real life

A 3905-post collection

Almost Holidays

There's today and tomorrow until two weeks' worth of slacking off, so of course both my little darlings are trying various tactics to get that time off early.

Mayhem is trying the "oh I'm sick, I'm dying, I need to stay home five-ever" routine. Quickly kiboshed with the household thermometer. Chaos was a little bit more clever and insisted I missed a day. Going to the extreme of pointing out a missing day in the communications book. This missing day was (a) in Week Seven, and (b) a day in which she was sick. I showed her the actual date on my watch, and said that if she insisted that it was still Week Seven, she could go to school for three more weeks.

We have enough of last night's Bodge Meal to see us through tonight, so that's one less thing for me to worry about. After that, it's one packet of mince and three steaks to split amongst four people. And then we have to buy meat again.

Which is going to take a definite honk out of my weekly budget.

We still have soup bones... maybe I can do a stoo.

At least there's one butcher in my roaming area that sells pasture-raised beefs. Shy of raising our own chooks - which I can't because asthma - there's no real way to be sure that free range chicken I get at Aldi's is pasture raised or no.

I freaking love the fact that Keto encourages ethical omnivorism.

For those not in the know: being an Ethical Omnivore means that you recognise that all life feeds on the death of another life. Therefore, you attempt to use all the animal/vegetable/mineral that becomes a part of your sustenance. And, wherever possible, make sure that any animals at least had time to enjoy something of a life before their slaughter.

Ethical omnivores are against fattening pens, cage farms, barn farms, and generally locking animals indoors and pumping them with drugs before they're slaughtered. We're also in favour of sustainable fishing habits.

Ketogenics is also in vast favour of pasture-raised animal products, because micronutrients are important.

We're still gassing about that aquaponics farm, which would mean that I would be able to enjoy fish that I know were ethically farmed. But Beloved has taken to wanting a forge of all things... potentially melting down all the aluminium cans their office goes through. I can't see a goal to that, but whatever. It's something cool that we could plausibly do.

I really want that aquaponics though. That could be so awesome.

Blurgh... murgh

Today is going to be a FML day. I know this because Beloved came home to bed at one in the morning and I spent most of my time since then attempting to snatch a fragment of sleep or three.

The only plus side is that I remember a dream I had that was "sort of" about Steam Powered Giraffe.

It was a procedural drama in which the cops in question were looking into the SteamPunk community and... some very familiar faces

Read more »

Cheevs?

Sometime last week, I actually contributed to a fanfic. And that means that my $5 Patrons would be treated to a new WIP. If I had any $5 Patrons.

But I'm still putting it up because having stuff for my Patrons is important.

I've begun work on Shot #8 for SESP, and I might just have time to animate some of it all, this weekend. Powers know I've been more than a little slack about that. I have features and shots to

Read more »

My plate overfloweth

Which is a fancy way of saying I have a lot on my plate. I haven't even sat down to my email, yet, and it's gone ten AM.

Tonight's dinner is spagbol with zoodles instead of spaghetti. Stage one of which is making the tomato sauce. Which meant getting buttloads of tomatoes [2kg] and slow cooking them in vinegar with sweeteners and herbs. Once they break down, I'll blitz them and add the mince.

I've already got the cleaning 90% done.

Further

Read more »

Techie Day

I'm flying off across Brisbane to visit MeMum and hit all her tech with a hammer.

I also have to do Self-Shill Sunday [since Saturday was spent solely on cooking] and the daily Instant and queueing up tomorrow's Blasts From my Past.

And of course my compy likes to freeze at random times during all of this noise, delaying everything.

The good news is that the new batch of "muffins" seems to be a success. If burned a little.

To this bread

Read more »

Interesting times...

Beloved has some free time, and we're going to spend it cooking. Tomorrow, I'm off to the outer reaches of Logan to sort out MeMum's tech troubles.

Beloved has PLNs for muffins. Chaos wants to have more Crack Slaw in her lunchbox. We're going to need smaller freezer boxes for that part of the party.

