the color of storms, shadows, and rain

...content

2026-04-22T16:02:29Z

This semester I've been in a thermodynamics class that introduced the extremely generically named concept of quality: the ratio of mass in vapor phase to mass in liquid phase in a mixture at the ~boiling point.

I've also been reading Underwood Dudley's Numerology: What Pythagoras Wrought, a disapproving but light-hearted commentary on numerology, where at one point he introduces a similarly generic name and concept, for the context of dealing with the mutterings of charletans: content, or the probability of people disagreeing with a statement. Where a statement resulting in unanimous agreement such as "You regularly drink something containing water" would have a content of 0, and "You are Carl Frederick Gauss" (his example!) is so improbable as to be approximately 1.

And, juxtapose this with my randomly getting back into the_miracle_aligner, who does song covers in mostly ancient languages, but who chose "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" to put into his own tribal language, with a remark about what but an extremely relatable song?

aaand furthermore, the idea that what we know about other people's inner lives is inevitably curated...

eta: the point I am circling around is that we are privy to others' misery (and indeed any other emotional state) only inasmuch as that emotion is expressed to us, and our perception of the ubiquity of a given emotion is based on how much whatever our social circle+media has expressed that emotion.

"content" is a rather inapt or cruel lens for this idea, but something like its... complement (1-content) might be a better expression of the idea that you are likely not alone in a given emotion...

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cooking using up things around the house

2025-12-07T21:18:11Z

Early this week I made a kind of turkey pot pie stew from leftover turkey, and served it with biscuit mix biscuits with celery seed added to them (to reflect the crust of my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook's pot pie recipe)

Cursory notes on the procedure

Cooked 1 medium onion, chopped, in roughly 2 T oil with a little salt and more generous black pepper, add 2 T flour and cook for a couple minutes, then added four (and eventually a fifth) cups of water, ultimately about 4 tsp Chicken Better than Bouillon, 2 medium carrots chopped, 2 smallish russet potatoes, diced, 6 oz frozen broccoli cuts (alas, some of the stems were a very bad texture due to being fibrous), and 6 oz frozen peas, and about 1.75c chopped cooked turkey.

I think I added 1/2tsp celery seed to a half batch of biscuit mix biscuits, which was not very strong but did come through somewhat.

Today we baked a cran-apple (walnut-less) cake as seen in *Heart of the Plate* (apparently also in Moosewood Cookbook though? I do not know it that well + have never paid a great deal of attention to the dessert section) and I made a couple Indian dishes for a late lunch since I had bought the mixes on a whim and they had recently passed their best by dates* (Plus I had some clearance mini naans that were getting old so needed eaten up).

Both were Rasoi Magic brand, and the Methi Mutter Malai (methi/fenugreek leaves and peas in a creamy sauce) turned out pretty well, although I think I would prefer to add slightly less sugar to the dish than it has (and am curious to perhaps try making Methi Mutter Malai with fresh methi at some point). I am less pleased with my tofu version of their Paneer Tikka Masala--even though the spicing and the tofu seem a promising combo, how I made it was more frustrating (involving shallow frying tofu cubes and experiencing some sticking), it was too spicy-hot for my mom to eat (which I failed to consider when I bought it), and it told me I should add a "cup" of water at the last step, which turned into a really liquid sauce that did not thicken up within anything like the recommended cooking time...

*anecdote: ...a month or so ago I stopped by the nearest Indian grocery and happened to pick up some sort of dried root that was in the spice section to look at the package, curious if I could glean any information about the unfamiliar item. I discovered, however, instead that it had expired by some earlier month in 2023 (maybe even 2022) so decided to bring that particular package to a staff member's attention. I was told that whatever it was was used medicinally, and that best by dates don't mean a lot (which is true!), but in my defense, I do feel that discovering you'd purchased something over 2 years past its best by date (without even being marked down) would be disappointing to most people. I was fine with using these mixes a month or three after their dates, although I wouldn't want to buy one that expired more than a month ago since I don't always get around to using them very quickly, and these contain nuts and milk powder, both of which tend to go strong. Otherwise I don't totally mind using somewhat older spices/spice mixes though yes, they do lose at least some flavor.

**I actually cooked by the mL quantities since my measuring cups have both and my Indian Saffola oats give a cup quantity of water that does not mesh with the mL recommendation at all. But I do think these were more reasonable approximations even if the mL (in like, centiliter accuracy) is probably what's strictly intended.

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embarrassing (light-heartedly)

2025-09-13T01:27:24Z

while ~singing/rapping along to the ...nuclear physics ethics anthem with the unprepossessing name "Eminemium" (it's based off "Lose Yourself"), I started contemplating how Tim Blais says "Warsawa" there (I've heard it's incorrect and may look it up in a bit) ...and accidentally said the end of the line as "co-assured twauma" (does me psychic damage due to how people talk about uwu language)

addendum: yes, Warszawa (ie what we in English know as Warsaw) is more like var-sha-va. well, if Wiktionary editors can be trusted, apparently the IPA is var.ʂa.va(?)

