* Got a lot of grading (all the accumulated grading in fact - an exam for my smallest class, a set of short papers for another class, labs for the third, and a couple late pieces I accepted because the people had been out sick). That took most of the day, along with picking up and putting away yesterday's lab. But I think I can take tomorrow fully off, and finish the rewrite Monday and Tuesday.
* I then came home and did 15 minutes (very slowly) on the cross-country ski exerciser. I'm using the arm motions more (there's like a pulley with a cord that you use to keep your arms moving in the right plane; it was hard at first and I can tell my back muscles got out of tone, but it's getting easier). It hurt a lot at first and I wondered if I should stop, but then it got better - I find that if I sit for very long (like: grading papers) I hurt until I get up and walk for a while, then it gets better. I mean, it might still hurt, but it's less.
And I did the PT stretches. And it was MUCH easier to get up off the floor this time; I think my right leg is finally getting stronger. I need to keep making myself do this - the cross-country skiing as a warm up (and a bit of cardio, though fifteen minutes really isn't much) and the stretching because my pain was far less this evening, and I can walk around my house in much more comfort. It probably just takes something like PT to get myself stronger and better.
* I bought some coconut water and drank one after the workout. I think this is better than the sports drinks like gatorade, and I do think maybe it's good for me to do a little electrolyte replacement so I don't cramp up. (The coconut water is mostly potassium, but every other morning I do take a magnesium supplement. And I don't need extra sodium.)
I did have some problems earlier this week with cramping in my upper back, because as I said, I've gotten a bit out of tone these past 2 months. It'll be a while to get it back.
* I figured out Easter dinner - I found this recipe for refried-bean enchiladas, and I'm going to modify it a bit - a commenter suggested adding a can of the little Hatch green chilis and that sounds good, and I think I will use the recipe for the enchilada sauce for the cheese enchiladas I make out of the America's Test Kitchen "Cooking for One" cookbook (which is an excellent cookbook and I should look at it more often for ideas) instead of buying a can of already-made sauce.
I will have to buy shallots for it and the bigger tortillas, and make get cheese if I don't have the right kind on hand. I know I have beans and the chilis and the chicken broth and chili powder for the sauce.
to go along with it? probably some kind of fruit - I tend to prefer simpler meals these days. Unless I make a little plain rice. (I don't have a recipe for the so-called "Spanish rice" many Mexican places serve - I like it, but I think you need a special chicken-and-tomato bullion that's not easily found). And if Pruett's has an interesting flavor of icecream in one of the small pints, I might get that for dessert.
* I've been picking away at various projects; I'm still about a dozen rows before introducing the next color on the Orchard and Vine shawlette but that's what I worked on tonight. A couple days this week I wore a couple of the shawlettes I've made; it's not so very cold out now but I wanted something a little bit jewelry-like and that would give a little warmth first thing in the morning. So it got me thinking about that one again, and I worked on it again.
I want to start something new but I really need to finish something first.
I also have the first sleeve of Chalcedony mostly done; I worked on it in an exam this week. I may try to finish the sleeve this weekend and start the next one - I give another exam Tuesday.
* Someone posted a link to this on Bluesky and I kind of like it. I use YouTube occasionally to set it just to one of the "ambient music" or "background music" channels because one thing I have found as an after effect of the isolation of 2020 is that sometimes a too-quiet house makes me anxious; I need some kind of sound there that I can mostly ignore but that keeps me from feeling ALONE alone. And yes, I have some 150 CDs but they require one to pay attention, and I also probably need to replace the player; one of the trays in the changer no longer works. (I hope they still MAKE CD players? It seems more and more there's a push to make everyone do everything through the cloud, where the music you buy you might not actually own, if the service either shuts down or if there's some kind of dispute with the artist over copyright)
Anyway - the BBC Channel 4 (radio) does something called The Shipping Forecast, which is like a holdover from older days (though I suppose ships do still need it!). Lots of people like it - it's quiet and repetitive and if you're not actually out having to steer a cargo ship but are instead at home, it's weirdly comforting to listen to. Here someone has set it to ocean sounds, so you can imagine the reader sitting in a lighthouse or a cottage by the sea and watching the weather as he reads:
It's a couple hours - at least what I've heard it's the same reader, though I know the BBC uses different readers. Minimal animation, just a dog/wolf/whatever the creature is looking at his paper and rocking a bit in his chair.
I don't know. I like it. But I like geography and at one time when I was younger I thought being a lighthousekeeper would be a pleasant life, and I like the idea that there are these lives out there we never think about - I dare say many Americans never consider that the people (most of them men, still, I suppose) out on the sea transporting stuff from place to place are there, and that they need to know what the conditions will be, and that there are also people out there who read that off across the radio.
I like BBC 4. It's a more general-purpose radio station - it has news, and it does a few comedy programs, and it has informational programs, and even a church service on Sunday mornings. I really got into listening to it (I have an app on my phone) during 2020 and it really did make me feel less alone. These days I mostly listen to the news from time to time, or the program ("PM") that comes on before the 6 pm news, which is a more in-depth commentary program. The nice thing about the app is that you can listen to most things any time you want to, you don't have to catch them when they're on.
Sometimes when I'm cleaning house, or working at sewing something, or lately, working on the Moominhouse, I like to just put on whatever is playing "live" (so I don't have to pick a new program when that one ends) and in a lot of cases, as I said, it's just to have human voices there.
I miss that in most places now in America, "OTA" (over-the-air, as opposed to things like satellite radio or the streaming music services where you can pick and choose) radio is just kind of.....nothing now. Where I live we don't even have an over-the-air NPR station I can pick up. So it's mostly country music (which I generally don't care for, especially the current form of it, where it's either pop-country or what's sometimes now called "bro country") or it's very shouty political programs (mostly on AM), or sports radio (which can be OK, and I sometimes do like to listen to baseball games). But it's not like it was many years back, or even when I was a kid, where there were hyperlocal stations that did lots of news-of-the-area and even talked about social events and such. Here, I don't know that we have a LOCAL local news station; I'm not even sure which frequency to tune to on either FM or AM during bad weather to get updates; I usually hope the power stays on so I can see the local weather guy on the tv. And I do have one of the NOAA weather radios, but those aren't fun to listen to for an extended time.
I suppose OTA radio isn't profitable any more, and so it's being phased out in favor of programs you pay for (like Sirius XM) or the public-supported NPR. (I presume BBC 4 and its siblings are "public supported" either by tax dollars or a foundation or something; there are no advertisements on it, and I suspect advertising these days is a fickle mistress.)
But yeah, if I were remaking the world to suit myself, one thing I'd want were several good over-the-air stations that everyone could pick up on a radio, that featured local news and maybe had some educational programming, and maybe dramatizations (either straight drama or comedies), and music, and other informational stuff like indepth weather information....
No comments:
Post a Comment