busybee fluffy rambles

Food

YouTube’s been inundating me with videos about seitan (vegan meat made primarily of vital wheat gluten) so I figured I’d start experimenting with that a bit. Today I made some pretty simple seitan nuggets, just gluten + nutritional yeast + water, kneaded and cut into little nuggets and then rolled thin and fried in olive oil.

It was okay. It didn’t have much flavor on its own, but adding a little bit of barbecue sauce made it tasty.

The latest YouTube seitan recommendation was this video about teriyaki not-chicken and it looks pretty good, so I made up a bunch of the dough and have that resting in the fridge and I’ll cook it tomorrow. I’ll probably just use bottled teriyaki sauce though, and I’ll serve it with, I dunno, rice and broccoli? That sounds good.

The funny thing about frying up seitan is that the gluten lent itself really well to inflating like a balloon with the steam inside, and I was afraid it was going to pop and splatter oil everywhere! But as soon as I took it off the heat it shrank back down. I think letting the dough rest for a while would have made it a lot better, but first time’s always the most experimental, right?

Choir

Last night we performed at the Kay White Choral Fest and it went amazingly well. Vashon Island is a nice little community and there were so many supportive people in the audience and the person who presented our set is a trans man who got to use this as his first opportunity to present anything after transition! So that was super cool.

A recording was taken but I don’t know if it’ll be public. I hope it is, and I hope when it is people don’t notice all the times I missed my fucking cues and came in early, oops.

Fitness/health

My cardio fitness has gone in the toilet ever since I had to stop doing DDR because of my joint issues. I need to find some other form of cardio workout that I enjoy doing. Beat Saber was never really much of a workout for me and I mostly just get frustrated by it at the higher skill levels these days. I don’t really have room for a full-sized exercise bike, and the compact one that I have isn’t a great experience to actually use.

Maybe I should get a real bike and ride around on it. I’m super unsure if my knees would be able to handle that, though. But I definitely need to be doing something that gets my heart rate up!

Also I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday. Maybe this new doctor will have an idea about what’s going on, or at least care enough to try to figure it out.

Vertigo/anxiety

I’m still having vertigo issues, but today I needed to run some errands, and of course had vertigo while driving, but I was able to push through and get to where I was going without having a panic attack. I did get anxious of course, and I’d rather not be having vertigo or anxiety right now!

Gardening

So, I finally got a pole pruner so I could cut down some branches on a Very Tall Bush in front of my house which was starting to cause me some concern with possibly taking out my house’s power and Internet. The bush is now trimmed. There’s still a few branches sticking out on top that I’d like to take care of but couldn’t quite get to, but it’ll be easier to do in the winter, or when it isn’t friggin' raining.

I also am still dragging my feet on actually building steps for the slope along my driveway. I have three major competing ideas, all based on things I’ve seen on YouTube:

1. Get some 6x6" timber, cut it into 3' sections, terrace the slope, and drill some holes and tie it to the ground using rebar. This approach would cost around $200 (mostly for the timber) and be a bunch of work, and would look fairly rustic. I’m not sure about its longevity.

2. Get some 2x6" boards, cut it into 3' sections, terrace the slope, and either tie it to rebar with nails or cedar spikes with decking screws. This would look a bit more modern, but would also not be as sturdy, but it would only cost around $50 to do.

3. Same as #2 but build the steps into a wooden frame as well, which would cost around $80 to do and also be way sturdier, but I’m not quite sure how to make it work with the specific shape of the slope and it would be a lot more work.

4. Build steps out of retaining wall blocks, using paving sand as a substrate for them. This would cost around $90 and would look nice but I’m not sure how well it’ll hold up to erosion, since there wouldn’t be anything to pin the blocks to the ground.

I also want to make a better pathway between those theoretical steps and the basement entrance, and maybe have some other nice pathways around my yard in general. I’d probably do it with cheap paving stones, maybe on a gravel bed. I should probably draw up some plans or something.

I’ve also thought about using those concrete paver molds but that feels like a hell of a lot of work, and the results look kind of cheesy to me. It’d probably be cheaper overall though.

Entertainment

Tomorrow night I was planning on seeing The People’s Joker with a bunch of friends, but nobody else actually got tickets for the showtime I’d decided on, and now they’re sold out. But I got a ticket, so I’ll be seeing it on my own. Yay.

Car

My Niro still has the “Wheel of Fortune” sound so I’m taking it into the dealership on Tuesday. It’ll probably be a multiple-day repair so I will probably need to rent a car. Fortunately my CarMax extended warranty covers up to $40/day in rental fees, and Enterprise has rental cars for like $40/day and a location near the dealership. Or maybe I could rely on Lyft? I don’t have all that much driving to do right now, just choir practice (which is around $25 each way) and, of course, getting between home and the repair shop (which is around $35 each way). Or, y'know, rely on the bus, although taking the bus between home and those locations is awful, at about an hour and a half each way, although with surprisingly little walking involved.

Well, for choir there’s some folks I can carpool with, so that’s less of a concern.

So, I dunno. Whatever. I’ll figure it out on Tuesday.

Pottery

Oh yeah! My first small batch of tiny coffee cups came back. They look great!

They’re a bit on the small size; the one with the hexagonal lip (and circular base) is 140mL (just under 5 ounces), and the one with the circular lip (and hexagonal base) is 100mL (around 3.5 ounces). So, large enough for espresso/lungo/cortado/macchiato, not enough for a latte. I do have a larger round-lip mold that I’m experimenting with as well, and my next greenware firing will include one of those cups, and hopefully it’ll be large enough for a 6-ounce drink.

But, cortado cups go for a pretty good price on Etsy, so I’ll definitely want to keep on making and firing a bunch of these anyway.

I’m also looking forward to experimenting with different glazes. The blue rutile I used for these had a really interesting effect, but it might not be the best color for coffee.

Anyway, the cool thing about slipcasting is that it’s relatively easy to mass-produce with. Right now I only have one mold for each shape and I’m still learning the best way to trim and clean the pots afterwards, but there’s some really neat possibilities with this technique that I’m only just starting to play with.

Music

I haven’t made much progress on the new music website. But I have been putting my own visualizer videos up on the YouTube page with the hope that this will help me get access to YouTube’s copyright tools. I actually do have access to the manual-takedown process now (because I ended up submitting a takedown request against that fucking ad that was stealing my music) but that hasn’t yet gotten me access to the content-matching stuff which is what I really care about.

Meanwhile, Mirlo, which I’m now considering to be my primary sales platform, is having a Kickstarter drive and I’m hoping for the best for them! I’m looking forward to seeing what some of the backer perks might be.