Random Shenanigans

While not speaking in front of any major national conventions, I’ve been up to some things of my own.

The “wow new toy” sheen has worn off the phones, and they’ve settled in as mighty, mighty useful pieces of equipment. I still haven’t explored all of the functionality, and it’s neat really just to browse around the phone and learn all the neat stuff it can do. I find myself using it for navigation, looking up silly things online at random, the occasional video and the so-useful-I’m-not-sure-how-I-lived-without-it functionality of a speaker phone. Jess really likes hers, too. It’s not cheap, but it promises to be, with luck, worth the cost.

I made some more bread this weekend. My whole wheat loaf is much improved over previous iterations, though I have to be careful to really let it rise like crazy, because unlike regular bread loves which rise pretty significantly after you put them in the oven, the wheat loves pretty much just bake into whatever shape they were when they went in there. And you can loose some volume off putting the thermometer in there, too. I also found, finally, a good way to make cheesy bread so that you don’t get loaves with big, cheezy holes in the middle. Essentially they’re just great big cinnamon rolls, except with cheese instead of cinnamon. Jess really liked those ones.

Judo, have I not talked about it much before? Well I’m still doing it and it’s a blast. It combines many of my favorite aspects of a martial art:
1) It’s competitive. Not aggressively so, but it’s always good to have an art where you can try things out and if you’re doing it wrong, you’ll know, because it *won’t work*. It’s also nice because the looser doesn’t get knocked out, just thrown down. I can take that kind of defeat.
2) It’s really good exercise. Mostly for those core muscles in the middle. Because it’s just fall down, get up, fall down, get up, for an hour and a half. Just standing up is enough to break a serious sweat.
3) I get to practice falling. Let’s be honest, here, I’m not likely to ever get into a fight. But I’m sure to fall over one day, and being able to do so safely is a very useful skill.
4) No contracts. I’ve learned my lesson on that one.

We’re in the summer doldrums, of a sort, for video games, in that there is little of note that is coming out until the really big stuff hits for the holiday season. Lucky for me, this means I get to go back and play some stuff I missed from last year. As well as catch up on reading and making music. And baking bread.

We found a farmers market! And, lucky us, it’s actually going to be moving *closer* to us next week. It’s peach season round here, so we got 8 or so of them for munching later. They’re ripening as we speak. I drool with hunger! We also got some veggies and made up some salad for dinner. Little (tasty) tomatoes and some sort of Zuccini variant that is crisp and delightful. I’m looking forward to learning my way around that place better.

Jessie has been skating like a maniac. She took, I think, one day off last week. The rest of the time she was on wheels either for hockey or for derby. Her recreational league had a (closed door) game this weekend and she has actually been a team leader for a few weeks. Well it turns out all that work on proper lineups and the excellent leadership that comes with a positive attitude rubbed off on the team because they *DOMINATED* the opposing team. From the sound of it, her team gelled quite well, everyone skated to their utmost potential, and Jess scored MASSIVE points when she got to be the jammer a couple of times. Next time you see her, make sure you let her know that you are in awe of her skills, because she doesn't quite seem to grasp how great she is on wheels.

-N