hrj

 Somehow, every time I drop by DW, I think I'm reading regularly but it's been two days since I last read/posted. If it weren't for the scheduled social events, the labeled cat food cans (so I don't double-feed them), and the weekly pill boxes I would never know what day it is. So today is Thursday? That means I last posted on Tuesday. So what have I done? Well in the past two days I've finished editing and uploaded four podcasts. So the podcasts are set for the entire month, which means I'll suddenly panic round about my end-of-month vacation and realize I haven't maintained that caught-up-ed-ness. I was relieved that the Zencastr recordings with Janet Todd came out ok with a little editing, because both sessions were plagued with dropped connections and re-starts. We had two lovely chats and I'm glad that loveliness will come across properly in the shows.

Cross my fingers and knock on wood, but my investigations at work are coming along, though with a certain amount of dragging-kicking-and-screaming regarding people I need buy-in from. Had an interesting off-the-record email exchange with someone who was a fellow investigator ten years ago who's in a different department now about the emotional difficulties of not doing other people's jobs for them, even when you're watching them do something regrettable. (I don't actually have that knack. That's why I end up investigating things that nobody actually asked me to investigate.) I'm finding that more and more I seem to have slipped into the role of Wise Old Advisor to the department. The one who says, "You know, maybe we should stop doing this particular task reactively and design principles for a consistent workflow?" The one who reminds the management that we've been struggling with Topic X for the last three or four rounds of process improvement and maybe we have the wrong end of the stick? The one who says, "Actually this is a bigger problem than people are treating it as, and we really should stop trying to shovel dirt over it to cover it up." The big advantage this gets me is that I get listened to and trusted. The disadvantage is that I get asked to solve the problem.

There was a press release from Contra Costa county health services today saying they're starting C19 testing for everyone, symptoms or not. Free to all, though if you're on a health care plan (which everyone is supposed to be, because Obamacare) they'll get charged. I know that Kaiser has been setting up their own comprehensive testing facility in Berkeley but I don't think it's operational yet. (And I'd have to drive to Berkeley.) The CoCo testing requires an appointment, made by phone, so I imagine they'll be swamped for quite a while. I can wait. I mean, what would I learn? I've had absolutely no relevant symptoms. I've been tracking my temperature daily since the start of shelter-in-place with nary a blip on the thermometer. If I test positive, it will have been the most asymptomatic case ever. (And then I'll worry about having potentially exposed others, even though I've been taking all the standard precautions.) So if I tested positive, it would be a combination of freak-out and relief. If I test negative (the expected condition) that's only meaningful for the current instant. I will, eventually, get tested. But there's no rush.

The temperature was supposed to have been in the mid-90s today and projected for that again tomorrow. It was hot, but not unbearably so. I noticed it on my bike ride but still enjoyed the ride. My daily routine is to begin the day by dressing in "normal office clothes" (since we have our daily Skype meeting in the morning), then change to biking clothes at noon, shower after the bike ride and change to shorts and t-shirt, then open the front door (it has a screen security door) and the bedroom windows and start the fans going. Back when I started working from home, I'd play music when I wasn't having meetings, to cover the dead air and mask my tinnitus. But I haven't felt the need to do that for a few weeks. I don't know whether I've gotten used to the silence, or whether the white noise from the fans and the sound of the traffic fulfills the need.

Enough rambling.

 I'm not sure much happened on Thursday--but if it did, it got knocked out of my memory by the weirdness that was today. Not even connected weirdness, but just a sequence of random weirds.

Woke up from a very vivid dream that...well, here's the summary from facebook: I’m at a science fiction convention at a downtown hotel. The guest of honor is a dragon. But nobody had counted on the fact that the dragon is not simply intelligent and clever, but also cruel and hungry. The con com is trying to negotiate with it on the matter of not eating the membership while said membership tries to go about the business of the con. Somewhat furtively to avoid catching the eye of the dragon That’s when the large Pleistocene-era tigers and wolves started roaming the streets. Less intelligent than the dragon but just as hungry. They hadn’t figured out how to open the glass doors of the hotel lobby but neither could we figure out how to lock them. So the tigers and wolves kept pacing past, looking into the lobby hungrily as we froze in place to try to avoid stimulating their pounce reflexes Someone suggested that rather than hanging out in the lobby we should go to the film festival, except the festival was specializing in jump-scare horror flicks and somehow that didn’t seem appealing at the moment.And that's what my day was like. How about yours?

