dabbleswithpoisons

Reading. I have FINISHED Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), including both indexes, including The Games Therein, and had a Great time.

Started (just now) The Rose Field, volume three of The Book of Dust (Philip Pullman). ( Grousing; vague spoilers for vol 2 )

so as I say I'm not hugely hopeful for this, but hey, maybe I'm being unfair to it.

Writing. Did you know that getting knowledge out of your own head and into other people's is a specific set of skills that has very little to do with how well you know the things you're trying to communicate? TRY TO LOOK SHOCKED, PLEASE. (6.3k words, and am absolutely in an Iterative Cycle of trying to make the introduction more-or-less work. It is progressing, just... very slowly.)

Listening. I realised that Hidden Almanac was possibly in fact exactly a useful sort of thing to listen to while Wrangling Laundry, and have therefore started again from the beginning, at least in part as an attempt to actually listen to some of the episodes I dozed through while they were playing in the car...

Playing. Incomplete White Puzzle progresses. (Today I have added I think three pieces to the contiguous section, two of which I had already joined to each other as a free-foating lump, and made another couple of free-floating lump connections.)

I think we also did a bit more Inkulinati before I got horrendously distracted by Puzzle. And the sudoku fixation continues, though it is at least ramping down a little.

Cooking. I have been having A Rough Week brain-wise, but I have today managed to make some bread, and I did earlier in the week gently fry up some celery and garlic to add to the mashed potato & parsnip that we were having with Vegetables and Veg Sossij. I think that is about the extent of it.

Eating. VEGETABLES, including a couple of peppers from an overwintered plant. (Restricted diet for a week up until the Tuesday just gone, so the return of Fibre was Extremely Welcome.) Favourite chocolate stars with raspberries. Fruit With Skin On. Lebkuchen. Stollen. Seeds and nuts.

Growing. I think the nematodes (applied as a split dose a few days apart) have dealt? at least temporarily? with the sodding Sciarid Flies? for now?

Lemongrass needs pricking out. Physalis are showing zero indication that they have any intention of germinating, which is mildly annoying. There are still three not-dead Lithops seedlings, though I doubt they're the same three as last week. Orchids getting increasingly enthusiastic about their plans to flower.

Have not managed to get anything else sown, yet.

Observing. Lots of bulbs: daffodils and crocuses various and snowdrops are Definitely Underway, at this point. We are fairly convinced that the Yelling from the garden around dusk is Amorous Foxes, though we have not (yet?) bestirred ourselves to ask the internet if what we think we're hearing is in fact what we're hearing...

oursin

Last week's bread held out very well and there was even enough crust left to cut up and fry with onion and garlic to make frittata for Friday night supper.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 strong white/buckwheat flour (I was actually going to do rye, but it was rather long past its best before).

Today's lunch: this was actually a change of plan, because for last night's evening meal we had Waitrose Slow-Cooked Gammon Shank which turned out to be Rather A Lot, so quite a bit left over, which I therefore recycled into a sort-of cassoulet-type-thing with Belazu Judion Butter Beans, garlic, thyme, and panko crumbs; served with tenderstem broccoli tips, trimmed fine green beans and chopped Romano peppers white-braised, but with lazy chopped ginger rather than star anise for a change, and chestnut mushrooms sauteed somewhat after the recipe in Dharamjit Singh's Indian Cookery, with onion salt, ground black pepper, basil, a dash of cayenne, and lime juice.

siderea

Hey, does anybody happen to know the answer to this question?

Back when Mr B and I started doing joint grocery orders, I started analyzing our budget like you do. In the course of doing so, I discovered something I hadn't realized: about a third of my "grocery" budget wasn't food. It was:

• Disposable food handling and storage supplies: plastic wrap, paper towels, aluminum foil, ziplocs, e.g.

• Personal hygiene supplies: toilet paper, bath soap, shampoo, skin lotion, menstrual supplies, toothpaste, mouthwash, Q-tips, e.g.

• Health supplies: vitamins, bandaids, NSAIDs, first aid supplies, OTC medications and supplements, e.g.

• Domestic hygiene supplies: dish detergent, dish soap, dish sponges, Windex, Pine-sol, laundry detergent, bleach, mouse traps, e.g.

None of these things individually needs to be bought every grocery trip, but that's good, because they can add up fast. Especially if you try to buy at all in volume to try to drive unit costs down. But the problem is there are so many of them, that usually you need some of them on every order.

