No more GCSEs for me!
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I’ve been going between managing the live music for a play and some work on my IF projects… things are getting done. (Sorta.)
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Made my first piece of IF in… a while. Been going through a creative slump where I finish nothing and start every project that I’ve ever thought of all at the same time – so it was nice to publish something. Neo-Twiny remains my favorite of the game jams.
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Got 279 on the scales today, another 10 pound barrier broken. Last time I was this light, I was still in college and I might be lighter now than I was when I graduated highschool.
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I’ve fully cleared out my YouTube backlog under 65 minutes in length and have single digit numbers of videos left in the 65-70, 70-80, and 80-90 minute ranges.
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Finished helping out with the music for a school play. Very fun, and sad to see some of these students for the last time…
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What a genuinely good exercise, and thank you for sharing the why behind it, not just the what.
The accountability piece resonates: a thing noticed on your own is easy to wave away, but a thing said out loud to someone tends to stick.
My little win today is small, but it counts. I finally made my first post here about Maximilien, a project I’ve been quietly working on for years.
That sounds trivial, except the part of my brain that runs on rumination had spent a very long time insisting it was never quite ready, never quite good enough to show anyone.
Hitting “post” was mostly a small act of telling that voice to wait its turn.
To your question, I think a real “little win” is anything you did despite the part of you arguing against it.
Some days that’s a finished page. Some days it’s just opening the file again.
Both count, and I don’t think the second one counts any less.
Glad you started this thread.
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I said goobye to a lot of people today, being 2 days off moving, and it was more sad than bittersweet, really, but I think it’s positive/neutral anyway. I may not be on this forum as frequently for a couple weeks, but hopefully I don’t fully disappear for a bit…
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Recorded lead guitar for three more songs from the album I’m working on. Only two songs left to do lead guitar on, and then the recording part is done. After that it’s post-production: programming the guitar envelopes for wah pedals and stuff, EQ, mixing, and mastering. 
Also got an assessment to complete for a job I applied to. Hope I pass it, lol.
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Hi everyone! In case anyone was wondering, yes, I’m still alive and licking.
Honestly, I was a bit shocked when I saw how long it had been since I last visited the forum. Things have been crazy busy. Mostly good-busy though.
Renovation works on our house have shifted into high gear the past few weeks.
I’m almost finished painting the downstairs hallway, just a few more detail touches and the ceiling to go. In that hallway, we have a beautiful dark-wooden staircase. Unfortunately, the previous owners (what were they thinking?) had decided to smear a thick layer of grime-grey paint on it which I have been working to remove. Various chemicals of diverse toxicity and a lot of sanding went into getting that stuff off, but now I can finally apply a light and nourishing wax to the wood to make it take its place as a stunning eyecatcher.
Next will be a big overhaul of the attic to install our new master bedroom there. Especially good news for our son, who will get to move out of his small child’s bedroom and into our larger room. He’s excited about choosing furniture and decorating his teenage room of the future!
I’m also doing a lot of volunteer work for my son’s school. They have a patch of trees and shrubs on the premises, and I’ve been helping clear out a corner of that to grow an educational flower and vegetable garden. Great fun, lots of work digging out old roots and clearing nettles…
Speaking of my son, he did fantastic on his last batch of tests in his last year of primary school. He’s very curious and interested and eager to learn about all sorts of topics, so it was cool for him to show off his big brain. He’s also been having a blast for these playful last days of school of the year, where they can mostly goof around playing educational games the teachers have put together. It’s been asphalt-melting hot here, so those games involve a lot of waterballoons…
It’s absolutely wonderful and heart-pumping-with-joy-and-pride-beautiful to see what a great young teenage boy he’s become.
----sniff----sigh—
Any free time I have has mostly been spent reading static literature, of which I’ll give a recap on the Reading Thread soon. Once I finish this new Sanderson brick…
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Cackled.
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My portable AC developed a rattle a few days ago that has me worried something might be on the verge of catastrophic failur and which sometimes gets too loud for comfort… On the plus side, the $5 pocket electric fan I bought to help me deal with the heat is working surprisingly well… Granted, it rained yesterday after noon and got down in the 60s last night and its only 81F today, so it’s only too hot out instead of too expletive deleted hot… Plus, 50% humidity is pretty arid for around here if I’m not mistaken… The real stress test will be if my AC is making too much noise on Friday when it’s supposed to shoot back up into the 90s… I am not a praying man, but I hope we don’t hit triple digits this summer. Also, when I hang the fan next to my ear and swing it like a pendulum, it makes a cool sound…
Also, bought a box of strawberry shortcake ice cream treats… Also, tomorrow, I’ll be trying a new pasta shape I never heard of before a few days ago(ditalini, basically macaroni that’s straight and cut so the length of each piece is roughly the same as the diameter… trying it because the rotini that has been a stable for the last few years suddenly increased from 88 cents per 16 oz box to 1.24 per 16 oz box and the ditalini is the only pasta still under a dollar per 16 oz box… Unfortunately, ditalini apparently packs better as a 16 oz box of rotini comes out to 4 cups and some change while ditalini is only about 3.5 cups for a 16 oz box… Also, its a noticeably smaller box. Think I’ll be giving using the scoop I use when measuring out rice(not sure what the capacity of the rice cup is, but it’s somewhere between half and a full cup and its the measuring cup that came with my rice cookers). The next few days will determine whether I switch to ditalini fully or bite the bullet and deal with the increased cost of rotini…
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Ditalini are wonderful, but definitely more compact. They also (in my experience) need more stirring to avoid sticking, specifically because their shapes pack together better.
