Entry tags:
For a Change
I was given a 5-question meme by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ursula :
1. Tell us about a spice you had forgotten you owned.
Looking over the bottles (which I'm still working on reorganizing, I found a baggie stuffed inside one of the jars with a folded recipe rubber-banded to the outside reading "Lamb Tagine". The recipe may tell me who it came from, once I open it up. Since Lamb is one of the things I have a fair amount of in my freezer, I should try it. Even the spices that I can't really imagine using, I usually remember how and why I got them. Perhaps the oldest (and therefore least likely to be used) are some jars that are more in the incense range than spice (though they could be used in some medieval recipes: sandalwood, myrrh. Cynara gave those to me, I think when she was packing up to move to Virginia, which would be back the year after the SCA's 20th anniversary event (where she met the reason she moved to Virginia).
2. What was your favorite book when you were ten?
It may not have been exactly ten, and I don't know if it was my favorite, but the most memorable book from that era was Alexander Key's The Forgotten Door. There's a bit of a story around me reading it. Sometimes at my grade school they'd rearrange the classes temporarily for special subjects and we'd find ourselves sitting at someone else's desk for an hour or two a day for a week. I forget what the special subject was, but I was bored with it and was looking around in my temporary desk and found a copy of that book. I desperately read it during all the sessions I was sitting at that desk because I didn't know if I could ever find it again if I didn't finish it. That book convinced me that I really was an alien child from another continuum and all I needed was to find the door that would let me go home again.
3. Tell us about a personal experience with fencing, archery, or another martial sport.
Let's stick with when I was in grade school. My older brother and I were always coming up with imaginative play in our suburban back yard (also on camping trips), cobbling the props together out of whatever we could find. Once we made bows and arrows out of old curtain rods and bamboo garden stakes and practiced shooting by rolling a bicycle tire across the yard and trying to shoot through it.
4. What's a fictional trope that consistently intrigues you?
Intrigues or haunts? I'm a sucker for the misunderstood loner who some persistent person breaks through and befriends. (What can I say?) I used to fixate on "noble vampire" types for that reason until I had a surfeit of the type and pretty much stopped reading them entirely.
5. What's something you are anticipating in the garden right now?
The summer crops are too far away to really anticipate yet, so I'll have to say I'm anticipating the blooming of the gallica roses that are planted at the corners of my herb garden. This year I think I'd like to try doing something other than admire them. Maybe sugared rose petals.
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And now for the usual daily update. I'm starting to recognize some of the "regulars" on my lunchtime bike ride, especially since I generally see the walkers twice: once going and once coming back. Yesterday I was joking with one pair of women about which of us was stalking the other. Today I said hello to Woman With Very Long Purple Leash For Her Dog on the way out. On my way back, she was heading down a side lane to one of the apartment complexes and waved and I said "See you tomorrow."
My evening yard work was to finish the weed-wacking of the back yard. That's the first time in years I've finished the First Mow before the foxtails appeared. One of my back-fence neighbors was working near where I was and we chatted over the fence a bit. I occasionally meet one of the neighbors from the private lane behind my property, but there's so much turnover I rarely meet them twice. He's a heavy equipment operator in San Francisco (didn't specify what type of equipment) and still going to work. Not exactly a job one can do from home. Perhaps in a vital industry, so I won't judge.
My boss dropped a mention in the group teamroom this afternoon that our department has a new employee--since several days ago! (I believe we're about to hire one of our contractors permanently too, but that's not official yet.) I can't imagine trying to learn the investigation job remotely without a mentor beside you. But maybe he's done this type of work before somewhere.
Breakfast: oatmeal with plum puree* and yogurt. Lunch: boxed mac & cheese made up with yogurt rather than milk (tangier that way) and extra cheese. No Estates ingredient, unless you count the lemon* shortbread snack as part of lunch. Dinner was sorrel* soup made up with some of the lamb broth, plus toasted cheese and bacon sandwiches.
ursula :1. Tell us about a spice you had forgotten you owned.
Looking over the bottles (which I'm still working on reorganizing, I found a baggie stuffed inside one of the jars with a folded recipe rubber-banded to the outside reading "Lamb Tagine". The recipe may tell me who it came from, once I open it up. Since Lamb is one of the things I have a fair amount of in my freezer, I should try it. Even the spices that I can't really imagine using, I usually remember how and why I got them. Perhaps the oldest (and therefore least likely to be used) are some jars that are more in the incense range than spice (though they could be used in some medieval recipes: sandalwood, myrrh. Cynara gave those to me, I think when she was packing up to move to Virginia, which would be back the year after the SCA's 20th anniversary event (where she met the reason she moved to Virginia).
