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Today the weather is wonderful; it is above freezing at last
Been busy finishing a fellowship application, but now it is in and all I have to do is wait to hear if they will give me money or not. I'm not terribly hopeful, both because I heard there are a lot of people applying and because my advisor thinks they tend to fund people doing a different kind of work than I am, but he did say that it was a strong application. Also got some useful things figured out on the work front.
My new skates are comfortable and look great (I got them in black)... except I can't skate in them for more than ten minutes at a time because they just kill my arches. Like, ten minutes until 'I have to get off the ice now or I will not get off on my feet' levels of pain. I have been told that to some extent this is normal, but it is discouraging to pay that much for skates and to have so much pain in them, and because the more I wear them, the less I like wearing my old skates to practice in. A lot of people apparently have trouble with the stock insoles, so I might try the brand that everyone recommends; for tomorrow I'm just going to try the insoles from my old skates to see if it makes any difference. In my lesson yesterday, I was spinning much better, at least, and my coach seemed pleased with my baby waltz hop.
The amazake-making experiment was a great success :) It's so good, especially hot, and so easy to make. I will have to order more koji. It turns out that using brown rice works fine, but if you stick it in a blender after cooking and before fermenting, the fermentation goes much more quickly. Going to try making plain old koji + water amazake with the little bit that I have left, too.
Last weekend, Z and I went to Boston to visit some old friends of his. While we were there, we also went to the Harvard natural history museum, mostly to look at the gorgeous glass flowers:
They had so many delicate little parts and looked so realistically worn by the elements that we just kept staring at them and wondering how they were made. They were so beautiful.
We also went to the aquarium. It's always cool to see underwater creatures, and this was no exception. Plus I got to pet rays and sea stars and a horseshoe crab :D (Z declined to reach his hand in.) My only complaint was the huge amount of 'hey did you know that global warming is destroying everything and it is up to YOU yes you to fix the world'. It was absolutely everywhere. I get that the message needs to be out there and not everybody is as inundated with it as someone like me is... but it was still very depressing to walk by the tenth plaque about it in less than two hours.
But anyway, they had adorable penguins (we got to see them being fed), lovely sea jellies, lots of pretty fishes, a huge central tank with all kinds of animals including rescued sea turtles, sea horses and sea dragons including ones that were the size of your fingernail, an octopus that is apparently partially contained by astroturf because they can't climb it, and some handsome sea lions:
(This one was posing like that the whole ten minutes we were out there. I think maybe it likes the attention.)
This sea star was crawling on its rock. I've never seen one actually moving before. They look very strange.
My new skates are comfortable and look great (I got them in black)... except I can't skate in them for more than ten minutes at a time because they just kill my arches. Like, ten minutes until 'I have to get off the ice now or I will not get off on my feet' levels of pain. I have been told that to some extent this is normal, but it is discouraging to pay that much for skates and to have so much pain in them, and because the more I wear them, the less I like wearing my old skates to practice in. A lot of people apparently have trouble with the stock insoles, so I might try the brand that everyone recommends; for tomorrow I'm just going to try the insoles from my old skates to see if it makes any difference. In my lesson yesterday, I was spinning much better, at least, and my coach seemed pleased with my baby waltz hop.
The amazake-making experiment was a great success :) It's so good, especially hot, and so easy to make. I will have to order more koji. It turns out that using brown rice works fine, but if you stick it in a blender after cooking and before fermenting, the fermentation goes much more quickly. Going to try making plain old koji + water amazake with the little bit that I have left, too.
Last weekend, Z and I went to Boston to visit some old friends of his. While we were there, we also went to the Harvard natural history museum, mostly to look at the gorgeous glass flowers:
They had so many delicate little parts and looked so realistically worn by the elements that we just kept staring at them and wondering how they were made. They were so beautiful.
We also went to the aquarium. It's always cool to see underwater creatures, and this was no exception. Plus I got to pet rays and sea stars and a horseshoe crab :D (Z declined to reach his hand in.) My only complaint was the huge amount of 'hey did you know that global warming is destroying everything and it is up to YOU yes you to fix the world'. It was absolutely everywhere. I get that the message needs to be out there and not everybody is as inundated with it as someone like me is... but it was still very depressing to walk by the tenth plaque about it in less than two hours.
But anyway, they had adorable penguins (we got to see them being fed), lovely sea jellies, lots of pretty fishes, a huge central tank with all kinds of animals including rescued sea turtles, sea horses and sea dragons including ones that were the size of your fingernail, an octopus that is apparently partially contained by astroturf because they can't climb it, and some handsome sea lions:
(This one was posing like that the whole ten minutes we were out there. I think maybe it likes the attention.)
This sea star was crawling on its rock. I've never seen one actually moving before. They look very strange.