all things very
Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett- Have achieved More Event Prep: both the arrows catalogue updating (albeit not printing), and Folding All The Potions
that printed successfully. - Friend is watching Orphan Black for the first time. I am getting Yelling. It's DELIGHTFUL.
- Yesterday, leaving the lower limbs class that has been prescribed in an attempt to reduce the risk of reinjuring my ankle again, I... turned my ankle. (This is not the good bit.) In more or less the same way I did in April, that was the motivation for the current round of physio, but whether it was the exercises having actually helped anything at all or the fact that I was wearing different (and more supportive) boots or just pure luck, while it's a bit sore it is not e.g. refusing to bear weight any time I don't pay adequately close attention to how I load it, so I'm counting that one as a win.
- We forgot New Elephant Day on Monday (Sheldrick Wildlife Trust calendar) so instead had New Elephant Day today... AND IT AN ADORABLE BABY RHINO. 13/10, etc.
- I am nearly at the point where I think I might be able to read the Wikipedia page on action potentials and derive meaning from it? I'm definitely slightly less confused about the cell biologist's definition of depolarization than I was even yesterday...
Galumph!
Sep. 2nd, 2025 05:24 pmazurelunaticRecently, Belovedest hauled Dad's old machine (dubbed Galumph, after the imaginary draft horse stallion Dad always talked about as his preferred riding beast) out to test it and see if it would run. (The massive monitor that came with it did not run, but I have found a suitably crusty-looking TV and other screen based appliance repair shop to attempt a repair.) Galumph ran. Belovedest looked at the specs. "That's a freaking RACK SERVER masquerading as a desktop!!!" they said, or words to that general effect.
So after we returned from the Michigan trip, I told Belovedest that it was time to take them up on their offer to rebox my poor old suffering machine.
I accidentally gave them the wrong figures for my C: and D: drives, so there was a bit of a flurry at first, but after they switched them, they were able to get to a login screen. I opened my Chrome / User Data / Default / Sessions folder, copied the most recent Tabs_* and Session_* files to a subfolder that I've named "Explicit Distrust" and launched my browser.
All 1,5XX tabs opened.
I've been trying to decrease them a little bit ever since, starting with my Main window, where the tabs tend to proliferate with abandon. (Trying to do this on the old hardware took forever, in addition to me getting distracted by shiny things.)
United Healthcare is at it again
Sep. 2nd, 2025 05:17 pmazurelunatic"If you have any questions" I could call in. Where I learned that there were a lot of those letters sent out in error.
I requested that the UHC phone agent quote me with any creative profanity she'd like to attribute to me when conveying my displeasure to her supervisors.
I called the schedulers listed for my "new primary care", who instructed me to call UHC back to say that I wanted to keep my actual primary care doctor (who I've had since my former nurse-practitioner went into Infectious Diseases. And gave me the "MPI" number of my current doctor, and further instructions on how to make this happen. (But it can't continue happening until tomorrow, because both of them close down their phones at 5.)
Kudos to that agent, who was on the phone with me past her scheduled departure time. I thanked her for that.
today's tomatoes (before the spring onion and balsamic vinegar)
Sep. 2nd, 2025 10:13 pmkaberett
(By "today's" I mean not "all of those harvested today, nor even yesterday" but rather "the tomato course with dinner".)
I really love the ridiculous stars on the tops of the Blue Fire.
Returned from Mitchagain
Sep. 1st, 2025 01:37 pmazurelunaticSpicy mango frozen margaritas are delicious. We went to a local brewery, I think on Friday after the parish hall setup for the party. S & Z went for the frozen margarita "flight" and we passed the little goblets around for tasting. I tried the raspberry daiquiri (non frozen) and found it too sour. But I was able to enjoy the hot rim on the mango margarita, to the extent that I looked up recipes and got a bottle of Tajín after we got home. We played Sushi Go (except for Mums) and Wizard (except for me). There was no duckie in the big fishbowl drink as they were out. Alas. Hot Rim is our new band, and all the titles of the songs are double entendres, each followed by a B-side entitled "... Vociferously!"
Pips' partner H came for Saturday and Sunday, and it was very good to meet them. Belovedest has a sticker on their water bottle reading "I'm the enby sheep", and H is another such enby sheep. And Goth. We took to each other immediately.
The anniversary party was a hit. I even convinced Belovedest to dance with me to "I Will Survive", which I named as "our song" — not incorrect, but it's my song from nerd camp, and I believe their song by way of yeeting the evil ex, rather than our song together.
