Books
Started and finished Antarctica Station by A. G. Riddle. Not a bad little sci-fi thriller, but some things were either telegraphed or hammered home a little too much, so when the payoff happened it was a bit more “yes yes, we get it” rather than “oh how coooooool”. I didn’t hate it, though. It kept my brain busy while doing chores around the house. 3.75/5 ⭐
Movies
No movies this week. Unfortunately, my watch partner got distracted with something called whurrk? Maybe next week!
Television
It’s been Severance and The Expanse. The only thing I can say about Severance is that it’s getting weirder and I just have so many more questions than answers. Again.
For The Expanse, we’re now in the Jovian system dealing with the effects of Errinwright and Mao’s machinations behind the scenes. We just finished the episode that has so many people’s favourite Amos line. (For the record, it’s not mine or Augs. Augs’ is “I didn’t always work in space” and mine is when Amos smiles with the this-is-a-promise eyes and says “Thank you.” IYKYK.)
HOWEVER. And this hasn’t ruined it for me, but it’s one of those things where you go “I have never worked in this environment, so it would have never pegged for me but now that it has, I can’t stop seeing it…” A mutual on Mastodon commented “people tie the arms of their poopie suit (boiler suit) around their waist, we don’t leave them dragging behind us” and yeah. Holden does that all the time. I wonder if it’s an affectation of Holden’s because Naomi always has hers done up, as does Alex. I will have to keep an eye on Amos’s boiler suit usage.
I feel like if anyone would do it as a “I do what I want” it’s Holden. But also, in an environment where you could go on the float at any time, I’d think you’d want to have your clothing somewhat secured to you. Now you won’t be able to stop spotting it when you do your next watch. Sorry!
Board Games
Are board games media? Dunno, but we got a new game in and played it this weekend. We played Meenakshi Temple and while reading the directions for play before playing was a bit “Huh? What?” in places, the gameplay was nicely paced and understandable. We only had a few misunderstandings of the rules. The primary one being that for upgrades you must take the leftmost card if you are using it for additional statue storage, if you are taking the upgrade to act as one of your three upgrades, then you may select any of the available upgrade cards.
It’s a fun little action-selection game with a great design where you basically build a temple to your patron deity by way of a series of ever changing action + reward options. More powerful rewards result in a higher starting place the next round. It’s well balanced and while the scoring takes place during the game (which isn’t my favourite mechanic, I find it takes away from the fun of the game for me), it wasn’t too distracting. And being able to see the available action options for the next round creates a bit of strategy on how you play the current round. Definitely worth a go if you like action-selection games.
Knitting
Not much in knitting news. I washed and blocked the Fireweed Sweater. I’m hoping to get a blog post up this week on the sweater, but we’ll see. Still working on the Scraptacular blanket and the Larch Peds as my downstairs and upstairs projects, respectively. The socks are doing a great job of working through the remainder of my leftover sock yarn. Just in time, because I ordered some more to make hats from Undercover Otter. They had a colorway called Nostromo and I need some new hats!
Sewing
Oh, the sewing frustrations. I made the wrong call. I’m a big enough person to admit it. The fabric was too heavy for the pattern I chose and it’s sitting in the corner waiting for me to unpick it. Thankfully, the Encore Skirt comes with a lot of different styles, and while the pleated midi is too much for the heavy corduroy I selected, the a-line knee will probably be fine. The weight and structure of the fabric just resulted in a dead garment. It had no movement to it and it made me feel like my legs were the clapper in a bell.
While at D&D on Sunday, I will start unpicking the seams so I can recut the fabric. Really pleased with modern indie pattern makers that have multiple styles so situations like this can be saved!
Lego
I’ve started putting together the base plates and cobblestone paths for the Winter Village display MOC. It’s very satisfying and they’re different enough where it looks of a piece but not utterly repetative. I have seven of the nine baseplates that I need, so I have a better idea of what I have left to get. I’ve put a small sticker on each baseplate with which set they’re the display for since they’ve all got a unique setup.
I also found that I had a massive amount of Insiders Points to spend, so I picked up 80116 – Trotting Lantern and 10344 – Lucky Bamboo. I was going to pick them up anyway, but I had a replacement keychain (5007093 – 1950’s Logo Spinning Keychain) that I redeemed points for that was about to expire. So those will be fun to put together soon.
Home Automation
I have discovered that people have done smart things in a better way than I could imagine, and they’ve documented it! I love a helpful person. I reworked one project with someone else’s very handy code (laundry notification), and set up my own project as a “does this work?” proof of concept.
Once I decided that my main goal for home automation was to have an invisible butler, knowing what I wanted to do became a lot easier.
Laundry Notification:
I have the washing machine plugged in via smart plug to the wall. (❗❗❗ If you do this, make sure that the smart plug is rated for the amount of power draw your machine will use ❗❗❗) I originally had it where it would just send me a phone notification when the power dropped below a certain threshold that indicated the washing cycle was done.
