Tangents

My first accidental project of the year: pandoro - literally "bread of gold," festively Veronese Christmas cake, and absolutely not what I'd planned to spend the first day of the year on, but having volunteered on New Year's Eve to bring a dessert to dinner on New Year's Day, I wanted to try something new, and its mention in Nigella Lawson's recipe for "Easy Holiday Trifle" (in Feast) caught my eye.

Fortunately, I am at this point experienced enough that I picked up a box of cake mix when I hit the store, and I did indeed end up assembling the trifle with backup cake rather than the pandoro, which was slow to rise and ultimately would have been too dense for a dessert that depends in part on syrup and time melding together stewed fruit and spongy carbs. I will confess to being inordinately pleased with how the pandoro turned out, though -- it smelled fantastic while it was baking, it tastes great, and rolling all the layers into it was a heck of a workout.





The trifle (apricots stewed in cardamom syrup) before the toppings (whipped cream, bourbon honey, pistachios and almonds) were added:

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/186697.html.

While I'm keeping "zirconium" at Twitter for the foreseeable future, I've set up http://mastodon.sdf.org/@zirconium (AKA "zirconium@mastodon.sdf.org") to get familiar with the landscape in case #ScienceTwitter and other key circles head on over. As with this blog, updates will be irregular and I don't -- can't -- read every item in my feeds, but establishing and keeping open lines of access is part of the battle.



I actually spent the bulk of my morning on handwritten correspondence, including this season's first holiday card, which is going to a Scandosotan friend I was reminded of when another friend (based in Stockholm) recommended Sallyswag, describing them as "the queer folk soul brass dancehall hip hop band":



(Yes, it's rather early to be sending December holiday cards, but this one is an Advent calendar, and given reports from other friends about letters taking scenic routes to, say, North Carolina, I am not sanguine about this one even arriving before Trinity term. Now that I've said it, watch it arrive before the GOTV postcards I put in yesterday's mail to Georgia...)

In the Department of Plus Ça Change, still feeling crummy but functional. Full-blown respiratory woe has sidelined me from work gatherings and choral commitments (and heavy-duty cough syrups now give me splitting headaches, great). But my sunroom remains a gorgeous sanctuary, I have lamb and Taiwanese spinach stew on my stove, Aaron Tveit is covering "Take Me Home Tonight" on the YouTube jukebox, and being home means other things get tended to, including the sorting of tomatoes (this year's harvest was entirely from volunteer plants, descended from seedlings Miel gave out last year). I'm planning on making green tomato-cheddar hand pies later today or tomorrow.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/182908.html.

Tu b'shevat arrives tomorrow, and Middle Tennessee is supposed to get whumped by snow by then. Coincidentally, a crepe myrtle the Beautiful Young Man had ordered at the start of November was delivered this week, so he's planting it as I type.



The miniature rose bush I bought at the supermarket a year ago put out some glorious blooms. They were also havens for dozens of tiny bugs, though, so I chucked them into compost sooner than later. The Christmas cacti also put on a good show throughout December.

I'm going to chop up a fir wreath for mulch after I post this. I usually deal with it the day after Epiphany, but I'm still ill (!@#@!#@ lungs), though I'm managing a walk across the neighborhood most evenings. Many of my neighbors still have Christmas/fairy lights up, and I'm enjoying them as I stride through the gloom. There's also a new-to-me greenhouse in one of the alleys I tend to cut through, that may or may not be a commercial venture.

There's sorrow: relationships foundering, people dying. There's hilarity: recent reading has included K.J. Charles's Band Sinister ("You've been waiting your whole life for someone to write a Gothic novel about you, haven't you?"), Flight of Magpies, and A Gentleman's Position ("If you're obliged to cross a man at all, nail him to one while you're at it"), and I may confine my Instagram posts this winter to #CatsInPictureBooks. There's the annual gorgeous Lunar New Year card from a cousin in Kaohsiung. There are the tomatoes I canned and froze over the past two summers that I've been using now in soups and sauces. There's being terrified for the future of my city (those FUCKERS in the legislature . . .) and country and doing what I can anyway. There's pushing through paperwork and code, and trying to keep the pitcher plants alive, and adding smatterings of sparkle and substance to ongoing conversations when I can, and holding my peace and keeping my own counsel plenty of other times, and all this adds up to life being a lot even though the coughing + Omicron means I've been sidelined from singing since November, and I haven't seen anyone socially since December 18. (I do like plenty of time alone, but I object to my style being cramped. Grrrr.)

