april

4 - 1: twoweekersday
listening	for now I have moved away from spotify because my hacked app no longer works...tragedy....so I've been spending a lot of time on bandcamp. legitimately good radio and music discovery on there! I will probably end up back on spotify for a bit to export my good playlists etc but like. bandcamp kinda whips. Minds & Colors (mabanua): as in the first song's title, this feels like something you'll hear in a hip coffee shop. neutral groovy. favorite track: "On Everything", "Conflicting" finally listened to Tallahassee (The Mountain Goats) all the way through: good album! I think I like The Sunset Tree better as an overall album. favorite track: No Children is the obvious banger but First Few Desparate Hours, Idylls Of The King, and See America right get honorable mentions. maybe I do like this as much as Sunset Tree lol that's a lot of honorable mentions. Into the Hall of the Goblin King (Freshman Biology): whimsey! Some of the other stuff from this artist is discordant in a way that feels bad for me specifically unless I am in a specific brain state but this one is good. would love more classical music covers like this. 10/10. Hildegard of Bingen: O Fire Of The Holy Spirit, Comforter: cannot explain this one
reading	There's Someone On The Ice (Sam Kriss): engaging read! Really loved the section that was a transcript of a governmental proceeding. Into the Demiground (Margaret Killjoy): I do periodically think about nuking my facebook, etc, but a good point is made that having a suspiciously wiped clean online record can look a little weird. better to have it as a decoy sometimes. also we live in a society. From Elfland to Poughkeepsie (Ursula le Guin): this article was cited by that Amber podcast I mentioned a few weeks ago as a criticism of Zelazny's prose style but bizarrely it does not seem to mention him specifically in any way at all. then again that guy didn't know who Ursula le Guin even was, so -- We put dozens of trackers in plastic bags for recycling. Many were trashed. (Matt Guttman, et al.): well now I am absolved to put all my stupid plastic bags in the normal trash, I Guess. i'm the ghost of my mistakes (tentacledicks): (really good username that i only just now noticed): linked by the author in a shared discord server. I don't Go Here but I enjoyed it! mind the tags! and finally, burial at sea, a beefleaf essay zine by tumblr user mengyao/ao3 user bloodletter/dw user headstone. my copy came in the mail with a spine ding (it looks like someone stabbed through the package?? it's super weird) but thankfully it did not impact legibility. I spent some warm afternoon hours on a towel on the grass outside my apartment building reading it, really good, 10/10.
watching	extreme amounts of xisumavoid hermitcraft.
playing	more mostly-vanilla minecraft, plus a new modded server with B and friends! I say mostly-vanilla for the first one bc we did add a mod to make the majority of hostile mobs not-hostile, lol. this does not work for slimes, magma cubes, or ghasts, for some reason. the other modded server is . lots of things happening in there huh. the first time I tried to go on by myself I got shot by ?? something?? so . hang on there's an screenshot of the minecraft server chat that makes this funnier. and then immediately logged off for the night :V
making	little milk pitcher for me, matcha bowl for roommate. this was my first time collaring clay and there are Definitely ripples in that thang but oh well. thinking about what kind of handle to put on it.
eating	finishing leftovers, cleaning out some cubes of soups, chicken and rice, etc that I froze this winter. mostly fallow I think ...
misc	lads it's been a rough one mentally. I did find a local fencing club! the on-campus club is mostly geared towards undergrads, which feels weird to me to be in now, and also meets at NINE PM ON WEEKDAYS. no thanks. the local one is all ages which feels like a better fit socially and at 6pm which is Definitely a better fit schedually lol. so I went yesterday and it was loads of fun and I will definitely be going back. more money sink hobby yayyyy

4 - 8: light one this week lads
listening	some random relistens. lady gaga 'judas' for some reason. more relistening to tchaikovsky.
reading	finished transcribing my notes for 'Hill House' so I could return the book without incurring late fees lol rented 'Leviathan Wakes' from the library as part of an Expanse Blood Pact made with a friend from undergrad, did not start it yet tho
watching	still on that hermitcraft grind. almost caught up with xisumavoid's season 10 saw minecraft movie with friends just because lmao. it was cute! at least from my perspective I could tell that it was definitely a labor of love, everyone involved had a Lot Of Fun, and I respect that.
playing	a little minecraft running and playing dnd. snzzzzz
making	shaving bowl, matcha bowl, two sake cups, and my milk jug have all been trimmed/handled/finished for the bisque! been working on some scrapbooking/bookbinding style things for past international trips and just general yearly memories. all very in flux very in progress.
eating	uhh god. really lame ngl. lots of frozens and rotisserie chicken. good udon takeout after minecraft movie I guess. planning on making japchae at some point soon, which will be yummy, and also many passover potlucks incoming.
misc	ben affleck smoking dot png dot jpeg dot gif. coming up on a full calendar year of dealing with the same software bug.