I somehow managed to accidentally add ketchup to a Chicago dog, which I understand to be a faux pas, in ordering from a kiosk when I don't even like ketchup on hot dogs in general. (I saw it on my order but thought that it got auto-added as a fry condiment. I can only guess that something I did with toggling "everything" messed it up.)

However, while I didn't think it was a helpful addition, it was actually less bad with the ...tomato and pickle and celery salt (and maybe onion?) present than when I decided I had to give ketchup in the context a fair shake of a trial and ordered an All-American at Sonic once.

in other developments I did the thing I do maybe once or twice (or even three times a year) and made a meal of sorts out of Whole Foods hot/salad bar items

tonight's hodgepodge

saag tofu (why did the tofu start dripping when bitten into. but it tasted fine), lemon rice (Indian), "cauliflower-potato curry", turmeric-lemon potato wedges, rosemary roasted carrots, some sweet potatoes that I think were labeled tequila lime but didn't have a particularly seasoned flavor to me, a little of some Tex-Mex tofu in crumbles, aaaand: macaroni salad

...also I ...walked to a Korean grocery store and bought a roasted sweet potato as an evening snack (and one of the small "Korean melons", which I haven't tried yet) and it was quite nice! I would've liked to look longer and maybe browse or buy more but I had walked there, and it was evening, so I didn't want to carry a lot or stay out past dark. I did not find perilla oil in a fairly cursory search and the only perilla seeds I saw bore a prop 65 lead warning (augh) and were about $10 so I didn't get them.

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Chili... but as an open-faced sandwich

2025-09-04T00:59:05Z

tonight's dinner was chili ~subs based on a recipe variant in How to Cook Everything Fast, which I served more like sloppy joes, but on whole wheat hot dog buns (~~since Kroger no longer carries(?) the fun slider or sub variants of their whole wheat buns that I can find~~).

I suppose the concept probably sounds a little eccentric without being attached to the main meat sauce sub recipe, which, while it originated from a "smack barm pey wet"-like impulse translated to the context of relative Italian American prosperity (meatball sauce, sans meatballs, but Bittman doesn't bother with meatballs) makes somewhat more traditional sense as a sub. All the same, I thought it was quite nice.

( recipe below cut so as not to stretch dashes )

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in which I couldn't save all of them (cw:animal death--turtle death as roadkill)

2025-05-08T14:01:31Z

I had to take some library books back and there were turtles trying to cross the highway, so on the way back I stopped to get the first one across the highway, which caused traffic to accumulate behind me, so I pulled off and turned around to go back for the other two...

except that I pulled off into the turn for a side road to go after the second one, and, alas, doing so caused the box truck coming up behind me to pull further out into the road...

...and hit the turtle I was trying to save.

~~which I feel a bit like is my fault, seeing as the turtle was slightly to the other side of the line and the truck likely wouldn't have pulled out if I hadn't pulled over :'(~~

I did get to the third one though.

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not a resounding confirmation, but I'll take it (on hyacinth beans)

2025-04-09T02:48:30Z

um. It is remotely possible that some of you may remember that I am pretty sure I once voiced (well. in text) a question about whether a type of val dal that is not a lima is in fact the dry bean of ~~Dolichos lablab~~ Lablab purpureus, known fresh or ornamentally as hyacinth bean.

well, a few days ago while looking up what varieties of refried bean Goya (much as I disagree with them about certain powerful people...) makes, I happened to click over onto their varieties of ordinary canned beans, and lo and behold, what happened to catch my eye but something called "Green Rock Beans"? aka Feijão Pedra... which I thought was also the phrasing on a package of dried beans in the Portuguese section (ish. technically it may have been the Spain section but I could tell it was labeled in Portuguese) that I noted resembled the val dal in question.

What do these look like? Well, behold a blog post that informed me that Cape Verde, in Africa, has a feijoada, which is made with rock beans(!!!!!) You can see pictures of the dry beans being soaked there if you scroll down a bit.

Inspired by this, albeit obliquely, I tracked down the Portuguese Wikipedia page on the Lablab botanical genus and, YES, it says there that they are known as feijão pedra!

...not to mention that the English language article has I think improved from when I posed that question, and its note that hyacinth bean is known as val papdi in Maharashtra is probably suggestive in itself. (this is directly beside the article's mention of the name "surti papdi" in Gujarat, and I believe that is a name I've seen on frozen pods at the Indian grocery)

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corn and beans and plantains and cheese...

