days last week, so there's that. And I got (laptop)Lilac configured to the point of being usable on extended trips. (See Tuesday.) That's probably worth a curmudgeon post at some point -- it involved setting up an encrypted directory tree, and installing a DongleHider+ to put the (Logitech)mouse and (Lenovo)keyboard dongles on the same expansion slot.
From Monday, A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie. From Tuesday, Geneva's CERN takes antiprotons for a spin in a never-before-tried test (there has to be a country music filk in there somewhere). Also, did you know there's a Socks Wiki?
lb_leehungryghosts nerd-sniped me with, of course, multi etymology! Specifically, an anthology that looked like it might contradict my previous posts on the history of the use of "system" in plural space!, Richard P. Kluft was the editor; it's Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality from 1985!
lb_leefred_mouseNew-to-me flavour of chips: Thins Potato Chips Margherita Pizza.
Soooo tasty. Strong on the fake cheese, light on the tomato, reasonable on the basil / other herbs.
(brought home by Youngest from a picnic. This might be a short term variant).
mdlbearToday I am thankful for...
fred_mouseI'm a week post radiation; I'm still very red, and I have some raw patches in my armpit / outer edge of the breast. I assume this is mostly because I did not do the same prevention there, because I did not realise I needed to.
This means I am doing a lot of going topless; it is fortunately still warm enough to be doing that (although it is down to 22°C at the moment, and even with the door shut I'm a tad cold). I ran out of the ointment the hospital gave me, then the healing gel i was using, and the replacement artisanat found isn't as good.
I have found a couple more books to fit the reading for the fiction part of my project, so I'm going gung ho on that. Am a little frustrated that I keep finding books from the USA, rather than anywhere else.
I have not been keeping up with DW. I've just opened about 20 posts and I think I'm going to end up closing them having skimmed. I have, instead, fallen face first into Heated Rivalry fandom, and very much appreciate chaosmanor sharing their sources for fic. (I have not seen the show, nor read the books. This is unlikely to change. Youngest has been reporting back on the show).
lb_lee
kaberettReading. Finished my first pass through LIFTOFF by Casey Johnston! Will continue to use it as a reference work (tomorrow starts my third and final week of Phase 1 -- bodyweight practice of compound movements -- before I move on to doing things with Actual Weights...). I should probably note for the record that I have edited it as I've gone through to fix a fair few typos.
More She's A Beast archives (just reached February 2023!).
Tiiiiiny bit of a start on my Wicked Problems (Max Gladstone) reread, in a general spirit of wanting to have any idea at all of what's going on in Dead Hand Rule.
Writing. The document! is over! 9000!!! despite the fact that I've deleted a bunch of bits of variation-on-a-theme as I home in on what it is I actually want to say! I have gone "that will do" about my first draft of the introduction (it definitely needs ... more ... tweaking, but I think all the pieces are now there) and have moved on to the introduction to part the first, working title "What is pain?" I'm very close to having that Good Enough For Now, I think, whereupon... a chapter?!
Watching. 2026 Migraine World Summit. So much Migraine World Summit. BUT I managed to catch everything this year, and now I am working on condensing and transcribing my digital notes into my notebook. More to follow, possibly.
Listening. I caught up to where A had got to with Hidden Almanac (which I had theoretically heard all of but in practice was asleep for... some... of)! We had a long drive! We are now most of the way through 2014, I have learned about Pastor Drom's side hustle, and there is a crow named George.
Playing. Bit more Inkulinati? Tiny bit more Inkulinati.
Eating. Mooooore allotment lamb's lettuce. AND a bunch of TREETS from the local FANCY BAKERY, incl. double chocolate brownie (not quite dark and chocolatey enough for my tastes; too dark for A); bread pudding; and a rhubarb and ginger teacake.
This week I am also experimenting with lentil cakes (like rice cakes, but lentil) and Dr Karg's Pumpkin Seed Protein Thins. I find the former perplexing, in that they taste kind of like crispy seaweed snacks while also being completely the wrong shape and texture, and am much more into the latter (even eaten dry!) than I expected. A considers them alarming cardboard; I think I think they are enough like Ryvita, of which I am fond, to be of at least some interest? Might... get more of these. (Could in theory reverse engineer them but that sounds like a lot of effort.)