 Let's see...last updated on the 17th. That was Friday. Oops.

Part of my routine appears to be that I'm emotionally exhausted when Saturday rolls around and spend the entire day vegging out watching movies. After recording the interview first thing in the morning (which, by the way, I am not quite as enamored of Zencastr as I was when I first used it, but it's probably not their fault that the connection keeps dropping) I spend the rest of the day on the couch watching the entire extended edition LOTR. And that's it. Nothing else.

Sunday. Trying to remember Sunday. I did some yard work (tearing out ivy that grows along the fence with the neighbor--the neighbor who kept hassling me about getting rid of the ivy and never believing me when I pointed out that the roots were on his side of the fence (behind his toolshed) and it was not physically possible for me to "get rid" of the ivy. Finally when a male human being said exactly the same thing to him (my tree guy) he believed it. Grrr. But in any event, until neighbor and I synchronize our interest in replacing the fence in question, the ivy will continue to be a nuisance.

What else...oh, right the weekly DISTAFF social chat. After the first one, I decided I needed some handwork to do during the chat so I pulled out a piece of (very ambitious) needlepoint that I started back when I was in college. (For those playing along at home, that means over 40 years ago.) It's a medieval manuscript illustration of "the rabbits trussing up the hunter on a spit and putting the dogs in cookpots". I did my own charting, and a lot of the shading is somewhat freeform, so I can work on it without needing to constantly consult a chart. I'm making noticeable progress on it. I have no idea what I'm going to *do* with it when I'm done. It's an odd shape: about 1 ft by 4 ft. But hey, what the heck.

Also made a bunch more personal facemasks. Since I'm doing a "use once and toss in the laundry" approach, I decided 7 was a good number to have since I rarely do more than one load of laundry a week. I have yet to see how well the wire comes through the wash, but I found some brass craft wire so at least I won't have to worry about rust.

I got an inspiration for what to do for this months podcast essay. (I was contemplating doing another re-run but I like to save those for real crunches, not just feeling uninspired.) I'd done a LHMP entry on Brantôme's discussion of lesbianism at the 16th century French court that adapted nicely for a podcast without needing too much new writing. I should look around at some of my other entries I could use that way. The ordinary literature reviews aren't really suitable, but the primary source entries work well. I have a bunch of shows recorded that I haven't edited yet and I've set myself a goal of editing one per day until I'm caught up. Future!Me will thank Past!Me.

I had a thought at some point--I think it may have been on Sunday but who can remember these days? Living my life entirely physically separated from my social world and communicating entirely online both feels "normal" in that it's my default mode in ordinary times, but also triggers a lot of my anxiety about only existing to the extent that I'm creating content for other people to consume. I feel like a shark, constantly swimming to be able to breathe, except that I feel like I'm constantly flailing in cyberspace in order to continue to exist with respect to the world. That's why I'm tying myself up in knots over all the online activities that people are creating to fill in their quaran-time. I feel left out. I feel like I've stopped existing with respect to those activity-spaces. It's not that I haven't been invited to participate, but I CAN'T. I DON'T HAVE THE TIME. Because I'm working. Because neither my livelihood nor my other commitments have been halted by the Current Unpleasantness. And that makes me feel guilty for feeling left out. Because being too busy to participate in them is a privilege that many would much prefer to "suffer from."

But the other part of it is wondering if this is what retirement will dwindle into, especially if I end up with enough income to survive comfortably but not to travel and do the face-to-face interactions that make me "real" to other people. Being an online presence doesn't make you real to people. You're wallpaper. You disappear as soon as you stop swimming.

Speaking of swimming, Bella Books is doing a series of author readings on YouTube and mine just went up today. If you check it out, please do not bother to inform me that I have an annoying facial twitch. I know.

 I don't really wish I was spending the quarantine at loose ends wondering how to fill my time. Really I don't. But the weight of everything is wearing me out.

Slept badly last night, probably from a combination of having switched to the summer bedclothes (and hitting a point in the early morning when I was just a smidge colder than I wanted to be) and being mindful that I wanted to go shopping before "going to the office" to get started on Earl and Dad's shopping list. Except my car wouldn't start.

