A good day! Taxes and chores balanced out by several hours of fun design work, solid hangout time with husband and cats, reading a novella, and dinner including vegetables that did not take an hour to cook 🦾 I love working for myself - might not earn much but I’m way healthier and happier 🤷♀️
Probably I should trim these lower branches for access since even I have to duck under them, but they make such a lovely arch in the spring! Just saw a hummingbird in there too 🌸
📚 Today’s library haul:
Linghun was suggested by my librarian and was a Nebula nominee last year. Hopefully it’s not too horror for me!
I blazed through my last library haul so today’s is bigger 😎 A couple cookbooks, some art books, and some comics. Still going for lighter (mental) fare – but had to bring my husband to carry these for me since I still have lifting restrictions from the surgery 😹
French toast with berries for breakfast! 🍓🫐
My cat came over as I was finishing and casually took a big ol chomp of the butter before I realized what he was doing 🧈😹🤦♀️
Listening: Passion by Peter Gabriel
First day post-surgery (2 weeks ago today) trying to do some real work - taxes - and I fizzled after about 45 minutes 🫤 Hoping I can find the energy and brainpower for both taxes and a project scope I need to prep this week… Recovery is sooo slowwwww 🐌
I’m pretty low mental energy right now so I requested a bunch of comics and art books from the library. The Artist’s Way snuck in because I failed to re-pause my hold in time 😂 (I tried while I was waiting for my surgery but must’ve forgotten to hit save 🤷♀️)
Finally had some energy today after surprise gallbladder removal on Monday – but burned myself out cooking. Turns out I can handle the pain of an infected organ far longer than I should but have zero tolerance for plain food – I almost cried over an Ensure 🤣 Made white bean soup and fish tacos.
We think the coyotes might be denning in our back 40 again! Heard some cute yipping yesterday 😄
Also been hearing a varied thrush a lot – one of my few confident birdsong IDs – and finally saw it wreaking havoc in the wood chips 😂
I made the most of a morning blown by a doctor’s appointment by stopping for a waterfront walk on the way home 🌞 Gotta catch that sun whenever I can!
I recently blogged about why leaning on LLMs to do the work of reading and researching for us is a mistake:
Using LLMs to prepare summaries presumes that you will be interested in the same aspects of a piece of writing as anyone else, when what we take away from anything we read is specific to us — to our current knowledge, understanding, framework, and purpose for reading.
As someone who’s deindexed my main blog from Google to avoid turning up in their generated summaries / results, imagining people using some other LLM to summarize that essay makes me feel icky and sad 🤷♀️
Today’s library haul was pleasingly slender, making this a more realistic venture than many 😂 * Design for the Mind * This Country (graphic novel) * The Tea Master and the Detective * Steering the Craft * Ways of Curating
I was lucky to escape the library parking lot intact though! Never go at closing 😂
Twenty years ago today, I put on a vintage nightgown and shot a gothic self-portrait in a tree behind the college gym at 9 at night 🤷♀️ There was a basketball game inside so I kept hopping down and putting on an overcoat as groups of people walked by, looking super shifty 😂
To make myself feel better, I ordered lead test swabs and tested our vintage dinnerware. The tests are a little hard to judge but I think we’re in the clear there. (Might retest in daylight?) Then I tested my vintage pyrex 😬 Adios!
Baked Smitten Kitchen’s pumpkin bread. Used 1.5c AP flour and 1/2c whole wheat. Cut sugar to 1 1/3c. Upped cinnamon to 1tsp, and added a bit more of the other spices too. Topped with a cream cheese glaze. Took at least 75min - it was looking dark so I draped foil over it partway. Moist and tasty 👍
Maaaan, just found out vintage ceramics can leach lead from the glaze, especially if you wash them in the dishwasher and it damages the glaze. We’ve been eating off vintage plates for the past three years 😕 Ordered a lead test kit even though there’s nothing to be done besides stop using them 🙃🤞
Second go at this thick-toppinged coffee cake. Subbed ginger for allspice. Added 1/4tsp fine salt to topping, I’ll try 1/2tsp next time. Baked 55 min but could have pulled out at 50. I’d vote more nuts, maybe 1.5c? This time I crumbled the topping too finely. Might go lighter on the vanilla.
Brunch day! Potato salmon hash with poached eggs and sourdough toast. Now I’m ready to lounge 😄
Baked chocolate chip cookies. I like very little chocolate, so I used 6oz total (2.5oz 70% bar and the rest semisweet chips). Half the brown sugar was dark. Stand mixer struggled with the thick dough. Baked 12 min. This batch was just chocolate, but I’ve added 1c walnuts to the rest of the dough 🍪
Two of these bumbles on my tall Oregon grape this afternoon! Does it seem early for bees? 🤔 Glad to have this winter flowerer for them ❤️🐝 (I’m guessing black tail bumblebee?)
I’ve had a RescueTime subscription for years but I’m not getting much out of it these days. My subscription renews January 1 so I have a couple weeks to decide… I might also switch back to Classic RescueTime – love the ethos of the New version but probably not worth $50 for me 🤷♀️
Pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling and streusel. The topping was hard to apply – mine became a solid. I added 1/4t ginger but pretty sure I forgot the salt 😅 Flavor a bit flat. The cream cheese filling made the muffins separate when baked. The initial hot bake technique worked again here.
I had a lot of ripe pears so I cooked this dessert twice this week 😂 Simmer 3 diced pears in 2T maple syrup and 1T lemon juice with sticks of fresh ginger for 10 min. Let cool, pick out ginger, serve with vanilla ice cream (and pecan cookie 😉). Recipe from Erin Alderman’s The Easy Veg Kitchen.
Baked these buttermilk biscuits again tonight and actually followed the instructions this time 😉 Put in at 450, raised heat to 500, once it reached temp I let it bake 5 minutes, then lowered the heat to 450. Total bake time 19 min. Nice and tall! Added 1T sugar and probably 2-3T extra buttermilk.
Troubleshooting night at my house: CSS for me, Excel for the husband 🦾 I’m not big on puzzles or mind games, but problem solving on my website makes for a fun evening. I’m old school so I made it work on desktop first, mobile can come tomorrow 😉