Why I Enjoy Baking/Unfocused ramblings about baking

Short answer: Because it's fairly straightforward and it makes the house smell nice.

Longer answer: Because my mom gave me her old Sunbeam Mixmaster (is that right? I'm too lazy to walk to the kitchen to check) with the note that "you have to watch it. you can't just leave it alone." This surprised me, because that is my assumption about mixers! I was not aware that there were any mixers that could be left unsupervised during operation! What a world we live in! What a marvelous future! Having a stand mixer on the counter made me think more frequently about baking things, like chocolate chip cookies. Then I started baking chocolate chip cookies. A lot.

I guess that short answer #2 is "stand mixer."

I make excellent chocolate chip cookies now, I barely have to look at the recipe. By the way, Maida Heatter is a wonderful cookbook author, at least for desserts. I've read about a third of her cake book, and I don't even have any interest in baking cakes. I just enjoy reading her cake-related writing. For a while, I was making a couple batches of cookies each month, which was excessive, but it was a pleasant and delicious hobby, and cookies make thoughtful-seeming presents. They aren't actually thoughtful when you're compulsively baking for reasons you don't fully understand and you don't want to eat four dozen cookies every week, but they seem that way!

 Now I've been made aware of quickbreads (two words? quick breads?), starting with this recipe.

Pretty delicious, actually.

It's ridiculously seasonal, thanks to the fact that it is pumpkin bread, but that's kind of nice. I like that element of baking. I'm not much for decorating the house, though I do have a tiny fake Christmas tree and some decorative candles that I put up after Thanksgiving, but I like the idea of a tradition of baked goods for various times of year. There's something appealing about ritual, and baking seems fairly benign. You take simple ingredients, you make something delicious.

People are surprisingly impressed by baked goods. I don't know why this is, though it's probably one of those "you have the luxury to take the time to bake things sometimes. Good for you" sorts of situations. When I started typing this I was thinking "maybe people think baking is hard and they are impressed because they don't think they can do it," but now I suspect it's more "Oh of course, you childless single person with copious amounts of time spent alone, of course you bake."

So that's a rundown on my thoughts about baking. Because it's a pleasant way to pass the time, it's not very expensive, it makes the house smell nice, it makes me feel like my kitchen appliances are justifying the counter space they use, and when it's all over, I get to eat something I made. Or at least look appreciatively at something I made, and then wrap it up to give to someone else as a "thoughtful" present.

Self-aggrandizement

http://gigaverse.com/guides/shena-wolf/

...I would change some things. I wrote this quite a while ago. Mostly the "present/presence" thing. It bothers me. Aside from that, I think it's solid. LEARN FROM ME! <monocle>

Why I fix things

I like to fix things. Not all things. I don't know how to do plumbing (yet) and there are many, many things that I know nothing about. However, when something breaks in my house, my first impulse is to take it apart and figure out what's going on. I've been taking things apart since I was little. If it's a small household appliance, I can probably take it apart and put it back together and it will work about as well as it did before I began. After I bought the house, my scope got a little broader. Things like washers and dryers became fair game.

My reasons for this are simple. If something is broken, then there's not a lot of risk involved. It's already not working. At worst, it will continue to not work when I'm finished with it. Thanks to the internet, there are lots of places to find information on the broken thing, as well as helpful stories from other people with broken things, and sometimes tutorials and videos on how to repair broken things. So far, I've replaced the drum seal in my dryer (upper and lower) and now I've replaced the control board on my washer. (I should also add that *that* one also involved learning how to access the error codes, which is super easy, and included in the tech manual that is taped TO THE INSIDE OF THE WASHER. It is amazing. And a little bit ridiculous.)

Both repairs went well, and they didn't take as long as you might have thought. With the washer, from discovering it wasn't working (spin cycle just wasn't happening anymore) to fixing it, I think it's been about six days. That included taking apart, diagnosing, ordering the replacement part and swapping it out. I am, in my heart, a massive procrastinator, so I'm proud that I actually got it done within a week. Proud, and a little surprised, as I am whenever I do something right away instead of waiting, despite spending the last decade developing habits that help mitigate my tendencies.

Another thing I've learned how to do since my last blog post (ages ago! I am not good at blogging AT ALL!) is replacing the front wheel hub assembly on a mid-2000s GM car. I hired a mechanic to come to my house and teach me how to do it. It cost very slightly less than getting it done at a shop, very slightly more than just having the mechanic fix it in my driveway, and now I know a new thing. Here's a key element, though - he did one side, and then I did the other. Watching someone fix something is interesting. Fixing a thing yourself is invaluable. The difference between someone who kind of has an idea of how to do something and someone who knows how to do stuff? Actually doing the stuff.

