Baked pumpkin cream cheese sourdough muffins. Made 18. Baked 22 minutes but probably should have pulled at 20. I went shy on the filling because I was worried about spillover but should have done the full Tbsp - the batter’s not very sweet but the filling is. Added extra cinnamon and ginger.

Baked sourdough coffee cake. Took 80-90 minutes to bake in my 8x8 pan. I added 1/4t ginger powder to the topping, cinnamon flavor was overwhelming though. Wonder if one of those Tablespoons ought to be a teaspoon? I liked the gooey filling layer. Skipped the icing. Overall tasty.

📚 This week and last’s library selections:

• Radium Girls (comic version)
• Seen and Unseen
• Age of Revolutions
• Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India
• Where We Meet the World
• The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy
• The Crumrin Chronicles Vol 1

Do you have a draft blog post you want a second opinion on? I’m offering to do a developmental edit for 5 people this month as a gift to the indie web community. Details on my main site.

Darn it, we did a big grocery shop yesterday then the storm knocked our power out 😾 (along with most of the Seattle area). Fridge items are toast but I’m hoping the stuff in the freezer makes it 🤞 Sounds like it could be a few days to come back on.

😑 ate a (rinsed) raw carrot with lunch, an hour later got an email they’re being recalled 🤦‍♀️ Just got home from travelling so I’m not up on the news.

ICYMI, the NY Times tech guild is on strike and asking people to not visit NYT Games or Cooking websites or apps ✊

📚 Today’s library run:

• CCCP Underground by Frank Herfort - this caught my eye from a staff display
• A Shining Beacon by James Albon
• Dear Sophie, Love Sophie by Sophie Lucido Johnson
• Ways of Seeing by John Berger - oh dear, this is set in bold type 😒

Requested too many books from the library again 📚😅

I was telling my buddy he needs to read Maus but commented I read it too young and would understand it better now, and he suggested I reread it. I read it in 1994, so a 30 year revisit 😄 Wish it weren’t on my mind though.

My printer ran out of toner so I had to make a run to the library sooner than usual, but at least some holds came in!

• Entropy
  
• The Strategic Designer
• The Bauhaus Ideal: Then and Now
• Floral Fantasy
• Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen

Alas, the pruning book I really wanted wasn’t there yet.

📚 Library grab bag because I forgot to re-pause some holds 😄

• Sohla’s cookbook! Start Here
• The Lantern and the Night Moths, a poetry collection recommended by my fav author Courtney Milan re: her latest
• Shikake: the Japanese art of shaping behavior through design
• Navigational Entanglements

Baked sourdough buttermilk cobbler. Doubled the topping and used a 9x13” pan. For the filling I did 7 nectarines and ~9oz of blueberries, 2T maple syrup, 1 tsp sugar, 2T cornstarch, 1t cinnamon, 1/4t ginger, zest & 1t lemon juice. Could maybe use more sweetener but I thought it was fine.

📚 Library haul!

• Advocate
• Washington’s Gay General
• Aquicorn Cove
• The Garden Against Time
• Adventures in Space
• The Way of the House Husband 2
• Carmilla: The First Vampire

A couple of the Chinese Hugo shortlisted stories are in this collection so I want to check them out.

I ordered the frame for this Frank Gonzales print in December, but finally put it together today! 😅🦾 I got it online from “Frame It Easy” and appreciated their included instructions – it was easy but still took me 45 minutes to round up the tools and do 🤷‍♀️

Baked cream scones using sourdough today and they turned out lovely! The vanilla is quite potent, I might even tone it down to 3/4tsp. Took 20 minutes to bake from refrigerated. I did two sets of rolling out and folding into thirds both ways.

Best wakeup call ever! My husband woke me to show me the fat raccoon eating our figs, and in the time he was away from the window, a bobcat appeared! It jumped on the fence but got stymied by the apple trees and left.