But! Neighbors brought by smoked cream cheese and Texas caviar, and friends sent galaxies and other goodies, and I made ginger tea with homegrown ginger root earlier this week and fixed a keyboard lag issue this morning. On to weeding and wreaths and mailings and daube marseillaise. This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/180203.html.

Today I retrieved my seam-ripper and extracted broken nosewires from three masks: they'd been washed and adjusted so often since March 2020 that the metal had snapped. I was off-camera during two of the three events I attended during my virtual college reunion today, and I liked being able to deal with much of the mending pile while listening to the presentations. (As for the on-camera social, I cackled out loud when a friend DM'd, "Dude you put on lipstick" . . . )

I had to bail on the two choral projects I mentioned in my previous post. That didn't feel good, nor did heading into today's Bach workshop with no real prep. But summer is not yet here. One of my former choir directors often ended our read-through rehearsals with "You know what you need to do." Yeah.

The front garden received several compliments this week. ("Your flowers are lookin' good, hon.") A volunteer French hollyhock is at its peak, front and center with tiers of blooms. Friends brought by a rosebush that I settled in the back yard, along with some tomato seedlings that Miel had culled from their garden. Some of the cherry tomato plants are showing clusters of tiny green globes. The radish seeds from 2013 or thereabouts have germinated, as have two of the basil seeds from a packet sent by the United Negro College Fund. The basil starters from the nurseries haven't thrived in my outdoor planters, but an aging tiny-leaved plant I'd been neglecting has now put forth a new cascade of white blossoms. It's too early to tell if the parsnips are going to materialize.

I harvested some mint and kale to go with the chicken tikka masala I pulled from the freezer, and doctored today's orange slushie with honey and sumac. I need to plow through a fair amount of work + paperwork tomorrow, but I am pleasantly achy from this morning's workout (2.5 hours of kayaking and paddleboard yoga), and I expect to sleep well. This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/176172.html.

The subject line's from Adrian Mitchell's "After the Third Election of Thatcher," which continues:

. . . and climb on my horse and ride away
And if I were Wales I would turn my back
And climb on my horse and ride away . . .

This is in the collection Blue Coffee: Poems, 1985 - 1996, which has this opposite the table of contents:

EDUCATIONAL HEALTH WARNING

None of the work in this or any other of my books is to be used in connection with any examination whatsoever. Reduce the size of classes in State schools to twelve and I might reconsider.

---

Today's household misadventure was a result of following directions: the recipe said to use a food processor to pulverize ginger in boiling water. Ow. I'm irritated not only at the mess, but by the fact that I'd already experienced this mishap before, when attempting to puree soup. On a less grouchy note, I have used up the aging ginger in the fridge, and there will be ginger-orange jello soon.

The rain let up now and then a few times today. I took breaks from the Scottish show to tug at weeds, thin out mallows, and tie up stems, as one of the "Sky's the Limit" rose bushes has become a rose sprawl. It is also producing red instead of yellow flowers this year.

Also entertaining: the Christmas cactus closest to the cyclamen now has a new bud.

---

My recent bathtub reading included the October 2001 issue of Sculpture, which included Anne Barclay Morgan's interview of Westen Charles. The installation that interested me most was Retirement. The artist provided some background:



I tossed the magazine into recycling after I was done . . . and then dug it out a day or three later, wanting to reread the description after seeing Patty Seyburn's Ode to John Hinkles, Junior and Senior, which begins:

A man filled the thumb hole of his favorite
bowling ball with his father’s ashes,
then bowled a perfect game.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/175396.html.

[The subject line is from June Jordan's It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean.]

It's a sunny Saturday morning, the sky is a beautiful blue, and the forecast for this afternoon is in the 50s, with the wind below 10 knots per hour. But I have seven chapters and a fifty-page bibliography to finetune for a volume editor and image manager before the end of the day, and a dozen-plus other files to power through before the start of Monday.

Younger Me would mutter "Tae hell wi' y'all!" and hop on the paddleboard and string the kite anyway, and then grind through the lot overnight. Current Me is cranking up Rameau, Monteverdi, and Anderson .Paak and getting on with it -- after I placate my peasant brain by dealing with a bundle of limp carrots. I combined some of the greens with asparagus this morning to go with scrambled eggs . . .