Cleanup on site was very swift, and we didn't actually have to stack all the chairs. Afterwards at home (the parental home), V and Mums put away leftovers and sorted the salad (cucumber and tomato separate from the lettuce) while the rest of the kid generation gossiped and played games and I carefully pulled the photos off the science fair board and sorted them back into their ziplock bags.
There was Sunday brunch, and I think we may not go there again — both of us and perhaps more of the party had mild food poisoning symptoms that afternoon. It didn't ruin our days fully, but I was glad to have my fully stocked medical kit on hand.
Squaredle is one of the family preoccupations. It's a NYT game that resembles Boggle, except it's a composed game rather than random, and the boards vary in size and shape. (One recent one was a 5x5 doughnut, with the middlemost letter missing.) There were also games of Boggle.
I did have the new folding power chair for the trip, which saved my strength for the important things. The acquisition is its own story, with the Bastard & Our Lady's own lucks. (This is a distinct entity from the folding scooter, which should arrive later this month.)
Crochet updates:
My #10 crochet cotton super Goth beaded choker is finished with the structural crochet work and needs the final outside beading. I'm waiting on more of the beads.
The self-striping granny triangle shawl has the first triangle complete, and I could wear it like that if I wanted to. Now that I know how it's sized, I've started the second triangle of three to make it a trapezoid.
Secret #10 crochet cotton project with a due date: I need to make a crucial measurement, but I found the perfect button in my collection. Awaiting the first chain. And I am pleased beyond measure to have been commissioned it.
Yellface is extremely glad we're home. She lectured us at length about having left, in tones I've never heard from her before. That was the extent of her displeasure, fortunately.
I experimented, and got us a first class upgrade on our way out. There was almost enough foot room for Belovedest, and enough elbow room for me. I even napped some. There was a cheese plate, and I felt secure enough in my prophylactic meds to partake. The only problem was the combination of my swoopy sleeves with armrest cup holders, so my right sleeve became saturated with ginger ale for a while.
Coming back was very crammed, even though we were in the premium seats with some extra foot room.
I'm glad I went.
(no subject)
Sep. 1st, 2025 04:43 pmcesyThanks to The Happy Newspaper for the tip.
Vance is Worse [pols, US, Ω, Patreon]
Aug. 31st, 2025 11:57 pmsiderea0.
With all the eager discussion of the possibility of Trump dying in office, I am in the delicate and unfortunate position of not actually being in favor of it.
Don't get me wrong. I, too, would enjoy to seeing something very bad happen to Trump. What I'd best like is him getting his just deserts – ideally being arrested, indicted, tried, found guilty, sentenced, having appealed, the appeal failing, appealing again, having that appeal fail, petitioning the POTUS for clemency and it not being granted, him being duly executed by the state as the traitor to the Republic and the Constitution he was proven to be. I'm not generally a big fan of capital punishment, but I am in fact willing to make exceptions; he seems to think he's an exception to a lot of things, and here I would agree with him.
But that's not going to happen, not in this time-line, and it's probably for the best that it doesn't.
Perhaps he will simply keel over dead, and I confess I will take at least a little bitter satisfaction in it.
And it's certainly not that I don't wish us all to be spared even another moment of this Trump presidency. Of course I do.
Alas, as much as I hate to crush the pleasant fantasy of us being redeemed by the deus ex machina of artheriosclerosis finally doing its job and carrying off our oppressor: Vance is worse. Much, much worse.
1.
( It's perhaps understandable that you would not realize this.... Read more [6,770 Words] )
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Code deploy happening shortly
Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenancePer the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.
There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.
vital functions
Aug. 31st, 2025 10:31 pmkaberettReading. ( Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )
Skimmed several more pain-related papers.
... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.
Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".
I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.
Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).
Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).
For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)
Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.
Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!
Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.
Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where ( breathing, everything is fine )
such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!
Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?
Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.
Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!
small delights
Aug. 30th, 2025 11:54 pmkaberett- Went out to get mozzarella to have with lunch. Realised halfway down the hill that we could go all the way down the hill and watch the latest batch of cootlings. DID SO while eating raspberries. Excellent.
- Lunch also included home-made Tomatoes and Basils and Bread, and also separately a small baguette with fig jam courtesy of my mother and brie courtesy of Somerset via The Supermarket. V pleasing.