This fact is in the back of my head whenever I hear politicians or economists or social commentators talk about the "cost of groceries": I don't know if they mean just food or the whole cost of groceries. Sometimes it's obvious. An awful lot of the relief for the poor involves giving them food (such as at a food pantry) or the funds to buy it (such as an EBT card), but very explicitly doesn't include, say, a bottle of aspirin or a box of tampons or a roll of Saran wrap. Other times, it's not, such as when a report on the cost of "groceries" only compares the prices of food items, and then makes statements about the average totals families of various sizes spend on "groceries": if they only looked at the prices of foods, does that mean they added up the prices of foods a family typically buys to generate a "grocery bill" which doesn't include the non-food groceries, or did they survey actual families' actual grocery bills and just average them without substracting the non-food groceries? Hard to say from the outside.

When we see a talking head on TV – a pundit or a politician – talking about the price of "groceries" but then say it, for example, has to do with farm labor, or the import of agricultural goods, should we assume they're just meaning "food" by the term "groceries"? Or it is a tell they've forgotten that not everything bought at a grocery store (and part of a consumer's grocery store bill) is food, and maybe are misrepresenting or misunderstanding whatever research they are leaning on? Or is it a common misconception among those who research domestic economics that groceries means exclusively food?

So my question is: given that a lot of information about this topic that percolates out to the public is based on research that the public never sees for themselves, what assumptions are reasonable for the public to make about how the field(s) which concern themselves with the "price of groceries" mean "groceries"? What fields are those and do they have a standard meaning of "groceries" and does it or does it not include non-food items?

This question brought to you by yet another video about the cost of groceries and how they might be controlled in which the index examples were the ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but, as usual, not the sandwich baggy to put it in to take to school or work.

azurelunatic

I got a steroid shot in my right knee on Wednesday, and miraculously I can almost walk again.

I'm still spending a lot of time in bed, but I don't have to strategize about bathroom trips. One cane is sufficient.

kaberett

At some point in proceedings (depression? pain? migraine? dense technical text for the PhD? poetry?), I realise, I have gone from reading Unusually Quickly to still reading More? Than Population Norm? (75ish books last year, of which 15ish were graphic novels or otherwise not-a-novel's-worth-of-words), but no faster than I'd be able to read the text aloud -- "hearing" each word in my head, and often rereading sentences repeatedly.

This is in contrast to how I type, which is much faster than I can speak comprehensibly (... though I now recall that I am in fact often asked to Slow The Fuck Down when providing information verbally).

I have over the last little bit been tentatively experimenting with trying not to read each word "aloud", mentally, and instead treating The Written Word as something that doesn't always need to be (pseudo-)vocalised.

It feels weird. It's an active effort. I am extremely dubious about the impact on how much information I retain; Further Study Required. I think this is probably how I used to read (when?); I'm not sure what changed; I'm unsettled.

(And I want to post something to Dreamwidth before bed, and this is a thing I was thinking about a lot while almost-but-not-quite finishing Index, A History of the -- I'm at a point I'd ordinarily count as "finished" but obviously it is in this instance both important and rewarding to read the index, all two of it, so here y'go.)

oursin

That was a week that felt a bit odd, which may have been quite a bit down to my not sleeping as well as have latterly been doing.

Also not getting out for accustomed daily walk as often as usual because RAIN.

Somewhat stunned by phonecall from friend with whom I am collaborating on various projects who has recently had some rather devastating health news.

Resumption of contact with two other friends: one of whom I had contacted after receiving what turned out to be, as I had suspected, spam email from her hacked account.

Having the February blahs, pretty much.

kaberett

The context is Simone Giertz's Incomplete White Puzzle, which A got me partly to troll me and partly because they thought I'd enjoy it and partly because getting the bundle of all three puzzles gets you 20% off individual list prices.

Current status: 105/"500" pieces in their final positions, plus another 57 no longer singletons. I have several semi-sorted categories including (in the halves of the box) "could plausibly have come from a reasonable puzzle" and "bullshit", and (on the table) Swoopy Bullshit, Offset Noses, Weirdly Straight, Multi-Nose Bullshit, and Featureless Curves.

( THOUGHTS )

I am having a very pleasant and soothing time, and I am trying to break up the hyperfocus by instituting a rule of Get Up And Do One Unit Of Something Else After Every (Contiguous) Piece Placed, and yes that is me rules-lawyering after the fact...

oursin

Do I need to ask, guess the critic, given the headline on this review of the Gwen John exhibition: In a superb, mystical retrospective, the painter sheds social trappings – and her clothes – as she uses her enormous intelligence to paint purely. JJ, go and take a cold shower!

