(no subject)
Aug. 19th, 2024 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spryngI resent the way adult illnesses always take 4-7 days to resolve, instead of the 24 hour bugs we used to catch as kids. Of course, the downside of those was all the vomiting and fever and nausea but idk... sometimes I'd rather just feel awful for a short period and be over it instead of the lingering.
Anyway this is day 3 or 4 of this cold and I would like to just sleep, even though I am also tired of sleeping.
I did go for a run on Saturday to take advantage of the cool weather and I do not regret it. Even though it was only 3km, the ease of it despite having a chest cold reminded me that I won't have to struggle to run forever; the humidity will break, the cool season will come, and I will have all of this endurance from pushing through all summer to actually go run long distances and have fun again.
Just. Like. One more month.
I made a book cake this weekend, for practice. CG saw the recipe in a Sprinklebakes book and insisted I make it for my birthday because I "love books and love making cake." Lol. She also said something about how I should make a coffee cup cake because I also love coffee. This girl gets me. Or maybe I'm just that simple.
I decided to practice the cake since it used several techniques/pieces that I haven't tried before. Namely, the cake itself (madeira, which is egg-heavy and dries out easily), fondant, sculpting, and lettering. I managed about 2 out of 4 of those all right, hah. But I let the cake bake too long and get too dry (the trouble with baking when kids are around) and the fondant didn't look terrible, but everyone still politely scraped it off their cake.
Still, it wasn't a complete failure and now I have some solid ideas on how to make it a lot better. Namely, maybe make the cake itself the day before while the kids are away, hah. Also maybe try to decorate the icing itself instead of fondant. As cool as fondant can be, if no one is going to eat it, what's the point?
Speaking of books, I finished Starter Villain in two days last week (mmm, candy) and just finished The Death I Gave Him this morning. The former was an easy breeze of a book to read, although it feels like Scalzi is starting to be a bit dated in his writing. The MC was supposedly someone in his early 30s, but everything about him screamed late 40s divorcee. The latter was a visceral sci-fi retelling of Hamlet with a lot - a lot - of character dissections, both figurative and literal. I ended up skimming the second half quite a bit and not missing much, but I also recognize there have been times in my reading life when I would have lapped up the excessive descriptions and metaphors. I've never read Hamlet itself before, but the story shape has been used so many times that it felt familiar. Still, I didn't expect that ending, and I loved that.
Next I'm picking up Gideon the Ninth for the seventh time. Maybe I'll actually finish it this time. Not Gideon's fault--it's got a great rhythm once I get into it, I just kept getting interrupted what with kids and everything. And it's been long enough that hopefully I can appreciate it for what it is, instead of tangled up with all the hype. Gideon definitely suffered from the Hype Machine, which tends to turn me off whatever media it's currently blasting. That plus it being The Necromancy Book the same year my own necromancy book came out, and never hearing the end of it...
But I want to give it a fair shake, so. Let's go again.
Anyway this is day 3 or 4 of this cold and I would like to just sleep, even though I am also tired of sleeping.
I did go for a run on Saturday to take advantage of the cool weather and I do not regret it. Even though it was only 3km, the ease of it despite having a chest cold reminded me that I won't have to struggle to run forever; the humidity will break, the cool season will come, and I will have all of this endurance from pushing through all summer to actually go run long distances and have fun again.
Just. Like. One more month.
I made a book cake this weekend, for practice. CG saw the recipe in a Sprinklebakes book and insisted I make it for my birthday because I "love books and love making cake." Lol. She also said something about how I should make a coffee cup cake because I also love coffee. This girl gets me. Or maybe I'm just that simple.
I decided to practice the cake since it used several techniques/pieces that I haven't tried before. Namely, the cake itself (madeira, which is egg-heavy and dries out easily), fondant, sculpting, and lettering. I managed about 2 out of 4 of those all right, hah. But I let the cake bake too long and get too dry (the trouble with baking when kids are around) and the fondant didn't look terrible, but everyone still politely scraped it off their cake.
Still, it wasn't a complete failure and now I have some solid ideas on how to make it a lot better. Namely, maybe make the cake itself the day before while the kids are away, hah. Also maybe try to decorate the icing itself instead of fondant. As cool as fondant can be, if no one is going to eat it, what's the point?
Speaking of books, I finished Starter Villain in two days last week (mmm, candy) and just finished The Death I Gave Him this morning. The former was an easy breeze of a book to read, although it feels like Scalzi is starting to be a bit dated in his writing. The MC was supposedly someone in his early 30s, but everything about him screamed late 40s divorcee. The latter was a visceral sci-fi retelling of Hamlet with a lot - a lot - of character dissections, both figurative and literal. I ended up skimming the second half quite a bit and not missing much, but I also recognize there have been times in my reading life when I would have lapped up the excessive descriptions and metaphors. I've never read Hamlet itself before, but the story shape has been used so many times that it felt familiar. Still, I didn't expect that ending, and I loved that.
Next I'm picking up Gideon the Ninth for the seventh time. Maybe I'll actually finish it this time. Not Gideon's fault--it's got a great rhythm once I get into it, I just kept getting interrupted what with kids and everything. And it's been long enough that hopefully I can appreciate it for what it is, instead of tangled up with all the hype. Gideon definitely suffered from the Hype Machine, which tends to turn me off whatever media it's currently blasting. That plus it being The Necromancy Book the same year my own necromancy book came out, and never hearing the end of it...
But I want to give it a fair shake, so. Let's go again.