. . . and the roots are in the slow cooker with other ingredients for beef stew. It feels good to have the wherewithal to make things happen, even when they weren't in our plans when we got out of bed a few hours ago.

This week I also baked a chocolate soufflé (because this past Sunday was National Chocolate Soufflé Day, which I used as my prompt for Day 28 at the Tupelo 30/30 challenage) and two loaves of cranberry bread (because I'd ordered a bag from Misfits Market with a vague idea of making relish, but then hadn't followed through with picking up related ingredients when I went to the store). I picked up our monthly Chinese feast from Lucky Bamboo on Monday, and dumped cheese (blue, American, pizza blend . . .) on various leftovers and vegetables for lunch, dinner, and snacks. The BYM resorts to frozen meals when I don't feel up to cooking, and one night brought home a mushroom pizza from Smith & Lentz that rated an awww yeah when he reheated what was left the next day.

In other happenings, our larger hellebore is blooming beautifully (the smaller one probably needs another year or two . . .), and indoors some of the Christmas cacti and cyclamen are still producing buds and flowers. The aloe plant I'd brought home from Downtown Pres in 2019 was again in need of repotting, so that happened as well:



This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/172854.html.

Today is crowded with overlapping possibilities. Newark Museum's virtual Carnival Celebration runs all day, with the samba/capoeira session at the same time as Iowa's English country dance gathering. Says You's Kisses and Quips show was on my calendar for a long time, but my church's cabaret for Habitat for Humanity streams at the same time. Plus, there's tomorrow's Tuupelo poem to draft, doing enough Chinese/Welsh/Spanish/French to stay in Duolingo's Diamond League, putting ten postcards to voters in the mail, doing something about the butternut squash I roasted two or three nights ago before the next Misfits Market box arrives . . .

This week had a lot of crud. I'm trying not to brood about the things I cannot change, but I am reminded of other bloggers greeting February with EVERYBODY BRACE NOW There's something about the months before the equinoxes that make them feel like a long haul, even though in my case they also feature the birthdays of some of my favorite people. And fatigue with both the pandemic and the equally unrelenting and life-threatening banality of evil is also a thing. It took me five times as long to get to things I normally enjoy dispatching with ease, and some things that would literally make me feel better (working out, dancing, ironing . . .) keep getting shafted because it's easier to stay in the rocking chair for one more Duolingo/Mimo/Earpeggio lesson.

Anyhow, I do like the Befruary take on this gloomy gray stretch of the season, and I did my metal-dawg / Taurus-with-Virgo-rising thing and herded/hauled my mental sheeps to meadow and market. New poems up at Tupelo:

Day 6: "More than a Single Bound" (prompted by a motorcycle stunt)
Day 7: "Gazing at Tennessine" (prompted by Periodic Table Day)
Day 8: "Free As . . ." (prompted by National Kite-Flying Day)
Day 9: "Sweet Spot" (prompted by the Feast of St. Apollonia, patron saint of toothache sufferers)
Day 10: "Imperfect Fragment" (prompted by Edmond Halley)
Day 11: "Gathering Up All the Fragments" (prompted by Lydia Maria Child)
Day 12: "A Foot-Long Tongue" (prompted by Charles Darwin)
Day 13 (up later today): "Through a Screen, Darkly" (prompted by Absalom Jones, a Black Episcopalian priest and essential healthcare provider during a yellow fever epidemic)

The "someday" reading list is getting new titles added to it pretty much every day. There's an orchid display at Cheekwood this month; with Darwin's Contrivance by which British and Foreign Orchids . . . now in my Google library, I'd be keen to see it, but it's indoors, so I'll have to content myself with old photos instead, like these:



Ironically, as a household, we are not hugely into holidays. My belle-mère and closest cousin are by far more into (and better at) decorating; I mailed a Valentine to the BYM last year mainly to yank his chain (it was an adorable design, but it also had glitter); there have often been professional and/or performance obligations that had me on duty instead of at gatherings. That said, I'm weak for stickers and ribbons (even though they too often leave the ironing board and cutting mat weeks or even years after the festival they were originally purchased for), and every third year or so I work up the energy to donate something related to Lunar New Year to the church auction. This year's donation wasn't directly tied to LNY, but the winners of the bao subscription were easily gracious about me wanting to skip January, so I expanded yesterday's delivery of shrimp bao to include Taiwanese tea eggs, radish cake, and pineapple-ginger bubble tea:



The photos show my second take at mixing the tea; the first batch tasted fine but looked revolting. "Failing better" is definitely a thing here. ;)

[The subject line is from a valentine by Emily Dickinson that may be the most daft thing (outside of political/medical misinformation or art historical polemics, natch) I read this week.)] This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/172060.html.

