Experimental Cookery 2019: Freestyle Stir-fry

On Saturday, following a fairly large lunch, we had a pretty late, and pretty light, dinner. This one was a stir fry with noodles, beef, carrots, and yellow pepper. What was noteworthy about this one was that it wasn't a recipe I took from anywhere - I basically put together a bunch of things I fancied having and cooked those.

It was okay, but not great. Too dry and too salty, though the various components were fine, both individually and collectively. Some more work is required to really make this worthwhile.

And that's pretty much all there is to say about that.

Chores

Had a bit of an interesting discussion yesterday about making the bed.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, probably in the context of Christmas, I tend to divide tasks rather messily into three groups:

1. Tasks that you actually enjoy. Obviously, the list of such tasks will differ from person to person, but basically if there's something you enjoy doing then go for it!
   
2. Tasks that you don't enjoy but which are necessary. In which case you should optimise them so as to get them done and move on to something more enjoyable.
   
3. Tasks that you don't enjoy and which don't need done. In which case, why are you bothering? Nobody who has your interests at heart will judge you for not ironing the dog's blanket.

(I should note that the second category includes tasks that aren't necessary but which represent a price worth paying for something else you do want. For instance, when LC and I repainted our main bedroom that was something that didn't need done, represented a task we didn't enjoy, but was the price worth paying to have a bedroom that more suited us.)

I should also note that 'optimise' is not code for "do a half-assed job". In general, it's better to do a good job once than to have to do the job again because it wasn't done right the first time.

One thing I really hate is "make work" tasks - either tasks that 'must' be done, not because they're actually necessary but because someone has decided that this is the thing; or tasks that do need to be done, but where someone has decided they must be done this way and not that way. (Someone in this context is probably a matter of tradition, some habit passed down through the generations, or peer pressure. Very often you actually can't identify the specific person who originated it, but "it is known".)

Which brings me to the question of making the bed.

Making the bed is not a task that I enjoy. Nor indeed is it something that is actually necessary - when the evening comes you're going to get back in the bed, thus immediately un-making it. It's purely an aesthetic matter, and one for a room that most people are never going to see.

That said, making the bed is also a very small task, and one that serves as a payment for having a slightly neater bedroom, and that I do find somewhat satisfying. For that reason, it's a price I consider worth paying, and so it's a task I'll generally do (unless LC beats me to it, of course).

So far, so good.

But here's the question: should I, given what I've said above about necessary and unnecessary tasks, and given my aversion to "make work" tasks, proceed to teach Funsize that she should make her bed? (This is, of course, entirely theoretical at this stage. Funsize isn't yet at an age we'd even consider assigning her chores.)

At this point I'm also going to note that this is not just some silly, obscure philosophical point. Our society goes to significant lengths to load people (and especially women) down with imaginary obligations. I'm not sure of the motivation by all of it, though an awful lot seems to be about parting people from their money.

But the problem is that the time spent ironing your dog's blanket is time that you're not spending doing things of more value - whether that's time spent working on a career, time spent out enjoying yourself, or indeed nothing at all. By loading people up with imaginary obligations, you're either preventing them being more successful elsewhere or you're leading them to becoming increasingly stressed and overwrought by the 'needs' of life.

The upshot of that is that one of my roles, as the father of a daughter, is to teach her the discernment to understand the nature of these imaginary obligations and the pointless "make work" tasks they generate, and thus empower her to choose to opt out of them if she so chooses. That is, if Funsize decides to make the bed, it should be because she wants to, and not out of some imagined social obligation. Conversely, if she wants to use that time for something of more value to her, that's all to the good as well.

And yet...

Obviously, in order to choose to make the bed or not, she needs to know how to make the bed. And another of my roles is to equip my children with the skills that they'll need in order to make their way through life. In other words, I do have an obligation to teach Funsize how to make the bed, and indeed to reinforce that lesson through practice.

(And, actually, there's some value in teaching routines of that sort and teaching the attention to detail needed to do the job well. Diligence in the small things in life inculcates habits that lead to diligence in more serious matters, which is worthwhile learning on its own merits.)

The upshot of that, I think, is that the answer is that, yes, at the appropriate time we should teach Funsize that she needs to make her bed, and to do it to an appropriate standard. However, at some time beyond that there will also be a need to discuss why, and then let her stop... or not.

Yep, That'll Be The Problem...

Due to a combination of going away on holiday for a few days and then falling ill for a few days, there was a week when I didn't get a chance to practice my bagpipes. This is a bad thing at the best of times, but was especially bad given that I was using a hide bag (and, indeed, a hide bag that was nearing the end of its lifespan, and was therefore especially sensitive to drying out).

