![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rather a long post...
Jan. 24th, 2012 10:23 pm...because I have been meaning to post for a while, and keep getting distracted by Unseen University, and Skyrim, and crochet and feast planning and ....
It's funny, but I feel like I've had a lot more leisure time lately. Partly it's probably due to having to do less and less for the kids as they get a bit older, but I think mostly it's just by way of contrast to the last couple of months when a large amount of free time was going on the online course I was doing. Stanford has now considerably expanded the range of online courses they are offering and I have foolishly signed up for two, which will probably begin next month. Only one includes programming exercises like last time, but unlike the last one I am unlikely to be able to wangle work time for it. But they really are hard to resist. As it was I had to remind myself there was no way I would likely ever need to use natural language processing (but it's taught jointly by a linguist and and a computer scientist :-) ) and there was certainly no way I would manage three courses at once. Still the amount of leisure time is likely to decrease rapidly soon.
[OMG, I am just now seeing the 'Barbie Girl' Sam Kekovich ad!!! curiously enough that is Ashwyn's favourite song at the moment]
I have been meaning to post for a while about what has been happening in the garden since we got back from Queensland. The plums, as anticipated, had been devoured by the fruit-stealing parrots, who left plum stones strewn all over the front path. The rotten buggers started on the apples after that. We had more than a dozen apples on the baby apple tree this year, and managed to get two of them that the parrots somehow missed. I am going to have to get bird nets for next year.
We also thought the strawberries would be dead, and they were, but they had been dying before we went. I planted a whole heap of them in planters and they were doing well for a while, but then they all just went brown and crispy and died. I think there must have been some strawberry disease blowing by. However, the tomatoes and capsicums are doing very nicely, although we are getting more size than quantity from the romas this year. Masses of cherry tomatoes though. I also acquired a blueberry plant this spring, and while it was too small for blueberries this year it is now growing quite nicely and we may well have some next summer.
i have recently become enamoured of large hook crochet. Generally I do better with small crochet projects like hats and gloves, because the large ones take so much time (I have about three on the go at any one time, and they often take years, or just never eventuate). This seems like a good way to do large projects quickly (the large hooks make big stitches, so the fabric forms more quickly). Last week I made a scarf in about three hours. Maybe I will start working my way through some of my yarn stash.
And finally I was very slack over the holidays and did little of the feast planning I was meant to do, which meant I had to do some of it last week in a hurry, because we had a test dinner. This went rather well, and I have made some adjustments to the menu which make me a lot happier with it. I still need to try a few things out and finish costing, but I feel a lot more comfortable with it. Now I just have to work out how to manage making 200 odd pies. :-).
I will post more about the menu, and some modern and period recipes later. Right now I am going to bed because I was up far, far too late last night playing Tropico 4.
It's funny, but I feel like I've had a lot more leisure time lately. Partly it's probably due to having to do less and less for the kids as they get a bit older, but I think mostly it's just by way of contrast to the last couple of months when a large amount of free time was going on the online course I was doing. Stanford has now considerably expanded the range of online courses they are offering and I have foolishly signed up for two, which will probably begin next month. Only one includes programming exercises like last time, but unlike the last one I am unlikely to be able to wangle work time for it. But they really are hard to resist. As it was I had to remind myself there was no way I would likely ever need to use natural language processing (but it's taught jointly by a linguist and and a computer scientist :-) ) and there was certainly no way I would manage three courses at once. Still the amount of leisure time is likely to decrease rapidly soon.
[OMG, I am just now seeing the 'Barbie Girl' Sam Kekovich ad!!! curiously enough that is Ashwyn's favourite song at the moment]
I have been meaning to post for a while about what has been happening in the garden since we got back from Queensland. The plums, as anticipated, had been devoured by the fruit-stealing parrots, who left plum stones strewn all over the front path. The rotten buggers started on the apples after that. We had more than a dozen apples on the baby apple tree this year, and managed to get two of them that the parrots somehow missed. I am going to have to get bird nets for next year.
We also thought the strawberries would be dead, and they were, but they had been dying before we went. I planted a whole heap of them in planters and they were doing well for a while, but then they all just went brown and crispy and died. I think there must have been some strawberry disease blowing by. However, the tomatoes and capsicums are doing very nicely, although we are getting more size than quantity from the romas this year. Masses of cherry tomatoes though. I also acquired a blueberry plant this spring, and while it was too small for blueberries this year it is now growing quite nicely and we may well have some next summer.
i have recently become enamoured of large hook crochet. Generally I do better with small crochet projects like hats and gloves, because the large ones take so much time (I have about three on the go at any one time, and they often take years, or just never eventuate). This seems like a good way to do large projects quickly (the large hooks make big stitches, so the fabric forms more quickly). Last week I made a scarf in about three hours. Maybe I will start working my way through some of my yarn stash.
And finally I was very slack over the holidays and did little of the feast planning I was meant to do, which meant I had to do some of it last week in a hurry, because we had a test dinner. This went rather well, and I have made some adjustments to the menu which make me a lot happier with it. I still need to try a few things out and finish costing, but I feel a lot more comfortable with it. Now I just have to work out how to manage making 200 odd pies. :-).
I will post more about the menu, and some modern and period recipes later. Right now I am going to bed because I was up far, far too late last night playing Tropico 4.
