rectangularcat | Reading

Appreciation: Visiting friends; Sunshine; Naps; Coffee.

Theme for 2025: Focused creation

Me: It's been a mad week, starting with my Auntie and cousin being in London for the long weekend, shooting up to an event for a Laurelling, making stuff and shopping for people, and going to a 5-day event in Ireland. I...have not always made the best food choices, and WOW is my body grumpy with me. The madness continues for a bit, though, as I have houseguests tonight, and again at the end of the week until the middle of next. It's Countess Adina, who brings her own chaos vector, starting with "You gave me a bunch of transportation options to get to your house from Heathrow, and I chose none of them and got Paddington Express tickets instead," which puts her in probably the worst place to start from to get to my house. But here we are.

I'll talk about the event a bit, below, but Saxa and I fucked off on Sunday night back to Dublin to stay in a hotel and get a little bit of touristing in. This was an inspired choice, and I'm super glad we did it. A little tour of Trinity College and a peep at the Book of Kells, followed by seeing a bunch of lovely artefacts at the National Museum (waves at the Ardagh Chalice and Boru brooch) before I had to leave on Monday night.

The Food Report: I've just been eating what's in front of me, and hoping for the best, really. I am hoping to get back on track, because my body isn't happy with me.

Villa Formaggi Resort & Spa: Panic cleaning commencing in 3...2...

Reading, Watching, Listening: Reading: ... Watching: YouTube Listening: A lot of subliminals.

Eagerly Anticipating: Midsummer Coronation. A long stretch of nothing much so I can maybe make some new clothes.

SCA: I've made an apron panel for Her Upcoming, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I'm using the leftovers and some stuff I had laying around to make a matching hat for His Upcoming, so while they're not matchy-matchy, they'll at least look coordinated and shiny.

I test-drove the new dress at St. Bede's and Strawberry Raid, and I am well pleased. I wore one of my 16th c. dresses one day at SR, and was so uncomfortable I am now dedicated to making more of the new style and new 16th c. ones that actually fit (now that I have the patterns from Victoria). I also think I can just remove the laces entirely, on the sides, without losing any of the nice shape. That will have to wait until after Coronation, though.

Strawberry Raid was good fun, in sum. It was every bit as windy as the last time I was there, which I didn't enjoy, and there was more drama than I am generally interested in. If I go back, I'll sort out different food and lodging arrangements, I think. Staying in a big house with a bunch of other people isn't ideal, and there was a lot of backing and forthing for meals and schlepping food to site and a bunch of nonsense that I just am not into. There were a couple of other moments that weren't excellent, but I probably won't post about them but will say that some personalities are very challenging for me. I did have a good time, though - Etienne taught me how to play medieval chess, which was hilarious because he is hilarious. He proceeded to trounce me, and then I proceeded to trounce his daughter. I taught a couple of classes that seemed to be well-received. I had LOADS of hang-out time with lovely people, made some new friends and made some existing friendships better. It didn't rain while I was there. I got to do a bit of Town Crying, played Stunt Seneschal, and attended the royalty, so even got to scratch the herald and service itch a bit. Most importantly we have new Royalty, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they bring.

The bestest of the best, though, was getting to hang out with Saxa a tonne. She taught a bunch of classes, too, but we fucked off on Saturday after the tournament to go to the Irish National Heritage Park up the road a bit and then, as I said, ducked out on Sunday night to get back to Dublin. It breaks my heart that the Kingdom where she lives is such an absolute shit-show, in general, and for her specifically. I wish we could adopt her, because she brings so much with her.

Projects: Green sweater is still in the punishment pile. I gave up on the mittens because the pattern was nuts, and I've put the matching hood kit into the Charity pile because nope. I've started a hood for Ma out of some dark pink tweed, and have yarn to knit her a hat to match a scarf she wove for herself. Lots of thinky thoughts about modern clothing sewing, but stopping just short of buying fabric for that, so far. Materials for the Langobard ensemble continue to amass - I found some wool gauze for a veil and some linen for a dress, and bought a rustic-looking Laurel medallion from Oriane's first attempts at gilding + enamel so I can put it on some of the beads I have stuffed in a box, somewhere.

Work: Back on the bench, but have been attached to a couple of pitches so we'll see how it goes.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Villa Formaggi Resort & Spa
Current Music: Tinnitus

hrj

I was out deadheading the roses today when I noticed a few late-emerging artichoke heads--I thought the season was well over! That's something to note in my garden calendar. The garden calendar is a long-term project to track when various things typically come ripe and how long their season is. One reason is for the "blink and you'll miss it" crops. The other reason is so I can be mentally prepared when it comes time to do serious harvest processing. I mean, not that it's helped to know that the Seville oranges come ripe around the New Year, since I often haven't had time in January to do things with them. (This year I finally harvested the last bushel in May, which wasn't optimal in terms of quality.)

The other crop that's currently delighting me is the blueberries. Combining the fact that blueberries ripen individually rather than all at once, plus the fact that I deliberately planted varieties with a range of harvest seasons, I could well have a steady supply of about a cup every week for the entire summer. Last year they weren't entirely happy for unclear reasons, but this year they're going great guns.

The tomatoes are setting but none are coming ripe quite yet, which the calendar says is typical. It should be a good season, though. I'm trying a different irrigation method this year--soaker hose that loops around the bed, rather than the oscillating sprinkler. I've spinkled radish and onion seeds along the line of the soaker and I'm getting a steady supply of the former for my salads.