2025-03-14T00:40:42Z

Tonight I had a black bean and cheese arepa with the delicious creamy and garlicy sauce the restaurant has and an order (small) of sweet plantains, which I think are fried and then topped with cheese and crema. Delicious, but it was really a bit too much food...

(I really should see if they'd do what I ordered + 2-3 slices of plantain or else let me order the pabillon but without meat and probably with extra black beans. Either of which amounts to approximately the same thing.)

I thought I was going to do my darnedest to go to a library program tomorrow but it has, alas, been cancelled. (apparently not for lack of interest.)

(I had also had thoughts of going to a yoga program at a different library this morning, but I vetoed that last night due to heavy period.)

Since the extension service apparently sends off the soil samples in the afternoon on Fridays, I am hoping my soil will dry out sufficiently by tomorrow morning to drop off and hear about that...

I have an SCA event this weekend and so hoping to get various things I might otherwise do then done tomorrow.

I had the thought of doing the ~grocery shopping early—this afternoon instead of the weekend, however the improvement of my depression seen with the antidepressant has exacerbated my impulse shopping tendencies and among other things I grabbed huazontle, fresh(!) epazote, favas, and a tuna/cactus pear. I expect to eat the latter and have a couple fresh fava recipes that should work for those, but I'll have to figure out what to do with the others...

It's been close to 80F the past couple days and while a certain amount of warmth sounds welcome, I am not a fan of such warm weather at this time of year :( Not least because I have to adjust before I can tolerate temps over about 75F very well and the heat bothers my skin.

We got out last night and planted the things the extension service guide says can be planted outside as of this week: peas, mustard greens, and beets.

( minor medicine note )

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lightening (of hair)

2025-02-22T06:15:01Z

For the first time, I tried bleaching part of my hair--the end of my ponytail, which I habitually keep doubled in a sort of quasi-bun--with the intent of putting unnatural color in (intending to attempt bright yellow, but...). It's kind of a weird feeling to look at the tail of my hair if I put it over my shoulder and see that it's lighter than it's been all my life. I didn't achieve a super light result, and in some lighting I have thought there's a bit of gingery orange albeit not very dark to it (but then I think in sun sometimes my brown hair has coppery undertones), so I'm not sure how the intended yellow, or a different prospective color, some turquoise I happened to get on clearance, will turn out...

but honestly I think the results could still be decent? and they're semi-permanent colors so will in theory eventually wash out. (manic panic vampire red on my unbleached hair persisted for MONTHS despite no special washing care, but it was a very subtle thin streak so wasn't a big nuisance)

it looks rather odd when my hair is down because turns out that when [I don't want to talk about how long ago] I last er, hacked off some of my hair from a tangled mess, it wasn't even round the bottom, which I knew but failed to really consider here...

I am half-contemplating whether I should consider recreating something akin to a historical queue bag for containment of dye during sleeping...

Why does the pretty basic formatting of the one relevant duck duck go result from the NPS site for Morristown National Historical Park induce ~nostalgia for some of my earliest roamings online, circa 2002 (I turned 8 that year), when I spent most of my computer time playing kids' games and a lesser fraction dabbling in ~historical searches?

The plan is to get a haircut whenever I tire of having colored ends--possibly as drastic as down to a Fourth Doctor or hobbit-y cut, which I will probably let grow out again, as I have had it cut so rarely I doubt I would have the patience to get frequent cuts to maintain it... but then the shortest it's been (12 years back) was still more or less early Sarah Jane Smith length so I don't actually have experience with that short of hair...

(...my maternal grandma, all my life, had quite short hair, and my mom and her sisters as long as I've been alive have also had relatively short hair. I think even my paternal grandmother had short hair when I knew her at the end of her life, although I have little idea of my paternal aunts' hairstyles; my uncles (and grandfathers) are not of the disposition to have particularly long hair. Thus I have been the outlier in the family for having hair well past my shoulders most of the time. But: I don't bother about cutting it with any frequency, and while tangle-prone, it's very easy to pull back and get out of the way!)

I intend, after that cut, to finally fulfill my aspirations, first conceived of in high school (albeit then intended for college once I would no longer be living with my dad...), of dyeing a blue streak in my hair...

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Chinese split pea soup via Fuchsia Dunlop

2025-01-24T03:52:26Z

Dai Shuang's yellow split pea soup, from Every Grain of Rice

Advantages: not particularly difficult
Disadvantages: not a one pot recipe/dirties several dishes, benefits significantly from the somewhat to pretty obscure in US supermarkets ingredients of whole Sichuan pepper and pea shoots (and is prettier/possibly slightly different in taste with yellow instead of the more ubiquitous green split peas)

( Read more... )

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this great unstable mass of blood and foam

2025-01-02T06:25:13Z

by circumlocutional means, have slowly gotten to tonight's brainweasels' point:

by evidence/metric of who makes an active effort to interact with me¹, I am less lovable than Darth Vader (*as seen in the plethora of "LukeVader" fics)

by the same evidence, I'm less lovable than how I write Palpatine²...

