scordatura (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scordatura) wrote2020-10-03 02:25 pm
scordatura) wrote2020-10-03 02:25 pm
Entry tags:
September Update
Hello hello, friends, and welcome to my SEPTEMBER UPDATE POST (only a couple days into October, we are WINNING this time, kids!!). As alluded to last time, I've shaken things up a bit -- moved some things around, added some things, just fiddling with format and priority to figure out how best I want to do these and what matters to me to keep track of/talk about!
Probably the biggest change is that I've added a little General Life Things section up top, to talk about some of the stuff going on with me -- my mental state, updates on work/diss stuff -- that just isn't really Twitter-friendly or better suited for, like, an end-of-month reflection rather than consistent daily updates! Otherwise I've trimmed some things, reworked the Duolingo section, and otherwise set this up to be a fun update on where I'm at and what I've been doing wrt the things that matter most. \o/ I'm pretty sure no one reads these, ha, but I've enjoyed putting this together and hope to be able to do more like this in the future!
General Life Things
• I've mostly been doing okay; I was very excited for this month for many reasons, mostly weather-related, but my allergies spent most of the month absolutely slamming me in the face, ruining a lot of things I'd planned or hoped for, which has been a real downer! I hope the weather FINALLY cooling off means that they'll get better, because I've felt so terrible for at least a couple days every week for the past few weeks, which has just... sucked, obviously, ha, and hasn't exactly made the whole trash fire of the world any better.
• In addition to that, I appear to have acquired a mysterious pain in my hands/wrists that isn't being affected by any of the usual treatments! Love that for me! I finally talked to a doctor (virtually) the other day and while he also had no definitive theories (which both makes me feel better and worse, ha), he prescribed some stronger NSAIDs and told me to keep wearing the compression gloves I've been trying if I find that they help, so we're going to give it a few more days and see if anything improves. And if not -- well, he recommended I go see someone in person, but the character of the pain has been so variable (it's shifted a couple times, new symptoms have popped up), I might just try another teledoc visit first, if things feel different enough that I want a second opinion? But if not, I get to go see an in-person doctor during a global pandemic, WOOHOOOOOO. :((
• Otherwise, I've been generally feeling super on and off about wanting to connect with people -- some weeks, I want desperately to know how everyone I love is doing and I feel totally consumed with the desire to feel close to people, and some weeks I'm just... eh, I talked to people three days ago, I'm good for a bit, I trust everyone is doing okay? It's been super up and down, so I'm trying to just ride out the urge to connect when it hits me and live as normally as possible when it doesn't.
My parents and Boyfriend and I will do some virtual dice games on random weekends (sometimes we do two in a row, sometimes we go like a month in between them -- again, see above re where I stand on socializing intermittently, ha), and that's been nice! Sometimes it'll be just me with my parents and sister, which is also nice, and sometimes it's us with my aunt and uncle. It's a good way of missing everybody just a little less, with some of the things we'd do if we were actually together, but still not really a full proper substitute, sigh. In terms of getting in touch with people I don't usually talk to, I've been trying to keep e-mail chains going with my former coworkers (data manager and supervisor) that were such a big part of the work experience for me and whom I really love as people and miss regularly talking to. They're both in kind of weird places (the former left us for a new job in April, so getting used to the new work remotely has been weird for her and she's in general feeling kind of down and overwhelmed; the latter left without a clear idea of what would come next for her and she's in California, so she's kind of trying to figure out how to spend her time and also staying, you know, fully healthy respiration-wise), so it's not as regular as I'd like communication to be, but I'm doing my best -- I know it's nice to feel like people haven't given up on you when you're not as good at staying in touch as you'd like, so I'd like to be that person for them!
I'm also going to try to, whenever this health shit gets figured out, set myself a loose goal of one personal contact every day. This can be super casual -- a work happy hour or a work catch-up call/Slack or a knitting class or a call to my parents -- or more structured, like reaching out to someone I haven't talked to in a while or checking in on someone I usually talk to via Twitter or e-mailing someone I haven't heard from in a bit. Basically just a way of making sure the connection continues, even in a lowkey kind of way! We'll see how sustainable that is, but I think it might be nice.
• Nothing really new to report on the diss or the work front! Still waiting for advice on my last hypothesis on the former; still working on my main project on the latter, and trying to stay involved as much as possible in figuring out what comes next for us and how we can grow in a better direction as an org. Hope springs eternal on that front!
Writing
Gay Werewolves: 132,995 words (+1.4k), 129 pages into draft #1, about two-thirds/three-quarters through Chapter 13.
CMRN #2: 78,654 (+700), about one-quarter into Chapter 12 (progress!!).
