Transcripts for Everyone!

Reading. Finished Dead Hand Rule, Max Gladstone. Am disgruntled. Might soothe the disgruntlement by rereading the Sequence of adoration past.

Also finished Fight Right, as previously mentioned; I am sort of interested by the range of disagreements I have with them and also by some of the things they omitted (they make no suggestion of exchanging Tokens Of Good Faith when brain is too Bad to talk usefully???); I am kind of sad for them and specifically for Julie that they... are much less good at this than they think they are, based on their reports of their own fights. (Two key examples: including Julie saying "I'm always [negative]" during Model Apologies with zero indication that this is not good practice on multiple axes; the whole lengthy story in which neither of them seem to notice that what she actually wanted was for him to say Hey, You Did A Hard Thing You Struggle With, Good Job and instead got him assuming out loud that she had in fact done the polar opposite of the hard thing and proceeding with the conversation on that basis.)

Casting around for Maybe I Want Some More Non-Fiction, my "maybe read this one day" queue in the library app has yielded: Much Ado About Mothing, James Lowen, which is obviously relevant to several of my interests though I'm prepared to be disappointed by the lack of any meaningful incorporation of My Favourite Shakespeare. I am in chapter three and having a good time.

Listening. Today was Laminate All The Things day, so we have listened to another chunk of Hidden Almanac! Mord's hellebores.

Cooking. Broad bean kuku with the ALLOTMENT SAFFRON. Experimental Kaiserschmarrn with blueberries instead of raisins, and pear and rhubarb compote. Another round of the potato and kale and bean thing.

It turns out that the tiny 2.5kg weights A has for their dumbbells do really well for squishing tofu in a hurry, which would be a more useful fact if A were not considering getting rid of that set of dumbbells given that I have the fancy ones...

(Weights nerds: the 1" spinlock things that are endless faff.)

Eating. SAFFRON from the ALLOTMENT.

Exploring.

Creating.

Making & mending.

Growing. I made it to the plot. I spent very little time there but I made it; cherry tree looking EXTREMELY unhappy about not having been watered but soft fruit all looking promising; should def harvest some broad beans (or maybe just have An Million to do a whole bed full next year).

At home: some TLC to the smaller orchid, which is looking very sad (having successfully sent up a flower spike most of which never opened, sob) because I am having a time trying to get watering it right without moving it into its own saucer that I don't reaaaaaaally have space for on that windowsill. (Am I contemplating going back to the charity shop and Acquiring the pointy teardrop open terrarium situation I saw there yesterday? Yes I am.)

Observing. Baby birds! The teenage foxes continue to yell SO MUCH. Many excellent plants in passing. Gosh it's nice being outside at the moment when it's not, you know, absolutely bucketing it down.

We engaged in what is now our Brunch Date tradition, in that we visited the fancy bakery and then we bimbled around the aqueduct looking at baby birds while slowly consuming our spoils.

Baby birds the first were at coot nest #1; we spotted the mallard sitting merrily on top of it to start with, and then I went HOLD ON THAT'S A TINY FLUFFY DUCKLING. ... THREE DUCKLINGS. The coots (a) are not shy about chasing ducks off and (b) tend to move gradually down the not-exactly-a-river with successive clutches, so we are not too concerned about them.

There were also: another clutch of (rather larger) ducklings, with no supervising adult; some extremely teenage coots; some extremely baby coots going WHEEK WHEEK WHEEK at the tops of their tiny lungs; yet another coot nest containing one (1) adult, two (2) teenagers, and three (3) tiny fluffy cheeplets, the teenagers being actually in the nest and variously sitting on top of and preening the cheeplets. The Egyptian goslings meanwhile are very nearly all the way grown up, but continue to spend most of their time clustered together.

I am not entirely sure why I had decided baby season was probably over, but I think we can definitively say that It Is Not!

1. was invited to read A Bedtime Story :)
2. fresh new bedlinen
3. Eating More Food has in fact fixed the muscle soreness, again
4. successfully achieved a favour for a person (via venturing into the Warhammer shop halfway down the hill)
5. after the torrential rain, the sunset

Reading. Max Gladstone: I have finished Wicked Problems and am now most of the way through Dead Hand Rule, and have been remembering why it is that I'm feeling so much less fannish about these later books than the earlier ones. ( Read more... )

The library has just delivered unto my auxiliary internet device Fight Right (Julie Schwarz Gottman and John Gottman). I... cannot remember where I saw this recommended, I think in another piece of non-fiction I was reading but I can't remember what, so like... watch this space for how grumpy it makes me, I suppose?

Eating. Everything Has Been Too Warm, but: this week's most adventurous culinary wossname has probably, tragically, been The Protein Powder. Thus far I do not hate it but jury's out on whether it is actually a useful addition to my diet...

Exploring. I have been poking around new routes back from the gym and on my most recent journey found a delightful twisty little path including, among other things, walnuts.

Growing. ... I have watered the plants at home?

No, c'mon, self: the lemongrass is actually thoroughly established and I'm very pleased about it. The aubergines desperately need potting up but are also not dead. The poblano is fruiting merrily on the patio. Some things grow.

Observing. BATS: last night we heard something that might have been a soprano pip social call? Or might have been a noctule? We are not at all sure because we didn't get to hear much of it. But: bat!

1. consumèd the last of my birthday cake <3
2. supermarket supplied More Cut Price Pistachio Croissants for More Indulgent Luxury Breakfast
3. A is very very good in particular (I went Quite Wrong on Wednesday night; tonight we debriefed and achieved many communication and I think none blame)
4. the weather is a bit cooler and it was extremely pleasant to be outside for Evening Constitutional
5. brain appears to be allowing me to read a tiny bit of fiction, which is a nice change!!!