Then when I looked at my photos later, we realized there were TWO bobcats!!! 🦝🙀

I baked with sourdough starter for the first time and it came out terrible 😿 I made a double batch of banana nut bread. My food processor is too small for a double batch so I used my blender instead. I’m not sure if the texture is rubbery from that, the sourdough, or something else 🤷‍♀️

More graphic novels in this week’s library haul! 📚 I’ve been enjoying them as light summer reading 👍

• West End Earl
• Natural Palettes
• Women and Power
• Be Prepared
• The Pale Queen
• The Midwinter Witch
• Paying the Land

I got overexcited buying fruit so I had a pound of plums to eat – so I made this plum crumb cake. I doubled the streusel 😉 Used vanilla paste and added lemon zest, nutmeg and cinnamon to the batter, I’d skip the nutmeg and stick with vanilla extract. Baked ~65 minutes to fully set the topping.

📚 Heavy on the comics and art books this library run!

• Decolonizing Design
• How to Be Ace
• The Story Cure
• Dear Sophie, Love Sophie
• The Hidden Witch
• The Infinity Particle
• Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty
• Machine Embroidered Woodlands
• Cucina Povera
• A Life in Pattern

Tried a new cornmeal cobbler recipe – not sold on the texture. Should have used a pie pan to fit more, smaller biscuits. Used 2c blueberries and 6 nectarines. Subbed brown sugar in the filling which I think was a bad call – something’s a smidge off on the flavor. Baked for 32 minutes at 425.

Today’s library haul 📚🌈

• Emergent Properties - grabbed off the quick reads
• Road to Ruin
• Earls Trip - ditto
• Welcome to St. Hell
• Neom
• The Do-Over - I follow their blog and didn’t know they had a book 😅
• Seven of Infinities
• The Witch Boy
• SFSX
• Bark

My goatsbeard is getting so big! 😍 The bees are all about it 🐝

A second goatsbeard I planted in an inadvisable spot* has resurrected itself and will need to be moved… this fall, maybe?

*I would like A Word with Past Tracy over her “it’s fine just shove it in the ground” approach 😒

First bobcat sighting in my wildlife garden!!! 😃🐆🏡 We watched it sit in the backyard for five minutes, then it meandered into the front yard and tried pouncing on something in the bushes. Funnily enough I drew a bobcat today for work 😄

Soaking up the sun on a chill Sunday 🥰

Some micro.bloggers might be interested in this conversation tomorrow Saturday May 18!

Social Norms in the IndieWeb

I’ve written some about how unclear social norms can deter inter-blog conversation. I bet folks here would have interesting thoughts compared with self-hosted sites.

Tried a new strawberry shortcake recipe. Tasted good but didn’t rise much. A few theories why:

• I used too much buttermilk
• I didn’t have a 3” cutter and sized up instead of down
• I got a new baking sheet which is a different material
• recipe should use more baking soda
• should bake at 425 not 400

I stumbled across my old iPod in a box yesterday and charged her on up. Discovered my Bluetooth speakers have an aux in and we’re off to the races! 🎶 Wonder when the last time I synced this thing was 😂 2016? Hoping I can add music to it without iTunes 🤞

Had fun browsing for books with friends at the library today! 📚 Went in to pick up Doppelganger, which I had on hold, then we poked through the fiction section and ridiculed their poor labeling system. I was the only one who found stuff – I’m willing to try random stuff as long as it’s short 🤷‍♀️

A couple neat bonsai I saw yesterday. The second one’s a wisteria, probably days from the flowers opening – will be spectacular then but I liked the cool shadow it cast now.

I was thinking about doing some planting, but with drought in the forecast I guess I should hold off another year… native plants need watering their first three years. Just a bummer when it’s such a a long wait for the next chance (some native flowers seem to only be available in spring).

