![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
another post of things
Nov. 9th, 2014 07:04 am1) Reading: I made a second attempt to scale the summit of Wade Davis's 600-page Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, and succeeded this time. It didn't quite do what I wanted of it, or what the title promised. In the opening chapters Davis does a good job of establishing the 1920s Everest expeditions in the context of the war, colonialism, ideas of masculinity, etc., but then there's no follow-through. The book turns into a straightforward narrative of the 1921, 1922, and 1924 expeditions, and often with a rather odd focus to boot. Davis spends many many pages on the 1921 expedition, most of which involved trying to find a route to the mountain itself, and he follows every little side trip and false start in excruciating detail, whereas he writes much less about the 1922 and 1924 attempts to reach the summit, and the story of Mallory and Irvine's disappearance is compressed into about 15 pages.
Last time I tried to read this I complained about Davis's weirdness on the subject of sexuality, and that didn't get any better on re-read. ( More under the cut )
2) Listening: the anon meme (yes, I've started going there--there's a lot of good discussion on many fannish topics, and it's surprisingly well-modded) got me interested in The Thrilling Adventure Hour, so I've listened to the podcasts of "Captain Laserbeam" and "The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock." They're both comedy/parody: the former is a superhero story in which, among other things, the hero may be developing a romance with Philip Fathom, The Deep Sea Detective (who is not entirely unlike Nolanverse Batman); the latter features a sort of gay steampunk Doctor Who. If you check these out, give them long enough to grow on you. I was deeply underwhelmed by the early episodes of both, but both get better as they go on. I keep wishing there was video, though, because there are a lot of moments when clearly something very funny is happening onstage that the dialogue gives no hint of.
I might try the "Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars" segments next, though I'm not at all a fan of westerns or western tropes.
3) Cooking: on my most recent days off I made more bagels and also baked an apple pie, something I've never done before. Oddly I had more trouble with the bagels than last time; for some reason the dough came out stickier and they were harder to shape. The pie turned out pretty well, though I had some difficulty rolling the dough out big enough. Also, I had no idea how long it takes to peel, core, and slice ten apples. (Answer: a very long time. I was listening to "Captain Laserbeam" which helped alleviate the boredom, but still. A very long time.) I used honeycrisp apples, one of the most commonly recommended kinds for pie. They tasted nice and kept their shape well, but they were perhaps a little too crisp for me.
In a completely different culinary vein, I also made Korean vegetable stew with soybean paste. I only loosely followed the linked recipe: I again used a bonito and konbu dashi instead of the dried anchovies, and the vegetables I used were potato, kabocha squash, Korean daikon, onion, and some frozen broad (fava) beans for something green that would benefit from simmering. The latter may seem odd, but I've read that broad beans are widely used in China, so I figured it wasn't completely bizarre.
4) Yuletide: have reviewed canon. Am writing. Am over minimum word count, yay!
Last time I tried to read this I complained about Davis's weirdness on the subject of sexuality, and that didn't get any better on re-read. ( More under the cut )
2) Listening: the anon meme (yes, I've started going there--there's a lot of good discussion on many fannish topics, and it's surprisingly well-modded) got me interested in The Thrilling Adventure Hour, so I've listened to the podcasts of "Captain Laserbeam" and "The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Tick-Tock." They're both comedy/parody: the former is a superhero story in which, among other things, the hero may be developing a romance with Philip Fathom, The Deep Sea Detective (who is not entirely unlike Nolanverse Batman); the latter features a sort of gay steampunk Doctor Who. If you check these out, give them long enough to grow on you. I was deeply underwhelmed by the early episodes of both, but both get better as they go on. I keep wishing there was video, though, because there are a lot of moments when clearly something very funny is happening onstage that the dialogue gives no hint of.
I might try the "Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars" segments next, though I'm not at all a fan of westerns or western tropes.
3) Cooking: on my most recent days off I made more bagels and also baked an apple pie, something I've never done before. Oddly I had more trouble with the bagels than last time; for some reason the dough came out stickier and they were harder to shape. The pie turned out pretty well, though I had some difficulty rolling the dough out big enough. Also, I had no idea how long it takes to peel, core, and slice ten apples. (Answer: a very long time. I was listening to "Captain Laserbeam" which helped alleviate the boredom, but still. A very long time.) I used honeycrisp apples, one of the most commonly recommended kinds for pie. They tasted nice and kept their shape well, but they were perhaps a little too crisp for me.
In a completely different culinary vein, I also made Korean vegetable stew with soybean paste. I only loosely followed the linked recipe: I again used a bonito and konbu dashi instead of the dried anchovies, and the vegetables I used were potato, kabocha squash, Korean daikon, onion, and some frozen broad (fava) beans for something green that would benefit from simmering. The latter may seem odd, but I've read that broad beans are widely used in China, so I figured it wasn't completely bizarre.
4) Yuletide: have reviewed canon. Am writing. Am over minimum word count, yay!