Exploring. Had another couple of Extremely Satisfactory errand-bimbles discovering People's Front Gardens.
Making & mending. I have FROGGED the experimental continental knitted portion of A's second glove (tension was bad; have decided I want these gloves Done more than I want to do enough continental knitting to get the tension right) and resumed; I have done A Little More Cuff.
Growing. Aubergines finally! belatedly! sown! Oca into the ground. Broad beans finally coming up. More garlic transplanted.
Observing. THE COOTS! HAVE! EGGS!
umadoshiscruloose's first, except for the part where they saw most of the finale with minimal context back when I watched it. They also had some random bits of info in advance for their watch, because when I was initially watching it I wasn't at all thinking in terms of "this is a thing they may wind up watching" (they have much less interest in watching things in general than I do), so I'd been blithely telling them random stuff here and there before we got to the point of "perhaps scruloose will watch Canada's new national export after all". La? But they really enjoyed the show, which is the important thing. ^_^
mdlbearNot a bad week. Home from the US Sunday noonish (was not keeping careful track, because at that point I'd been more than 24 hours without sleep). Predictably, sleeping better (or at least longer) than usual all week. Walks 6 days out of 7, plus bonus st/roll with N and (new scooter)Gizmo on Wednesday.
Gizmo is heavier than Lizzy, and doesn't fold as well, but he's more than twice as fast. N went and bought a helmet -- purple with flowers. Her name is Kore, which is "Colleen" translated from Irish to Greek. Lizzy is still in the shop - no telling when she'll be back. Yes, we name a lot of our stuff.
N and I have been checking out book marketers. A bit expensive, but we want to do a good launch for her next one, and need someone who knows what they're doing.
Linkies: 41-Year-Old Woman Celebrates One Year With Her AI Octopus Boyfriend and Says She’s “Fully Satisfied”
lb_lee
kaberettToday was A Travel Day; yesterday, in preparation for same, I Ran Errands, including "acquiring Tiny Cake" and "visiting the pharmacy".
On the way from those two jobs to the next couple, I passed Several Good Things.
One was a new-to-me flavour of completely ridiculous daffodil:
It's a double not in the sense of having a confusing froth of intermingled trumpets (as of Double Fashion or Double Camparnelle, both of which exist locally), but in the sense of having two nested trumpets, one shorter and orange, from which the longer white one protrudes. I have never! previously! seen a thing like this! I am really enjoying my current streak of encountering varieties of daffodil that make me go "what the fuck???"
Shortly thereafter I checked over my shoulder while crossing a tiny bridge and was startled and delighted to see A COOT UPON THE NEST that, last I passed it, was clearly still derelict. Obviously I went back and Gazed Upon It for Some Time and was eventually rewarded by it STANDING UP to reveal SEVEN??? (possibly) EGGS!!!
And the Egyptian goslings were peeping about the place when I subsequently passed them on my way back up the hill. A+ errands would run again.
lb_lee
lb_lee
kaberettmdlbearToday I am thankful for...
lb_lee lb_lee - Ny Bweekkaberett - vital functionsumadoshi - Weekly proof of life is weirdly heavy on the cinnamon talkmdlbear - Done Since 2026-03-22lb_lee - I Still Say MPD Multis Don't Own "System"lb_lee - Meagan Morrisfred_mouse - Chip (crisp) tastingmdlbear - Thankful Thursdayfred_mouse - minimal updatelb_lee - On Labelskaberett - vital functionsumadoshi - Weekly proof of life: media intake while catching my breath in a break in the crunchmdlbear - Done Since 2026-03-15lb_lee - Zine: my love is strangekaberett - happy equinox, etclb_lee - Comic: Sneak Attack!lb_lee - Book Spine Poetrykaberett - some good thingsmdlbear - Thankful Thursdaylb_lee - Potential Future Projects We're Kicking Aroundbranchandroot