The fully-charged battery box did nothing for it. So I hooked up the plug-in battery charger and went online to make a noon appointment at the Honda dealership. This definitely isn't the battery draining because I haven't been driving much (since I took it out for a serious spin less than a week ago to deposit some checks). No, this was an ex-battery. One that was pining for the fjords. Problem was, when I went out to start the car after several hours of charging...still nothing. I called the dealership to see if hope-beyond-hope they might have a jump service. (No.) I let them know I might not make my appointment, but I'd try. Got a roadside service call that was right in the neighborhood, so I was there by noon after all. Left the car, biked home, skimped on lunch, lined up two investigations to close (for real this time). And waited for notification from the dealership that the car was ready to pick up. Their quarantine hours closed at 4:30 rather than their usual 6pm. I had already scheduled a Skype meeting for an investigation at 4:30. Around 3:45 I phoned in to poke them about the car and they allowed as how it was ready to go. (And when were they going to tell me?) Started to rattle off the recommended additional service and I explained that I needed to be back home with the car by 4:30 and if I promised really truly to get the work done when the world was back to normal could I skip the explanation? Jumped on my bike and pedaled madly off to the dealership, paid up, then waited while they were very leisurely about finding my car, and very meticulous about sanitizing everything they'd touched. (Ok, ok, I'm good with that. It's just...) Did not break any speed limits getting back home and slipped into my computer chair two minutes before the meeting was due to start.

Worked until around 6 to make up for all the time on errands, then finally went out to do the non-grocery part of the shopping. Some items are going to be tough, but I've got a second shot tomorrow morning. Then after work tomorrow, off to Stockton to deliver. In the mean time, I have a baking project on tap.

Tonight was supposed to be dinner-and-games-with-Denise but she's working late and I'm just as glad to have the option of going to bed early. So it works out for the best. All my usual sleep issues are being exacerbated by ambient stress. I have a book to read and a podcast to edit before the weekend. I'm not jealous of the people with all the time on their hands setting up social get-togethers online. I just wish I had the mental space to participate.

 One of the podcast interviews I've been working on scheduling looked like we were pinning it down for next Saturday, and then there was a crossed communication and yesterday I got an email confirming for this morning. Not wanting the opportunity to slip away, I went ahead and confirmed then stayed up late making sure I had good questions set up. A couple more emails on scheduling came in in the middle of the night (silly international time zones) but we decided to go ahead and make contact this morning and then probably do the actual recording next week to give me time to read the book first. (It's rather awkward to explain to an interviewee that you often don't read your guests' books before the interview. We ended up recording half the show this morning. Usually I do one show focusing on the author's own work, then a shorter one where they talk about books they've enjoyed reading. But this time I wanted to grab the opportunity of having an actual historian on the show to talk about her research and how it ties in to the LHMP themes in general. So we did that part today.

I started a batch of bread and then decided I needed a long break from being productive. So I grabbed some junk food and binged the rest of the first season of the Victoria series. Nearly nodded off a few times in the middle, not because of the show (which is lovely) but because I'm chronically under-slept. I now have a splitting headache, but I suspect it may be caffeine deprivation because I often switch to decaf on weekends. (Doesn't make that much difference in the current regime, but it's a habit.)

Now the bread's about to go in the oven and I'm back to feeling like I should be productive. So I guess it will be more Jane Austen marathon and data entry. This is the first day of ShIP when I've really been overcome by malaise. I want my hanging out in a coffee shop, not having to interact with people, just being *around* people.

 ...is I kind of forget what I did yesterday? I think I can reconstruct things. Started out with recording an interview for the podcast with someone in a European time zone. Great show. I love guests who have lots of interesting things to say.

I had a check to deposit and since I don't have that "take a picture with an app" thing going, I drove into Berkeley to my credit union only to find out that their ATM wasn't working (and they aren't doing face-to-face business. The deposit can wait, I just don't like hanging onto checks. It messes up the sender's accounting. Stopped by Peet's Coffee to pick up a mobile order of beans. They have a good set-up with both their doors organized with a service table across the entrance: one to take orders, the other to hand things out. Stopped by Safeway for the rest of the list and even though they were metering people going in, it wasn't a long wait. More milk and a few fresh veggies. I should have checked for half-and-half again but I hadn't get cracked into the "fat free half-and-half" and realized just how unacceptable it is. Look, folks, it's milk. Just milk. With artificial additives. If you don't want to put all the fat of cream into your coffee, just use regular milk, ok?