On pasta, one time I had radiatore and it was truly awesome. I just loved the weird shape and everything.
On that note, there is a type of noodles in my cupboard that are simply the best so if you ever find them somewhere, buy them. (I will name them in a bit, I don’t have the box right now.) Over the last four years I’ve leatned to differentiate between different types of noodles, but the funniest thing is that bee hoon is very thin round rice noodles (vermicelli), but in some places I’ve heard bee hoon to refer to round moderately thin noodles, yet in one place the owners say it’s actually more similar to kway teow. I’m not kidding.
ditalini lisci (smooth)
or rigati (striped ?) ?
(the pics are for reference for other people; sorry for posting pictures)
Lastly, a friendly warning for gentlemen travelling in Italy: the word “ditalino/i” has double meaning, one, indeed, food-related, but the other is, ahem, “scientific”.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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What is radiatore? Also, my screen reader is pronouncing it Ray dee at tore but I have a feeling it’s supposed to be closer to ray dia tore ray. The Radi part makes me think radius of a circle, but lots of pasta shapes have radially symmetric cross-sections, so assuming that isn’t a linguistic red herring, it doesn’t really narrow things down…
Though, now that I think of it, shells and bow ties, are those just not common shapes over in Italy or are they just the rare case of the Italian(or at least italian sounding) name not catching on this side of the Atlantic…And does actually knowing italian demystify names for various pasta shapes?
Anyways, made cheesy ditalini and beans for lunch today. used the rice cup instead of the whole cup from a measuring cup set I’ve been using for rotini, but otherwise used the exact same preparation method(toss dry pasta in the pot of a mini rice cooker with some bouillon, seasoning, chia and flax seeds and a 12 oz can of water, cook covered for 20 minutes, turn off the rice cooker, remove the lid, and stir before letting cool in the pot another 20 minutes while the pinto beans in the other rice cooker finish cooking, drain the beans, mix with the pasta and a handful of shredded cheese.
Can’t say I noticed any more pot sticking than with rotini, though the individual pieces do have a tendency to clump together, though if anything, that just makes for more interesting shapes. Also, since the tube length is so short and the lack of a bend, I don’t end up with the problem macaroni gave me when I first switched frommaking block ramen via pouring water from an electric kettle to using bulk box pasta in a rice cooker where unflavored water would get trapped inside the bend of the macaroni. Also, I like the way bits of the powdered ingredients end up plugging the holes in some of the ditalini bits. Not sure I’d put ditalini above rotini, but it’s making a good first impression and the lower price is looking worth the switch. plus, the more compact size is probably going to help with storage as well and make it easier to toss on an extra box or two when needed to hit Wal-Mart’s order mininum for online delivery orders.(the not tupperware I dump pasta inta when I open a box can only hold 1 box of rotini comfortably, but they can hold two boxes of Ditalini, and the square bucket I use for storing unopen boxes of pasta can hold 6 16 oz boxes of rotini, but if I’m correct the ditalini has the same height and width as the rotini box, the thinner thickness should be enough to fit 8 or maybe even 10 boxes… might even be worth seeing if the ditalini comes in 32oz boxes at a better per oz price(I stuck to 16 oz boxes of rotini because 3 32oz boxes wouldn’t fit in the bucket the way 6 16 oz boxes would, but since the 16oz ditalini box is already smaller than the 16 oz rotini box, it’s possible the 32 oz ditalini box would fit the bucket well… Might actually be able to stock up on ditalini in quanty sufficient to last an entire 5-week pay cycle(my SSDI comes in on the 4th Wednesday of the month and I get no extra in months with 5 Wednesdays, but between two not tupperware reserved for storing open pasta and 6 boxes in the bucket, I have storage space for pasta that caps out at a 32 day supply for rotini, and ideally, I’d squeeze all my grocery shopping for the month into one order since the aforementioned order mininum is just high enough to make mid-paycycle restocks a hassle.
It’s literally pasta that looks like a tiny radiator. The heating fixture.
They’re sort of like rotini, but instead of a single ridge spiralling around to make a cylinder shape, there’s a thin hollow central cylinder and a series of separate ridges sticking out perpendicular to it. They hold sauce really well.
Bow ties are sometimes called farfalle (“butterflies”), but at least in my family everyone just refers to shells as shells.
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As I feared, the usage of pictures caused confusions… 
yes, bow ties are called “farfalle” (butterflies) in Italian (warning: another, but more mild, “scientific” double entendre, this time at least common to English)
and Daniel is right: the pasta liscia (smooth pasta) is used with burro (butter) or margarina (margarine) e la pasta rigata (rough) is used with sauce (mainly tomato, of course…) indeed because holds well the sauce (note that the holes in many pasta are intended for holding sauce…)
anyway, I guess that is better giving a good bilingual lexicon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pasta
I’m sure this will helps in the debate…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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It is 9pm and light outside. This is crazy…
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