Lazy Easter weekend accomplishments
Apr. 6th, 2026 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
box_cameraI broke my Lenten THC tolerance break a couple of days early, so I had a lazy long weekend and I don't feel a single bit bad about it.
Friday I got kolaches for breakfast, then did the grocery shopping. At home I cleaned and dusted the top shelves of my desk, and rinsed out the fountain pens I had in rotation for March. I read and finished off my apple pie moonshine. David made catfish for supper, and afterwards I watch the new episodes of Monarch and For All Mankind. If Joel Kinnaman survives this season (seems doubtful) and he's in the final season, Ed should just be a head in a jar a la Futurama.
Saturday I picked up the Honeybaked ham in Lafayette, then chose 4 fountain pens for the April rotation and inked them. I tackled the main surface of my desk, which is a chore I don't do often enough. Like a lot of creative people, I keep a ton of stuff on my desk--the reason you didn't see any cups in my Mardi Gras throw display is I always use them to hold pens, colored pencils, paint brushes, paint pens, and other miscellaneous stationery and art supplies. So I had to take everything off, dust and wipe down, then put everything back in a slightly less chaotic fashion. Some of it was stuff that needed to be put with other supply stashes, like a lot of collage material that I had cut out but didn't wind up using.
David made honey walnut shrimp (except it was honey pecan shrimp) and saffron rice for supper, and afterwards I watched The Testament of Ann Lee, which I have wanted to see for months and I saw it was on Hulu. It was a fascinating movie; mesmerizing even, something I have not felt about a movie in a long time. The Shakers (there is one community with 3 members left) could not have commissioned better propaganda, because honestly, I get it. That sexual energy was going somewhere, and not just into their meticulously crafted furniture. In a world where most people had to toil endlessly just to stay alive, and where sex was something that was usually done to women, for the sake of babies that often died anyway, I can see trading celibacy for that kind of collective ecstasy.
But I'm asexual, which would have been being a Shaker on easy mode.
Anyway, I could probably write a whole dissertation about how interesting it is that a religious community led by a woman was a model of egality, industry, and pacifism, instead of getting twisted into a snakepit of power imabalances and nonconsesual sex like every single one led by men eventually did, but y'all get that already.
Sunday I made cornbread pancakes and bacon for breakfast, remade the bed, and washed the sheets. After showering I baked my carrot cake bars and made a dozen deviled eggs. After years of experimenting with variations I decided I just prefer a no-frills deviled egg. Mayo and mustard, a little pickle brine--I used brine from the pepperoncini jar this year--salt and pepper, a sprinky-dink of smoked paprika. That wheel don't need to be reinvented.
I had couple of hours free, so I poured myself some wine and read. I'm currently reading Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman and I'm not loving it. I get what he's saying about media radicalizing everyone until they turn into literal zombies--the cable news channel that zombifies the Boomers is called "Fax News", is the level of subtlety we're dealing with here. And it's like with The Stepford Wives, is he mocking the thing he seems to be mocking on the surface, or is he mocking the backlash to it?
It feels like both, giving the book icky liberal centrist "But both sides!" feelings. That is just not the vibe for the year 2026.
Also, the prose is banal as fuck: I know it's because the POV characters are very average Americans, but that doesn't make it any less tedious to read.
Dinner was fairly easy, the potatoes au gratin baked while I made the creamed peas. Afterwards I watched the new episode of Dark Winds then read for a while. The book reads fast, I'll give it that, so I'll finish it and afterwards maybe I'll read Rebecca or Neuromancer or something just for the prose.
Friday I got kolaches for breakfast, then did the grocery shopping. At home I cleaned and dusted the top shelves of my desk, and rinsed out the fountain pens I had in rotation for March. I read and finished off my apple pie moonshine. David made catfish for supper, and afterwards I watch the new episodes of Monarch and For All Mankind. If Joel Kinnaman survives this season (seems doubtful) and he's in the final season, Ed should just be a head in a jar a la Futurama.
Saturday I picked up the Honeybaked ham in Lafayette, then chose 4 fountain pens for the April rotation and inked them. I tackled the main surface of my desk, which is a chore I don't do often enough. Like a lot of creative people, I keep a ton of stuff on my desk--the reason you didn't see any cups in my Mardi Gras throw display is I always use them to hold pens, colored pencils, paint brushes, paint pens, and other miscellaneous stationery and art supplies. So I had to take everything off, dust and wipe down, then put everything back in a slightly less chaotic fashion. Some of it was stuff that needed to be put with other supply stashes, like a lot of collage material that I had cut out but didn't wind up using.
David made honey walnut shrimp (except it was honey pecan shrimp) and saffron rice for supper, and afterwards I watched The Testament of Ann Lee, which I have wanted to see for months and I saw it was on Hulu. It was a fascinating movie; mesmerizing even, something I have not felt about a movie in a long time. The Shakers (there is one community with 3 members left) could not have commissioned better propaganda, because honestly, I get it. That sexual energy was going somewhere, and not just into their meticulously crafted furniture. In a world where most people had to toil endlessly just to stay alive, and where sex was something that was usually done to women, for the sake of babies that often died anyway, I can see trading celibacy for that kind of collective ecstasy.
But I'm asexual, which would have been being a Shaker on easy mode.
Anyway, I could probably write a whole dissertation about how interesting it is that a religious community led by a woman was a model of egality, industry, and pacifism, instead of getting twisted into a snakepit of power imabalances and nonconsesual sex like every single one led by men eventually did, but y'all get that already.
Sunday I made cornbread pancakes and bacon for breakfast, remade the bed, and washed the sheets. After showering I baked my carrot cake bars and made a dozen deviled eggs. After years of experimenting with variations I decided I just prefer a no-frills deviled egg. Mayo and mustard, a little pickle brine--I used brine from the pepperoncini jar this year--salt and pepper, a sprinky-dink of smoked paprika. That wheel don't need to be reinvented.
I had couple of hours free, so I poured myself some wine and read. I'm currently reading Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman and I'm not loving it. I get what he's saying about media radicalizing everyone until they turn into literal zombies--the cable news channel that zombifies the Boomers is called "Fax News", is the level of subtlety we're dealing with here. And it's like with The Stepford Wives, is he mocking the thing he seems to be mocking on the surface, or is he mocking the backlash to it?
It feels like both, giving the book icky liberal centrist "But both sides!" feelings. That is just not the vibe for the year 2026.
Also, the prose is banal as fuck: I know it's because the POV characters are very average Americans, but that doesn't make it any less tedious to read.
Dinner was fairly easy, the potatoes au gratin baked while I made the creamed peas. Afterwards I watched the new episode of Dark Winds then read for a while. The book reads fast, I'll give it that, so I'll finish it and afterwards maybe I'll read Rebecca or Neuromancer or something just for the prose.