Further projects. I actually did briefly revisit all of the things I have in progress/things I'd really like to write in my last writing newsletter, so that was fun! Still not really in a place to do anything about them other than that, ha, but I did really enjoy coming back to them, however briefly, just to keep my enthusiasm going. :") Also still super excited for NaNo and brainstorming ridiculously!!
Knitting
So sadly this section is a little sparse this time around because of aforementioned as-of-yet unexplained hand and wrist pain; I've been trying to limit a lot of my knitting, especially over the last week or so, which means I haven't made too much progress on most of these, which is unfortunate!! Fingers crossed I can get back to it soon, because I MISS IT SO.
Friend and family projects: No progress on either of these fronts right now; I've narrowed down some patterns and yarn choices, but I really don't want to overexert myself on this front until I know for sure whether everything's okay with me healthwise and I'm up to the challenge. So check in again next month to see where I'm at on this!
Mystery shawl: 30", almost done with Clue 3! (The whole pattern is out now, but I've got till the 15th to finish, so we'll see whether I actually do?? Fingers crossed, lmao sob.)
Work trip shawl: 21", just an inch or so into yarn #3!
Socks: No new progress here either, sadly!
Sweater: I cast this on two weeks ago, and I'm currently done with the first half of the split hem (about 2.5")!! It barely looks like anything thus far, but I am still VERY excited about it, and it looks great even in its small form, and feels so lovely and squishy!! I'm SO impatient to get back to it, aaaaaa.
Up next (hopefully!!): I'm doing the Stephen West MKAL shawl with friends, so I'm very excited about that!! My yarn store is also doing a ~brioche-along, which means I am gonna LEARN BRIOCHE, which I'm very stoked about! I want to do this scarf as kind of a low-pressure brioche intro (I'm going to use some of the cheap yarn I bought for charity knitting for it, and if it turns out well it'll be another charity scarf), and I'm taking a class to knit this hat, which I found some very cool stash yarn for! CAN'T WAIT.
Cooking/Baking
Cooking: Mostly revisited old favorites last month on this front, but I did find this simple sauce for chicken thighs, in wanting to make sure I cooked them correctly; it was so simple to put together (even with some substitutions -- skipped the mustard and did black vinegar instead of balsamic), and I found that it didn't impart a super strong flavor -- it just made the chicken way more flavorful and delicious, like a big taste boost. Definitely going to revisit this in the future!
Baking: The closest thing I came to this (apart from what I'll mention below!!) are these hand pies, only with apple rather than peach filling (and apple pie mead instead of bourbon, hell yeah hell yeah); I cobbled it together out of notes on that recipe as well as prior apple pies on SK! I ended up cooking them first for a bit, with some brown sugar and a bit of cornstarch and a shitton of spices and a squeeze of lemon juice, and they were SO GODDAMN DELICIOUS. (I only wish I'd brushed them with apple butter, which is my usual trick for next-level apple pies, but I COMPLETELY forgot I had some, sob.)
Yeast-based: I did a couple of new sourdough things this month, which was very exciting!! First, sourdough naan, mostly meant as a way to use the discard from second, sourdough cinnamon rolls!! The former was indeed super easy; I used sour cream instead of yogurt and did find the dough to be a little too wet (which was mostly an issue when I shaped all the naans and they stuck terribly to the counter, whoops), but otherwise very simple and made a lovely texture, if a little too plain -- I'd consider adding something to the base dough in the future for more flavor! (Though it was GREAT with hummus.) The latter was much more of a journey to craft, ha, but went really well; the only sub I made here was brown sugar instead of white in the filling, and using all three of my fancy cinnamons! Otherwise I followed the recipe to the letter (mixing by hand instead of mixer, which was a bit of an adventure, ha, but worked out fine!), and I was really impressed by the texture and flavor of both the dough and the frosting (which -- forgive me, Deb! -- I liked more than the SK one I usually use!). I thought the dough was a tad too sourdough-y -- weirdly, even more so than my bread usually is! -- so I'm going to have to fiddle with that a bit in the future, and I might up the filling, which I didn't think was quite oozy and gooey enough. :") But otherwise a total slam dunk, and definitely a future weekend adventure for when my hands are up to the task again!
Languages
French: 25,125 XP (+200); 436 crowns; level 23; 36% complete (-4%?? that's not fair, lmao, looks like they added content or I broke some progress! boo!)
Italian: 10,467 XP (+400); 115 crowns (+3); level 16; 52% complete
German: 1070 XP (+300); 24 crowns (+5); level 7; 6% complete (+2%)
Russian: 703 XP (+70); 11 crowns (+2); level 6; 6% complete
I've been pretty on and off about my plan of scheduling some dedicated time for each language once a week -- it's easier with the ones that are entirely new to me rather than the ones I'm more comfortable with -- but whenever I do it, I remember how much I enjoy language-learning! I feel like I'm making some actual noticeable progress on German especially, which is very exciting, so hopefully I can keep that momentum going!!