It's been raining fairly steadily all weekend (yay rain!) which was ok since the green can is already full, but it meant I didn't get my yard-exercise in. I honestly have no idea what I did yesterday afternoon, but after dinner I decided I need to accomplish something fairly brainless so I put Jane Austen videos on and tackled the taxes. That means (as it has for the last couple years) I started by tackling entering all the receipts since this time last year. They I enter and scan in all the bills. Then I reconcile the checking and credit card statements. *Then* -- with all the tax-relevant stuff flagged in the finance database -- I start assembling the tax data spreadsheet. Last year I got so furious at the way TurboTax is gouging for anything more complex than an EZ form and swore I'd do the free online tax forms this year (having bookmarked the site where TurboTax hides them while officially "making them available"). It means I have to do my own arithmetic (horrors! not) but since the pattern of what I'm entering is identical to the last several years, I'm ok with not having the leading-by-the-hand aspect of TurboTax.

Today started with more podcast interview stuff, then the regular Sunday DISTAFF chat, for which I actually pulled out some handwork to do while chatting. (Which opened another can of worms for sifting and reorganization: my sewing cabinet.) The rest of the day will be more Austen videos and data entry. And then it'll be Monday again. And how's *your* confinement holding up?

 I keep struggling with the feeling that I should be being more productive in my WFH time. I mean, other than being blazingly productive on my day job. And honestly, I'm not being *less* productive in any way. I'm chugging away through Female Masculinity for the blog (which is a fascinating book and has me developing a number of new mental models). I'm doing yard work every day. I'm cooking up a storm. What I'm not doing is writing fiction. It's the only thing I'm not doing that I feel like I ought to be doing, so of course I'm obsessing about it.

I made a pan of lasagna today. I'd meant to make it yesterday, but didn't get started early enough so when I "left the office" I was too hungry to wait the couple hours it would take to prepare. Today I had the better plan of using the prep for stretch breaks to get away from my desk for a few moments. (WFH means I'm not moving around as much in the course of work--no trips to the copier to print or scan, no popping into someone's office to chat.) When I did my first Quest For Groceries I included the necessary lasagna ingredients because I'd found the box of noodles while doing the cabinet re-org and figured that was a good an excuse as any. They were "no boil" noodles -- you make up the lasagna with runnier sauce than usual and let it sit to soak a bit before putting it in the oven to bake. I can't say it was wildly successful as great lasagna, but it was ok. I'm debating whether to simply have lasagna for my next three dinners or to freeze a couple of the servings. There's a paranoid part of my brain that whispers that if, by bad luck, I get sick, it would be good to have a bunch of zapable meals handy. (And I do already. I've got about eight containers of soup stock, and another half dozen boxes of soup. Plus other things.

Today's yard work was starting to take the hedge clippers to the parking strip. I love having rosemary and lavender there because they don't require watering and they stand up to people getting out of cars on top of them. But they stand up a little too well. The rosemary is almost three foot tall in places and I only wanted it to *survive* people stepping on it, I didn't want it to barricade them in their cars. I'm thinking I should replace it with the ground-hugging trailing variety. Some of the lavender is getting scraggly and woody, which presents similar problems, so I should probably start rotating it out for younger plants as well. The main problem with the parking strip (other than people's tendency to leave trash scattered through the plantings) is dealing with the volunteer weeds. When I first cleared it out and planted the rosemary and lavender, I put down a layer of landscaping cloth that suppressed the weeds. But that degrades over time, and you get sediment on top of it and the weeds go ahead and sprout in that anyway. I go at it with the weed whacker a few times a year, but it needs it more often in the spring if I have any hope of keeping it presentable.

You know how I used to complain that the most exciting thing I could usually think of to do on a Friday evening was go to bed early? Well, every night is like that now. Since I've gone back to my early alarm (and am getting my blog reading and writing done in the mornings), my target bedtime is back to 9pm. So here I am getting on to quarter of nine and thinking: well, might as well pack it in for the day.

 Don't worry, I have not been consumed with fever and been eaten by my cats. I just somehow forgot to blog yesterday. I wasn't particularly busy or distracted, I just...forgot.

Fridays at work are always a bit of a scramble  because our deadlines are based on "calendar days" not "work days". So if there's a random distribution of due dates, Fridays get three times as many things falling due. We try to anticipate that and pack some of the work into the earlier part of the week, but...there you are. Most of my current investigations are spiraling toward the drain, which means it *looks* like I'm not actively working on them, but at any moment there maybe comments that need to be addressed and turned around immediately.

