The Raven's Roost

Yesterday's doctor appointment almost didn't happen because of some dumbass on 21 and 16. There was a wreck at that intersection - a major one where two heavily traveled highways cross. Some guy wanted to go north in Middleburg. Instead of turning to the right or left (which weren't blocked off) and taking a side road into town (218 goes from Camp Blanding to Penney Farms and goes right through town) he sat there. Through twelve goddamn light cycles. And I was a bit too far back to creep up the right-hand shoulder and make my turn, or I would absolutely have gone around him and probably given him the finger to boot. As it was I made it with minutes to spare, so go me.

I know not everyone carries around a map in their head, and I know it's something I tend to be exceptionally good at. My other beef here is with the cops working the scene - someone should have gotten out there and directed traffic. Call for a PSA. Or just get out there and start waving people around. C'mon man, what are you doing?

Anyway. My new doctor is a nice lady who seems to be about my age or a little older, who hails from south Florida and specializes in women's health. Also, SHE IS A RUNNER TOO. So she gets it! She even ASKED ME what my exercise routine was like. She actually looked in my ears and listened to my chest and stuff. You know, normal doctor things. It feels like I shouldn't be this excited about a doctor doing doctor stuff. This is just one visit, so of course, you can't really tell, but it feels good to me. I've got a battery of lab work to have done and I see her again for a full physical in December.

Also on today's schedule - finish the last grass mowing of the season, and start roasting the rest of my pumpkins. A short, easy run to the stop sign and back, and sitting down to write this afternoon.

One of the stories in my news feed this morning is "Things to do in Jacksonville, FL this weekend!" And beside it is a black and white photo of a woman on a couch. It's actually about the Mama Blue reading of Dickens in Fernandina Beach, but that little snippet makes it look like what you can do in Jacksonville is ... sit on this couch.

No disrespect to the couch though, it might be hella comfy.

From the Harvard Independent, no one can read. It seems that the Common Core requirements have led to "teaching to the test," which has students only reading non-fiction and technical works. Which, as the author fittingly puts it, makes reading as much fun as solving math problems. No one's encouraging kids to read storybooks, fiction, or any of the enjoyable reading of childhood that cements a reading habit later in life.

Relevant to my interests - things to do with roselle calyxes. So many of these call for starting with dried calyxes that I'm planning to simply wash and dehydrate mine. I need to dig out my pressure canner and check the seals - I think they'll need replacing. Once that's done I can use the remaining harvest to make more jam and heat can it for cabinet storage.

Dump & Go Gyudon - a video link. Looks like a lot of what's being made is single serving but it should be easy enough to adjust up for two or three servings. The whole channel looks good :D Easy Japanese home cooking from a real Japanese person. Also, gyudon is awesome and I love it.

It's delightfully cool here today - 59 as of just now. We opened the windows yesterday and have been enjoying the lower temps. Finally. I plan to get some gardening work in that I was going to do earlier in the week, but rain delayed me. I'll be chopping down the pumpkin vines and prepping the two fallow beds for planting. I'll be trying out cabbages, some cooking herbs, and probably spinach if I can get seeds for it.

Last week when our power was off, Fox went next door to see if they'd let him fill a 5-gallon bucket (they did) and he noticed they were trying to work on Jamie's truck in the dirt yard. He offered them use of our concrete driveway, if you can call it a driveway, it's more like a parking pad outside the garage, but it's a good place to work on vehicles. They came over last night to look at her brakes, and it turned out her front brake pads were pretty worn, so they replaced them. I have not interacted with her husband Rob that much, and his dad came over from where he lives a road or two over. I actually now know where he lives and have run there a few times, but I don't go that way any more because of the loose dogs.

I like feeling useful and helpful.

Fox has PT again this morning and we may pull the camper out today or tomorrow. We've got a replacement sink cover on the way - the glass one shattered on a trip home, as they do. He found a company selling composite replacements, which will give me that entire counter as a work surface again.

