the girly who shall end all girls

when I was a kid I was enchanted with the Harry and David catalog, and the boxes of fruit and nuts that my uncle used to send to my grandparents. i toyed with the idea of buying myself a subscription to fruit and cheese of the month boxes for this year, but decided it would be more fun* to make it a date instead.

starting in December i set up a recurring "Fruit and Cheese of the Month" event on our calendar. we walk down to Pike Place Market, buy whatever fruit is seasonal and good that day, and then go to the cheese counter at DeLaurenti's and ask for a cheese pairing recommendation. (Last month was pomegranate, and a hard goat cheese from Spain.)

the extreme-for-Seattle cold this morning (14°F) meant that the market was pretty empty. we try to arrive as close to opening time as possible so that C can get a GF cinnamon roll before they sell out. they were still hot but most of the heat had gone by the time we took a few steps away. a lot of vendors didn't even open, so our produce selection was limited to Sosio's. we rarely shop there, mostly because it's in the heart of the busiest part of the main arcade and on a weekend there are too many people to linger long enough to shop. today we got to talk with the owner, get fed so many samples, and have our fruit chosen for us based on when we plan to eat it 💖. how cold was it? their damp cleanup towel was frozen stiff.

we took our local Comice (creamy texture, notes of white wine) pear and local Lucy Glow apples (a honeycrisp/red-flesh apple cross, golden orange skin and firm flesh marbled with red, sweet-tart) off to get cheese. also quiet, where normally one is constantly being banged into by milling people while at the counter. since we got two fruits we got two cheeses, a firmish assertive gorgonzola for the pear and a creamy soft-ripened goat (looks like brie) for the apple.

tomorrow we'll eat them









*and economical, and environmentally sound, by a long shot. plus C doesn't like pineapple and mango which would make two of the projected months less fun.

In the waning of the year I let (the beneficial version of) my impulsiveness off the chain. I have a year-end roundup post in progress, but that is on my computer which is in the other room and getting up is difficult

• I had to pause writing it last night to meet with a tattoo artist and then collect a few more references for her. I've been thinking about this piece since shortly after my first one (nine years ago!) and probably would have done it sooner if that wonderful artist hadn't left town. found her because I was getting maintenance on my ear piercings... I really liked the piercer and I think a "curated ear" is in my future but after I've absorbed the cost of the tattoo

• today (yes today the holiday) I did a functional movement screening with a physical trainer. I start small group on Thursday. I am so out of shape. I'm not in pain tonight but very fatigued from doing a very limited number of squats, lunges, etc. there were zero judgement statements made and he has promised me that I can hit the punching bag (fun for ironymaidens) for cardio instead of the stupid treadmill. goal is build bone density and get back to a solid self-rescue for paddling. fingers crossed

• I also have a pottery class starting at the end of the month; it's making tableware. I haven't found my imaginary dream dishes for sale, so I'm making my own coupes/pasta bowls with blackjack and hookers

[xkcd about how the free cellular data of ye olde kindle got you wikipedia and wikitravel access anywhere*] this is why my kindle had a sticker on the back that said "Don't Panic" in large friendly letters.

i adore reading on an e-ink reader. the older i get, the more i appreciate the light weight and the ability to adjust the text size and illumination depending on how my eyes feel. (it has to be e-ink, backlit screens hurt my eyes when i'm tired and i always respond to them as blue light no matter what color shift is engaged.) more importantly, it protects me from running out of book. i say this as someone who used to find an English-language bookstore in each city i visited in Europe in order to trade in the book i had just finished for a new one. i don't actually buy many books from Amazon (mostly library, Project Gutenberg, and Ao3) but i like their hardware.

Friday night i stepped on Dawn Treader (my beloved kindle voyage). i was bummed - it had tactile (if not clicky) buttons and could fit in a large pocket, and while the battery did lose a step it wasn't so much that i ever got around to installing the replacement i had ordered after reading too much while camping in 2021. it was from 2015, so a pretty good run for electronics these days. after being cronched it still woke up and slept and you could turn pages with the buttons and read on it, but the touchscreen was broken so there was no way to get to the library or settings. (wish my first one had lived longer, it didn't need no stinking touchscreen.) ifixit was out of screen replacements (and the instructions kind of sucked), so i went ahead and did a trade-in.

they make it cheaper to buy a new one with trade-in than to buy a refurb (my first choice with most electronics). a new Oasis (clicky buttons) - comes with same day delivery here in the mothership, so i was reading on it before the day was over on Saturday.

i'm still getting used to the form factor - the reading area is off-center so that you have a grip with clicky buttons; the screen part is ridiculously thin with all the guts in the thicker grip. the page turn buttons are swapped from how i had them on Dawn Treader; i still occasionally click the wrong one to turn the page. i could change this in settings but the default is a more natural spot for my thumb to rest, i'll get used to it. the screen rotates, so you can hold in either hand, but the sleep button is on the top of the grip side if you're holding it in your right hand. its location when you read from the left (on the bottom) makes locking the screen one-handed awkward. not optimal for, say, standing on the bus. apparently i hold with my off hand much more than i realized. Desert Rose** is waterproof, optimal for reading in the bath, which i do a lot. no more ziploc bags*** for me!

today i ran down to Whole Foods to drop off Dawn Treader to complete the trade-in. i hadn't done that before - there's a little room with returns and pickup, you bring in the thing and a barcode and they take care of everything. the person behind the counter was deaf - he had a sign with instructions on how to signal him what you were there for, and then we did a combination of pointing at options on the computer screen and pantomime. worked great, it was kind of fun.

now i just need my new "Don't Panic" sticker to arrive.





