elainegrey

For some reason Friday i became so impatient with the scam callers. I don't know why it became so noticeable then. But on Saturday morning i snapped at Christine. By the end of Saturday i was kind of achy from yard work. I've given up on building the fence myself because there are too many gardening things to do, and i was a little disheartened, but at least my snappy impatient mood dissipated. I did get seeds on the ground along with potatoes before a long rain on Sunday.

In the happiest news, i found lots of sochan seedlings that i could move to the shady east end of rows. I have noticed how the height of okra and corn tapers off at that end, and so tall sochan, which can grow in shade, and the native thicket bean can manage as perennials at the less productive ends of the rows. It seems violets are straining to put leaves out faster than rabbits can eat them, and the onion greens were happy enough that i picked some for dehydrating.

I hold the residents of Kyiv and Ukraine in my thoughts. It brings to mind a fuzzy memory of being a freshman or sophomore in high school and being very aware of Poland and the "Solidarity" Trade Union movement. I read the statement by FCNL about promoting diplomacy, but i wonder if there can be diplomacy with bad faith actors. I want to choose peace for myself and encourage peace in the world, but this action by the Russian government does not seem to be like that between Pakistan and India, or the internal conflicts in Colombia. I do deplore how the Ukranian government is not allowing men to flee the country.

I had a flush of the trimengial neuralgia pain Saturday morning: i do look forward to feeling confident that it is nothing to worry about. Not that i worry much, but it's just a thing on the list. While health care in the country is awful, i am thankful for my employer's benefit. I would easily accept a little more trouble over getting the MRI on my part if it could be more equitably available for all.




Kenyan Purple tea is ... a variety with purple leaves? And it does have a slightly cooler hue, and there is a marked color change with addition of lemon.


I've started a walk practice. I've got easy to slip on yet ankle supportive shoes now so that it's fairly quick to take a ten minute walk. Hopefully that will be the start of more exercise and more dopamine.

I need another mediation or stretch practice, and i need to figure out a way to stay on top of stuff. To that end, i've added some integrations with airtable using IFTTT. I was an early "adopter" of IFTTT and was able to subscribe for "name your price" when the application dropped its free tier. I wasn't really using it, but i thought i might. So i named a very cheap price (but more than i pay for extra Apple cloud storage), and now i am really using it. I am creating an in box, essentially, one location, much as i had with Evernote. It could be better, but it works.

One small depressing thing is that a working group report i have been working on for three years is likely to not be accepted buy the organization. It's a little disenheartening.

Geraniums (south Africa), oleander (perhaps southwest Asia), magnolia (southeast North America), crepe myrtle (India), lily of the nile (south Africa), and roses (Europe or Mediterranean) are all in bloom, all of which are not native to the area. (The California native roses have not, i wager, contributed any genes to the flowers in abundance on city streets.)

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Last week escalated in intensity, day after day, and Friday morning i found myself unable to motivate myself unless driven by something external. With no deadlines hovering -- either so far in the past or yet in the future -- i dawdled and dabbled. The weekend had a few successes, movements toward goals, but .... Well, i should stop there, right? Forward movement is forward movement.

Monday doesn't indicate an easy week ahead: 12 hours with a lunch break. At least i was at home. The afternoon spent on analyzing the failures during the performance test was engaging: the analysis and focus on a problem is what i enjoy. The context i was working in, the stress my colleague has over the failures and his blatant magical thinking, does not make it a joy though. He promised it would be fixed in August. ( small detail )

Christine and i did not have our app meeting last night, i didn't exercise, and none of the conditions of enoughness were met.

Maybe i should order a very good Keemun. I have not been delighting in my tea choices. As my morning tea drinking is the quite time of joy before the demands hits me, having the tea be unsatisfactory is unfortunate. The last choice was an inexpensive China tea that was supposed to be Keemun like, but has an edge that Keemun does not. I ordered an organic and fair trade scented tea that also has the edge. So here, "From An Hui province, this superior grade of Keemun is composed of dark leaves with a smattering of golden tips. The cup has a characteristic Keemun profile, with a complex flavor that is both smooth and sweet. Hints of chocolate and subtle smoky nuances add to the character of this offering." Ordered. I don't often need the superior and fancy grades, but given how work is going, this should be a small treat, much like the dark chocolate and good cheese i've been savoring in the evenings.

This morning: half my regular tea, half Lapsang Souchong. Lapsang Souchong is the Retsina of teas, but given that my regular tea for the summer has juniper berries in it, pine smoke just ups the flavor a noch. I think i have enough Lapsang souchong to make my morning pots for my tea order to ship to me.

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My deck garden is blooming furiously. Tangerine orange pompoms of marigold are under the lemon tree, which will bloom again next week. The hydrangea is a purply pink: after years of no treatments it is no longer blue. My scented geraniums (pelargoniums) are past their show of purple blooms, but the garden geraniums (pelargoniums) have their summery show of red and white pompoms. While all the white are from the same cuttings from a neighbor, the reds are from a variety of sources, and one is a coral pink. It looks like a ivy-leaf geranium may bloom again after the flush of spring blooms. It will compete with the purple chrysanthemum that shares its pot. Another pot has garden geraniums with an brown-gold chrysanthemum that is just beginning to bloom.