Fox is pretty adamant that if he drops back to the half marathon for Space Coast that I do not drop back with him. He says he's perfectly fine with needing to wait for me to finish, and I guess it would be good to have at least one person with a functioning brain who can drive home. With that in mind I will be doing a fifteen mile long run this weekend, and then of course I have the half that first weekend in November. Reading more into carb loading based on that 580 grams per day rec, I am likely not even remotely carb loading enough before my long races because the first thing I do when I get anxious about something is stop eating.

By the time we get home I should also have my Fablemaker's deck of many things, a D&D5 item but also useful as a general storytelling deck. All of this solo RPG stuff is a great way to procrastinate on my writing by writing other stuff. Great success!

Friday, I did manage to get ALL my blood work taken. She had to take something like eight vials, but I was able to walk out under my own power. At that point I could have eaten breakfast and had some coffee and been hunky-dory, but I still have the imaging to do, and it was almost 10:30 before I was able to eat. I was also pretty dehydrated at that point, too, since they don't like you drinking a ton of water for these procedures. So I felt "off" the rest of the day, but was still able to generally function.

The GP's normal metabolic panel is all done, and nothing unusual came up. Everything is "green flag." The more specialized liver panels aren't done yet except the hepatitis checks, and I don't have Hep A, B, or C. And it could take a week or so for the imaging to be looked at and interpreted. Also apparently my ferritin is normal, so I have a normal amount of ferrets :D My ceruloplasmin is slightly low, but I'm not sure if it's low enough that he'll want to do much about it. Low is 18, mine is 16.

The garden is coming along nicely except for the pumpkins which aren't sprouting. Almost every garlic bulb I planted has sent up shoots, and my bell pepper has five little peppers on it, and a bunch of new flowers. Some of my citrus trees look a little rough, so I'm going to look at running soil samples over to the county extension office next week.

Dinner came out great and we have a ton of food, so I know what I'll be eating the next few days.
Peri-peri chicken - I found a marinade recipe online and used that. It was a cup of lemon juice, paprika, chili powder, and salt. It called for four split chicken breasts but I had enough marinade to do four pounds of boneless thighs, which we smoked. I dressed my serving of meat with Nando's Peri-Peri garlic sauce which we're able to find locally. The garlic claims to be mild but packs a decent punch.

Nigerian Jollof Rice from a recipe by Kitchen Butterfly, a famous African food blogger. This was good. I did not use the "party rice" step, but instead used a can of fire roasted tomatoes. I could not get Scotch Bonnet peppers and simply used some Tabasco. I also couldn't find African curry powder and subbed hot Indian curry instead. I did still have a slight crust of rice on the bottom of the pot which I scraped off and ate because the little bit of burnt rice is tasty.

These honey cornbread muffins are a tried and true recipe. If you want sweeter muffins, use AP flour. Whole wheat gives a nuttier flavor. I had enough batter to make six jumbo muffins. These are good with extra honey and butter, or pepper jelly depending on your tastes.

The rice should develop its flavor overnight so we'll see how the leftovers are tomorrow. I plan to warm some up and plop a fried egg on top. And now if you'll excuse me, I had a long day and I'm going to go turn into a pumpkin.

I didn't get a ton of reading done this month. I'm currently reading The Shining by Stephen King - as someone who has been a fan of King since middle school, I'm surprised at myself for not having read this one. I read a lot of his early and middle-years work, up through maybe Green Mile. And I'll probably go back and start catching up at some point. I'm also reading the Discourses & Selected Writings of Epictetus because I'm a huge nerd.

I finished The Magus by John Fowles (highly recommended but with some reservations,) and Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which reminds me, I need to go find that grape ice cream recipe. So far as I'm able I'm trying to read what I already have. I've been able to weed out a few novels so far, starting them and then quitting when they failed to hold my attention, rather than forcing myself to finish them. I did need to buy a book, which came today.

With everything going on right now I felt like reading something superficial. I wanted the book equivalent of a box of meringue cookies. Edward Gorey was a big fan of EF Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels, which I gather are on TV now in Britain, but that sounded like a good diversion. Unfortunately, and the reason I'd not read them before, I only had the last three books in the series. At the time I was buying them they were apparently out of print in the States and I was having to gather them from used book shops. An excellent excuse to spend weekends scouring the French Quarter. Anyway, I broke my "no book buying" pledge and purchased a collected edition of the first three novels (bonus short story!) through Amazon Marketplace. So right after The Overlook Hotel burns down, I'm headed to 1920s England.

