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The sky feels everything
Sep. 8th, 2024 04:17 pmIt's been a varied weekend, with a good mixture of being out and about, and nesting at home.
Things started off on Friday evening after work, where I met Matthias for a drink at our favourite cafe/bar in town, then headed off to a silent disco in the cathedral. This is the third time such an event has been held here; there was a 90s music one last September, an 80s music one in the spring this year, and this third one was 80s, 90s, and 2000s music. As always, it was a great time — dancing under the vaulting ceilings to the cheesiest songs imaginable — a perfect three hours to kickstart the weekend. The organisers said they'd be back for another event next year, although I'm wondering about the music, since I don't think any earlier or later decades would have the same crowd-pleasing draw as those covered previously. We'll see.
Yesterday, I had errands to run in Cambridge, and, as is our preference, Matthias and I made a day of it. We tried out the new mini-Dishoom restaurant![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
permitroomcambridge (typical Dishoom brunch until midday, after that small plates and cocktails, with live DJs in the evenings) for lunch, and found it delightful. I'll definitely be back, if only because I couldn't eat every dish that I wanted to try!
Central Cambridge other than that was as unpleasant as it always is on a Saturday — heaving with crowds of slow-moving tourists — and we got out of there as quickly as possible. It was very nice to head back to the part of town where we used to live, and other favourite residential/local shop areas, where things were much calmer, and filled only with residents out and about living their normal weekend lives. The cows were clustered around the path near the millpond, and everything felt warm and bucolic.
Today has had somewhat frustrating weather. I washed a load of laundry after getting home from the pool, hung it out — and then it began raining torrentially almost immediately. So then I hauled all the laundry inside again — only for the rain to blow over and the sky to become clear and sunny. So back out the laundry went for the second time. I was in such a bad mood, I went out for a walk to the market to clear my head, where the excitable dogs and children bouncing around did a lot to restore my mood. The piece of pistacchio tiramisu that I bought certainly helped as well!
Yesterday I bought a lot of vegetables, and today I cooked/preserved them. Between 10.30am and 2.30pm (with pauses for lunch, and the aforementioned walk), I did the following in the kitchen:
I stewed apples (from our tree!) in cinnamon for Matthias's breakfast porridge, and plums and strawberries to go with my breakfast muesli
I turned the massive bunches of parsley, coriander and dill into salsa verde
I cooked a huge bean/vegetable stew thing with rice, for our lunches for the first two days of the week, and Monday's dinner
I made pickles
I got started making a green and a red batch of this shatta (pickled chili paste)
I parboiled some potatoes in preparation for roasting them as part of tonight's dinner
I like doing this kind of stuff, but it was quite a lot!
Beyond that, I've been continuing my reread of both the Benjamin January and Roma sub rosa historical mystery series (set in 1830s New Orleans, and the Roman Republic/Empire respectively), both of which I find comforting and nourishing, in spite of the turbulent political times in which both series are set, and the dangerous personal circumstances their characters experience. The second series is one I began reading when I was still in secondary school (I stumbled upon it in my school library), while the first is something I discovered through Dreamwidth friends in the past few years, but they have a common emphasis on complicated, messy families both blood and chosen, which are for the characters a source of strength, and an oasis of community, support, and love — a shield against the despair their difficult circumstances might otherwise engender. Every book of course has a mystery which the protagonists must solve, and these are well-crafted and tied in well with the broader social and political context — but the true pleasure of these series very much lies in the depiction of their historical settings, and the characters and their relationships. I love them dearly.
Beyond reading, dancing, and cooking up a storm, my weekend has involved a lot of repetitively listening to this song, and I regret nothing!
Things started off on Friday evening after work, where I met Matthias for a drink at our favourite cafe/bar in town, then headed off to a silent disco in the cathedral. This is the third time such an event has been held here; there was a 90s music one last September, an 80s music one in the spring this year, and this third one was 80s, 90s, and 2000s music. As always, it was a great time — dancing under the vaulting ceilings to the cheesiest songs imaginable — a perfect three hours to kickstart the weekend. The organisers said they'd be back for another event next year, although I'm wondering about the music, since I don't think any earlier or later decades would have the same crowd-pleasing draw as those covered previously. We'll see.
Yesterday, I had errands to run in Cambridge, and, as is our preference, Matthias and I made a day of it. We tried out the new mini-Dishoom restaurant
permitroomcambridge (typical Dishoom brunch until midday, after that small plates and cocktails, with live DJs in the evenings) for lunch, and found it delightful. I'll definitely be back, if only because I couldn't eat every dish that I wanted to try! Central Cambridge other than that was as unpleasant as it always is on a Saturday — heaving with crowds of slow-moving tourists — and we got out of there as quickly as possible. It was very nice to head back to the part of town where we used to live, and other favourite residential/local shop areas, where things were much calmer, and filled only with residents out and about living their normal weekend lives. The cows were clustered around the path near the millpond, and everything felt warm and bucolic.
Today has had somewhat frustrating weather. I washed a load of laundry after getting home from the pool, hung it out — and then it began raining torrentially almost immediately. So then I hauled all the laundry inside again — only for the rain to blow over and the sky to become clear and sunny. So back out the laundry went for the second time. I was in such a bad mood, I went out for a walk to the market to clear my head, where the excitable dogs and children bouncing around did a lot to restore my mood. The piece of pistacchio tiramisu that I bought certainly helped as well!
Yesterday I bought a lot of vegetables, and today I cooked/preserved them. Between 10.30am and 2.30pm (with pauses for lunch, and the aforementioned walk), I did the following in the kitchen:
I like doing this kind of stuff, but it was quite a lot!
Beyond that, I've been continuing my reread of both the Benjamin January and Roma sub rosa historical mystery series (set in 1830s New Orleans, and the Roman Republic/Empire respectively), both of which I find comforting and nourishing, in spite of the turbulent political times in which both series are set, and the dangerous personal circumstances their characters experience. The second series is one I began reading when I was still in secondary school (I stumbled upon it in my school library), while the first is something I discovered through Dreamwidth friends in the past few years, but they have a common emphasis on complicated, messy families both blood and chosen, which are for the characters a source of strength, and an oasis of community, support, and love — a shield against the despair their difficult circumstances might otherwise engender. Every book of course has a mystery which the protagonists must solve, and these are well-crafted and tied in well with the broader social and political context — but the true pleasure of these series very much lies in the depiction of their historical settings, and the characters and their relationships. I love them dearly.
Beyond reading, dancing, and cooking up a storm, my weekend has involved a lot of repetitively listening to this song, and I regret nothing!
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