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Farewell and good riddance…

Yay! These came today! They’re for making Chinese dumplings AKA potstickers AKA gyoza AKA Jiaozi AKA 餃子. Yes, of course I looked that last one up.

I love these things. Now I can make them!

I didn’t have any ground pork, so I didn’t bother making proper wonton wrappers either. I had some leftover puff pastry from a disastrous turkey pie I made the other day. That was totally wrong for potstickers but made pretty okay tiny sausage and cheese pasties.

I’m whistling and cooking and slowly backing away from 2020. No sudden moves, people, and we might just make it.

December 31, 2020 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 11

God speed, little parcel

Yep, that’s my booze order. It still hasn’t gotten to me yet. Strategic gin reserves running lean.

We use this particular shipping company a lot. In the other half of the screen, there’s a map where you can track the poor bastard as he moves along his route.

I refresh it frequently and it’s weird – he will get close to me several times before moving far away again. I trust they have some kind of clever algorithm that maps out the optimum route, but it sure doesn’t look like it to a layman.

I’m stop 121 of 122 and it’s estimated the delivery will be between 7 and 9. Those guys have an absolute shit job.

December 30, 2020 — 6:04 pm
Comments: 14

Officially horrified

The Boston Dynamics robots, dancing. Including terrifying snake wolf thing.

Does anybody know much about how they’re powered? They must absolutely gobble the juice. Usually when you see them, they’re corded. I would imagine that’s the main technological hurdle keeping them from being any damn use in the real world.

As the owner of an electric bike, I can say with confidence we don’t have this one worked out yet. Unless they have some top sekret tech.

December 29, 2020 — 9:21 pm
Comments: 11

Death by turkey

We did it! We conquered the turkey!

Cold turkey for supper last night. Turkey sammiches for lunch today. Three meal-sized portions of mixed white and dark meat vacuum-packed and frozen. Then I boiled the carcass all day (my, doesn’t that stink?) and extracted enough broth and back meat for several pots of soup and a pie. Which we’re having tonight.

If we can face it.

A couple of tweets to share. Divine: this amazing Welsh church.

And, well, this. It made me laugh.

December 28, 2020 — 8:57 pm
Comments: 13

Merry Christmas!

Sandy Claws brought me one of these. Ever since my old office chair went to bits, I’ve been using a hard wooden dining chair at the computer. Elderly butts do not like this.

Ahhh…that’s better.

We are now post-presents but pre-Christmas dinner. We eat ours late.

The turkey is the largest we’ve ever had and there’s some trepidation about getting it into our usual roasting pan, not to mention the oven. It must have been a very peculiar-looking bird in life – its breast is disproportionately huge and its legs rather small.

We’ve had an excellent Christmas and we hope you have, too. We’re hoping to stretch the Christmas mellow across the weekend.

See you Monday!

 

 

 

 

 

December 25, 2020 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 22

Oh, no!

They originally said it would be here today. Folks, that’s my booze order!

Never mind. I’ll just have to dip into the strategic gin reserves. As dog is my witness, I shall not face Christmas sober.

See you tomorrow!

December 24, 2020 — 4:31 pm
Comments: 11

All set

Picked up our turkey this afternoon. Eye-watering price. Partly because we had competition this year for a small bird – most years, people want bigger birds than we do – so it’s larger than usual. Partly because things are just stupid expensive here. Still, it’s a farm we’ve bought from several times in the past few years and they’ve been really excellent.

That and a few bits and pieces in the other shops and we’re ready to go.

My mother used to put little red cellophane booties on the turkey to distract from the stumps. Brits, they don’t even cut it at the ankle, they snap the feet off raggedy and stuff the stumps up the giblet ‘ole. Festive!

December 23, 2020 — 8:05 pm
Comments: 17

Not going to lie: Old Christmas looks pretty lit. I’m thinking it was a pagan booze holiday.

Last day of work before Christmas today. That’s usually one of the most awesome days of the year, but 2020 has the power to dampen even that. I’ve had so much time off this year, what’s a few more days?

Still, we are on course for a fine Christmas. We have an obscene amount of food, a beautiful tree, a selection of presents and twelve days of bone idleness ahead.

I like bone idleness. I’m good at it.

I’ll still post, but my heart is with the comfy chair. Talk about whatever you like.

p.s. I’ve looked at the picture some more. Is Pagan Santa wearing a three-toed variant of two-toed shoes?

p.p.s. Wait, did he steal that baby from the house in the background?

December 22, 2020 — 7:21 pm
Comments: 12

Happy Solstice, everyone!

I used to avoid celebrating the solstice, such is my disdain for the larping idiots who gather at Stonehenge every year. Well, ha!ha! they couldn’t do it this year, but you can watch sunrise at Stonehenge via English Heritage’s live stream. Spoiler: this is England. It’s completely clouded over. Go watch dark gray turn light gray, if you like.

I am told the Egyptian Temple of Karnak was built with a solstice alignment, as were some of the towers in Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In Peru, the Temple of the Sun in Machu Picchu has a window that the sun shines through on this day, illuminating a ceremonial stone.

The Roman Saturnalia was a solstice party, and how.

The Chinese have the Dongzhi Festival which, like most Chinese celebrations, revolves around food. Here I took a detour and looked up multiple recipes for glutinous rice balls or tang yuan. I made myself hungry.

In dusty places like Iran and Afghanistan, they have Shab e Yalda, the birth of Winter, on this day. They traditionally eat fresh fruit and think of Summer.

So have an extra helping of gruel tonight! The days are getting longer!

And where did I find this list of holiday delights? Oprah Magazine, of course. I’m not proud.

December 21, 2020 — 4:43 pm
Comments: 7

Pyramids of Nubia

Pyramids of Nubia, y’all. A real thing, apparently, but probably not all clustered together like that. You can read more about it (and see the full-sized image) here, though the article is really more about cartography. Or printing.

Whatever. I found it in an image search and thought it was trippy.

Me, I’ve been playing Twitter like a slot machine addict today. Poking F5 and expecting something extraordinary to fall out. Any. Minute. Now.

Eh, I don’t suppose anyone’s interested in the full, unredacted Epstein flight log. First time the unredacted version has been released, I think. Nothing too interesting, that I saw. Roberts isn’t in it. Chuck Schumer (“Schumi”) is. So’s Trump (he said he took a flight home on Epstein’s plane once). I confess, my attention span for spreadsheets is really short.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

December 18, 2020 — 8:37 pm
Comments: 10