...

and a lot of it is surely because I have isolation instincts fueled by an abusive parent who was acting based on paranoia³

I don't even mean romantic love. i mean just. friendly

¹: i.e. only my... parents. sort of. I have gone basically no contact with my dad, however, and I ...live with my mom, so...
²: I believe my old therapist once suggested that possibly my great redemption attempts toward villains I identify with was an exercise in trying to... demonstrate that I deserve? love? I don't think he was entirely wrong about this.
³: and underdeveloped social skills due to ...isolation, social anxiety related to an unpredictable and delusional abuser, etc...⁴
⁴: and people are busy with their own lives and I'm not a particularly important person to anyone so...

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it's all about the checks notes microcomputers 👉👉

2024-10-25T04:53:41Z

I have... started a second accounting class.

The textbook for this one has

referred to "microcomputers"

I quote, "when a mass producer of memorabilia (or swag)"

when was this written? who was this written for?

As a very tail end millennial who sometimes feels more like a zillennial, I don't think I knew what "microcomputer" even exactly referred to until I got into computing history, and using it outside the specific context of computing history definitely feels like an outmoded or at least retro term¹, but disambiguating memorabilia as "swag" feels ah... almost excessively targeted at the young'uns?

~~Also I am reminded of OWL at like, every turn. 🙃 Ah, cengage...~~

(oh and uh... previously, in the first accounting class implied by the opening statement, I encountered an example problem where everyone and the company were named after alcohol brands (although I had to look one of them up to know that)... except the petty cashier. Who was he, you ask? Eminem! How?! why?)

¹: granted, I fairly routinely watch videos about minicomputers, but that's unusual.

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baked a pumpkin tonight

2024-10-15T06:09:01Z

eurgh I can't tell how much not feeling good is ...physical and how much is depression creeping on (nor how much of that is ...seasonal? well, how much is attributable to day length in particular, mostly. There are definitely bad memories for me about this season.)

Mind, last week I was in my almost-inverted schedule state, but that usually results in somewhat insufficient sleep even when I am not grasping at the straw of "just staying up through it" to try to readjust it, so I may also be experiencing accumulated tiredness. :/

Went for a walk ~yesterday (well. Sunday. it's technically Tuesday as I write this but I'm still in Monday's wakefulness), which was nice, but a) I think I may have gotten slightly too much sun to my face or something, as there was very little shade, and... I scratched some of it and now it... kind of hurts, and b) [I've been struggling to get up the courage to go in for a significant dental issue which in the meantime has the side effect that] I've been having trouble eating and haven't been walking a lot which combination I think caused the otherwise moderate walk to deplete my energy and that also made me feel blah.

other minor slightly gross issue

And I think I have a small boil, again, near where a bra band would normally sit... which isn't quite where it's been the couple times before when this has happened, but pretty close, and is also slightly painful :P

Tonight we made tomato-based beef-vegetable soup again and it tasted pretty good... I have been very grateful for soup in recent times due to the teeth issue.

I've watched a few somewhat older movies I had never seen in the past few weeks (Mean Girls, Labyrinth), although they are... not new favorites. ~~I may have gotten distracted from the latter by the thought that a certain terf may have used a line (someone messing up Hoggle's name) to name a major thing...~~

( project details )

And I don't think I've really mentioned here but I'm taking a few online classes via the local community college and they're ...sort of going well (one has finished thanks to being an eight week session but I haven't managed to get signed up for the following class as I had meant to...), although I have my annoyances (one instructor hasn't posted any grades for over a month 😐) and I am running up against the gauntlet of mid-semester bureaucracy, due to things I need to do (including that following class) that are not going as smoothly as I would've liked. 🙃

~~tbqh the prospect of trying to get back and finish my bachelor's degree at the four year university has felt scary the past few days~~

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representative incident of the day

2024-08-20T22:24:32Z

well.

I am in the middle of trying to right (in a ship-like sense) my sleep cycle away from being awake all night, and, of all things, I managed to do my best today to attend a therapy appointment ...that is actually Thursday. 😐

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how do they rise up, rise up high?

2024-05-26T03:57:14Z

*GNU Terry Pratchett*

---

I've ended up thinking tonight, on the occasion of missing an online bardic circle due to sleep issues (having zonked out earlier, my ability to sleep on recent nights troubled by anxiety, and still hoping to go back to sleep in a bit) but half wanting to sing "All the Little Angels" in company, unfortunately, about how the way we memorialize The Glorious 25th is largely directly borrowed from the book and probably seems esoteric and meaningless to those unacquainted with it despite, I think, being quite meaningful to the ones memorializing it.