Then I came across Home Automation Guy’s post on getting a notification when your washing machine has finished it’s cycle. It was so easy to set up (though Call Service is now Perform) and I am now able to see when the laundry is done with a light change and I don’t leave finished laundry in the machine for days.
My bath, Jeeves:
This is very much a comfort thing, but also that I would forget time and time again to turn the heating down after.
As a kid, we had a bathroom that had a jacuzzi tub (and yes, I did put bubble bath in it and then run the jets. It’s a rite of passage.) and a heat lamp. Living in the northern climes, it was so nice to step out of the shower or bath into a warm bathroom to dry off and put on moisturiser or do hair stuff, or whatever. It made bathtime as a kid something that wasn’t a form of torture.
I don’t really need this for the bath, but for the shower? Absolutely. I put in a water leak sensor and set up an automation that when the leak sensor flips to ‘wet’ that the heating comes on to 24C for 15 minutes and then turns off. This makes it so the bathroom heats up while I’m in the shower and stays warm for at least 5 minutes after. The only thing I need to remember to do when I’m done is to flip the water sensor on it’s back if it fell into the shower pan so it dries out until the next time.
Tinkering
I had a Fitbit Versa 2 that I bought back in March of 2020 that was having issues with battery retention. I ordered the kit to do a battery replacement because I was well out of warranty and I figured that I should at least try to repair it before tossing it. Unfortunately, the issue was not the battery, and while I could Ship of Theseus this smartwatch, I think the better use of my time and money will be getting a new one.
“Why not just get a regular watch?” Because I use my smart watch to alert me to low blood glucose events at night or when doing chores. It’s a medical accessory more than ooh fun toy. Thankfully, I have a spouse that likes me and wants me to stay alive and stuff (I know, it’s been almost 15 years and we still like each other. Highly recommend.) so, much like the first smart watch I got, this one will be a Valentine’s Day gift.
I’m looking at the Garmin Venu 3S for my next watch as it has Dexcom integration. This makes me feel better about it rather than the Fitbit offerings that were supposed to have Dexcom integration a few years back but never did. As a result, any Dexcom integration for Fitbit is due to volunteers making and maintaining clock faces.
DIY (Destroy It Yourself)
I finally got the globe outdoor lights up in the carport, but now I’m waiting on a connector that came with the solar panel/battery backup but I can’t find. Once that arrives, I can get it completely hooked up and then start tinkering with the home automation part of things. I’ve already figured out how to set it up to turn the lights on when the car arrives home so I can get out in a lit area when I have a late night back from the city. That project only took a month from conception to (near) completion.
Much quicker than the next one.
We have a dishwasher that’s been out of commission for at least a year. We have a new working one (disconnected) in the foyer for… at least a year. The problem has been that the tiles were not done across the entire floor so the cabinets and dishwasher were sitting on the subfloor, about 2cm lower than the tile height. I mislaid the multitool for a while so getting the bolts off (screwing them up wasn’t working) was delayed. This weekend we decided to have one more attempt to remove the old one and we were moderately successful. Only to find out that there’s a massive electrical cable running under/between the set of legs of the dishwasher and there’s no space above to sort it out.
On the other hand, I think the tool I need is a crowbar. Which means… I get a crowbar! My current plan is to pull the baseboards under the cabinets (I’ll put them back in with glue and asshair, the kitchen is MDF, really shit, and not long for this world. To the point where I might just order a shitload of birch faced ply and build my own cabinets.) to see if I can trace the mystery cable, disconnect it if possible, and then we can get the dishwasher fully out. Then I’ll put down some OSB to level the new dishwasher up with the current tile and we’ll put a water sensor underneath, connect it all up, and call it good.
Now I know why the kitchen came with the house instead of it being bare like every other place we’ve seen. Speaking of the kitchen…
Cooking
I wanted Eggs Benedict. Like, itch that needed to be scratched, possibly verging on craving wanted Eggs Benedict. But I suck a poaching eggs. I watched a video from Brian Lagerstrom earlier in the week about basically… brining raw eggs to get them to hold together a bit better when they go in to poach.
Honestly, it worked better than I expected. I had two failures in the transfer, but I suspect that was due to my bowl being too deep and my not using a ladle to transfer them. Definitely going to try this again and hopefully with more success. I would love to have a few poached eggs in the fridge for weekday breakfasts.
Overall, a busy week though not a very successful one. Progress has been made on quite a few things, and a lot has been learned, for good or bad. Next up for me is making my meal plan for the week, writing my grocery list, GETTING A CROWBAR, running some errands, and generally planning out the chaos for next week. I hope you had a good week and figured out how to mess up in new and exciting ways! Stay safe out there and I’ll see you next week!
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