Salt and corrosion

Today's haul:



I have plans for a curried zucchini slice and zucchini brownies, and my mother is thinking of zucchini soup. And by then, the next ones will be ready to harvest.

While I'm doing photos, last year, while people were doing sourdough in lockdown, I had a crack at croissants. ( How did that go? )


January

22. How often do you check your phone?
Rarely. In the Beforetimes I hardly ever turned it on. These days, it's on most of the time because my work phone diverts to it when I work from home, and because of checking in everywhere, but I try to ignore it as much as possible. I really do resent its constant demands for attention.

It's so easy to do a daily update when there's the ongoing saga of my booster shot to report. Not that there is much to report today, just that I found out the "unforeseen circumstances" that made them cancel today's appointment. Apparently Thursday is meant to be for children, but they somehow managed to mix up who was eligible to book an appointment on which day. A whole lot of parents and children turned up for their appointments yesterday to find there were no children's doses, and had to come back today.

I received a text from the Department of Health this morning saying they would call me soon to arrange a new appointment. I wonder if they'll realise I've already done that?

I was quite lucky to get a new appointment at the mass vaccination centre next Monday. Payroll Lady at work was trying to make an appointment this morning, and couldn't get in there until April. She tried her GP, and couldn't get in until March. So she rang around the pharmacies, and managed to get an appointment on 1 February.


January

20. How fast do you read?
I'm a fast reader. Not speed reading fast, but in primary school the teacher didn't believe I was reading books so quickly until she tested me on them and realised that I did know what was in them. And if we ever had to share a book in class for some reason, I would find myself with time to wait at the end of the page.

Having said that, I don't always have a lot of time available for reading, so I can take a while to read a book. I slowly read a book quickly.

Something I learnt today: sharks have the same sort of reflective layer in their eyes as cats do. As the book I read that in said, if they walked on land, you'd see them at night when your headlights picked up their glowing eyes. So there's a free idea for your nightmares tonight.


January

18. In 40 years, what will people be nostalgic for?
Forty years ago was 1982, and the 1980s are having a moment now. So does that mean forty years in the future, people will be nostalgic about this year? Keep your masks, f-list: all the cool kids will be wearing them again.

Already I have discovered something using dog breeds as my titles: the Akita and the Akita (Japanese) (or Akita Inu) are not the same thing. Always learning.

It is zucchini time again in the garden. There were five little green fingers on the plants yesterday morning; by this afternoon they were like forearms. I picked them so they didn't get any bigger, and immediately grated two of them to make a zucchini-and-other-vegetable slice for this week's work lunches.

For my birthday last year I was given a Lego bonsai. I made it up with the green leaves and have it on my chest of drawers. While I was waiting for the zucchini slice to bake today, I finally got around to swapping them out for the pink blossoms. A bit of variety.

January

16. What's the most creative use of emojis you've ever seen?

My mother and her friends send the most bizarre emojis to each other. She'll send a text to say Happy birthday and add cake, cake, cake, balloon, champagne, chicken, chicken, chicken, duck, duck, chicken, smiley face. "What does that mean?" I'll ask, and she'll just say, "Who doesn't want a chicken?" Fair enough.

Yesterday's storm turned into last night's storm and I woke this morning to a freshly washed world and a flock of rainbow lorikeets.

My mother had her Covid booster today. Mine is next week. And that leads me to today's story from... [imagine that wavy thing TV shows do for a flashback]... way, way back in December last year. Three weeks ago.

Day one
The government sent me a text to say it was time for my third vax. So I went to the local hospital's vaccine registration site, which is how I set up my first two doses. There, I clicked the big blue button to set up an appointment, exactly as I did for the first two doses. But instead of giving me appointment times, that link has now changed to a state-wide registration site, which I had to set up a user name for. So I did that. The site said they would email me a temporary registration number to enter in order to create a password. The email did not arrive. I clicked the link that said it would re-send the number. That email didn't arrive. I decided I'd try again the following day.

( How did that go? )

So that was a bit of fun.