It's going to be a lot of shopping and I am glad that my Beloved is footing the bill TBH.

Adding to the Interesting Times is an

Read more »

Getting Sorted

I have my Hallows' Read story finished and in Beta. I don't have to clean, today. So some part of today will be spent on 'shopping up a cover for that sordid and horrific tale.

I'm montaging references for the cover of Beauties and the Beastly, tracing what I can and deciding where I'm going to use pattern brushes1. But I'm going to take a break from the cover, today so I can devote my time and energy to some more

Read more »

Oh fucking hell, THIS again

I fucking hate my sleep issues.

I went to bed when I was tired, last night, at about 7:30PM.

Woke up at a quarter to 1AM.

Spent FOUR AND THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR trying to get the fuck back to sleep. With spotty results.

Take a guess when I felt tired enough to sleep?

Yes, folks. Five FUCKING SECONDS after my morning alarm went off.

I thought I was done with this noise. Nope. It's come back and it's bit

Read more »

Success! Sort of

Crack Slaw is delicious. It's even okay when you leave out the coconut amino by accident. It's better when Beloved adds eggs, coconut oil, coconut cream, and a whole bunch of other yummies.

There's not quite enough for tonight, so I'll be making more Crack Slaw tonight and endeavouring to remember the soy sauce substitute.

On the downside, I gained half a kilo. Boo. Might be the turnips I put in.

Future versions will not have turnip to see if that makes

Read more »

PLNs, Effort, and Reward

It was a quiet weekend, all up. And, for the record, Beloved and I finally got to watch the Lego Batman Movie. The internet was right. It is the best Batman movie ever.

My PLNs for today involve the usual cleaning and writing, but also include a new discovery called Crack Slaw. To anyone who watches that video - go ahead and follow that dude. He is gorgeous.

I'll be making a variant on this deliciousness for tonight's dinner. Alas, all coleslaw

Read more »

Father's Day

Or, as I would call it in the Amalgam Station Universe, Secpa's Day.

Since the household Secpa is asleep, and so are the kids, I get a little time to blog.

Economically, I'm not doing fantastic. I spent $15 out of my New Compy fund [to support Chaos' school], and only saved $5 this week. So now I'm $20 away from having $300 in cash.

Sigh.

I have $30 in my PayPal, $12 held by Smashwords, and almost $500 in my Dreams

Read more »

Day 2 of the Tumblr Strike

I've noticed that the sponsored posts have 'mysteriously' vanished from Tumblr. Odd that a social website that makes its money by supporting pedophiles, homophobes, and racists suddenly doesn't want its sponsors knowing what it's really up to.

Funny that.

Well, I vow that I'm going to keep stirring that pot until the day that I can export all my Tumblr shit to Pillowfort. If I see an advertiser, I'm going to frelling tweet them about exactly what organisation they're paying to spread

Read more »

Cleaning day once more

After I'm done with this blog entry, I shall be loading up the kitchen sink with all kinds of post baking fallout.

Good news: I discovered that another living thing in this household likes my "bread".

Bad news: it's the household mouse.

Worse news: the loaf that had been nibbled was also going mouldy.

I despise waste, so the whole thing was sliced and sacrificed to the neighbourhood bird population whilst I hurriedly prepared a new loaf. I like my two daily

Read more »

Cake-like Object, Experiment #1

Followers of this blog will know that I've been making this bread with added linseeds for my intestinal health. It works pretty well in my humble opinion, but it is something of a brick and nobody else in the family will touch it.

I had been pondering how to turn it into a cake-like object, but not doing much about it.

However, Chaos has been battling internal blockages and since she won't touch my bread, I had to get into making that

Read more »

Now What?

I've run out of one thing to share with my Patreons. And this happened because I'm too busy doing other shit to fanfic much. Alas.

This week, I'm going to run out of editing chapters to post. The last one will appear on my Patreon this Friday.

I don't think I'll ever run out of stalled fics, so there is that bright point. Maybe. It's getting trickier to pick them, though.

On the other hand, I've posted the first piece of music

Read more »