(It's also another Star Wars day and Towel Day re Douglas Adams, and idk, much as I have, after a fashion, loved Star Wars, it feels right now all too easy for a celebration of it to linger on superficial matters that are ...not, to, me, as meaningful and broadly applicable as the 25th of May.

...which is probably unfair, and another matter on my mind recently has been (regarding music), my propensity to a juxtaposition of serious and earnest music and well... absurdity.

sometimes you do get both.

and I do think Luke being willing to ~redeem his father is a poignant message but I think it's embedded in a very noisy whole signal, where it's easy to get caught up in the question of the significance of being family to this point, let alone the possibility for wandering off into the visually compelling fascist regime weeds ...or, once you include the PT, an on ramp to e.g. stanning a religious order of police... (I don't think the mythological scale of Star Wars renders the nuances of "Are You Tearing People As Things (=doing evil)?" with anything like the force of this era of Pratchett's writing))

and, while the emotionally devastating effects are largely a result of my own poor practices at the time, this day this year marks the tenth anniversary of the time I lost several thousand words of fanfic, some of it deeply personally important and something like the baring of part of my soul through a ~philosophical meditation ~~(but via an edgy but earnest teenager)~~ to Windows bluescreening on me*, so that's A Feeling...

...erm, anyway, I bring up the symbols because I think Star Wars is so broadly popular and celebrated (not so much memorialized, really) with obvious and well known symbols that most people are apt to get it, while the Glorious 25th is, say, 90% Night Watch, with a 9% side of the opaque clacks system code from Going Postal, by which we mean to say that a man is not truly dead, so long as his name is still spoken...

*...due to neglecting to save in a writing setup lacking an autosave

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from a seed up through sapling/daughter phoenix rise

2024-04-19T14:54:00Z

By way of an update to post earlier in the week, but also just related thoughts—

I am doing somewhat better, close to what has become normal for me in recent times.

Reporting back now, I'm not sure how useful my therapy appointment seemed or seems in some regards—I think I have enough background issues that there's a "you can't dismantle Rome in a day" factor (and sometimes the process of deconstructing something doesn't free up what it was obstructing until it's done, which leaves this metaphorical city more prone to problems caused by small issues, like one person braking causing a traffic jam.), and I'm kind of slogging through it somewhat aimlessly without an end in sight, and probably losing sight of what work on it I have done.

But then I suppose all this is true generally for mental health issues, it's just that in some cases with acute issues it may be more possible for the work to achieve significant improvement in months or even (perhaps optimistically) weeks, rather than years that are stretching on into nearly a decade for me...

Thankfully other distractions have helped the acute suicidality depart for at least now, and the on-ramp thoughts recede to more normal-for-me levels.

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(dream) fun with local parameters

2024-04-17T01:27:56Z

On a completely different note, I recently had a dream (probably yesterday but maybe as long ago as Saturday morning) involving these areas (in something vaguely like a mall and vaguely like an all ages interactive museum) where you could alter things like gravity and then physically interact under those conditions within a space. The *physics* one required supervision, but I think Matt Parker (of Stand Up Maths) was ~staffing the "math" one, which was safer for some reason?? I don't really remember what it did as versus the physics one (hopefully not Bloody Stupid Johnson stunts)

(I think the concept may have been inspired by specifically some stuff in the Star Trek Voyager: String Theory trilogy of novels (about which I honestly have mixed feelings) but they also could owe something to "creative physics" in a TOS novel (might possibly be The Wounded Sky but idk) and bear a slight but non-sinister resemblance to some of the concepts of the hexarchate)

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(cw:suicidality) no emotion that's worth having

2024-04-17T00:55:41Z

having too many suicidal thoughts to feel functional, but not enough to subject myself to varying degrees of what I deeply suspect/from experience know wouldn't be very helpful (+might well be more harmful than helpful when certain things are factored in) and is, beyond a helpline, likely expensive 😑

... anyway I have a therapy appointment tomorrow so I guess if I can just wait it out for less than 24 hours...

~~it would also seem that my ultrasound results are in. half afraid they're going to tell me I may have the cancer that runs in the family.~~

( Read more... )

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muddled feminism in the 2023 Barbie film

2024-04-01T00:22:36Z

I belatedly watched Oppenbarbie earlier this year and initially found the Barbie film disappointing, which I partly blamed the tonal shift between the films. But I viewed it again Friday due to deciding to write a fic idea I had (I promptly had another which is the one that is actually up) and I still have some issues...

( Read more... )

(oh, by the way, I enjoyed Oppenheimer—although it was slightly different than I expected—and don't have major complaints. The last line particularly was chilling and perfect.)

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to everything a season? (not necessarily a literal season)

2024-03-02T18:58:08Z

...I looked through How to Cook Everything Fast this morning and bookmarked a bunch of recipes. Thinking about doing the BBQ lima beans maybe...