I'm such a sucker for kawaii packaging. I hadn't planned on buying more mooncakes this season, having already splurged on two boxes and a CAAN festival feast last month. But, BUNNIES!!!

(The cakes are gorgeous, so I placated my household budget gods by designating three of the four as gifts to colleagues/family. And I subsequently received a box of four from a vegetarian friend who had purchased them before realizing that they contained lard.)

Autumn Sky Poetry Daily published my poem "Vinegar" this week.

Herding deliverables to their destinations has been grueling, and I missed dances, chats, and services this week. And an alternate service I attended for a few minutes was off-key enough that on five hours of sleep across two days, I couldn't take it. On an un-whiny note, though, it's indeed a silver lining to have multiple options for all three, and to be able to catch some of the recordings later. This week's video sessions also included London Art Week's webinar on 15th-century frames, whose presenters in turn recommended Closer to Van Eyck, which may be of interest to the medieval/Renaissance, restoration/conservation, and interactive programming nerds who happen to be reading this. Today's dance (hosted by Iowa English Country Dance) included "Hazelfern Place," which I had not encountered before, and a breakout-room craic with dancers/musicians in Atlanta (with bonus rubber chicken) and Bristol (UK).

Pounding through piles of pages (and spending hours de-snarling some tech tangles) also meant not restocking on groceries until today, so we'd run out of eggs, bacon, waffles, lettuce, and other staples by this morning. But I was able to produce Uncle Nearest jello cups and deviled eggs for a tiny outdoor gathering, and spiced banana muffins to cover a couple of breakfasts, so go me. I have more work and correspondence to whale through tonight, but first I'm going to make chili with some of the tomatoes I grew:


The green bananas are to help ripen the green fruit I'll have to bring in early because of rodents or frost. speaking of which. . .

The BYM (gestures toward scrabbling in the walls): Can you do something about that squirrel?
Me: Burgoo.
The BYM (shouts at the scrabbling): Hear that, mf? KENTUCKY IS IN THE HOUSE. This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/168645.html.

[Today's subject line quotes Stanislaw Jerzy Lee. I forget where I first encountered it.]

A morsel of lagniappe: working at home all day means I get to see these tiny starry flowers when they are open. They close up as night falls, which means I'd previously seen them only as buds.



Our governor says the safer-at-home order will expire on April 30. For those of you tracking my dithering about the Y: if the centers reopen on May 1, that will be the last straw for this camel. I will cancel my membership faster than you can chant "To the left, to the left..."

For those of you not on my Twitter TL: bacon coffee jam, y'all! (And other uses for coffee dregs and grounds) https://www.myrecipes.com/ingredients/leftover-coffee-and-coffee-grounds-uses?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-share-article (via the https://littlewaves.coffee/ newsletter)

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/163443.html.

Hello to y'all and to 2020. Today's subject line refers to the Great Sardine and Maple Leaf Drop, a fine collaboration between Canada and the United States mentioned in a public radio roundup of Things Dropped yesterday.

I didn't kiss anything at midnight, truth be told. I was asleep, plus the Beautiful Young Man came home from Minnesota with a cold. I had a great time at the gym yesterday once I got myself there: although I woke up in time for the first class I'd intended to hit, I didn't get myself to the Y until the second class was already underway (and still managed to forget my shirt -- but, for a change, I wasn't the only woman dancing in just her bra, and it beats the time I had to improvise a skirt out of my cardigan because I'd left my shorts at the office). It felt good knowing some of the routines well enough to really get down, and the instructor (who gave birth just three weeks ago, and looks fan-freaking-tastic) high-fived me after I bounced up from a floor twerk. (And here you thought "get down" was merely a turn of phrase. ;) )



I had half the gym to myself for a good ten minutes after class, and a hoop to myself for twenty minutes beyond that. I'm terrible at el baloncesto -- especially when I try to shoot left-handed, which I worked on for a while yesterday -- but it's still fun even when I'm bricking 19 shots out of 20. I like the sound and feel of the ball hitting the floor and landing in my hands. (The opening poem in my book is "Practicing Jump Shots with William Shakespeare." The girl may not get to the court often, but it's definitely part of her (hi)story.)



