Kihō no Monogatari

Reading. ( Burch + Penman, McMillan-Webster, Wells, Davies + Jones, Hwang Carrant, Keynes + Aidley )

... all of which adds up to more pain-related reading than I felt like I'd managed this week, huh, I thought I had tripped and fallen entirely into Murderbot and EatYourBooks indexing but apparently not!

Writing. A response to the EHRC consultation, which was... several thousand words. A very, very brief response to the Pathways to Work green paper consultation ("I am too disabled to manage doing this properly. These charities are speaking for me. Please fucking listen to them.")

Watching. The first half of Fantasia, with the toddler, with my hand held through all the scary bits to reassure me, apart from the bit that was SO scary that we had to get up and distract ourselves until it was over. Which had absolutely not been flagged as one of the scary bits, and which was the deep-sea-origins-of-life section.

(I had not watched the film since primary school, I don't think? And between then and now I have played a bunch of orchestral music, for most of that time on the violin but latterly as a French horn. It turns out that when I'm not distracted by playing a completely different part, I have incredibly intense sense-memories of several of the pizzicato sections early on...)

Another Murderbot episode. (I continue Indignant.)

Another Farscape episode, this one Taking the Stone (S02E03), which I think was firmly back to early season one levels of incoherence.

Tragically we have not managed The Old Guard 2, because I have had too much migraine and there have been SO many things Happening, but... maybe this week???

Cooking. Several new things! Four from East, leaving me at 41/120 recipes still to make (two of which are "probably won't happen" for reasons of "grapefruit" and "matcha"); of those this week's meal plan includes two (aubergine larb with sticky rice; Vietnamese coconut pancakes). I appreciated the reminder that fried new potatoes are tasty, and A is notably into the chargrilled summer vegetable salad, though I was not a fan of the faff and think I prefer smitten kitchen's charred corn succotash.

Approximately zero faff was salt lassi, and A is now aware that this Special Treat is available; low faff was a cherry clafoutis with fruit from the plot, which I overcooked a bit but, hey, I do in fact like caramelised crunchy bits.

Eating. FIRST BATCH OF DESSERT GOOSEBERRIES ARE RIPE. A tiny handful of Sugar Magnolia sugarsnap peas. Misc jostaberries. RASPBERRIES. And also supermarket strawberries, because we have hit the stage of the summer where they're down to £5 per kilo :)

Growing. I have been doing small bits of harvest and failing to get support structures in for the beans and tomatoes. The outdoor tomatoes have tomatoes on. The squash are coming along; I put more squash seeds in, on the grounds that they're super late but might still do anything; I have not managed to kill all of the chillis; the pepper has flowers.

Harvested lots of dried peas for sowing next year. Am attempting to develop Plans that might actually let me have a full bed of broad beans and a full bed of peas in the interests of getting Reasonable Quantities of them. If the council doesn't tell me I'm not allowed the abandoned plot next door--

I could get so much done if I could coax myself out there for even an hour a day but the agoraphobia is saying No, annoyingly. Gonna try to get A to chase me out more this week.

1. Freegle has both provided (a 4'x8' piece of 6mm plywood, which I am intending to press into service as A SHED FLOOR) and taken away (a bag of used Jiffy Green padded envelopes).
2. I have discovered to my delight that I do not have to wait for a submitted indexed recipe book to actually be approved before I can ask for (and be assigned) the next one. My submitted queue is currently two deep; I'm working on another of the very short books now, and will be entertained if I manage to get it three deep. I am finding this data entry very soothing. (Though I am also having an entire moment over the vegan cookie recipe entitled "Rrraw", developed in collaboration with the Rrraw Cacao Factory, featuring raw chocolate and raw cocoa powder and raw cacao nibs, that is then baked at 160°C.)
3. ........... the internet just Provided someone's photo of a pet rabbit with googly eyes along its side. This is so perfectly engineered to A's interests that I'm kind of surprised it showed up in my feed because someone I actually know, who is not A, shared it.
4. I think I had somehow not previously ever spent a significant amount of time removing dried peas from their pods? But one of this evening's distractions jobs (while A was removing the ratchets from the plywood in service of removing the plywood from the roof bars) was removing the pods from all the extremely dried-out peas for the purposes of being able to sow more of them next year, and... they go ping and twirl themselves up into neat little curls for broadcasting purposes? if you just look at them a bit funny? I somehow had NO IDEA about this and it's GREAT. (Somehow: all my attempts at growing significant quantities of drying peas have thus far failed dramatically.)
5. While double-checking the series-internal order for Murderbot because I needed to remind myself which novella came next, I discovered the existence of another short story I had inexplicably been entirely unaware of... because apparently it's being published on the 11^th (and possibly in Reactor Magazine on the 10^th? According to at least one misc website...).
6. A, eating tonight's curry, suddenly went "... oh :( I meant to stop off at the supermarket opposite the pharmacy and get some lassi :(" (the last several places they have expected to be able to get salt lassi from having Not Provided). I, who had been aware of the Why Will Nobody Sell Me This problem, had been vaguely intending to get around to just making some and, up until this sad oh-ing, had been singularly failing to actually, you know, do so. But five minutes later A had acceptable salt lassi, and it was really nice to be able to Just Produce a Treet.
7. First couple of really good blackberries, and lots more raspberries, while at the plot. (There have been blackberries for a week or so now provided you didn't mind that despite the fact they were black they weren't actually quite done ripening... but apparently Just Enough more time has now elapsed!)
8. Facebook showing me the Mayor of London emphatically posting, as a caption to a photo containing at least 44 Progress Pride flags, "In our city you are free to be whoever you want to be, and love whoever you want to love. We must take a stand against those seeking to roll back hard-won rights."
9. Tomorrow morning's elaborate breakfast plans are cherry clafoutis, with allotment cherries. (And then while the oven's on I'll bake the bread.)
10. We are doing a pretty good job this week of remembering that mutual social grooming is good for us, and therefore actually managing brushing each other's hair first thing in the morning. Which for bonus points I am attempting to actively engage with as somatosensory rehabilitation, because I am having Thoughts about my constant background headache, and doing science on myself is my idea of a good time.