Probably the biggest change is that I've added a little General Life Things section up top, to talk about some of the stuff going on with me -- my mental state, updates on work/diss stuff -- that just isn't really Twitter-friendly or better suited for, like, an end-of-month reflection rather than consistent daily updates! Otherwise I've trimmed some things, reworked the Duolingo section, and otherwise set this up to be a fun update on where I'm at and what I've been doing wrt the things that matter most. \o/ I'm pretty sure no one reads these, ha, but I've enjoyed putting this together and hope to be able to do more like this in the future!
General Life Things
• I've mostly been doing okay; I was very excited for this month for many reasons, mostly weather-related, but my allergies spent most of the month absolutely slamming me in the face, ruining a lot of things I'd planned or hoped for, which has been a real downer! I hope the weather FINALLY cooling off means that they'll get better, because I've felt so terrible for at least a couple days every week for the past few weeks, which has just... sucked, obviously, ha, and hasn't exactly made the whole trash fire of the world any better.
• In addition to that, I appear to have acquired a mysterious pain in my hands/wrists that isn't being affected by any of the usual treatments! Love that for me! I finally talked to a doctor (virtually) the other day and while he also had no definitive theories (which both makes me feel better and worse, ha), he prescribed some stronger NSAIDs and told me to keep wearing the compression gloves I've been trying if I find that they help, so we're going to give it a few more days and see if anything improves. And if not -- well, he recommended I go see someone in person, but the character of the pain has been so variable (it's shifted a couple times, new symptoms have popped up), I might just try another teledoc visit first, if things feel different enough that I want a second opinion? But if not, I get to go see an in-person doctor during a global pandemic, WOOHOOOOOO. :((
• Otherwise, I've been generally feeling super on and off about wanting to connect with people -- some weeks, I want desperately to know how everyone I love is doing and I feel totally consumed with the desire to feel close to people, and some weeks I'm just... eh, I talked to people three days ago, I'm good for a bit, I trust everyone is doing okay? It's been super up and down, so I'm trying to just ride out the urge to connect when it hits me and live as normally as possible when it doesn't.
My parents and Boyfriend and I will do some virtual dice games on random weekends (sometimes we do two in a row, sometimes we go like a month in between them -- again, see above re where I stand on socializing intermittently, ha), and that's been nice! Sometimes it'll be just me with my parents and sister, which is also nice, and sometimes it's us with my aunt and uncle. It's a good way of missing everybody just a little less, with some of the things we'd do if we were actually together, but still not really a full proper substitute, sigh. In terms of getting in touch with people I don't usually talk to, I've been trying to keep e-mail chains going with my former coworkers (data manager and supervisor) that were such a big part of the work experience for me and whom I really love as people and miss regularly talking to. They're both in kind of weird places (the former left us for a new job in April, so getting used to the new work remotely has been weird for her and she's in general feeling kind of down and overwhelmed; the latter left without a clear idea of what would come next for her and she's in California, so she's kind of trying to figure out how to spend her time and also staying, you know, fully healthy respiration-wise), so it's not as regular as I'd like communication to be, but I'm doing my best -- I know it's nice to feel like people haven't given up on you when you're not as good at staying in touch as you'd like, so I'd like to be that person for them!
I'm also going to try to, whenever this health shit gets figured out, set myself a loose goal of one personal contact every day. This can be super casual -- a work happy hour or a work catch-up call/Slack or a knitting class or a call to my parents -- or more structured, like reaching out to someone I haven't talked to in a while or checking in on someone I usually talk to via Twitter or e-mailing someone I haven't heard from in a bit. Basically just a way of making sure the connection continues, even in a lowkey kind of way! We'll see how sustainable that is, but I think it might be nice.
• Nothing really new to report on the diss or the work front! Still waiting for advice on my last hypothesis on the former; still working on my main project on the latter, and trying to stay involved as much as possible in figuring out what comes next for us and how we can grow in a better direction as an org. Hope springs eternal on that front!
Writing
Gay Werewolves: 132,995 words (+1.4k), 129 pages into draft #1, about two-thirds/three-quarters through Chapter 13.
CMRN #2: 78,654 (+700), about one-quarter into Chapter 12 (progress!!).
Further projects. I actually did briefly revisit all of the things I have in progress/things I'd really like to write in my last writing newsletter, so that was fun! Still not really in a place to do anything about them other than that, ha, but I did really enjoy coming back to them, however briefly, just to keep my enthusiasm going. :") Also still super excited for NaNo and brainstorming ridiculously!!