4 - 16: passover postin'
listening	been listening to the dear hunter migrant on repeat for some reason. just been tickling my brain.
reading	Cunk on Fangs (beemovieerotica): really really really funny A Murder at the American Physical Society (Sarah Scoles): I had heard about this before but this is the first formal article I read. I do very badly want to go to the APS crank session at some point. I have gotten some Wild emails from random cranks that just get email blasted to the whole department LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything (Thomas Claburn): SLOPSQUATTING. lol. also love that their username is "_lain". lain moding fr As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond (Jakob McWhinney): huh. hate this This Painting of Lounging Lions Was Hanging in a Family’s Living Room. It Turned Out to Be an Original Delacroix (Sonja Anderson): wild!!!!
watching	this could have gone in listening but this section would be otherwise fallow so: saw a Vivaldi concert last week to honor 300 years of the 4 seasons pieces and duuuuude it was So fucking good. I don't think I've ever seen a professional string-only group? they were so in unison that it sounded fake. knocked my pussy clean off
playing	just some jackbox games. someone came up with two new quarks (squeeze and stretch) which made me laugh a lot
making	did some more underglaze painting .. doing some jellyfish ... also went to a spring-themed event on campus and the horticulture club was selling plants so I got some plants and also some cut flowers to make my own bouquet :)
eating	made japchae ! it's kosher for passover! very tasty, apparently I didn't cut up the carrots thin enough but oh well. SO much passover. made the deb smittenkitchen cauliflower salad with dates and pistacios for first night seder potluck and TWENTY EIGHT DRUMSTICKS for the second night seder potluck at the temple. I was told to make food for at least twenty people so I did. reader, only like 6 people took drumsticks. I was able to pawn some off but I have at least a dozen in my fridge still. they're tasty, I baked them with paprika, salt n peppy, a little lemon, olive oil, and a lot of oregano and they took Forever to bake, but man. so much chicken. also for the first night friend version the host made prime rib and it was So fucking good. meat slab.
misc	passover:)

4 - 23: slapdash
listening	Rachmaninov album performed by David Helfgott. my specific recording is Very Special to me, it lives on my phone not my app and there's a section in one track where the CD skips because I ripped it to mp3s as a kid. also you can hear the pianist breath in sharply at certain spots and it just makes me feel some kind of way.
reading	started reading Leviathan Wakes! made a blood pact with a friend (I watched s1 of the show with him in like 2020 lol) to read it by the end of April and. checks calendar. lol. I'm only like a chapter or two in but I feel like I can power through it pretty fast so we'll see
watching	grian hermitcraft
playing	dndddd
making	working on quilting a dust cover for my switch! I made one a while ago just by sewing together rectangles and it Works but has zero structural integrity so I try again. this will be the top panel, done with quilt-as-you-go, it's a little sloppy and haphazard but I'm having fun using up scraps :) painted some jellyfish on this plate but then noticed some chipping...and it flaked more ....... turns out there was a hunk of unmixed lime in the clay :") so the whole plate is fucked, it'll crack eventually anyways, so I went ahead and used it as a glaze test. will find out tmrw what it looks like! knitting streamline tank pattern, frogged it and restarted because I realized I fucked up the ribbing in row 2 hahahah
eating	made that korean beef bowl thing again that I've linked before. yum! for the last night of passover my roommate made an INSANE tasting menu that was passover themed. it ruled. 10 courses (for each plague), lots of little easter eggs (as in secret references to pesach lol), BONE MARROW, I died, it was so so so yummy. the courses: sangria (glass of wine 1), greens with salty miso dip, amuse-bouche of eggs castellan, carrot four ways, tomato+wine soup (glass of wine 2), matzoh meal tart/mini seder plate (goat cheese, beets, greens, honey), bone marrow with greens and garlic butter, brisket and duck fat potato cube, matzohball soup dumplings, wine and pear sorbet (glass of wine 3), egg and wine custard (glass of wine 4) pictured: carrot four ways (pureed, baked, pickled, air fryer crisped skins) (for the four children lol), matzohmeal tart, BONE MARROW!!!, brisket and cubed potato in duck fat (these were Insane), matzohball soup dumplings (weird and not great ngl but I appreciated the creativity)
misc	-1hp -1hp -1hp

4 - 30: belated to finish a book before april ends!
listening	stereolab dots and loops: elevator music on crack
reading	A Strange Phrase Keeps Turning Up in Scientific Papers, But Why?: lollll i FINISHED "Leviathan Wakes". it was good! I have thoughts! mostly I'm mad that Avasarala wasn't in this one, wtf, the tv show gave me false expectations. [guy who has only read Annihilation voice] getting a lot of annihilation vibes from this one. Leviathan Wakes did come first but whatever. I have other thoughts on themes of possession/control, something about how the way Miller feels weird ownership over the Idea of Julie parallels some of the larger structures...idk still percolating
watching	was playing minecraft with friend and her boyfriend was like "can I put on Ted Lasso? have you seen it?" and I was like I have never heard of it lol so I got the pitch and then ended up watching like four episodes, deeply charmed tbh, am gonna probably watch the whole thing watched the first episode of OG Columbo! what a delight tbh minecraffttttt. grian and also falsesymmetry.
playing	minecraft as usual magic the gathering, and I won a game !!! admittedly because most of our heavy hitters were AWOL, and the one who was playing was using a less juiced deck than normal lel. mono green slay
making	quilted the switch cover! forgot to take a picture! need to figure out how to bind it off now! houseplants! what do we think, was my monstera rootbound
eating	misc bullshite
misc	made a blood pact to finish Leviathan Wakes before end of April and by god did I do it! read half of it on the plane yesterday (am back in old people land) and finished the other half today! back in old people land. lol. just for a few days to take care of some stuff but man the sympathetic nervous system kicked in like hell. stress.

back to calendar