A few thoughts on eating styles

I can sympathize—though I'm not sure I've yet gotten there—with Bittman's eating beans over other proteins (as of my revised edition) but there are some other things less adjacent to my tastes: I don't eat a lot of fish (though tbh recently I have been trying to eat some on a regular basis in hopes it will help with mental health); I rarely eat beef as steaks at home (I think this is a budget cuts thing... relatively to other cuts over all time I've consumed a lot of chuck, either ground or as roasts. I also don't eat steak out a lot, but it is probably more like 5-10% of my restaurant beef consumption. And I *am* trying to generally eat less beef.); and finally, because I have had some trouble actually eating regular meals in recent years, I don't typically have much interest in incorporating meals of only low protein vegetables without at least a significant presence from beans, grains or potentially nuts/seeds. Or an egg or some cheese/yogurt. Otherwise they have too high a ratio of effort to macronutrients and satiety for me.

...I will say though that I feel like Bittman at this writing seems better about this than America's Test Kitchen was as of the publication of Soups, Stews, and Chilis—it seemed to me like a lot of their vegetable soups would just not be very substantial...

... and then on a whim I decided to look through Plenty, which I have had for a while but never found much appeal in, and somehow, suddenly, I think I get it!

I mean, a lot of things aren't necessarily seasonal at the moment, but it feels less like everything is kind of tangential from my tastes. And sure, a few of the recipes are significantly less appealing than others, or something I'm not sure I'd like (eg I am learning to tolerate and occasionally like mushrooms but I'm still not sure that whole caps will go over. or raw ones...), but most of it finally sounds intriguing...

(it was also around this time of year probably 11 years ago, that I first found and got into Bean by Bean, so maybe it's just personally a good time of year for getting into cookbooks?)

...lest you think from my music/location bits that spring is here locally, I wouldn't say so yet, but I think I am ready to anticipate it and start to enjoy days that approach 70F instead of fretting over how unseasonal they feel... I have said, historically, that March is probably my favorite month and well... yes. Unfortunately, I will be plagued later in the season with allergies, and having to readjust to temperatures above 75F.

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Food Meme

2024-02-07T07:31:43Z

via ursula; list of foods originally provided by brainwane

oatmeal: I have mixed feelings about it. I grew up eating the packet kind (of which bananas and cream is probably my only unacceptable major flavor) on a semi-regular basis and based on something in some childhood book I tried eating plain oatmeal with sugar and cream, which was only sort of good--the texture is tricky for me if it doesn't taste "right". Unfortunately my willingness to eat packet oatmeal has now become somewhat inconsistent, particularly if I'm trying to make it with hot water instead of in a microwave. Steel cut oats and oat groats are sort of more tolerable on a textural basis, but I'm not always in the mood for such a chewy breakfast. Currently I will have quick oats now and then with mandatory peanut butter and either banana or cocoa powder and sugar (or all three)--the peanut butter much improves the texture for me. I've also done a somewhat pared down version of Edward Lee's chile oatmeal, via the Liana Krisoff book Whole Grains for a New Generation, which involves almond butter that similarly improves the texture. (I do love oats in cookies (even if I'm not always in the mood for raisins) and bread though!)
miso (soup or otherwise): I didn't grow up eating miso, and I've still only had miso soup proper a handful of times, but I am generally favorable towards the flavor. I've committed and enjoyed a couple of miso sauces from Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu, and I am pretty sure that I enjoyed the results from a somewhat eclectic suggestion in Bean by Bean (Crescent Dragonwagon) to flavor the vegetarian version of a fairly plain white bean soup ala the US Senate restaurant with mostly onion, ancho chile, and a finishing spoonful of miso... (I forget if I also added carrots, garlic, or possibly celery as well as those things.)
licorice (black or red): I used to like strawberry twizzlers, but I don't eat candy as much any more. I have had a couple pieces of a Dutch black licorice that I understood to be salted (admittedly I don't think it was dubbelzoute) and didn't find it as horrible as many Americans say, and I went through a phase of chewing Blackjack gum now and then, but I'm not generally a black licorice enjoyer per se. I kinda like fennel; I think it's the glycyrrhizin in particular that I tend to dislike. (I LOVE dill though and I don't understand why I've seen it described as anise-y)
hollandaise sauce: ...technically I'm not sure. I've had it maybe twice, and if I remember correctly I was very unimpressed. Other than melted butter(/garlic butter!) itself, I'm pretty picky when it comes to rich sauces. And Hollandaise is supposed to have lemon in it, but that seemed like a setup for disappointment as I don't believe it tasted like lemon... I have thought sometimes about trying eggs benedict, but I fear it would just result in disappointment. (Eggs are iffy for me, particularly when they are cooked without mixing the yolk and white...but I also don't entirely see the appeal of runny yolks. So poached eggs sound probably bad, and hollandaise doesn't seem like it would improve the experience) If I wanted to give it a chance the best idea would probably be trying it with asparagus or similar.
coconut milk: I would say I generally like it, though I don't have much experience trying to drink straight coconut milk, and I'm not sure how well I'd like that?