I have two new investigations, one of which I volunteered for because it happened as part of the same process as the other and since I was in the middle of immersing myself in the background, it seemed most efficient for me to do both. The first one involves some of the sort of document-history detective work I love doing. Where you trace back the problematic bit of the Standard Operating Procedure and discover that several years and multiple revisions ago, someone made a peculiar error that has never been caught and now you have to sort it out and ask how they were managing to perform the procedure correctly if they were actually using the SOP for guidance. And seemingly unrelated issues pop up in the mean time. Here's the basic issue: We have a procedure for shipping Object X from Location A to External Storage. We have a procedure for transferring Object X from Location A to Location B. We do not have a procedure for transferring Object X from Location B to Location A, nor do we have a procedure for shipping Object X from Location B to External Storage. Location B is full and we need to move some of the contents to External Storage. How do we do that? (Or rather, given that we *are* doing it, how do I deal with that because our procedure clearly doesn't allow for it.)

I also spent a fair amount of work time coaching my trainee (who, in theory, is fully qualified but that's different from being completely independent). I forget if I blogged about the investigation last week where, at the last minute, my reviewer required a whole slew of documentation on potential impact that was utterly unrelated to the actual failure I was investigating. Anyway, my trainee has an investigation for a similar part of the process being reviewed by the same reviewed and was told, "Provide me with this laundry list of documentation. Heather can help you because she did it for her recent investigation." Never mind that I explicitly said, "I'm giving up and I'll give you The Things because we need to get this closed, but I don't want this to be a precedent that these requests are reasonable or necessary and (to my manager) this is an official escalation that we need to address the question of irrelevant documentation requests." So the idea that my grudging capitulation is being used as precedent to require the same in another investigation is galling. (I told my trainee to talk to our manager and ask him to push back on her behalf.)

Yesterday I gamified part of my kitchen reorganization. The problem: I have a lot of coffee mugs. Far more than I need (especially given that I've got a full set of coffee cups as part of my china pattern). And I want to free up some cabinet space. (Currently one entire cabinet shelf is coffee mugs.) So every day I'll be using and posting a picture of a different coffee mug and asking facebook whether I should keep it. So far, the answer is: the vertebra-shaped novelty mug should be kept as a pencil cup on my desk, but removed from the cabinet, but the squat wide-bottomed "travel mug" should be ditched.

I had decided that, on my lunch bike ride, I was going to formally introduce myself to the regular I think of as "purple leash lady". (She has a very long, purple nylon webbing leash for her dog to let him run. Which means that any time someone is passing her and she needs closer control, she has to loop up 50 feet or so of leash. Which she does, but it's a bit funny to watch.) I've already spoken to her a few times (including apologizing for my initial comment, "you think the leash is long enough" because I realized that she's undoubtedly heard that joke entirely too many times before). But we missed each other's schedules because I was a bit late getting away from my desk, so I didn't see her.

To decompress over dinner, I've started getting caught up with some of the tv shows I've bought off of iTunes. I've been working my way through Versailles, but though it's a gorgeous show, I can't say I entirely *like* it. In part, it dwells too lovingly on physical nastiness (one of my squicks is body horror and it does a fair amount of that). But in part, I get restless because of how male-centered it is. Not that there aren't female characters, but with the exception of doctor-lady, their stories all revolve around the men. It gets tedious.

I'm having a bit more fun with Wolf Hall, though it's still a very male-centered story. I keep mentally comparing it with my memories of A Man for All Seasons and thinking about how entirely different stories can be told of the same events from different perspectives. Even as the viewpoint character in Wolf Hall, it's inescapable that Thomas Cromwell's story is that of a villain in some ways. And yet we're inescapably drawn into understanding the events from his point of view and seeing why every thing he does makes perfect sense.

I'm definitely getting starved for one-on-one social interactions, so I've set up a Skype call that I need to sign off here for soon. So I'll quickly summarize the food: breakfast - savory oatmeal with some of the lamb minced up and some of the lamb drippings mixed in. (I'm a big fan of savory oatmeal.) Lunch - lamb sandwich with apple chutney, lemon shortbread with mashed fresh raspberries. Dinner - hmm, trying to remember. Oh yes, the last of the lamb, reheated with some leftover steamed potatoes. 

