Armchair activity

Those with wee bubs would know you can hold a squalling infant in one arm and and surf the ‘net with the other. Fortunately this means when I don’t have time to actually do things I can still research. As I mentioned in an early post, sometimes the planning is as much fun, if not more, than the doing. Also it keeps me away from the often insane world of internet forums and losing an hour of my life reading bizarre threads that explode with righteous anger over topics such as, “what do you tell the checkout chick when she asks your two year old if she’s started her Santa list yet, but your family doesn’t believe in Santa?” Seriously, I did not make that one up. The arguments that ensued, in all sorts of delightful directions, were astonishing. "How dare she address a young child directly", and "I'm tired of being oppressed by thoughtless well-wishing from adherents of the dominant religion's festivities" among them.

Here are some notes on my armchair progress:

#30 - bake an apple pie from scratch and make vanilla icecream to go with it

This week, instead of buying new food, I am eating my way through the contents of our freezer to make room for the bowl of the icecream maker, which needs to be chilled over night. I know, heroic sacrifice, isn’t it. We’ve been getting eggs each week from Aussie Farmers Direct and are building up somewhat of a stockpile. Seems a good time to make some rich custard, yes? That or go on an omelette binge. Was also inspired by a lovely looking apple pie on Poh’s Kitchen the other night. She was visiting King Island, the isle blessed by the gods of dairy, and made a pie crust with cheddar cheese in the pastry. Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard. May replace the copha with butter though.

It occurred to me yesterday that this might be a nice excuse to invest in a spiffy new pie dish. Found something that fit the bill at the General Trader but I may wait and see if I can pick something up second hand instead. When I was eying it in the shop I had one of those anti-consumerist moments where I wavered between “ooh, pretty”, and dithering over whether it was right to spend $15 on a ceramic pie dish just because I liked the red and white polka dot pattern. Decided my decision making skills were impaired by lunch-time hunger so left the momentous choice for later. This is the kind of thing I’m coveting.

#12 - record some of the songs I’ve written

Looked into external microphones for my Macbook pro. Given I was indecisive about a $15 pie dish, and these shiny gems are naturally more alluring and expensive, am taking up kind offer from Matt to borrow his to experiment with and see if that’s the type I’m after. Have already done some tests with Garageband recording vocals alone and was pleasantly surprised at the results.

#29 - make Martha a book about inspiring women I have met or read about

Many ideas in the shower this morning about where to take this one. (Does anyone else like to think in the shower, or is it just me? No? Okay.) I’ve started a mental list of women I want to include. Thinking about the look and feel, have decided to use this program I have on the Mac Mini to mock up a comic book style layout, with two facing folios per woman. Hopefully will get a chance this coming week to get some more ideas down on paper. Am also planning to write to some of the still-living women to see if I can get some responses to specific questions to include. I figure this is always worth a try - during my PhD research I contacted a wide range of people for help and there was only one who sent a curt and unhelpful reply, which seemed to assume that somehow my research on the particular questions I’d asked her had been limited to that one letter. Marg would be amused to discover who she was... a school-time favourite, I believe? Needless to say, she is not in the book.