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in my unpopular tastes in fandom...

2024-01-27T05:48:46Z

accidentally learned that the top fic on AO3 by hits is apparently one I bounced hard off (due to "he would not say that/act like that" and uhhh weird class stuff about the portrayal of a major side/antagonist character) and that it has its own fandom including on tiktok and I feel kind of weird about this.

(I mean. it's also an HP fic, so that at this point throws an additional twist into my feelings.)

...how did it come up, you ask? ...I was contemplating writing a permission statement and trying to work out how to phrase telling people not to do the legally dubious act of submitting it to a ~publishing service as if for "self-publication"—which I'd heard people had done with this particular fic.

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Transformative Works Policy

2024-01-25T06:29:27Z

I'm handschuhmaus over on AO3.

Medium transformations:
In theory I am happy for you to podfic, translate, or fanbind my works if you feel so moved... however I'd feel odd about people doing that to my (unfortunately copious) unfinished works, so please ask if you are interested in doing one of those things to a work that is not marked complete and/or tagged "ok to podfic". If it says "ok to podfic" or is (um, correctly. I think there might be a few works that I need to fix) marked complete, go ahead. I should be happy to link these things on AO3 or in the remote likelihood you choose to fanbind something, potentially reblog pictures over on tumblr if you want to share them.

(Please do not insert ~~soup~~ ads¹ into a translation or ...post podfic/translations of my work in such a way that you may earn money off them/as an exclusive for eg patreon supporters, as I would rather neither of us got into potential legal trouble. I am willing to chance the risk from people who happen to have something like a ko-fi generally linked from their tumblr/site, as long as it isn't associated with fic commissions.)

Re fanbinding: Please do not use a commercial printing/binding service to produce a copy of my fic.(expand for details on copy shops/library printing)

I understand that you may need to go to a printing shop or library to print out the work, and if you also want to just e.g. use their comb-binding capabilities or something along those lines for a copy or two I don't care, but do not submit my works to a commercial service as if "self-published", or in a circumstance where they will retain the work "for future copies". (I do also understand, though I'd be surprised by the attention, if you need to contract another fannish handbinder to do the binding.)

As a clarifying example, printing my work at a local FedExOffice is okay; submitting my work to somewhere like thebookpatch.com is NOT. Basically, you or some particular person (or two) you can identify should be the one to convert printed pages into book form, and additional copies should not be available to random people; any and all funds exchanged are for services only.

You may share your typeset/print-ready versions of my fics with other people who may feel inclined to fanbind the work, should that happen, as long as attribution remains with the fic, and they also agree not to submit the work to a commercial binding service.

If you should want to create more than say 3 physical copies of my work, maybe let me know about it?

~Derivative works: remixes, sequels/prequels, fanart:
I don't really believe in restricting people from creating derivative works based on what are already derivative works. Unfortunately I can also be weirdly picky or perhaps even territorial about my artistic vision, so my policy here is: go forth and create if you are so moved; I will endeavor to be gracious about your inspired creations, but I cannot promise that I will recommend them etc. (This does not mean I discourage you from listing my work as inspiration--and if I do not react/respond to a related works request, in any case sometimes (maybe even frequently) I'm just bad at responding to things in a timely manner.)

¹This is a joke based on an issue Terry Pratchett had with the German Discworld publishers.

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LaceRotAlong 2024: Armenian Needle Lace (notes-in progress)

2024-01-10T07:17:45Z

So, over on tumblr lacerotalong is doing a type of lace per month for the year, and I don't dispute that BecomeInspired has a very useful tutorial, but the playlist of the needle lace videos seems to be somewhat haphazardly organized. I'm diving in, I guess, and making some notes about the content covered in the videos--hopefully I will be able to extend this to cover most if not all of her Armenian lace videos, particularly those in the playlist.

