From Rain to Sunshine

[hrj]

 The nice long soaking rain we had all weekend was still promising things yesterday, but held off long enough for me to do my lunch bike ride. (It teased with a few drops when I was at the turn-around point, and then again just when I was a block from home, but didn't get me seriously wet.) I had a lovely zoom chat with hawkwing_lb before work. We've done it twice now on a Monday morning, so that's traditional, right? And then in the evening I dropped by the virtual book release party for A.J. FItzwater's The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper, from Queen of Swords Press. I've been feeling overwhelmed by all the online fannish activity going on, but wanted to support friends with small presses. And so I experienced my first "zoom bombing" which was an exercise in really pointless juvenile "because I can" nastiness which definitely falls in the category of "why we can't have nice things." The release party resumed after being cancelled and private invitations being sent around for the new version. But honestly, if the most entertaining thing you can think of to do with yourself is that sort of drive-by crapping on other people? I think the human race is better off without you.

I was thinking of getting take-out for dinner yesterday but left it too late to get started so I thawed out one of the frozen lasagna servings and determined to remember to order well in advance today. (Like, order by 4pm for a ca. 6pm delivery maybe.)

I'm having the problem of not really remembering what I did the day before. I should go back to blogging right before bed. I'm closing some of my older investigations finally two in the last two days and another on track for sometime this week. That will leave me with only one "oldie moldy", and in fact it will leave me with only one investigation older than the 30-day closure target. So take that, working from home!

Just in case I don't do today's blogging before bed: my baking project today was finally cracking open the elderly can of poppyseed filling and making a rather large batch of kolatchky. (There's enough poppy stuff left for another something-or-other so I think I'll bake a cake. Later.) I'll probably freeze 3/4 of the kolatchky and hope they're still delicious later. I'd much rather share them out with friends and family, but...well...here we are.

Listened to the announcement of the Hugo finalists while putting things in and out of the oven (in the non-biking part of my lunch hour). It'll be interesting as usual to go back and compare with my nominations. Definitely continuing the highly diverse nominee tradition!

Yesterday it was pouring rain after work so the yardwork languished but it looks like the storm has moved on so I can get back to applying the hedge trimmer to the bushes in the parking strip. Assuming that there aren't parked cars in the way. Or maybe I'll take the day off again. I'm feeling tired, mostly from interrupted sleep. And my hands are going through a stiff phase. For a while I thought that adding an aspirin a day to my vitamin routine might have beat back the arthritis, but evidently it was just the normal ebb and flow. My fingers are back to clicking and popping in the morning though they loosen up by mid-day.

Comments

[hrj]

4/6 - Temperature: 97.4
Lunchtime bike ride on the canal trail, no close proximity, no physical contact, no other excursions off the property.
4/7 - Temperature 97.4
Lunchtime bike ride on the canal trail, no close proximity, no physical contact.
Chatted with my next door neighbor when I got back from the ride -- their younger son had thrown a frisbee over the fence and they wanted to retrieve it. Took the opportunity to gather up the frisbee, large ball, small ball, small car, and wind-up toy that have migrated over the fence in the last half year. I figure my contributing to teaching object-impermanence is the lesson that if you throw something away it doesn't magically come back to you. We didn't quite manage to keep a 6ft distance while chatting, but no direct contact (though I handled the toys before handing them over).

[aurumcalendula]

Kolatchky! I kinda want to make some now.

(and this reminds I need to figure out how to scale down my grandfather's recipes (he was a baker for many years) - although iirc they tend to be for amounts along the lines of six dozen and I think the measurements are by weight)

[hrj]

My bread baking has been more or less by feel, though I did go online to look up a kolatchky recipe and used it for approximate amounts, ingredients, and some vague nod at their order-of-process.

[evil_macaroni]

I've heard of Zoom bombers but haven't experienced yet. People suck sometimes.

[hrj]

I've never quite understood the attraction of shitting on other people's lives just because you can. And yet, I have personally known people who have talked about how much fun it was to troll people online "for the lulz" or whatever the saying is. And yes, I do judge them for it. But I also have a hard time integrating that fact with what I know of them in face-to-face life. Which is what it's all about, isn't it? These aren't some alien species of online troll. They're people that we would never imagine would do something like that who get some perverse kick out of having the power to make random strangers upset.