2. What was your favorite book when you were ten?
It may not have been exactly ten, and I don't know if it was my favorite, but the most memorable book from that era was Alexander Key's The Forgotten Door. There's a bit of a story around me reading it. Sometimes at my grade school they'd rearrange the classes temporarily for special subjects and we'd find ourselves sitting at someone else's desk for an hour or two a day for a week. I forget what the special subject was, but I was bored with it and was looking around in my temporary desk and found a copy of that book. I desperately read it during all the sessions I was sitting at that desk because I didn't know if I could ever find it again if I didn't finish it. That book convinced me that I really was an alien child from another continuum and all I needed was to find the door that would let me go home again.
3. Tell us about a personal experience with fencing, archery, or another martial sport.
Let's stick with when I was in grade school. My older brother and I were always coming up with imaginative play in our suburban back yard (also on camping trips), cobbling the props together out of whatever we could find. Once we made bows and arrows out of old curtain rods and bamboo garden stakes and practiced shooting by rolling a bicycle tire across the yard and trying to shoot through it.
4. What's a fictional trope that consistently intrigues you?
Intrigues or haunts? I'm a sucker for the misunderstood loner who some persistent person breaks through and befriends. (What can I say?) I used to fixate on "noble vampire" types for that reason until I had a surfeit of the type and pretty much stopped reading them entirely.
5. What's something you are anticipating in the garden right now?
The summer crops are too far away to really anticipate yet, so I'll have to say I'm anticipating the blooming of the gallica roses that are planted at the corners of my herb garden. This year I think I'd like to try doing something other than admire them. Maybe sugared rose petals.
* * *
And now for the usual daily update. I'm starting to recognize some of the "regulars" on my lunchtime bike ride, especially since I generally see the walkers twice: once going and once coming back. Yesterday I was joking with one pair of women about which of us was stalking the other. Today I said hello to Woman With Very Long Purple Leash For Her Dog on the way out. On my way back, she was heading down a side lane to one of the apartment complexes and waved and I said "See you tomorrow."
My evening yard work was to finish the weed-wacking of the back yard. That's the first time in years I've finished the First Mow before the foxtails appeared. One of my back-fence neighbors was working near where I was and we chatted over the fence a bit. I occasionally meet one of the neighbors from the private lane behind my property, but there's so much turnover I rarely meet them twice. He's a heavy equipment operator in San Francisco (didn't specify what type of equipment) and still going to work. Not exactly a job one can do from home. Perhaps in a vital industry, so I won't judge.
My boss dropped a mention in the group teamroom this afternoon that our department has a new employee--since several days ago! (I believe we're about to hire one of our contractors permanently too, but that's not official yet.) I can't imagine trying to learn the investigation job remotely without a mentor beside you. But maybe he's done this type of work before somewhere.
Breakfast: oatmeal with plum puree* and yogurt. Lunch: boxed mac & cheese made up with yogurt rather than milk (tangier that way) and extra cheese. No Estates ingredient, unless you count the lemon* shortbread snack as part of lunch. Dinner was sorrel* soup made up with some of the lamb broth, plus toasted cheese and bacon sandwiches.
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Lunchtime bike ride on the canal trail, no close proximity, no physical contact, no other excursions off the property. Talked to neighbor across the fence, but 6+ foot distance.
I need to get up and move around more during the workday. And I really need to do something about getting more face time online with friends. The "problem" if you want to call it that, is that I don't actually have much more "free" time than I ever did. I just don't have the casual human interactions in parallel with work and such. And just like physical visiting, there's that psychological barrier of, "How am I supposed to initiate this sort of thing? Do people actually just randomly intrude on each other and say, 'Let's talk'"?
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I mean it, btw, because I'm going up the walls here and I have absolutely no focus so talking to humans would be great. :D
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I also don't know if my laptop's microphone is working; couldn't even find it when setting up the skype account, but later found out that I was using the wrong sound profile (output only).
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I wouldn't hear notifications in the night anyway, because I'm a whole floor from the laptop, which is closed when I'm not using it and has the sound off! :-)
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I read Key's The Magic Meadow a lot as a kid as it was in the library. I don't remember much of his other work being there - our library was strange that way. They tended to have only the first and third book of trilogies, so it took a while before I could read the Riddlemaster of Hed books. I should try The Forgotten Door. I finally found The Magic Meadow based on fading memory and lots of searching.
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