The window box i repotted on Memorial Day is doing brilliantly. For a few years in the worm casting soil it was simply sticks of geraniums with a few leaves and occasional blossom and the occasional volunteer nasturtium. Repotted with a mix of potting soil, the plants are thriving.

Before this experiment, i had taken the winter worm castings and filed a large planter. Most of the seeds i planted did not take off, but the sunflowers are thriving. The soil has compacted a great deal over just a few months: that must be partly the issue with worm casting compost as soil. Too much nitrogen?

The nasturtiums i seeded on Memorial Day weekend look like they are getting to a blooming size. I think the scarlet ones (with a darker leaf color) did not germinate as well as the cream. The other seedlings are sitting sheltered in seedling pots: i've not repotted them yet.

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I have to make a decision: i think i have to let my subscription lapse to Bay Nature. Fortunately it's only four issues a year, but i've a deep archive -- probably ten years worth. I'll donate a year's subscription, instead, as the magazine is non-profit and educates about environment restoration. Conscious of this decision, i pick up the last copy to arrive in the mail. I'm fascinated by and delighted to hear of the porpoises returning to the bay, interested by the stories of mesopredators. As i flop down the issue at my desk, i see it is right over an incompletely read issue from last quarter.

I can't bring more reading into the house.

Ah but i did. Yesterday i found that the books i gleaned from the office shared bookshelves (books that have been untouched for over a year or so) earned about $10 credit at BookBuyers. I tried to find TIptree Award winning authors to buy and place on the bookshelves, but had very little luck. Instead i bought a fantasy trilogy about cartography and read the first one yesterday. I'm not particularly delighted, and at the very end of the first book one of the few female characters came to a depressing end. It's possible she'll be back, but i didn't find the plot twist believable and , all in all, i'll happily not finish the trilogy. Back to Highlander as an escape.

If i think about it, i'm having a hard time believing what month it is and even what year it is.

Yesterday included a couple hours of reviewing work email, thoughts about baking and some cooking experiments. Really, the chickpea flatbread with shrimp was quite yummy! Although i reflect on hushpuppies with onion chunks in them and ponder the similarities.

I am doing some shopping:
* alpaca yarn (Llama theme tiny family gift) and
* bias cut silk ribbon (for Mohops) from Dharma Trading to attempt to dye (i ought to dye again before the new year!), and
* Etsy Letterpress made New Years cards for my staff.

I'm pondering what to do about the Hein Braat "Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra" recording i have. It was a duplicated CD from my Grandmama some years ago, claiming it was the Dali Lama chanting for world healing. This turns out to be a widely spread urban myth. While searching for "Hein Braat" turns up results at Amazon, none of the results are his work. (And all are music; none seem to be simple chants.) He's not available on iTunes, either. The CD with the chant isn't available from his website, apparently. And, what is available are, erm, in Euros and an unfamiliar vendor.

I need to buy tea [419-0-5341798]. However these two posts --
* http://www.tching.com/2009/05/tea-and-cheese-anyone/
* http://artandtea.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/tea-and-cheese-pairing/
evoke a splurging in which i should not indulge.

OMG.

See's web catalog does not mention the egg nog truffles that i saw last year (and was too late to buy). Didn't i see them in the print catalog i recycled? Or was that the buttermint truffles? While i'm beginning to prepare to switch to only fair trade chocolate, See's seems to deserve an exception. I note they're owned by Berkshire-Hathaway, which means that they're not run with an insane quarterly profit, bottom line driven ethic. But they're not the family business i imagined. Hmm. The other extended family gifts are from Boudin Bakery.

We're off to watch The Road this afternoon: stopping at Whole Foods then See's afterwards should be a good or surreal antidote.

The Onion's story about Tiger Woods is the only one i've allowed myself to read -- http://www.theonion.com/content/news/investigators_still_piecing -- avoiding everything else but Jon Stewart's Queen-inspired piece. Hmm, i guess i should find that Muppet video. It was a pretty popular link as we were testing the new wireless we set up at my folks', but it seemed the wrong thing to demonstrate the power of WiFi. (Ancestry.com was the demo.)

Tea review, part one: Boh tea from the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia.

My sister-in-law, who is Malaysian-Canadian, brought this tea as gifts for her & my brother's family's summer US visit. I was fortunate to be at her parents' home when she handed me the tea, and so witnessed the jealous interest of her parents. They didn't quite come out and say, "Where's ours!?" but the wish for the tea was clear. Fortunately, she had tea for them and their friends as well.

I made the tea as my second pot today, knowing i needed to find out if it would be suitable for my first pot when the current Organic China Keemun runs out. One criteria for my morning pot is a difference i find between China teas and Indian teas: i think it is an astringency. Apparently, per wikipedia, the Indian tea plants are a distinct botanically from the Chinese tea plant, which may account for the difference in the teas.

My guess would be that the Malaysian tea plantations were planted with the Assam variety of C. sinensis, so i suspected that the Boh tea would be too astringent for my morning pot (on a fairly empty stomach with no milk). Unintentionally, i have committed the perfect test: i let the tea steep for hours. This is a usual mistake for me, particularly with the first pot of the day, and surviving this mistake is a prized feature for me. The Keemuns survive it -- and so did the Boh tea. It's actually been just fine over steeped. I won't describe it based on this tasting, but i look forward to my next pot of it.