On the gaming front, there's a Steam Sale and I picked up We Happy Few, Gathering Sky, and Shovel Knight. SN is a collected edition with all the games, including the co-op Shovel of Hope. My controller is terrible and I'm looking to acquire a sturdier, nicer X-Box style one soon. I cracked the d-pad, and I'm also looking to get a faceted d-pad replacement. For whatever reason the joystick controller doesn't feel right and doesn't seem to work well for me. I also had a brainstorm and tried Cuphead with it, and hey, I got past the tutorial. Go me. *sarcastic thumbs up goes here*

I started We Happy Few (which really works much better with keyboard controls anyway) and I'm working through Arthur's story. On Hollow Knight, I have destroyed Herrah the Beast and opened the final Stag Station, so I got to go to the Stag Nest. I'm back in Queen's Gardens, probably going to try to take on the Traitor Mantis next. I got another nail upgrade, so I'm on Channeled Nail now, and there's only one more upgrade. And I lost all my money in Deepnest, so now I have no qualms about trying some of the trickier platforming segments.

Today's Fox's birthday (yay!) and we're not really doing much. I'll be making a pizza later, and we have some key lime cake. Tomorrow I'm probably going to do my last yard cutting of the year, but today I'm just cooling it. I pulled my calf muscle again, but it feels almost normal today so I might try a short run tomorrow. And I mean it really feels almost normal, not "almost normal except a little tight." I hopefully have given the thing enough time to heal up properly. It feels weird not running all this time.

And I upgraded my phone, but as usual, it's surprising what things don't automatically work. And I lost my house in Neko Atsume so I have to start that over. But I like the new phone, it's a lot lighter weight than the old one, so it won't be as much of a nuisance to run with. My Garmin actually will play music and run GPS at the same time but it will drain the battery fast. So for long runs, I'll carry my phone for music. If it's a shorter run, then I don't mind killing my battery quicker.

It's a gorgeous afternoon here so I'm thinking of getting my bike out of storage and pedaling around the yard some. Depending on how solid the sand feels on the road I might ride down to the turn. I'm just tired of being cooped up inside with the miserable hot weather, and I've played video games so much today my thumb is sore. But I got to take the Last Stag back to where he was hatched, so that was great.

 One thing I need to work on when I get back from racing is a proper set of icons for this journal. I have a piecemeal set of about thirty right now, no rhyme or reason, no seasonal icons, not enough reading or art icons, etc. 

And it's getting cold again! Some other parts of Florida got heavier rains, it dumped about .60 inches on us and there's lovely cool air now. I was seriously tired of temps in the 80s. In January. The 80s. Why. 

I'd like to get a little more wear out of my sweaters and hoodies before I have to pack them away again. If the forecast holds true, I will at least be able to wear my marathon jacket to Disney in the evenings, and I'll probably need to pack my running hoodie for the 5 and 10k. The half marathon looks like it might be warmer and humid and icky and gross, but that front will pass making marathon Sunday cooler and drier. 

Neighbor's cat got sort of lost last night. She wandered over here after her usual going-inside time and we heard her meowing, then the neighbor's older daughter was out calling her, so Fox went out to help, then I went out to help and of course the cat skirted around all three humans and went home on her own. And I know it was Jupiter because Crowley was napping with me and heard her meow, so he got up to go defend his territory by sitting in the window and growling. He also growls at my neighbor's younger girl and her friends when they play outside, and I've seen him hiss at the tractor.

Anyway I am very sleepy after having dinner and cleaning up for the night but I need to go do some yoga. Despite how Fitbit chides me for "working out" so close to bedtime, it will help me sleep better, too. I'm doing a yin flow of poses focusing on my legs and hips so this is not the strenuous, sweaty type of yoga.

I also started getting emails from a yoga teacher insurance company. How did someone get the idea I'm a yoga teacher? I doubt I could ever teach anyone yoga, let alone open a studio.