 I woke up to the notification that Worldcon has decided to implement a virtual convention rather than either canceling, postponing, or crossing their fingers and hoping the plague goes away. I have mixed feelings, but mostly from a baseline of "everything is awful so let's see what sort of lemonade we can make from these lemons." Honestly, I'm a bit excited to see what can be done with a virtual Worldcon. Of all the conventions I attend regularly, it's the one where somewhat leveling the playing field in terms of ability to attend and participate would reap the greatest benefits. There are things you can't get without the face-to-face interactions, but there's a chance that remote participation will increase the international character of the convention in positive ways.

Also re: lemons -- I made some lemon* shortbread as a treat today and shared it virtually with my twitter friends and physically when I went over to Denise's for dinner. Yes, I transgressed strict distancing, but we did a lot of handwashing and didn't touch and I was getting really starved for peopling. I learned a new tabletop game and beat her three times. We'll need rematches.

So far this week, I've officially turned in three major investigations for review and expect to turn in two minor ones before the week is out. I'm not being quite as productive as that sounds, it's just that all the dominoes were ready to fall. It'll make my manager happy.

They sent out the payslips for our annual bonuses today and I'm feeling a wave of...not guilt, but awareness of inequities. I'm still working almost like nothing's happened, I have every support from my employer you could imagine, *and* I get a bonus. It's not that I think I don't deserve it, it's that I think everyone does. I plan to do some tactical shopping from small businesses and such to assuage my conscience.

Breakfast was bacon and french toast, topped with various jellies* and preserves*. Lunch was the solids from making the lamb broth with herbs* from the garden. Dinner was salad with tomatoes, surimi, canned artichoke hearts, and dill pickles*. Plus lemon* shortbread.

(* = produce of my estates)

Today I’m trying the whole “get up earlier and be creative before work” thing. It worked, although since Monday is LHMP blog day, the writing was all for the intro to the article.

Every time I look in the mirror, I wonder what my hair is going to look like by the next time I get it cut. It was just at the point where I usually cut it at the start of the SIP (shelter in place, though at work that acronym stands for “steam in place” for sanitizing large equipment). I sometimes think about trying a new hair style but you need to start out with more hair to do any truly different from your usual. Maybe this time...

Dayjob was frustrating again today, with stakeholders offering ambiguous and contradictory answers to a request for alignment. Closed one investigation and have about four more ready to drop as soon as one last thing falls in place. Once more it feels like I do nothing but nag other people to do their jobs. Except finishing my deliverables is never their primary job, it’s always something piled on top of their primary job. When they come through, it can be magic. I spent an hour this morning drawing up a list of people who rose above the call of duty for a recent problem that I’m going to recommend for a corporate attaboy.

It was too cold to do yard work this evening, so I settled for watering the new plants, just to tide them over until tomorrow’s promised rain. It’s probably time to run tests on the irrigation system, replace the batteries, and start it going on the spring schedule. I love the programmable irrigation channels that run off the regular hose, but I really, really need to get someone in to do some hard-piping instead. Sometime when all this *waves hands vaguely* is over.

I decided to take a break from home cooking and ordered in from one of my favorite sushi restaurants through GrubHub. Too expensive to do often, but I don’t begrudge supporting the supply chain when I do. I opted for a hands-off porch delivery, but when I went out to pick it up, I called after the delivery guy, “Stay safe!” He asked me to include him in my blessings. May all the gig-working delivery people stay safe and healthy and able to support themselves.

So I broke the Estates requirement for dinner, but breakfast was steel-cut oats with plum puree* and yogurt. Lunch was a roast lamb sandwich made with apple chutney* and some miracle whip that’s been sitting in the door of the fridge for about four years. I’m not sure that it’s actually food--it looked the same as the day it was bought. I broke open another of the Bingley’s teas varieties for my afternoon tea, “Mr. Darcy”. And I'm keeping a bag of dried apple* slices by my desk for nibbling. Somehow in last year's crop I managed the perfect dried apple. Although they only seem normally dried when I bag them up and pop them in the freezer, they must get something of a freeze-dry effect because now they're perfectly crisp and crunchy. (If I keep the bag well sealed, they stay that was for weeks out of the freezer, though they're still good if they go limp.) The current bag is one of the cinnamon-sprinkled variants. I may try even more flavorings next season. A powder douce flavor would be nice.