As a consequence of that, when I finally did get back to playing I found that the bag had more or less completely dried out. And so I thought I'd done myself a mischief in carrying on. Time for a new bag, methinks.

Last night at band I decided to give the pipes one last check before admitting defeat, and indeed the bag was leaking air. So off came the bag cover for a closer look...

At which point the cause of the problem became obvious. One of the cords holding the stocks in place had come loose, leaving a dirty great hole where air was spilling out. Frankly, the pipes should have been completely unplayable, and the fact that I felt terrible after doing so was suddenly explained!

Fortunately, my current band have a policy that they will supply bags for pipers to use, and indeed they had two new bags in stock. So the pipe major and I spent half an hour or so stripping the old bag from the pipes and then fitting the new one.

And then all was well. Hurrah!

(Plus, the new bag is synthetic, which means it will be less sensitive to not being played on a daily basis. Though I'm hoping, and intending, to retain the habit of near-daily practice!)

Not a Game-Changer

Over the past several weeks, I have given some considerable thought to the possibility of replacing one or both of our home PCs. After all those deliberations, approaching the question from multiple angles, and generally agonising over the question, I've come to a decision.

I'm not going to bother.

The thing is, both our home PCs are now at least five years old, and that being the case it feels like they should be due for a replacement. This is especially true of LC's laptop, which intermittently suffers from performance issues. And yet, both PCs quite happily do what we want them to do, so it would mostly be just about getting new PCs that do the same jobs better.

The first machine I decided not to replace was my desktop PC. Here, the thing that I thought was going to be a compelling reason to upgrade was to add USB 3 sockets to the machine. The lack of such sockets would represent a distinct limitation in the machine. (You can add such support later by inserting an expansion card, but my experience of similar upgrades in the past is that they're not very satisfying - they work, but not terribly well. So faced with the choice, I'd be inclined to upgrade.)

However, having dug through the specifications for the machine, I was surprised to find that many of the USB sockets are already USB 3. The upshot of this is that there's no hardware limitation to compel a replacement. And that means that any such replacement would be about performance gains.

But digging through those specificiations highlighted that the PC was actually a fairly high-end machine when I got it. Indeed, it appears that it was actually marketed and sold as a gaming PC (despite my never having had any intention to use it for gaming - and indeed I never have). I'm not entirely sure why I went for what was a vastly over-specced machine at the time, but I'm rather glad I did - this machine should remain perfectly adequate for what I actually need for several years to come.

The decision regarding LC's laptop was somewhat more complex, for a while. Given the known issues with the machine, there would seem to be a good case for an upgrade.

However, it turned out that the issues with the machine were largely due to software configuration. There was a problem with the anti-virus software which I was able to sort out. Additionally, there's a small problem in that the machine is itself only used intermittently, which means that when it does get used, it immediately finds several updates and a virus scan that are urgently required. Keep on top of those, and the performance issues largely go away.

The upshot is that in both cases an upgrade is possible, but in both cases it would represent a significant expenditure for an incremental, rather than revolutionary, improvement - a nice-to-have, but not worth the investment of funds.

The other thing that my investigations turned up is that, for both machines, there are two upgrades that are worth making and that will provide much, if not most, of the benefits of replacing the machines at a fraction of the cost. Specifically, both machines would benefit from more RAM (especially the laptop, which is running with 4GB where Windows 10 really wants at least 8), and both machines would also benefit from switching to a solid-state hard drive.

So it looks like I might be delving back into the world of PC upgrades, something I've not tackled in a decade or so.

To-Do List: The Wash-up

As I said in January it was my intention with the current iteration of the To-Do List to let it run until the end of the Easter holidays. Since we're now at that point, it's time to round up where it got to and determine what's next. So...

Phase One

As noted, the accumulated documents were sorted and dealt with early in January. So that's done.

Likewise, the kitchen was cleared, as indeed was the sideboard. Additionally, I cleared out the last drawer in the utility room, thus bringing an end to the decluttering process from last year.

The accumulated RPG papers were scanned, filed electronically, and then shredded. This took a long time, but did finally conclude Phase One of the list.

Phase Two

The various books, clothes, and other assorted items were gradually disposed of to the charity shop. This took longer than I had hoped, but was eventually done.

However, the process of clearing the garage hasn't been quite so effective. I've managed to get rid of most things, but there is about one carload of general stuff to take, plus an old and broken washing machine to get rid of. Clearing that last carload shouldn't be a big issue - with luck, I'll get that done this weekend, but the washing machine is a slightly more difficult proposition. (One thing that was quite nice, though, is that we managed to donate both the dishwasher and the tumble drier to good homes. Which is nice - they were in good working order, so reuse is always better than recycling.)