January

14. What movie would be greatly improved if made into a musical?
Black Hawk Down.

A bit of excitement today: my bi-monthly cheese box arrived. This month:
- a semi-matured ashed goat's milk cheese
- a Persian feta infused with chilli and garlic
- a semi-hard cow's milk cheese made using leftover liquid from a gin still
- a fresh goat's milk cheese

And I bought a lovely red leicester just the other day, so I am totally cheesed up.

January

12. What's your favourite number? Why?
e, the base of the natural logarithm. Because I am whimsical.

I've just been looking at books, planning the next few things that I'm going to read. Apparently I'm very into non-fiction books about sea creatures at the moment. Am I moving on from last year's Golden Age detective novel binge, or is this just a blip?

January

10. What Olympic (or other) sport would be the funniest to add a mandatory amount of alcohol to?

Pretty much the entire Winter Olympics. Alcohol and ice: dangerous and funny. Drunk figure skating! Drunk slalom! Drunk skeleton! The fun would never stop.

A slow day, so here is a story from last year:

I.
When my mother was a little girl, her best friend was called Noelene. Noelene's family lived on the next farm over, both farms being big tranches of land outside a tiny town called Purnim. My mother will wax lyrical about the idyllic days she and Noelene spent riding their horses to each other's houses, or to the shop, or to the tennis court, or around the paddock. Eventually Noelene's family moved to a farm further east, and they lost touch.

II.
In January last year, my work employed a new accountant called Brooke. She's nice. We've both been working from home for most of the year, but for the last month or so we've been back in our newly-renovated office, where we have adjoining desks. Brooke isn't from the City by the Sea; she lives in the shire to the east.

III.
In late December, one of our colleagues stopped by for a chat, saying she had to go and pick someone up from hospital and she didn't know what she would have to do. Would she be allowed in? My mother had been in hospital for a day procedure (nothing serious) a couple of weeks earlier, so I told her my experience: there was a separate desk in the foyer for picking up people, where I had to go in and say I was there to pick up Pauline Daisyname, then wait until she came out, quite separate from the waiting area for people going in.

When our colleague left, Brooke turned to me and said, "Did you say your mother's name was Pauline Daisyname? Like, is that a married name?"

"No," I said, "that's her maiden name."

"How old is she?"

"Seventy-one," I said, and I thought I knew where this was going. My mother was a midwife and district nurse for a long time, so she probably delivered Brooke or visited her ailing relatives or some such, but her next question surprised me.

"Where did she grow up?"

"On a farm near Purnim. Why?"

Brooke blinked. "My mum's Noelene."

IV.
It is a small world.


January
8. Would you rather be able to see 10 minutes into your own future, or 10 minutes into the future of anyone but yourself?

I think ten minutes into my own future is very likely to be ten minutes further into me doing whatever I'm doing at any given point. I mean, ten minutes from now, I will probably still be sitting on this sofa, just with an empty cup rather than one full of tea. But ten minutes into anyone else's future, well, that's bound to be more interesting, isn't it? Even if they're sitting on a sofa with a cup of tea, it will at least be a different sofa and a different cup.

I am home again. Working from home, that is. I've been back in the office since mid-December. I've only just started getting used to it again, but word came from on high this afternoon, so I packed up my desk at the end of the day and here I am. It did seem a bit silly that I've spent the last two years working from home when there was only twenty cases in town, but had to come back to the office now Covid is out and about.

Speaking of work, in December I heard from Old Boss, at the not-for-profit job I left in 2016. They've finally lost their government funding and will wind up in December 2022. Which is grim, but given that this was first threatened in December 2005, they've had a good run. At the back of my mind I've always thought of it as my actual job, one I just happen to be not working at and would happily(-ish) go back to when enough time had passed. Time to recalibrate my ideas about that.

January

6. How often do you binge-watch TV shows?
So much for questions I could give interesting answers to. I don't binge-watch TV shows. I like to let my thoughts simmer.

I forgot to post all the questions last time, in case anyone else wants to do it. The full list of 365 questions is posted here.

Today I had to carry an office chair up a flight of stairs. Who knew that the seat isn't actually attached to the leg? Not me. I hoisted that chair by the back rest and watched as the leg fell out and rolled down the three stairs I'd just dragged the whole thing up. Still, easier to carry in two parts.