Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Um, *quietly* This is absolutely fucking terrifying.

    Trial Ballon for a coup

    …

    *now* I’m scared.

  • Need to contact the white house?

    …you could try White House Inc.

    via Teen Vogue.

    This is a terrible time – but if this vile human is going to try and destroy us all, the least we can do is make his life difficult.

  • Dear other Washingtoninans

    You may want to call the startled dugongs currently in the senate. Apparently Trump’s clusterfuck of woman-hatred wasn’t enough.

    They’ve introduced Senate Bill 5320 which… [Drum roll please]

    – Imposes a parental notification requirement on minors seeking an abortion (with exceptions for medical emergencies)
    – Effectively requires a 48-hour waiting period for minors seeking an abortion
    – Requires a pregnant minor to petition a court for waiver of the notice requirement
    – Requires new, unnecessary abortion reporting requirements
    – Makes it a gross demeanor to perform an abortion without providing the required notice

    So… you may want to go deal with that. I have called and made my opinion… clear.

  • Back in the old days…

    When I used to do fire training… Long, long ago… we used to have “fire hose reels”. These were enormous hosepipes, on reels, that you could – in the event of a fire – grab one end of – run to the fire and try and fight it with the full pressure of mains water.

    And they used to say “try and fight the fire, but if it’s too big then make make your escape”. Or words to that effect*.

    I keep looking around and wondering if the fire’s too big already.

    * Now they give you a little dinky fire extinguisher and say “If it’s a tiny fire and you think you might be able to put it out quickly, then maybe give it a go. But really, you should just leave”**.
    ** At least they say that in the UK. Here they’re a bit more gung-ho, and there’s still a bit more of a try-to-fight-it attitude.

  • Ugh

    The upcoming coronation inauguration in the US and the recent speeches in the UK have left me feeling really quite demoralised. The horror I feel at what is happening in the world is sapping my energy.

    I keep thinking about performing distracting self-care actions, and failing.

    So uh, yeah.

    Suggestions are welcome.

  • Our odyssey continues unabated

    So, as I’m sure you’re all dying to know how our Bokashi odyssey is progressing. Given the state of the world, our ability to compost left over veg trimmings and off food is clearly something of vital importance.

    So, one of the things with Bokashi is that the veg left overs need to be chopped up. There are devices like this:

    Hand-cranked-veg-chopper

    Which you can use to chop up the veg – but I* didn’t want to fork out the extra for one of them so at the moment we’re manually chopping up all the veg off-cuts. Normally our recipes have a fair bit of veg in – this about 2/3rd of the off-cuts from one of our larger dishes…

    IMG_20170114_194326

    As you might imagine this adds some time to our preparation. However, although the little compost bin – the countertop one we use to hold veg so we have sufficient to “make a layer” does smell sometimes (with the lid off, it’s fine with the lid on – it has a charcoal filter :) ) – the other bin so far is fine. When you take the lid off it smells a bit fermenty, but with the lid on nary a thing. And the fermenty smell isn’t bad. I wouldn’t want the entire house to smell of it, but it’s fine for a few minutes while we chuck the veg in and squidge it down.

    These are the Bokashi bins:

    IMG_20170116_175017

    We have two, because you seal one up to ferment for two weeks or so, once it’s full. We’ve about 2/3rds filled one of them – in about a week and a half. So it should work okay for us…

    Addressing the state of the world issue – I’m feeling more and more pressing need to do every-single-thing we can to reduce our impact. We’ve realised that we can compost the paper towel we use (I have tedious allergies, still, so finding something to do with all those tissues is handy), composting has reduced our ‘landfill’ waste by about half. And I’m continuing my quest to work out a way to substitute our insight for a fully electric vehicle.

    We keep trying for some political engagement, but at times it’s insanely overwhelming. On top of which, work still demands nearly all the time that exists. So self care has become of significant importance… so well, yes, that’s where we are.

    * This was my idea and it was meant to arrive around Christmas, as a sort of “I’ve got this for both of us” gift – but…it arrived late. To be fair, I ordered it very late.

  • Just in case you were wondering

    That anguished howl you heard earlier?  The one that sounded like 1000 souls dieing? That was me reading the letter from Thurston county.  You may recall that before we bought our land I made countless trips (well, about three or four)to the planning department ask all whether there was wetland on our property. 

    They did not think so. They could not be certain, but nothing they had indicated it was… Or so they said. 

    Of course now we’ve applied for permission to build on it, suddenly had applied the magic decryption key for the spider secure database which they definitely couldn’t check before. The one that says the neighboring property has wetland, possibly,and that LIDAR reports say there might be wetland. So please can W pay to get it assessed for wetland. 

    Oh, and no progress on anything else til that happens. 

    Yeah. 

    So we may have effectively sunk all our money into a barely buildable plot. 

    So that was the hotel you heard. 

    Yay.

  • To compost,  sorta

    We’re trying an experiment.  not as it happens a terribly cheap one.  We’re trying out something called Bokashi – it’s an urban,  allegedly non-odorous rapid composting method.  The main problem we faced is that while we have a place we can compost we have to keep the stuff to be composted for long periods.  And during those periods it’d probably start to smell.  Also we’re not deeply keen on the idea of encouraging wildlife onto our land for scraps of food. 

    Enter Bokashi. So we have two largish plastic bins and a small holding bin (because you’re meant to put in about 4-5 CM of fresh material at a time. Then you chuck over this activated bran mixture, squish it all down and, when the bin is full,  seal it up for two weeks.

    I’ll let you know. Because I’m sure you’re deeply concerned. 

  • Sunday sunday

    Today I have worked.

    I have cleaned the house for an hour.

    I have not even been outside.

    I may have underestimated the amount of work I was giving myself when I changed jobs.

  • Introspection

    So this is a maudlin introspective thing, which is what happens with me sometimes. You may want to skip it. (more…)