I've spotted two apricots. Not ripe yet, but they should be in a couple of weeks, if some critter doesn't get them first. They're on a very low branch. Maybe I should do something to try to protect them. The cherries will ripen sometime this month, based on past results. The calendar says that the plums will come in July.

hrj

So I've probably already mentioned (many many times) that one of my strategies for leading a balanced and productive retirement has been to identify a variety of "activity categories" and aim to do something in multiple categories each day, as well as aiming to do something in each category on a regular basis. That is, I don't have to hit every category every day, but I should rotate through them and get good coverage.

Today is the first day that I hit all 12 categories. I may at some point add more categories, but these are broad enough to cover almost everything. So what does that look like?

Got up around 6am (which seems to be what my body wants to do at the moment). Light breakfast and post about the podcast on social media {Category=Promotion}, then completed revisions on Skinsinger story #3 {Category=Fiction writing}.

Went out on a bike ride {Category=Exercise} and paused at the turn-around point to have coffee and read/annotate a chapter of my current LHMP book. {Category=Read for LHMP} Divert the end of the bike ride to set up the gym account that I get as part of my Medicare Advantage plan.

Shower and decompress for a bit, reading the current hard-copy novel (as opposed to the current audiobook). {Category=Fun reading} Then do a page of Medieval Welsh translation. {Category=Language} Type up the LHMP notes. {Category=Writing for LHMP} Then work on the "What is a Related Work Anyway?" background research. {Category=Writing organization/research}

Do a deep-clean of the bedroom. {Category=Housework/organization} Start dinner simmering (not a category). Do a session of weedwacking in the backyard. {Category=Yardwork}

At this point, knowing that I had a zoom date in the evening {Category=Socializing}, I wanted to push through and hit the last item {Category=Play Music}, so I put together my flute (which I haven't touched in a decade or so) and started some scales. The fingers were willing, but the embouchure was weak. This is going to take some work. (The higher priority is replacing a harp string and getting it into tune, but ticking the box with the flute was easier.)

So now I have dinner almost ready and at least a couple entirely free hours before bedtime. I know this all sounds really busy, and I'm serious that I don't have to hit every category every day. But it was fun to manage it at least once in my first month.

hrj

I worked on some fiction this morning. Nothing new, but I'm doing light revisions on my skinsinger stories so I can self-publish a collection (with one new story). I completed story #1 (of 7) today, mostly fixing some consistency and continuity issues of the sort that arise when you write seven related stories over the course of twenty years and had no overall plan at the beginning.

Yesterday I did a Berkeley Bowl grocery run and met up with former co-workers for lunch. Yesterday was also the start of the Rodent Mitigation in my crawlspace and attic. They were supposed to do more of it today but were having issues with the Giant Rodent Dropping Vacuum that needed to get sorted out. Unfortunately, this meant I hung around the house all day waiting for them to maybe show up and didn't get the final "not until tomorrow" until 4pm.

I finally got around to looking into the gym membership thing I get with my Kaiser Medicare Advantage. One of the member gyms is the Planet Fitness that I used for a while pre-Covid through Bayer's fitness plan, but there are a couple other possibilities within a similar distance. Biking is good for cardio, but I'd like to get back to some weight training too.

hrj

Started the day by biking down to Walnut Creek for some routine lab work. Dropped by Brioche de Paris for breakfast afterward combined with LHMP reading/note-taking. (My plan to reduce my "eating out expenditures" is being stymied by my current routine of doing LHMP reading in coffee shops. I'm not beating myself up about it, since I also combine it with my bike ride.) Texted the former co-workers to see if anyone wanted to meet up for lunch when I pop over to Berkeley Bowl tomorrow (since Wednesday is their on-site day).

When I brainstormed about how to structure my days in retirement, I came up with the idea of having a list of "activity categories" where I would try to regularly check off a certain number of different categories each day. (The point is the doing, not the checking off.) Most of them are things I'd been doing previously, though not on a close-to-every-day basis, like exercise, yard work, housework, LHMP reading, LHMP blogging, etc. But I added three categories for activities that had largely fallen off my routine: writing fiction (duh!), playing music, and--after some thought--working in non-English languages.

I'm still working on getting the first two into my routines, but yesterday I pulled out a Medieval Welsh text that I haven't previously translated (Owein) and started working through it. It helps that editions of Medieval Welsh texts generally have a glossary at the end, so in the event I don't know a word, I don't have to be going back and forth with a dictionary. But I was a bit surprised at how few items I had to check.

My current process is to copy out the original on every third line of a ruled notebook, take notes for vocab I had to look up, or verb forms I needed to work out on the second line, and write my translation on the third line. Out of two notebook pages, there were four words I didn't know, three I checked but had remembered correctly, and one verb form I needed to look up. There's also a passage where I know all the words, but I'm still working on the overall sense.

It helps that I'm intimately familiar with several of the branches of the Mabinogi, and the overall grammar and vocabulary of the medieval tales tend to be highly similar. (Also: I know the general shape of the literature.) But it was still gratifying to find that I could pretty much sight-translate 90% of the material. After I finish Owein, I want to try some poetry because I want to work up to translating a poem that doesn't appear to have an English translation published yet.

Given all the language study I've done across the decades, it's felt sad that I don't use most of it except as general background radiation. I'd like to brush up on my Latin, and I'd like to get a more formal grounding in reading French (at least academic French), which I can get the overall gist of, but don't have the grammar for.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

I know what I know, and perhaps more importantly, I know what I don't know...

tous naissent fous. peu le demeurent.

Reading

And they called the wind "I am so over it."

The Garden Delights Endlessly

Achivedment Unlocked

Did some writing...

Began another to-do category

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June 2025

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