Knitting
So sadly this section is a little sparse this time around because of aforementioned as-of-yet unexplained hand and wrist pain; I've been trying to limit a lot of my knitting, especially over the last week or so, which means I haven't made too much progress on most of these, which is unfortunate!! Fingers crossed I can get back to it soon, because I MISS IT SO.
Friend and family projects: No progress on either of these fronts right now; I've narrowed down some patterns and yarn choices, but I really don't want to overexert myself on this front until I know for sure whether everything's okay with me healthwise and I'm up to the challenge. So check in again next month to see where I'm at on this!
Mystery shawl: 30", almost done with Clue 3! (The whole pattern is out now, but I've got till the 15th to finish, so we'll see whether I actually do?? Fingers crossed, lmao sob.)
Work trip shawl: 21", just an inch or so into yarn #3!
Socks: No new progress here either, sadly!
Sweater: I cast this on two weeks ago, and I'm currently done with the first half of the split hem (about 2.5")!! It barely looks like anything thus far, but I am still VERY excited about it, and it looks great even in its small form, and feels so lovely and squishy!! I'm SO impatient to get back to it, aaaaaa.
Up next (hopefully!!): I'm doing the Stephen West MKAL shawl with friends, so I'm very excited about that!! My yarn store is also doing a ~brioche-along, which means I am gonna LEARN BRIOCHE, which I'm very stoked about! I want to do this scarf as kind of a low-pressure brioche intro (I'm going to use some of the cheap yarn I bought for charity knitting for it, and if it turns out well it'll be another charity scarf), and I'm taking a class to knit this hat, which I found some very cool stash yarn for! CAN'T WAIT.
Cooking/Baking
Cooking: Mostly revisited old favorites last month on this front, but I did find this simple sauce for chicken thighs, in wanting to make sure I cooked them correctly; it was so simple to put together (even with some substitutions -- skipped the mustard and did black vinegar instead of balsamic), and I found that it didn't impart a super strong flavor -- it just made the chicken way more flavorful and delicious, like a big taste boost. Definitely going to revisit this in the future!
Baking: The closest thing I came to this (apart from what I'll mention below!!) are these hand pies, only with apple rather than peach filling (and apple pie mead instead of bourbon, hell yeah hell yeah); I cobbled it together out of notes on that recipe as well as prior apple pies on SK! I ended up cooking them first for a bit, with some brown sugar and a bit of cornstarch and a shitton of spices and a squeeze of lemon juice, and they were SO GODDAMN DELICIOUS. (I only wish I'd brushed them with apple butter, which is my usual trick for next-level apple pies, but I COMPLETELY forgot I had some, sob.)
Yeast-based: I did a couple of new sourdough things this month, which was very exciting!! First, sourdough naan, mostly meant as a way to use the discard from second, sourdough cinnamon rolls!! The former was indeed super easy; I used sour cream instead of yogurt and did find the dough to be a little too wet (which was mostly an issue when I shaped all the naans and they stuck terribly to the counter, whoops), but otherwise very simple and made a lovely texture, if a little too plain -- I'd consider adding something to the base dough in the future for more flavor! (Though it was GREAT with hummus.) The latter was much more of a journey to craft, ha, but went really well; the only sub I made here was brown sugar instead of white in the filling, and using all three of my fancy cinnamons! Otherwise I followed the recipe to the letter (mixing by hand instead of mixer, which was a bit of an adventure, ha, but worked out fine!), and I was really impressed by the texture and flavor of both the dough and the frosting (which -- forgive me, Deb! -- I liked more than the SK one I usually use!). I thought the dough was a tad too sourdough-y -- weirdly, even more so than my bread usually is! -- so I'm going to have to fiddle with that a bit in the future, and I might up the filling, which I didn't think was quite oozy and gooey enough. :") But otherwise a total slam dunk, and definitely a future weekend adventure for when my hands are up to the task again!
Languages
French: 25,125 XP (+200); 436 crowns; level 23; 36% complete (-4%?? that's not fair, lmao, looks like they added content or I broke some progress! boo!)
Italian: 10,467 XP (+400); 115 crowns (+3); level 16; 52% complete
German: 1070 XP (+300); 24 crowns (+5); level 7; 6% complete (+2%)
Russian: 703 XP (+70); 11 crowns (+2); level 6; 6% complete
I've been pretty on and off about my plan of scheduling some dedicated time for each language once a week -- it's easier with the ones that are entirely new to me rather than the ones I'm more comfortable with -- but whenever I do it, I remember how much I enjoy language-learning! I feel like I'm making some actual noticeable progress on German especially, which is very exciting, so hopefully I can keep that momentum going!!