*while the days of "free" data are gone, the Kindle does remain the web-enabled device I own with the longest battery life, so still an excellent emergency resource
**C discouraged me from calling it Wonderwall
***not entirely true, i still prefer the iPad for comics, but now i only need to keep a gallon bag in the bathroom instead of a gallon and a quart

i was always about to sit down and write here in May. oh well.

this morning i replaced the battery in this laptop. battery is working well.
( it was a little scary, and i may have broken the keyboard )

then i shoved a muffin in my face and went up to Fiber Fusion NW. they were in a much nicer building this year, more room and better ventilation. (they asked everyone to be masked and i only saw one person who wasn't.) it wasn't crowded, which was lovely for my comfort level but leaves me concerned for the event and the vendors. i came home with a bag full of fiber grown and/or dyed in the region. i am a sucker for farmers - i bought some discount brown Targhee wool just because the story charmed me:

these are four dollars. Pigpen kept slipping out of her coat. when we brought her in [for shearing] she looked like she was wearing a ghillie suit. nothing would get all the vm [vegetable matter] out.

i had enough of the show floor faster than intended, which was fine, since it left me time to pick up flowers for my balcony planters before i had to return the car. the nursery was a madhouse, but i found everything i was planning for: more verbena since the one from last year miraculously overwintered; alyssum for fill and the smell; calibrachoa to trail. on a whim i got a bright orange black-eyed susan vine in hopes that it will climb the railing. they're all planted now and i split the creeping jenny so there was some in both planters (we'll see if the one i moved takes).

the new pen is here! one day it was in Guangdong, then today it was out for delivery. the ❄️ snowflakes ❄️ on the nibs are delightful. it writes well, a little on the dry side (tuned for Chinese) but not a problem. it was supposed to have two different-sized nibs, but I don't think it does, or the difference during the breaking-in period is too subtle for me to perceive.



I overfilled both sides and I'm already not sure about my ink choices, but that's okay. Once I cleaned my fingers I happily doodled all evening during D&D.

I ordered a pen from Shanghai in December (I picked it out, sadness shopping while C was out of town, and still wanted it after he was home for a few days so I pulled the trigger). Last update is that it went on a plane supposedly leaving China, on December 27. I knew when I ordered it that it might not show up until February, but aaaargh I want it now. it has snowflakes on the nib and is double-sided - gimmicky, yes but a two color pen would be very practical for the kind of note taking I do most days. I would like to have a stub nib or a flex nib next, but I had also just promised myself a Year of the Tiger pen which will come out after the lunar new year holidays in February - same manufacturer so I hope I get the first pen and like it before then, here's the Pen of the Year Ox from last year.

when i went to Kinokuniya over the weekend, one of the things i was hoping to do was treat myself to some new ink for my new fountain pen (did i mention i got a new pen? it's nothing special but it's very green). in the before times they had a broad selection of bottled fountain pen ink; on this trip it was picked over and it was easily three times what i remembered paying in the past. i couldn't bring myself to buy any (and there weren't any colors that thrilled me enough to consider it).

today mimerki sent me a link to Birmingham Pen Company. the name is misleading; they're in PA and they make their own ink and pens. reviews i could find seemed good. so i, um, ordered enough ink for free shipping.

the other thing that happened yesterday (after finding a vax appt for C) was that the new tent arrived.

we masked up and carried it downstairs to the common area where there was enough room to try pitching it and take notes and pictures. it was everything i hoped it would be and more.

the trend in tents has been to make 50% or more of the body out of no-see-um mesh. this makes sense for cutting weight for backpacking, but for being in a base camp as far as i'm concerned it sucks. there's no privacy without the fly (and don't get me started on the existence of rain flys that don't cover the entire tent). we live in a place where it's wet most of the year, i want a tent to protect me from rain. it's more likely to be cool than blistering hot, i want actual walls with the option to open windows and vents as needed. and we've been talking about doing more early/late season camping, so again, mesh walls don't cut it.

so: the new tent is a dome with six sides. the sides alternate between a large double-layer window/door and triangular double layer vent windows, plus more little double layer vent windows up near the peak. the fly has zipper openings for all the window/doors with one main vestibule that has its own pole support, and pop up openings for the vent windows (there are little props to tent them up so you can have air circulation but not rain). it's smaller than the previous tent but still just tall enough for us to stand up inside (we're both under 6'). all the stakes are stainless steel so we can hammer them into hard ground. it came with a waterproof footprint even though it wasn't listed in the specs. everything involved in the setup is color-coded. all the external lines and loops have reflective elements. the bag it comes in has compression straps. it's commensurately heavy but i didn't buy it to pack farther than a national park "walk in". i suppose i wish that there wasn't any gray in the color scheme, but i'll live :)

complete with napping and forgetting to shower. we've been watching Edwardian Farm all day.

the major accomplishment is the purchase of a new car camping tent. our funky old tent had plastic "windows" in the fly (more like skylights) and one of them just fell out one day. we tried gluing it back in, but that failed and we had to resort to duct tape. we knew we wanted a new one for this season, and the REI member sale is on, so this weekend was the time. (ultimately the new tent is coming from somewhere else, but they also had a 20% off thing going on.) we're excited about the new one since C's backpacking tent from the same manufacturer is old enough to rent a car and still going strong. this one ticks all the boxes for us and then some, being both bombproof and tall enough for us to stand in. fingers crossed, really excited to get outside again.