Weekend: Music, Injuries
- Via Three-Toed Sloth via Crooked Timber, it’s a cat research review.
- Saturday night, I See Hawks in LA was live at my old dorm. I’d never heard them, or of them, before, but they were billed as “bluegrass/folk/rock” so I got all excited. Of course I forgot that these words mean different things to people not raised by an old-time string band. In the rest of the world, “bluegrass/folk/rock” means “country for a different demographic” and not “Fairport Convention but with banjos and verve”.
But, after getting over a deep-seated sense of righteous indignation at a world that refuses to conform to my taxonomy, I quite enjoyed the show. Lead singer Robert Waller employed that classic bluegrassy style on the calling out across a parking lot side of singing; it worked most of the time, though the slower harmonic numbers didn’t get the careful blending they needed. It was a stripped-down ensemble, two guitars (dobros?) and bass, which supported the tunes (and they were fun tunes, a few quite catchy, with words and everything!) but really cried for ornamentation. Had the fiddler and drums been along – had I known there was a fiddler and drums – I probably would’ve snagged a CD. Maybe next time.
- Persimmons. Yum.
- My awesome backyard neighbor has been hinting that I should try my hand at prickly pear jelly from her prickly pears, so I could share the results. I gave it a go, and aside from having little prickles floating round the kitchen for a week, I burned my thumb on the hot jelly syrup last night. Rather than finishing the jelly anti-botulism preservation, then, I held ice on my hand for a couple hours (sugar syrup is hot). Now I’ve got three little jars of jelly (which really did gel!) in the fridge, rather than in the cupboard where I wanted them, and a bandaid on my thumb where I didn’t want it at all.
Prickly pear jelly: tasty, but not at all worth the trouble.
- I just now cut my finger on a yogurt lid. I will not rest until all ten fingers have bandaids!
Anonymous wrote:
Just don’t pickle your prickly pears. That’s weird. Can be good, can not be good… risky. As Jessica and I discovered in Brett’s all-cactus all-the-time dinner last Tuesday.
Posted 12 Oct 2020 at 11:22 am ¶
yami wrote:
All cactus, all the time? Hmm, nopales, yucca root, and pickled prickly pear – I know yucca is kinda starchy but it doesn’t seem like the kind of starch to go well with nopales, what was your main course?
I hope there was lots of tequila.
Posted 12 Oct 2020 at 11:30 am ¶
Rana wrote:
Yeah, I want to know what the menu was too. Nopales and fruits and tequilla?
yami — ow on the finger. Did it blister? If so, I figured out the trick to dealing with it (don’t ask how). It’s weird and looks strange, but somehow it does work to ease the pain. You take a condom or latex glove and fill it with cool water, then put your finger into it and pull it tight against your finger with medical tape (watch out for drips when you tighten the tape). Replace the water as necessary, and keep doing this until the blister stops hurting when it’s dry. I wouldn’t do this if the blister’s broken, though.
Posted 12 Oct 2020 at 1:05 pm ¶
yami wrote:
Yeah, it’s blistered. I haven’t taken the bandaid off yet to see it, and it’s stopped hurting now… but I’ll definitely remember to try a glove next time! Grocery bags with ice are v. leaky.
Posted 12 Oct 2020 at 1:33 pm ¶