GRIZZLY PEAR
My in-laws have a peach tree in their back yards, and to keep the birds from eating all the peaches, they wrap it in a net.
The net got compromised and three birds ended up dying in the summer heat before we realized what was happening.
There are many colloquialisms for what just happened.
But mainly it’s sad.
And a warning to the rest of us about life in general.
I was rereading Damn Good Advice by George Lois and I realized it is most likely one of my favorite self help books along with Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.
Then there are the two Jocko Willink and Leif Babin leadership books, Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. The first is clear and concise, the second is a necessary counterbalance to the literally extreme title.
And then Seth Godin’s most recent book This is Marketing, as well as his older classic The Dip. The first book is about selling, or as he defines it, making change in the world. The second is about quitting fast versus having grit and trying to navigate both great options.
And I need to re-read the massive tome Design for Ecological Democracy by my first architecture professor, Randy Hester.
Honorable mentions:
The One Thing
Essentialism
Dale Carnegie
Do it Tomorrow
The Leadership Pipeline
Throw in some “impractical” books like Invisible Cities and Labyrinths and that’s not a bad reading list at all.
Over the long weekend, we watched Mirai, winner of the Japanese Academy Prize for Animation in 2018.
Of his films that I’ve seen, this was his tightest story and I really enjoyed it. I am fond of slice of life family stories, but I felt that he did not do a good job wrapping up the end to Wolf Children so acclaim is not guaranteed. However I can happily say he stuck the landing on this one.
It also helped that the family included an architect, so the house in the film is pretty cool (albeit questionable IRL). As easter eggs, it was also fun to see the Ikea products in the house, presumably to signify a modern sense of style on a middle class budget.
And of course, it helped to have two kids spread apart almost exactly the same difference as the protagonists on screen. It was fun to watch the kids, but also of exchanges between the mom and dad.
This is a family film and the kids will dig it, but it is parents who will really grok what just happened.
No that I taught my girl Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) I’m getting greedy and I want to teach her Weiqi (Go).
I guess I need to be careful that I’m not transmorgifying my general acquisitiveness for games into forcing her to play different new games all the time.
That said, I think she did enjoy playing Xiangqi. She didn’t really enjoy the initial teaching part, but she did like moving pieces around and eating my pieces that I offered up to her by purposely bad plays.
Even though I’m naturally quite bad at Xiangqi, at least I’ve played it quite a bit and know how it works. But Weiqi is not a game I’ve played much, so I guess I need to play a bit online and then once I’ve at least gotten the rules worked out, then I’ll drag out a chess board (9×9 vertexes) and we’ll see where it goes.
We recently picked up a rotating compost bin and I’ve been depositing the goods every morning.
Our local ants have discovered this new treasure trove in the backyard.
I wonder what they are thinking when everything goes spinning around for ninety seconds before settling back into normal until the next morning.
I went back to my standard 75 hydration for this fellow after the train wreck of last week.
400g all purpose flour (King Arthur)
300g water
40g starter
4g salt
I started it around 6am, I thought I had put it in the fridge when we went out for a few hours in the afternoon, but the dough was sitting on the kitchen island when I came home.
Fortunately, given the small amount of starter, it was not over proofed and it came out quite poofy and pretty.
I’ve read about psychological studies which show that people actually get more enjoyment out of a movie or book that has been spoiled.
I’m not really sure I buy into that theory. I certainly avoid spoilers for any movies I intend to watch.
But I just watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and I suspect I will definitely enjoy the movie more the next time I watch it.
It was certainly an enjoyable watch the first time. But let’s be frank, the plot is pretty much as you expect from a superhero flick.
So getting rid of the minimal uncertainty about the plot details will just let me concentrate on the insane graphics.
Then again, would I have prefered to have this first viewing pre-spoiled?
Nah.
Driving up McLeod after lunch, I noticed a man on a bicycle with a couple foil balloons.
One each side of him were his two kids.
A trio in the heat, slowly heading home from the dollar store.
The practical man questions such fleeting luxuries.
The father in me knows he’s done right.
I pulled out my long forgotten harmonica and played it while watching the kids run around the yard in the lingering evening heat of the back yard as my wife picked tomatoes off the vine.
I can make noises that sound like blues and bend a little to boot, but honestly I don’t know what I’m doing.
Just pushing some fresh air around, entertaining myself and the kids as the last bits of daylight disappears behind the masonry wall.
In preparation for school, we started baking bread again.
The first one was the classic Jim Lahey No Knead Bread, which basically has a 90% hydration ratio. I had never done one of my loafs using yeast per his recipe, so it felt like a good way to get back into baking. It came out fine, no complaints, but the flavor is a little flat, as to be expected with a loaf using yeast.
The second loaf last week was a return to my old ratio, slightly tweaked due to the summer heat, since we keep the house at 80 degrees and I feared it would rise too fast, it did indeed rise very quickly.
400g all purpose flour (King Arthur)
40g ground flaxseed
320g water
80g starter
12g sugar
That loaf came out fine, but my wife thought it was a bit salty (after all those steamed breads, we’re not used to the usual bread!), and she wasn’t fond of the flaxseed.
So yesterday I decided to mess with the ratios, lowering the salt and starter
400g all purpose flour (King Arthur)
320g water
40g starter
4g sugar
It proofed all day, but I was too tired at night to bake it, so I put it in the fridge. This morning I pulled out the bread and it felt good in the hand so I let it sit a little but it seemed totally overproofed as it reached room temperature.
So I’ve added another 100g of flour and hopefully I can rescue this loaf.
Back in the game I guess.