Bonuses (oh hey this practice is working): pink gooseberries -- plus yoghurt and hazelnuts, but also by themselves. tomatoes setting fruit. Murderbot novellas. fiddling with pens as fidget. The Fan made this afternoon's 28°C (or at least the bits of it I was awake for) much less unpleasant. A has just set the bat detector up and it's Detected A Bat!

( Read more... )

Reading. ( Scalzi, Wells, Gordon + Ziv, Burch + Penman, McMillan-Webster )

I have also done a bunch of variably directed online reading about models and theories of pain, and will happily recommend the British Psychological Society's Story of pain should this be relevant to your interests!

Writing. I am several thousand words and 18 (of 52) questions into the consultation on the EHRC Code of Practice consultation. The deadline is in a little under 24 hours. Approximately two thirds of the questions appear to be very simple and straightforward tickboxes. I am not super enjoying the free-text responses, and especially did not enjoy that despite the total lack of any indicator of a word limit there is in fact a word limit and it's 1000 words. I discovered this having written 2511 of the damn things.

More cheerfully I am also, as mentioned, enjoying playing with my pens for the purposes of notes about pain. I am increasingly convinced (cannot remember if I mentioned?) that I have Solved the Problem of one of my fancy pens having an unwelcome tendency to dry up when looked at funny, via the method of "giving the cap a bonus little wiggle once it's on". (It's the Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age which, second hand, was a PhD completion present from A, because -- for those of you who aren't massive fountain pen nerds -- it's made out of a resin that's got crushed Etna basalt mixed in with it; I spent a while going "is it just because red-family inks are typically quite dry???" but nope, the effectiveness of the extra little wiggle suggests quite strongly that the spring for the inner cap isn't quiiite activating when I'd ideally like it to. This isn't necessarily a huge surprise given how sticky it was when I first got the pen, but it still took me... a while... to catch on.

Watching. Up to date with Murderbot. Remain grumbly about Decisions including "how little time the poor thing spends with its helmet up" and "how bad people are at poly" and also, fundamentally, the word "throuple" (I AM TOO OLD AND CRANKY FOR THIS NONSENSE, APPARENTLY), but am also mildly peeved that we've run out of episodes.

Listening. An Indelicates gig, which I almost could not make myself leave the house for but was very very glad I did. Not having yet managed to scrape together the brain to listen to Avenue QAnon significantly increased the proportion of new-to-me songs!

Cooking. Bread? Bread.

Eating. The branch of Tonkotsu a short way from the Indeligig venue turned out to have outside seating! And an updated menu since last time we made it to them, so we both delightedly consumed the chilli tofu ramen and also shared the cauliflower 'wings' and some edamame and the very pleasant yuzu lemonade and also also I tried A's Smoked Hibiscus Margarita and it was great. (I mildly regretted not being in fit state to actually want an entire cocktail of my own.)

Growing. I... harvested and processed 1.7 kg of redcurrants! And ate several handfuls of raspberries! Depending on how badly my neglect since Wednesday has damaged everything given The Heat there's at least as much again to come off the redcurrant bush, and the jostaberry and gooseberry were also both looking extremely promising. AND the second sowing of kohlrabi has started to come up.

1. Went on an Adventure to post a lost item back to someone (hopefully in time for the next thing they want it for...), and was rewarded with DUCKLINGS.
2. Not too warm to achieve fallback dinner of I Don't Know, Bake A Potato, with the result that we finished the lurking salad leaves and also stuck some of the cook-from-frozen pasteis de nata into the oven once potatoes were done.
3. Ridiculous organic greengrocer had an option on sending us rainbow chard this week, which means I might actually manage to cook one whole new recipe this month (!), which was otherwise... not looking likely. (I have been comprehensively failing to sow any, but there we go.)
4. Went fossicking in sofa to try to at least rationalise my horrid piles. Found one (1) of the two (2) fancy watch chargers I own, and not the one I was expecting to turn up (because I thought I'd probably mislaid it in a field), which hopefully means that given a leeeetle bit more fossicking I might even find the second.
5. Really enjoying playing with pens for the purposes of making notes on the pain reading. (Today has been Mindfulness for Health, with detours to read up more on the gate control and [neuromatrix] theories of pain; I was surprised that Model First Proposed In The 1960s is still apparently more-or-less the best we've got for "how the fuck does psychology and emotional affect and other sensory input actually affect how pain is experienced?")

I was trivially able to dig out an example of a documented 5:1 female:male ratio.

Why yes I am rereading The Way Out (previous commentary) for the purposes of making notes on content and structure.