§ The hostas are sprouting, the brunnera is flowering, and the trout lillies have absolutely taken over. In contrast, the jostaberry has done absolutely nothing. I’m not ready to write it off entirely just yet but ehhh it’s not looking good.

The best feature of my yard is the family of pileated woodpeckers whose calls make for an uncanny rainforest ambiance.

§ Lots of juggling at work this week. Monday kicked off with the deinstallation of my old big thing and ramped right into construction of the next one. I’ll be filming interviews with engineers at NASA Glenn next week! I haven’t been there before—I can’t wait.

§ The new quails are doing great, we will probably integrate them with the rest of the flock as soon as the weather warms up a bit. The only hiccup is that, so far, we’ve been getting only two eggs each day from the three birds so we’re starting to suspect one might be male.

Anyway, with quail egg season comes the excuse to make a bunch of eggy deserts. Last year was all meringues and angel food cake. This week we made, uhh, more than a couple pints of french vanilla ice cream.

I’m also trying out a new approach to extracting plant-accessible calcium from all of the egg shells.

§ Links

  • Tracy Durnell wrote about how she views recipes as “a score for improvisation.” I’ve been cooking dinner at home nearly everyday since 2020 (hmm… I wonder what prompted that) and I’ve only now started feeling comfortable doing the same. It’s hard and stressful and when a dish doesn’t go well you don’t have the recipe writer to blame. Still, I would love if one day new meals didn’t start with scrolling around for recipes online but instead from looking around in my fridge and imagining whats possible.
  • The Delta emulator is finally available on the iOS App Store. I remember jailbreaking to download a previous iteration of the app back in high school. It’s wild to see how far it has come.
  • Sam Kriss on giving up his smart phone – “Huge complex machines exist purely to show me more of the kind of things I like. Strange how all this fulfillment never seems to leave you feeling good. Strange how indulging all your idlest urges feels like you’ve mortgaged a portion of your life to Hell… As soon as checking my phone was no longer an option, the desire to do so simply vanished.”
  • Songs made directly from sunlight