Edit: this is the view Katy woke up to a few days ago:
Pavel has many unique sleeping habits
My slow descent into OS X reinstall madness
Ben inadvertently clicked to install a security update no his macbook – which turned out to be a full Big Sur upgrade. Even though it can, theoretically run it, in practice he keeps the HDD so full of crap that there isn’t any room to update properly and then everything falls over. I’ve already had to do one full reinstall, and even though I was kinda-sorta more clued in to what I needed to do, the damn thing fought me all along the way. I ended up staying up until 1am this morning, trying to get it fixed. Booting from USB barfed just near the end because of corrupted media. Recovery-over-the-internet gave an alphabet soup of error codes. I managed to recover an old TimeMachine backup from my old mac – but then realized that I didn’t remember my account password.
I started again this morning with a clearer head. I managed to download Catalina and create new boot media during the night last night. This morning, I tried to force reinstall, and that sort of worked, except it upgraded the version I couldn’t log into. I nuked that installation and then started the installation from USB.
IT. TOOK. FOREVER.
The time estimation is a joke.
It stayed at “3 minutes remaining” for just under an hour.
And then just like that, it started to do something again. Ben’s screen is a toxic waste dump.
And again, it got stuck at “3 minutes remaining” for about 30-40 minutes again.
And huzzah, I got it working. The 1st thing I did was to take a full TimeMachine backup so that if/when he borks it again, I have a stable restore point – because if I have to go through this shit again, the macbook will take a flying leap out the patio door.
What I must’ve looked like
So, fact about me: some (many!) songs will make me cry at the drop of a hat. Les Miserables? Waterworks. All of you by John Legend? Floodgates. Love of my life by Queen…. you get the picture, but I digress.
It’s too hot to run right now so I went for a power walk to get some air and VitD. Beautiful sunshine along the lakefront. I’m bopping along to ZZ Top and Van Halen, when boom! Tear song!! Still power walking, still lip singing, bawling my eyes out. Didn’t give two shits. Then Grandmaster Flash and the Wheels of Steel came on, and everything was OK.
The nice weather is attracting the nutters at beer beach
Colin and I met up for beach beers last night. First thing we noticed, the commune recently installed a handrail to get into the lake. WTF??? Anyway. Back to the beach.
It was crowded with… interesting people. There was a group of people practicing scarf juggling, fire juggling, led light juggling, etc. We had our own light show until well into the night.
Before the sun went down, we had an altogether different sort of show as someone (*) decided to go for a topless swim, as you do (and no, no pictures, that would be bad form). Walk up, whip off clothes, go for a frolic, walk out, go away. Truly random.
Was one of our better evenings…
(*) early twenties, buxom, cute, confident as hell.
Mental health walk
The Tao of Trash Bird
Saint-Léonard underground lake
Saint-Léonard underground lake is located at Saint Léonard in the canton of Valais. It is formed where a bed of Triassic gypsum has been dissolved by water. With a length of 300 and a width of 20 m it is the largest underground lake in Europe. Prior to 1946 the water-level was much higher, but an earthquake with a force of 5.6 on the Richter-scale opened additional fissures in the cave on January 25, 1946 made it more readily navigable. Its water is constantly at 11C. There is a population of rainbow trout that is being used to monitor the water quality and there are monthly concerts on the lake.
Fête des voisins
It was suggested that we do a fête des voisins, given that restrictions are lifting and there are lots of new faces in the building. Katy got volunteered to set it up – given our past involvement in Halloween and things, and also we’re some of the longest-standing residents in the building. It was last minute, but it was very well received by people old and new. It also lasted 3h longer than scheduled and involved us bringing the bbq from the balcony and setting it up in the play area. All in all, great success!
[recipe] giant chocolate chip cookies
225g cold butter cut into small cubes
300g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
360g flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
250g chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 200C degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together cold cubed butter, sugar, and vanilla extract for 4 minutes or until creamy.
Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each one.
Stir in flours, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Mix until just combined to avoid overmixing. Stir in chocolate chips.
Separate dough into large balls and place on lightly colored cookie sheet. They are bigger than you think! You will fit 4 cookies on one large cookie sheet. The dough makes 8 extra large cookies.
Bake for 9-12 minutes or until golden brown on the top. Let them rest for at least 10 minutes to set.
When your nurse has a sense of humour
Got my 1st dose of covid vaccine (Pfizer) and I just noticed that the nurse jabbed me on the arm of my tattoo, on my arm.