***

I am not sure that exorcism is quite what is needed in the case, unless he starts doing manifestations in galleries of writhing and speaking in occult tongues and so on: Demand for exorcisms rises as faithful want ‘deliverance from evil’. And in fact it all sounds rather low-key:

Even when an Anglican priest does perform an exorcism, they are nothing like Hollywood horror scenes with “shouting and screaming” and demonic drama.
They are “quiet and calm” affairs where a priest prays with a troubled person, usually after consultation with a psychiatrist and safeguarding experts.

One does feel that this is in the tradition of the C of E! Maybe with a nice cup of tea afterwards....

***

Knepp: Wilding from the Weald to the waves:

After inheriting the estate from his grandparents in 1983, Charles Burrell soon realised that large-scale farming was impossible on low-lying clay land. So, in 2002 he and his wife, author, and journalist Isabella Tree, embarked on what has become a pioneering rewilding project converting pasture into a patchwork of grasslands, scrub, groves, and towering oaks. Now home to storks, beavers, and nightingales, to name a few, Knepp’s ever-evolving experiment is open for all to enjoy.

Call me a cynical old bat, but I can't help feeling that this is in a Grand Old Longstanding Tradition of landowners doing whatever is The Latest Thing with the estate they inherited. And these days it is not either, tart it up like unto the gardens he saw on his Grand Tour in Italy, introducing various invasive species animal and vegetable, or, set up a funfair and safari park as a remunerative enterprise to enable him to pay off the crippling death duties the iron heel of Clem Attlee and Co has imposed, but to get acclaim for this absolutely on-trend thing to do with his land.

***

This is a different kind of heritage: Heritage Unlocked: Birmingham’s Unique Municipal Bank:

Birmingham Municipal Bank (1919-1976) was unique as the first and only local authority savings bank in England. Unlike other savings banks (such as the Trustee Savings Banks), customers could borrow money through the House Purchase Department to buy their home. Unlocking the Vaults, has been uncovering the Bank’s history and how it helped shape Birmingham’s story. The Exchange (opposite the Library of Birmingham) was once the head office for the Municipal Bank, and it lies at the heart of this project with many projects and events taking place in the historic Vaults.
Historic black and white photo of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, showcasing its grand architecture with tall columns and detailed facade.
....
A key finding of the project has been the significance of the Municipal Bank, not only as a financial institution but also as a cornerstone of community life, with local branches established on high streets across the city between the 1920s and 1970s.

***

The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships - in fact, point is made in there that perhaps what there has been is a rise of is families being all up in one another's business because of Modern Technology and tracking devices, family group chats, the ability to know where family members are and what they are up to at all hours of the night and day.

Because I would not at all describe my own family as 'low contact', we just did not live in one another's pockets and need to be constantly informed and have opinions about each other's lives. Weekly phone-calls - occasional visits- etc etc.

I'm not surprised people feel smothered and overwhelmed when I read some of the shenanigans that families do but then, am introvert to start with.

oursin

Happy birthday,

rymenhild!

kaberett

some washi tape I wanted has restocked at a UK retailer! Possibly a second one also! So as and when the website works out what's going on with Desired Tape #2, it is time to place a stationery order for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Progress With Preposterous Puzzle! I now have all the edge assembled (I think I wound up with only one piece having been Actually Wrong) and even I have managed to start filling in very slowly (I am up to... about 5 pieces placed so far? which is a further 1% down!)
I got a hug from the Child while saying goodbye this evening!
I have worked out an acceptable Wagamama order from the current menu and am feeling pretty good about my dinner.
Bread for tomorrow (anise, fig, hazelnut, copied from the local fancy bakery) is looking Extremely Promising.

oursin

(This may get updated over the course of the day)

After struggling to get Zoom link downloaded and operating etc, managed to get into first session I wanted to attend, Foundling Hospital in early C20th, good grief, practices had not changed much in a century had they? Recipe for trauma in mothers, children, and the foster mothers who actually bonded with the children until they were taken away to be eddicated according to their station in life.

Then switched to a different panel and was IRKED by a lit person talking about the Women's Cooperative Guild Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) which they had only just encountered ahem ahem - was republished by I think Virago? Pandora? in 1970s - and women's history has done quite a bit on the WCG since then so JEEZ I was peeved at her assumption that the working women were not agents but the whole thing was being run by the upper/middle class activists who were most visibly involved. And wanted to query whether working women thought it was very useful to have posh laydeez able to put their cases re maternity, child welfare and so on in corridors of power, rather than deferentially curtseying??? (I should like to go back in time and ask my dear Stella Browne about that.)