Phase Three

Perhaps surprisingly, I was able to get through the digital declutter last week, finally completing that task yesterday. This was a big task, and is one I'm very pleased to be able to tick off the list.

Also during the holidays, LC dug out the concrete plug from the garden, which I then took to the recycling centre for disposal. So that's that task done also.

Finally, we repainted the dining room over the holiday. As we had hoped, we were able to get away with just a single coat of paint on the walls. The paint we used was an almost exact match, which helped with keeping the job manageable.

However, we did not get to redecorating the study, largely because we felt we simply had too much on over the holiday without adding another big task. Given that I had a bout with a virus that stole a few days from me, that turned out to be a good choice.

Likewise, I never got around to taking another look at LC's wardrobe. That's a task that should be fairly minor if I can find the appropriate supplies. On the other hand, if I have to make do with something that's not quite the same thing, it could be much more extensive.

Wash-up

In all there were twelve tasks listed for the January To-Do List (although three started in a 'done' state). By the end of the Easter holidays, we'd completed nine of these between us, leaving three incomplete. Particularly gratifying was getting the digital declutter done.

Next...

The current To Do List has actually worked quite well, so I'm going to leave it in place (rather than rebuilding it from scratch, as I did last time). In addition to the three unfinished tasks, I'm adding two more: I have a pinboard that wants mounted in the kitchen, and a set of IKEA shelves to put together for Funsize. That gives five tasks for the list. Though if I get to a point where everything but the study is done, I'll retire the list at that point, since the study is also one of my annual goals and so retaining it in both places would then be redundant.

#17: "Darien: Empire of Salt", by C.F. Iggulden
#18: "Forever and a Day", by Anthony Horowitz

Day 100: Update on Goals

At the time of the previous update, I'd been having a really bad few weeks - 2019 had been a bit of a disaster. Fortunately, the weeks since then have seen a marked improvement in our fortunes, at least as far as our personal lives have been concerned. (Obviously, the political scene has sucked, and continues to be a complete mess, but that's another rant...)

Anyway, it's time for an update on goals:

• Books: By day 100 I should have read 16 and a half books, and I'm right on target. On the topic of The List, I'm still working through "Anna Karenina". As noted, it's looking very unlikely that I'll achieve 12 books this year, and am extremely unlikely to complete the British part of The List - this is one of the easiest of the remaining titles!
  
• Weight: I've managed a modest drop, which is a decent start, largely as a consequence of giving up Coke almost entirely recently. Those liquid calories are a killer!
  
• Blogging: I'm all caught up here, so that's good.
  
• Redecorate the Study: Our plan is to tackle this next week, while we're both on holiday and while Funsize is at nursery.
  
• The To-Do List: At the time that this post goes live (I have it scheduled to post automatically), we should be just starting the process of repainting our dining room. The plan here is mostly to do a patch job, rather than a full repaint - we're going to redo the walls in as close to the same colour as before as possible, and try to get away with one coat and skipping the edging. We'll see how that goes - it may just not work, in which case we have some time this week to revisit the job. Either way, I expect it done by the end of the week.
  My expectation is that that will take the To Do list down to five items. That's pretty good going - and with the exception of the digital declutter I hope to be done by the next update.

And that's that. The goals are actually, mostly, in a good place. See you in another 50 days!

#14: "The Steep Approach to Garbadale", by Iain Banks
#15: "The Magician's Nephew", by C.S. Lewis (a book for Funsize)
#16: "Pathfinder: Eulogy for Roslar's Coffer", by Jason Keeley

An Issue With Lent

For the past several years, including last year, I've been in the habit of giving up Irn Bru (and other 'sugar waters') for Lent. This had the key advantage of being a nice, obvious thing for me to give up, and also being suitably difficult to represent a real (if symbolic) 'sacrifice'. This year there is an obvious problem with that - I've had to give up Irn Bru anyway (due to the recipe change), and just don't have the same connection to Coke and other substitutes.

This year for Lent I've given up chocolate and chips. At the time, that seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but the effect has been largely trivial - I don't eat much chocolate at the best of times, so giving it up wasn't exactly hard, while dropping chips was likewise not a huge change (for the same reason). The upshot is that Lent has been pretty much a non-event this year, which renders it rather pointless.

The net effect of that is that next year I'll need to do something different to return the season to having some sort of meaning. It needs to be something easily understandable and also hard enough to notice.

There's nothing for it; it will have to be coffee.