- Excellent chapter of book has introduced me to all kinds of things including pain asymbolia.
- I have DONE SOME ADMIN: THE LRP PAPERWORK. There is paperwork that is DONE and consequently in the RECYCLING. I have sent SO MANY E-MAILS. I am getting some really lovely responses! And soon there will be FEWER THINGS.
- Playing with pens! Continuing to really enjoy playing with pens.
Sex Education, Season 4
Aug. 30th, 2025 08:48 pmswaldmanIt wasn't a patch on the first season. Or even on S2/3. There were some really cringy episodes where I had to stop watching, and force myself to finish later.
I feel that Otis's story was largely told somewhere during S3, with parts left to close out. Maeve's story had a little left, but not a lot. This season was mostly about Eric, and also about Jean. And that's fine. They had significant and worthwhile stuff to tell, and I think it would have worked better if it had pivoted to being more about them. But they kept the focus on Otis even though there wasn't much more to say with him except as part of others' journeys, and that led to some really stupid contrived plotlines and so forth.
Still, it was a nice ending. I was pleased that there was some resolution and optimism for everybody, but that it wasn't happily ever after for everybody concerned.
This one will be [curr ev]
Aug. 30th, 2025 04:20 amsidereaEvery day, a man walks to a news stand and pays for a copy of Pravda, unfolds it, looks at the front page, and throws it in the trash. Every day he does this, for months, until finally the news seller asks the man, "So what is it you are looking for on the front page every day?"
"I'm checking for an obituary."
"Comrade, the obituaries aren't on the front page."
"Oh, this one will be."
more good things
Aug. 29th, 2025 10:39 pmkaberett- BREAD. I have coaxed myself back into giving it vaguely sensible timings, and shockingly it works better when I don't leave it to get sad and lonely.
- I slightly tripped and bought myself a writing slope last week? ... I am somehow surprised that it's being useful, specifically for when I'm being a horrible laptop + paperwork goblin on the sofa.
- SPEAKING OF WHICH, I am going through a bunch of tragically overdue paperwork for Admin: the LRP purposes (the person it is overdue to is... me) and found the answer to a mystery. (I am somewhat baffled that I apparently got the answer to this mystery at the second event this year and yet had completely forgotten that I'd managed anything of the kind until Just Now, two weeks before E4; I think I'm probably just going to chalk this up as another piece of evidence that my brain just... wasn't... working very well at all in June.)
- TOMATOES. Actually this is related to the Good Bread -- I had an excellent bread-and-butter-and-tomatoes-and-parsley lunch, which was delightful. The Purple Ukraine are so good and I like them so much.
- Today I have managed non-zero tidying, and the flat is marginally better and more usable for it. Mostly sorting out some of my gardening horrors on the patio; partly Wrangling The Dishwasher and some of the washing up; partly the aforementioned overdue paperwork, a consequence of which is putting a bunch of paper IN THE RECYCLING. Is good.
some good things
Aug. 28th, 2025 10:38 pmkaberett- A coaxed me out of the house for lunch; they'd been intending to spend the day in the office, but Shenanigans ensued such that they needed to pick something up from home and also the office canteen had run out of the veggie option, and by this time the triptan was more-or-less working. So we had zapiekanka at the market in the sunshine, and lo, it was good.
- I apparently somehow managed to duck into the BHF charity shop right before it started raining heavily, and upon reemerging from poking at homeware and books at the back was startled to find that it was no longer raining heavily, but that everything was suddenly and inexplicably (at least briefly at least to me, in my migraine-addled state) damp.
- I have finally picked up Lake of Souls (Ann Leckie), which I absolutely pre-ordered and absolutely was very excited about but am only now getting to, and I am having A LOT OF FEELINGS. SO many feelings.
- A brought me ice cream from the freezer. Raspberry ripple, which I was inexplicably in the mood for, and the hazelnut + hazelnut brittle.
- ... and in fact I am going to go and be in a sleepy pile. Yes. That can be thing number five.
The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh
Aug. 28th, 2025 05:48 pmswaldmanIt's a magical school. We've had lots of them already. It's an ancient(ish) magical school in England, in what appears to be a parallel world where magic is normal and acknoweldged and something that you can do a GCSE in. It's yet another magical school, but this time it is written from the perspective of the deputy head. The author is a teacher, writing what she knows, and this shows. She gets it. The best way I can think to describe the tone of the narrative is, paraphrasing slightly,
"No, your squad of demon hunters can't take these children to a place of safety. You don't have DBS checks! In fact you haven't even shown me ID".