Also on wymmynz voices not, or at least hard to trace, in the archives, I fancy this person does not know a) Marie Stopes' volume Mother England (1929), extracts of letters she had from women about motherhood and b) based on 1000s of letters surviving and available to researchers. I could, indeed, point to other resources, fume, mutter.

Update Well, there were some later papers I dropped in on and enjoyed (and was able to offer comment/questions on; but I was obliged to point out certain errors in a description of Joanna Russ's The Female Man (really I think if you are going to cite a work you should check details....) (and I suppose Mitchison's work was just outside the remit of what they were talking about, so I was very self-restrained and failed to go on about Naomi.)

oursin

Happy birthday,

coffeeandink!

kaberett

( Read more... )

oursin

What I read

Finished The Doxies Penalty - I wonder where my copies of the first two in the sequence have got to? should like to revisit.

Kent Haruf, Plainsong (1999) - I think I mentioned when reading another work by Haruf that I had been intrigued by an essay in a collection by Ursula Le Guin about his novels, so I was looking out for these at 'taking a punt' prices. I feel that, um, admire the writing, the subtle subdued effects etc etc etc but not impelled to rush out and acquire everything he ever wrote.

For a massive change of pace, Megan Abbott, El Dorado Drive (2025) which was good if grim noirish about sisters who were brought up in comfort and then the economy crashed, getting caught up in a rather creepy pyramid-type scheme.

Then another change of pace, Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton (Bridgertons, #4) (2004) as it was on Kobo promotion and I felt maybe I should given these a whirl, but not massively taken. Kind of slow.

Then yet another Dick Francis, Decider (1993), pretty good, even if we have yet another dysfunctional privileged family (this one owns, or at least, is in the process of inheriting, a racecourse), at least one of whom is a raging psychopath. The competence-porn in this one involves architecture, in particular restoration of ruined buildings, with a side-trip to erecting a big top and how circuses deal with potential fires etc (plot-relevant).

On the go

Somebody somewhere some while ago was mentioning Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale (1930), which I literally read in my schooldays and never since, and had it mentally on a list to look at again, so downloaded it from The Faded Page and am well stuck in. Love Our Narrator being bitchy about Literary Circles, not so much enthralled by the actual plot.

Up next

Dunno. It's that time of year when I really have no idea what I want to read. Maybe that book about the Bigfoot Community?

oursin

Happy birthday,

aquila1nz and

wychwood!

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Hi all!

I'm doing some minor operational work tonight. It should be transparent, but there's always a chance that something goes wrong. The main thing I'm touching is testing a replacement for Apache2 (our web server software) in one area of the site.

Thank you!

oursin

So yesterday I had further converse with another person apropos giving a talk as part of a series of events in connection with an exhibition of archives at a local record office some months hence and they sound keen, and it is something I can do, and have a fair amount of material including visual stuff already. Plus, besides expenses, there will also be a modest honorarium - they actually asked what do I usually get paid - errrr.

So there's that.

And the long review essay is finally in production and while I had some rather confusing emails about this yesterday I think this is down to Academic Journals Having Really Confusing Systems, it is indeed going ahead, and I was obliged to compose a short biographical note, both to reflect current institutional state and also be pertinent to topics addressed in review (my last bio note leaned rather heavily on my relationship with Sid).

And I am beginning to get to grips with article for review, though slightly fearing I may be Interrogating From the Wrong Perspective (journal is Not My Disciplinary Field, though article certainly overlaps it).

Have had the very cheering news that a conference I thought I would never get to again because it would involve transatlantic travel, is coming to London next year, yay yay yay, I am already pondering a paper.

In other personal news, have booked dental checkup and hygienist appointment for next week.

And in other news, the National Trust has reached its target to buy the land around the Cerne Giant:

The money will be used to improve access to the 55-metre (180ft) figure and to link up a patchwork of habitats, improving conditions for species such as the rare Duke of Burgundy butterfly.
It will also enable further archaeological work to help solve the enduring mystery of whom the giant depicts, and when and why it was created.

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Care and Feeding,

When I was 14, my parents kicked me out because I was doing drugs and getting rides with random dudes. My uncle found me a couple of days later, having driven around town constantly looking for me the moment he heard about what had happened. He was a total wild man, but he put a roof over my head when nobody else would, gave me unconditional love, and helped me find my way. He helped me get into college, and he paid for it.

When he died, he left a void in my life. He also left me the house I grew up in, a large amount of money, and a successful business. Suddenly, my parents and my brothers, whom I’ve not spoken to in nearly two decades, are “reaching out.” It’s heartbreaking because I’ve always wanted my family back, but I am not stupid enough to believe that they have any interest in me. Is there a pathway for reconciliation here? Or am I just kidding myself? Am I a fool for wanting these people in my life? Or to even believe that could happen on my terms?