Speaking of past publications, one might think that someone with a poem about thinning seedlings would have zero hesitation about culling Christmas pepper sprouts from an overcrowded pot. One would be wrong. It's a wonder that anything ever gets done around here.

The red raincoat I wore for that author photo (taken on the same trip as the photo in today's icon, if you're reading this on Dreamwidth) is one I purchased from a bookshop in New Orleans's Faubourg Marigny neighborhood umpteen years ago, possibly during a holiday visit. With green/blue streaks in my hair since 2010, I haven't worn that coat much (until this week, the last time may have been last year's Santa paddle), so I had put it in the "donate" pile earlier this fall. But then Jane Fonda's red coat showed up in my feed, and then Louisville was picked for the Music City Bowl, for which I had tickets (thanks to MCB's sponsorship of the Dragon Boat Festival and to my donors, whose generosity added up to my being the top fundraiser on my team).

Y'all. I haven't worn so much Cardinal red in forever (earrings, scarf, lipstick -- the works). The seats were fantastic -- behind the endzone, four rows back, aisle. The BYM was decidedly uninterested, so my date was another mouthy Southern gal who brought over a bottle of Huling Station Very Small Batch bourbon. For appetizers, I opened the Zingerman's pimento cheese friends had sent, and also the jar of garlic I had pickled last month. I fried maifun noodles with cabbage, mushrooms, and carrots for the main course (my friend was fascinated with the resemblance of the sesame oil bottle to Mrs. Butterworth's), and for dessert we had red bean mochi.

It's a good thing we did the pre-game thing, because the adult beverage options at Nissan Stadium are ... limited. My friend bought a Miller Lite for me during one of her trips to concessions, and all I can say is, why squander 96 calories on something with little flavor and zero buzz. My friend is not a fan of JD and that was the only bourbon on offer. But my hot cocoa hit the spot, and the bbq nachos were OK, and more important, we had fun taking in the whole scene. Two friends from high school with whom I'm still in touch are Louisville grads, and some of my favorite dance partners live there now, so I definitely had a preference, but not enough to feel distraught when Louisville's defense wasn't gelling during the first quarter. The crowd around us was mixed -- some hyped-up State and Cards fans, but also a row of local bros behind us who were just rooting for their bets (at least $500 on overs), so their cheering was wholly dependent on who was about to score. My friend and I agreed that they managed to stay on the right side of hilarious vs. obnoxious, but they were definitely on the line. State's cheerleaders were more on point uniform-wise than U of L's (the short-shorts and Minnie-Mouse-ish bows did not work); U of L's band (especially the announcer) had the more polished half-time presentation; State's flag runs were more impressive; Cards fans were louder (and not just because the Cards got their game going second quarter). Louisville's angry bird mascot is aesthetically more appealing than State's jowly dawg, although my friend spotted the real pup during one of her walks around.

In short: bad football, good time.

I'd prepped some bourbon balls for the party we ended up skipping yesterday because the BYM was snuffling (and even if he hadn't been, I had fallen asleep in the bathtub during my afternoon soak, so I changed right into pjs and my Grouse Grind t-shirt instead of going-out clothes). I'd like to curb some of my tendency to over-prep this next year, but it isn't a resolution because there are plenty of situations on the other end of the seesaw where I would do well to level up my prep. The issue is about calibrating the amount of prep to the expected ROI, and the mix includes acknowledging that I over-research things like hotel options because that's another-potato-chip quick and easy vs. really digging into an aria or a not-yet-finished poem because that's never quick or easy.



Anyhow, the BYM and I split a 2016 bottle of TRBLMKR during the evening, and I went to bed after a couple of Spanish lessons and a few chapters on sea kayaking. The plan for this morning had been to hit the gym for three hours (i.e., two classes, with a reading or rowing break between) but my shoulder is doing its occasional freezing-up thing, so instead I fried pancakes, eggs, and bacon, and I'm going to repot some plants now (including the very cramped aloe vera plant I picked up from Downtown Pres, which the BYM suggested sticking an octopus head on because its fronds looked to him like tentacles...). I could also just open a Yazoo Cinnamon Milk Stout or Blackstone Dark Matter IPA and then take an extended nap in the hammock. I do like this actually having the holiday off.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/159701.html.