There's a good plot, and it was a quick and intense read for me. Beyond that it's about identity. Specifically, identity for a middle-aged woman who has given her life to her job, has excelled, and isn't sure what else is left. It's about trauma, self-awareness, responsiblity, and hubris.
Highly recommended, and special thanks to
sfred who recommended it to me.Tesh has now done great MilSF (or possibly anti-MilSF?), and excellent fantasy. I'm excited to see what she'll turn her hand to next.
[food] today's adventures in EYB indexing: The National Trust Book of Puddings
Aug. 27th, 2025 10:42 pmkaberettSubtitle 50 irresistibly nostalgic sweet treats and comforting classics... featuring "Trinity burnt cream":
Also known as crème brûlée, old recipes for versions of this pudding are found in various parts of Britain and Europe. Its association with Trinity College, Cambridge goes back to at least the nineteenth century.
Despite my documented interest in crème brûlée and, you know, having grown up in Cambridge, I had somehow never come across this before?! And yet it's inexplicably clearly attested on Wikipedia. Nominally this means I should probably be indexing the "Ethnicity" of the dish as "English" as well as "French" but, frankly, je refuse, and even Trinity have the grace to say:
The story that crème brûlée itself was invented at the College almost certainly has no basis in fact.
It's not even like the National Trust is making a point of having all the recipes in this book be of British origin! Clearly-identified non-British culinary sources include Italy, Latvia, and Russia! (... the Welsh- and Scottish-origin puddings have headnotes mysteriously quiet on said origins, though.) AND YET. Crème brûlée! Trinity! Really.
possibly the most constructive thing I have actually done today is hunt tomatoes
Aug. 26th, 2025 10:46 pmkaberett-- no wait that's a lie, I also investigated an apple tree. (Unremarkable eating apples.)
But! Tomatoes!
Pictured varieties: Purple Ukraine, Blue Fire, misc green stripey, Orange Banana, Moneymaker. Buried so you can't see it is a Feo di Rio Gordo. I did not get the whole rainbow I was aiming for this year (alas the Yellow Pearshaped all failed, as did the Known green stripey), but I'm nonetheless pleased!
vital functions
Aug. 24th, 2025 11:02 pmkaberettReading. ( Raymond Blanc, Ceri Olofson, David S. Butler + G. Lorimer Moseley, David J. Linden )
Watching. An episode of Farscape: S02E04 Crackers Don't Matter, which I note with mild alarm (given how "..." we were at it) is considered to merit its very own Wikipedia page?!
The Old Guard 2. I... might yet get around to writing up thoughts.
Cooking. An Salad. An improvised but definitely acceptable for its purposes (i.e. providing nutrition for someone who currently has some decidedly inconvenient dietary restrictions) chickpea curry.
Eating. BLACKBERRIES. Still. Also plums. Really enjoying the plums. So many tomatoes.
Also a box of Many Salads from Mel Tropical Kitchen, some mildly disappointing cookies and a Good raspberry pastel de nata, and another cardamom bun from buns from home. Hurrah for spending a day at the BL?
Exploring. Poking around the grounds of a new-to-me hospital, where I came across an Exciting Apple Tree that I totally failed to actually inspect more closely, and about which I am excited primarily because of just having read a book a solid, like, half of which was Reviews Of Heritage Apple Varieties. (I was a little sad that James Grieve got only a very passing mention.)
The BL! And Beckenham, a bit, while picking up a watering can.
Growing. LEMONGRASS HAS A ROOTLET. Having another go at rooting a bunch of supermarket tarragon.
Observing. We found BABY COOTS. At least five of them, possibly six, plus one egg. They are juuust at the stage where they are practising GOING INTO THE WATER and then rapidly deciding Don't Like That and retreating to the Warm.
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yaros
Aug. 24th, 2025 01:23 pmswaldmanI enjoyed the first two books of this series. I didn't think they were especially good, in a sense, but they were gripping and enjoyable.
This one flipped over to "ugh, no". I forced myself to finish it, but will not be looking out for the next installment. This series, like many others, has handled the need for escalation between volumes by increasing the scale and raising the stakes. We started off with one young woman's survival, and now we're dealing with world politics. But this simply isn't handled well.
(spoilers follow)
( Spoilers )
Bleh.