—Misspent Youth

( Read more... )

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Prudence,

A few days after Christmas, my oldest sister (“Clair”) sent a text message to me and my siblings (four of us total) saying “due to what happened on Christmas Day, I am taking a break from my family”—nothing more, no explanation, no response to us texting back “what happened?”. Christmas was at my house, and I could not think of anything bad that happened, and my other siblings were at a loss also. In talking to my mom a few days later, she mentioned that Clair was upset that we didn’t get her grandkids (ages 5 and 7), my grandnephews, anything for Christmas and that she and her family were topics of discussion and unwarranted questions were being asked about them and she didn’t like it. I can’t for the life of me imagine why.

Her son and his wife and kids moved back to the area three months ago and other than some baby gifts when they were newborns, no gifts have ever been given to them, so the expectation caught us completely off guard. As for being the topic of discussion and questions? How could we help ourselves when Clair was charged with vandalism a week before Christmas when she found out the married man she was seeing had no intention of leaving his wife for her, and she keyed and spray painted his car. Plus, why did her son, with supposedly a good job and a house, just up and move back with no explanation and remain unwilling to give one? And why is her unemployed daughter not applying where her uncle works, as they are hiring for entry level positions? Could it be because she knows she will fail the drug test?

This brings me to last weekend, when our cousin “Emily” and her husband were travelling near our area. They stayed the night at my house, so I invited my mom and other siblings, except for Clair (remember, no contact), over for supper. Yesterday, Clair found out about Emily’s visit and sent me a message demanding to know why she wasn’t made aware of Emily visiting and not being invited for supper. I mentioned her “break from the family” and she said “that’s not what I said,” so I sent her a screenshot of her message and said “I don’t know how to take it any other way except that you don’t want anything to do with the family.” Today she sent another message to the family saying she wants to be included in family things, but she and her family are “off limits for questions and conversations.”

Am I being unreasonable in thinking this requirement is ridiculous? In the past, she has had no issues in making my and my sibling’s families the topic of discussion, good or bad.

—Not Buying It

( Read more... )

rydra_wong

Artorias is a DLC boss.

Beating the final boss of Dark Souls puts you straight into New Game Plus, so you need to do the DLC first, but yeah. I have in fact completed the base game up until you enter the last area. And there is a general consensus that the final boss is not the hardest in the game.

The DLC bosses are all substantially harder than the base game ones, and I have two more left, so it remains to be seen whether I can beat them, but at this point the odds look decent that I will at least be able to finish the base game.

I would like to remind you all that my initial goal was to see if I could beat the tutorial.

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dabbleswithpoisons

April 2022

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Page Summary

kaberett - vital functions
oursin - Culinary
siderea - What does the word "grocery" mean, no, really? [econ, curr ev]
azurelunatic - Ahhhhhhh, sweet sweet steroids
kaberett - [navel-gazing] reading, fast & slow
oursin - Deep blankness is the real thing strange
kaberett - preposterous puzzle: thoughts so far
oursin - Odds and sods
oursin - (no subject)
kaberett - some good things
oursin - Online attending conference
oursin - (no subject)
kaberett - [food, healthwork] VEMGETABLES and NUTS and--
oursin - Wednesday was agreeably surprised first thing with Brahms' Double Concerto finale
oursin - (no subject)
mark in dw_maintenance - Minor operations; testing new serving path
oursin - Dull roots stirred, even if it's hardly spring rain out there
conuly in agonyaunt - (no subject)
conuly in agonyaunt - Well, this is a dramatic letter that's hopefully fake
rydra_wong - I FORGOT TO MENTION

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Page generated Feb. 9th, 2026 10:00 am

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

No, I do not have anything better to do.

Reading

vital functions

Culinary

What does the word "grocery" mean, no, really? [econ, curr ev]

Ahhhhhhh, sweet sweet steroids

[navel-gazing] reading, fast & slow

Deep blankness is the real thing strange

preposterous puzzle: thoughts so far

Odds and sods

(no subject)

some good things

Online attending conference

(no subject)

[food, healthwork] VEMGETABLES and NUTS and--

Wednesday was agreeably surprised first thing with Brahms' Double Concerto finale

(no subject)

Minor operations; testing new serving path

Dull roots stirred, even if it's hardly spring rain out there

(no subject)

Well, this is a dramatic letter that's hopefully fake

I FORGOT TO MENTION

Profile

April 2022

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No, I do *not* have anything better to do.

Reading

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No, I do not have anything better to do.