Needle Lace for Beginners (Part 1 of 8): discusses thread and supplies/setup briefly--DMC Cebelia #20 is linked in the description; how to begin with a ring; how to do the basic stitch; how to close the first round into a small ring. Pattern covered: Rnd 1 - ring of 12 petals; Rnd 2 - join the petals with small spaces.
NLfB (Part 2 of 8): covers the "over" joining stitch, a tightening tip. Pattern covered: Rnd 3 - in each space, *joining stitch, very small petal/"seed", larger petal, very small petal*
NLfB (Part 3 of 8): mentions end of round join, brief discussion of spacing, cutting off tails. Pattern covered: Rnd 4 - work ~medium spaces between the petals
NLfB (Part 4 of 8): brief petal sizing tip. Pattern covered: Rnd 5 - in each space, *joining stitch, very small petal/seed, 3 larger petals, very small petal*
*NLfB (Part 5 of 8): Pattern covered: Rnd 6 - work spaces between the petals--two smaller spaces are needed between the adjacent petals, and then a slightly larger space to connect them to the the petals on the next space over.
*NLfB (Part 6 of 8): how to join new thread! Pattern covered: Rnd 7: work small "seed" arcs between each space, but put an extra stitch into the larger spaces. Rnd 8-11(?): Continue working small seed arcs.
[NLfB (Part 7 of 8)]
[NLfB (Part 8 of 8)]
to be continued...

*I am going to review these videos again; summary may be incomplete.

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bobbin lace (mostly) links

2024-01-02T07:49:32Z

thanks in part to some activity on r/BobbinLace, I have been looking at some bobbin lace stuff tonight, and I stumbled across a few things of interest:

blog post on making a bolster pillow out of straw (this also made me realize that ...straw is something I could potentially order from Tractor Supply, for both pillow making purposes, and gardening purposes--for which case I have been vexed for some time about how to actually obtain straw when I thought it might be the best mulch for my situation...)
and from the same person, on making block pillow segments out of industrial felt (this might be a source? Though still kinda pricey)
and a type of Italian tape lace, Cantù...?
(this roller pillow lace kit, listed at Mielke's, might offer inspiration for a possible bolster pillow stand design)
reminder that Snowgoose, Van Sciver, and Lacis are major bobbin lace (and often to some extent other laces) suppliers in the US; Mielke's also carries a few things (and netting needles and gauges. Although so far as I know 50% of the netting-interested people in my circle is not in the US.)
a bobbin lace terminology translator, via Jo Edkins' really pretty helpful site
(while I'm at this stuff, The Lace Museum's Virtual Classes in various techniques, which I wish I felt more prepared to take; IOLI doesn't have a lot of online info in my experience (at least without membership?), but they might be a way to find local lace people*. And their convention this year is in Nashville, TN)
(aside from IOLI's library, the Embroiderers' Guilde of America also has some lace books in their library (...also a membership thing.)
here are a few more random lace pillow results of varying relevance (not sure how much I trust current search engines to reliably turn them up again)
(and a page about a Vermeer painting of bobbin lace, and a random history of some bobbin laces from archive.org)
not about bobbin lace--
blogger from those first two pillow making posts offers an inspiring collection of [mostly others'] nalbinding projects (btw I use the form "nalbinding" but just because I felt like picking one and being somewhat consistent; I do not assert that it is better than others for any reason beyond being one of the easier forms to input on a strictly English keyboard)
and one of the (somewhat lacy) projects showcased in said post--looks like this other blogger may have many more posts on the topic
(...also from that post, Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers)

*completely irrelevantly to everybody, they count Kentucky in the "Northern USA" region (basically the so-called midwest), by which I feel semi-vindicated for ridiculous reasons. (It is my opinion that insofar as it fits in with other states Kentucky is largely either (southern) Midwest--in common with its neighbors across the Ohio River-- or Appalachian in character, depending on where you are in it, and not as southern as a many people like to claim. If you count Missouri as Midwest, Kentucky should be in there too.)

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names I recognize belonging to things I do not know

2023-12-28T09:36:34Z

sometimes I think about names that in one context or another I hear a lot, without really looking into what they are or having personal experience with them, beyond a very superficial inference that it's a road/a person/a publication.

the other day I had a therapy appointment at a different location which meant I finally drove on a road that I've seen the exit for probably 50+ times and heard the name of in the context of radio traffic reports (some mostly tied to the exit location rather than the road itself) probably hundreds of times, having lived in the area since the first year of the millennium, yet I'd never actually set eyes on it. A few years back I finally used the Norwood Lateral (back when the Foodbank warehouse was located off of it), and a far longer time ago we first had cause to use the... Ronald Reagan [Cross-County] Highway that I'd previously heard of.

...but I bring this up actually because I have listened a lot to Advent of Computing in the past few years, and I only actually looked into Vannevar Bush and "As We May Think" in probably the past month or two, after hearing about that article as a major contribution in Sean Haas's view of computing history, and it was interesting to gain the actual context of ...kind of a precursor to the prevalent if perhaps underappreciated phenomenon of hypertext. (that is, text with links. And then I felt I needed to add a few of them to this post because well...) Now that aspect has been rattling around in my head now and then while browsing the internet.

(also, most of the time when Sean Haas has said its name, it's evoked in my mind the phrase "as you may think", which is more of a ...rhetorical flourish, and one that could equally be rendered "as you may believe". But on reading about the article, the topic is actually the process of thinking and the nature of memory.)

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