That's the crux of why I like to fix things. I want to be someone who knows how to do stuff, and every time I dig into something instead of calling someone else, I become more the person that I want to be.

An additional note

All of my profile information is from my hilarious goth poetry blog, and it cracks me up too much to change any of it. Oh, the internet...fine purveyor of all the stuff you forgot about ten years ago...

Starting over

I've had a lot of blogs over the years. Some of have been perfect examples of the overshare compulsions of my early twenties. Some have been hilarious poem blogs. This is my latest attempt at finding that balance between talking about things I enjoy while maintaining the aura of secrecy that fuels so much of my personal appeal. I think I'm going to get a monocle.

A quiet, rainy evening

I live on a quiet street in a neighborhood that was built in the 1950s. Some of my neighbors have been here for 40 years. We keep an eye out for one another. There are some impressively large trees, but none in my yard. I thought I'd plant at least one or two, but I've been here for six years and I haven't done anything like that yet. I keep up with the lawn. I don't keep up with the edging. I try to remember to keep the bushes trimmed (mostly because if I don't do it, my yardwork-centric neighbors will do it for me, and then I feel guilty. I do not feel guilty when they decide that they have had enough and it is time to clandestinely weed-whack my lawn, which they do, about once or twice a year).

There are a number of cats that don't belong to anyone in particular. There's a lovely gray one that hunts in the backyard. I know this because occasionally I'll see it stalking birds. I always wonder if Donald and James wish they could go outside and do similar things, but they seem happy enough to just sit in the windows and on the furniture and sleep.

It rained today, and stayed fairly cool, so the air had that heavy, damp quality that I usually associate with late spring. I stood outside for a while, watching the more motivated fireflies flicker, listening to the rain drip in the downspouts. It's almost August. I hate August. Tonight was nice, though. I have no complaints about tonight.

Post-SDCC blogging

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I don't usually dayblog, but I'm making an exception.

I have survived another year of San Diego Comic Con. The process of decompressing from this show is a complicated one. It's not exhausting in the same way that Spectrum Live is (it turns out that it's much easier to be an exhibitor than a showrunner) but it's probably similar in intensity.

Traditionally, I come back from San Diego, I do fine for a couple of days, then I get very, very sick. This is probably because, when I come back from San Diego, I have trouble remembering to eat, and I have even more trouble getting to sleep. I assume that the sickness is my body's only way of forcing me to get some rest. Tricky.

SDCC is overwhelming on a number of levels. There's a high degree of social interaction required, there are many late, late nights (social interaction!), there are 160,000 people with an exponentially higher number of germs all packed into a space. People are handling money. Handshakes are pretty common. Sickness! Sickness is inevitable!

It's a wonderful opportunity to get work done, and I always come back from the show feeling very productive. I'm good at what I do, and SDCC is another venue for me to get work done, both for my job and for Spectrum Live. There are connections you make at SDCC that you really can't make anywhere else, in part because EVERYONE is exhausted, and when you do find people you connect with, you bond more quickly than you might otherwise because you're so tired, and there are so many horrible people. New friends become life rafts on a sea of awful.

(I have made a number of lasting friendships at this show, and I continue to meet people who are interesting and engaging. I think that half the battle is wanting to get to know someone. The other half is wanting to let them get to know you. The fact that I come back from San Diego with one or two new *actual* friends each year is pretty remarkable.)

Of course, there's some emotional fallout when I get home, which is the inevitable conclusion to a very long show. There's a rawness to my emotional state which takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to normalize.

It's tied into the physical side of things. It's hard to feel normal mentally and emotionally when your system and your schedule are so out of alignment. I know this about the show, and about myself, and have gotten better at handling it over the years. It's much easier when you realize that you're not losing your mind, you're just very, very tired.

Because I can't help being prescriptive, here are some ways I deal with the show.

During the show:

Vitamin C (so much vitamin C)
Water
Coffee
An attempt to be healthy (vegetarian dishes, solid but not heavy breakfasts, smoothies)

When I get home:

Vitamin C (sense a theme?)
Water
Netflix (I just embrace the insomnia. It lets up eventually.)
Careful consideration before socializing
Frozen eggrolls (key for when it's 2 am and you realize you haven't eaten since lunch)
Cats
Comfortable pajamas