A good day! Taxes and chores balanced out by several hours of fun design work, solid hangout time with husband and cats, reading a novella, and dinner including vegetables that did not take an hour to cook 🦾 I love working for myself - might not earn much but I’m way healthier and happier 🤷‍♀️

Probably I should trim these lower branches for access since even I have to duck under them, but they make such a lovely arch in the spring! Just saw a hummingbird in there too 🌸

📚 Today’s library haul:

• Goblin Girl by Moa Romanova
• Strikethrough by Silas Munro
• Dumb by Georgia Webber
• Heartstopper 5 by Alice Oseman
• Linghun by AI Jiang

Linghun was suggested by my librarian and was a Nebula nominee last year. Hopefully it’s not too horror for me!

I blazed through my last library haul so today’s is bigger 😎 A couple cookbooks, some art books, and some comics. Still going for lighter (mental) fare – but had to bring my husband to carry these for me since I still have lifting restrictions from the surgery 😹

French toast with berries for breakfast! 🍓🫐

My cat came over as I was finishing and casually took a big ol chomp of the butter before I realized what he was doing 🧈😹🤦‍♀️

Listening: Passion by Peter Gabriel

First day post-surgery (2 weeks ago today) trying to do some real work - taxes - and I fizzled after about 45 minutes 🫤 Hoping I can find the energy and brainpower for both taxes and a project scope I need to prep this week… Recovery is sooo slowwwww 🐌

I’m pretty low mental energy right now so I requested a bunch of comics and art books from the library. The Artist’s Way snuck in because I failed to re-pause my hold in time 😂 (I tried while I was waiting for my surgery but must’ve forgotten to hit save 🤷‍♀️)

Finally had some energy today after surprise gallbladder removal on Monday – but burned myself out cooking. Turns out I can handle the pain of an infected organ far longer than I should but have zero tolerance for plain food – I almost cried over an Ensure 🤣 Made white bean soup and fish tacos.

We think the coyotes might be denning in our back 40 again! Heard some cute yipping yesterday 😄

Also been hearing a varied thrush a lot – one of my few confident birdsong IDs – and finally saw it wreaking havoc in the wood chips 😂

I made the most of a morning blown by a doctor’s appointment by stopping for a waterfront walk on the way home 🌞 Gotta catch that sun whenever I can!

I recently blogged about why leaning on LLMs to do the work of reading and researching for us is a mistake:

Using LLMs to prepare summaries presumes that you will be interested in the same aspects of a piece of writing as anyone else, when what we take away from anything we read is specific to us — to our current knowledge, understanding, framework, and purpose for reading.

As someone who’s deindexed my main blog from Google to avoid turning up in their generated summaries / results, imagining people using some other LLM to summarize that essay makes me feel icky and sad 🤷‍♀️

Today’s library haul was pleasingly slender, making this a more realistic venture than many 😂 * Design for the Mind * This Country (graphic novel) * The Tea Master and the Detective * Steering the Craft * Ways of Curating

I was lucky to escape the library parking lot intact though! Never go at closing 😂

Twenty years ago today, I put on a vintage nightgown and shot a gothic self-portrait in a tree behind the college gym at 9 at night 🤷‍♀️ There was a basketball game inside so I kept hopping down and putting on an overcoat as groups of people walked by, looking super shifty 😂

To make myself feel better, I ordered lead test swabs and tested our vintage dinnerware. The tests are a little hard to judge but I think we’re in the clear there. (Might retest in daylight?) Then I tested my vintage pyrex 😬 Adios!

Baked Smitten Kitchen’s pumpkin bread. Used 1.5c AP flour and 1/2c whole wheat. Cut sugar to 1 1/3c. Upped cinnamon to 1tsp, and added a bit more of the other spices too. Topped with a cream cheese glaze. Took at least 75min - it was looking dark so I draped foil over it partway. Moist and tasty 👍

Maaaan, just found out vintage ceramics can leach lead from the glaze, especially if you wash them in the dishwasher and it damages the glaze. We’ve been eating off vintage plates for the past three years 😕 Ordered a lead test kit even though there’s nothing to be done besides stop using them 🙃🤞