"moving at the speed of warm lead"
Today's subject line is from Rick Bragg's essay about Atlanta traffic in the May 2018 issue of Southern Living, which also talks about blood pressure as a metric for measuring gridlock: "I think this city has sent more truck drivers to the cardiologist than Little Debbie."
My predictably ornery subconscious devoted my two most recent REM cycles to (1) me playing harpsichord at a crowded expo, and (2) me managing all the logistics of a work-related party. Neither dream was relaxing, but considering I went to bed thinking of guillotines, I should be grateful that they at least didn't feature my own death. No, I haven't been insider trading, but I can't help recalling that intellectuals ended up on the wrong ends of guns and blades during the French Revolution -- U of C made me read Michelet three times -- and the Nationalist takeover of Taiwan. My Aunt Cherry lectured me at length during a phone call some years ago about all the people murdered on Chiang Kai-Shek's watch, including scholars, which is among the reasons why she refuses to speak Mandarin if she is talking to someone who can understand English, Japanese, or Taiwanese.
That said, I've been working on my Mandarin this week, since Duolingo has it and I have relatives with whom conversations aren't going to get very far if I don't get functional in it. I'm about to reach checkpoint 1 in that course, and just passed checkpoint 2 in French. I took a break from Spanish this week since it's tied to work.
Trying to tame the reflux cough means I'm eschewing booze, caffeine, citrus, mint, onions/garlic, spicy dishes, and chocolate at the moment (least successfully with the last two), so when I stopped at Sweet 16th yesterday (which is currently allowing only 5 customers at time in the store, and there was no one at all at around 1 p.m.), I bought a bandana to make up for the cupcakes I'm not currently indulging in. (Plus, I'm going to need more head coverings if physical distancing stretches out beyond a few more weeks. I'm relieved that I no longer have to renew my driver's license in person, even though it means being stuck with the current photo for another half-decade...) Lunch was the pimiento cheese sandwich I picked up from there, plus hot and sour soup from stuff on hand: chicken bouillon, shiitake mushrooms, thin-sliced lamb, Taiwanese spinach, and black vinegar. Dinner was more of that plus a made-in-USA Chinese sausage.
It's not Good Friday yet (which is when one should get to planting, according to the late great Jace Burch's granny), but it was so sunny yesterday that I went ahead with sowing some lettuce, radishes, and peppers. (The seeds for the first two date from 2014, so who knows if anything will sprout...) I also moved four jonquil bulbs from the back room to the future hellebore bed, in hopes of them doing better cushioned in mud than resting on top of pebbles and water. Bates Nursery is open, so today's mission includes fetching a carload of dirt.
Over in the Triangle, VAE is hosting an auction of toilet paper art for NC artist relief. So I grabbed my pens and markers and came up with the above. You can bid on it and other originals at https://e.givesmart.com/events/h0V/i/_Auction/atKl/ if you feel so moved. ;)
This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/161347.html.
My predictably ornery subconscious devoted my two most recent REM cycles to (1) me playing harpsichord at a crowded expo, and (2) me managing all the logistics of a work-related party. Neither dream was relaxing, but considering I went to bed thinking of guillotines, I should be grateful that they at least didn't feature my own death. No, I haven't been insider trading, but I can't help recalling that intellectuals ended up on the wrong ends of guns and blades during the French Revolution -- U of C made me read Michelet three times -- and the Nationalist takeover of Taiwan. My Aunt Cherry lectured me at length during a phone call some years ago about all the people murdered on Chiang Kai-Shek's watch, including scholars, which is among the reasons why she refuses to speak Mandarin if she is talking to someone who can understand English, Japanese, or Taiwanese.
That said, I've been working on my Mandarin this week, since Duolingo has it and I have relatives with whom conversations aren't going to get very far if I don't get functional in it. I'm about to reach checkpoint 1 in that course, and just passed checkpoint 2 in French. I took a break from Spanish this week since it's tied to work.
Trying to tame the reflux cough means I'm eschewing booze, caffeine, citrus, mint, onions/garlic, spicy dishes, and chocolate at the moment (least successfully with the last two), so when I stopped at Sweet 16th yesterday (which is currently allowing only 5 customers at time in the store, and there was no one at all at around 1 p.m.), I bought a bandana to make up for the cupcakes I'm not currently indulging in. (Plus, I'm going to need more head coverings if physical distancing stretches out beyond a few more weeks. I'm relieved that I no longer have to renew my driver's license in person, even though it means being stuck with the current photo for another half-decade...) Lunch was the pimiento cheese sandwich I picked up from there, plus hot and sour soup from stuff on hand: chicken bouillon, shiitake mushrooms, thin-sliced lamb, Taiwanese spinach, and black vinegar. Dinner was more of that plus a made-in-USA Chinese sausage.
It's not Good Friday yet (which is when one should get to planting, according to the late great Jace Burch's granny), but it was so sunny yesterday that I went ahead with sowing some lettuce, radishes, and peppers. (The seeds for the first two date from 2014, so who knows if anything will sprout...) I also moved four jonquil bulbs from the back room to the future hellebore bed, in hopes of them doing better cushioned in mud than resting on top of pebbles and water. Bates Nursery is open, so today's mission includes fetching a carload of dirt.
Over in the Triangle, VAE is hosting an auction of toilet paper art for NC artist relief. So I grabbed my pens and markers and came up with the above. You can bid on it and other originals at https://e.givesmart.com/events/h0V/i/_Auction/atKl/ if you feel so moved. ;)
This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/161347.html.