kiya

Five gallons + 1 sodabottle of cyser is now 5 gallons + a half-full sodabottle of cyser with much less sludge in it.

Not bad, needs aging. Also, the sodabottle is much sweeter than the five-gallon jug.

Definitely alcoholic.

Also, sweet enough to provoke me into declaring, "Don't worry, your jikharra will drink it!"

I'd feel less irritable at myself if I'd been able to get anything that needs done done today.

I'd feel more able to get things done if I didn't wind up feeling like someone's trying to split my head with an axe every time I stand up (and sometimes when I'm sitting down).

This doesn't help the grumpy, either.

On a lighter note, conversations with erispope:

I say ". . . gracious."
Lavoisier mr?
Whitney just tasted the rhodomel.
I say "It smells glorious. It's very dry."
Lavoisier says "What is in that?"
I say "Rhodomel? That's a term for rose petal mead."
I say "This one also has spices."
Lavoisier ooooooooh. Gimme.
I say "But of course, o rose-perfumed amazon of the South."
Lavoisier says "Pardon me while I go fall down. That's the best epithet string I've yet gotten."
Whitney bows. "I blame the gnome."

Not doing so hot. Dissociation continues apace; emotional reality is more than a touch discontinuous. I suspect extraordinary efforts at establishing connection would help, but are not in the offing; normal communication is insufficient and small slights have magnified effect. Depression may also be involved, but I'm taking my damn pills.

Talked with my father today; he's not coming up to a visit after all. We discussed various and miscellaneous things (cheshyre, the missile test you wrote about in your blog the other week -- I was right, Dad considers that and how it was spun business as usual for missile defense systems.) We also had a bit of conversation that went a bit like: "You rang." "You rang back." "You initiated this sequence of ringing." "Oh, I don't know. I was there when you were born. You were loud." "You started me." "Er, yes. I suppose I can't beat that. Beyond that it just gets ontological." I am my father's daughter, yes.

Bottled the lime-ginger melomel. It's almost mellowed enough to be drinkable; sipping it is no longer the taste equivalent of someone driving tacks through my tongue, at least. Also racked the braggot and tried a little of it; I think I'll want a larger drink to make any serious evaluations of what I think. Started the rhodomel, which is bubbling away merrily (though not as zippily as the braggot did); I'm suspecting what I'm doing to get the yeast started is making for fast early fermentations.

I have this wonderfully Discordian idea that will probably need to incubate a bit before it hatches into something constructive. I've also written 215 words in the last two days (on the WIP, as opposed to the 800-word . . . thingy of a few days back) which is at least infinitely better than absolutely nothing. Not sure about the spellwork; may harass oneironaut for comments.

Watched MiB with teinedreugan. Or rather most of it, because our DVD is damaged. Mumble.

Anything else news? Um. Well, Arthur jumped on my head earlier.

I had forgotten how much this krupnikas tastes like Big Red gum.

Down to the slightly syrup-tinged aftertaste.

Well, aside from the sinus-purifying grain alcoholness of it.

I have redyed my hair, and I feel red. I'm also, after, what, three years of doing this, getting to the point of being able to wash the henna out in a moderately effective manner. And my hair behaves so much better afterwards, too, which is a joy.

Doing more laundry. I spend large portions of yesterday bottling cider mead. I have bottled eight bottles of cider mead, and I still have mead, and I'm out of bottles. Rar! However, given that eight bottles of cider mead is rather more than I'm liable to drink any time soon, I'm sticking one in my suitcase to give to linenoise in the event that we arrange a lunch date. Which makes six bottles in my luggage going out, which, when distributed, will leave plenty of space for books to bring back and possibly stuff picked up at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.

Which is an expotition I'm really looking forward to, because it looks Utterly Cool.

And for my belated yoghurt commentary. Ahem. I do not come from a yoghurt-consuming culture. (Haw haw.) It's just not a part of what I grew up with, and as I'm a food-neophobe, well. But I've come to the conclusion that it would be Good For Me (partly medical reasons), and so I've been carefully approaching the whole yoghurt thing. The first go around was . . . well, artificially flavoured. It smelled like strawberry-flavoured dentist fluoride treatments, if that translates. I ate it anyway; it helped. Today I had a higher-end vanilla one. Not bad. Nice sweet/sour thing. Slightly more than I wanted in a container. Ate it anyway. For I am Virtuous.

I am not, however, virtuous enough to have packed yet. And teinedreugan and I are going out for a while anyway. Whoops. ;) Well, I'll pack and feed the snakie when I get home.

Closing note: I love this song.

Apparently there's a legend-of-the-two-strangers in Polish history, associated with the Piast dynasty. I think I've seen that in Greek and Old Testament sources before -- the two strangers who are turned away from one or more places until they find someone who will take them in and feed them, and they bestow upon that house blessings. . . . I wonder what the ur-story for that is.

Beer and mead were brewed in the home, for regular use; wine didn't become popular until later. A chronicler in the 1400s noted that prince got a release from the Pope from an oath of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land because there was no beer or mead to be had there! Now that's taking your drink seriously. (It was also said that Pope Clement VIII was so fond of Warka beer that he cried out for it on his sickbed, and some of the cardinals took him for calling upon some saint.)

I find myself strangely tempted by some of these beer soup recipes. And the kashas look fine. Must experiment.

I've been burbling stupidly at enough people about the colour of the rose wine that I might as well just show 'em, y'know?

In any case, that's a one-gallon jug of wine made from the rosebushes outside, the red one, and the five-gallon carboy is full of cyser (apple mead) that's slowly starting to clear, not that you can tell from the photo; the top about handspan of it is notably less . . . colloidal . . . than the rest of it. I'll probably rack it sometime.

But see? The rose wine is a pretty colour, damnit!