April 29, 2025

I've picked up a couple obsessions during the last couple days and am trying to figure out how to deal with them while also getting myself back into Responsible Adulthood tasks (aka cleaning the house and proper meal prep). One of these is the whole concept of mother sauces, since I tried to make a Hollandaise sauce the other day for a steak and ended up with Grainy Egg Butter instead. I'm now determined to learn all five of these sauces and repeatedly get them right.

Another is learning more about Physics 101, since I've been helping my spouse quell their thought-squirrels by putting my own brain-weasels to work so I can come up with topics to discuss while we get ready for bed. Physics (especially astrophysics) is a passion of theirs and I stopped paying attention to it around junior year of high school. (My mistake, since it's actually quite interesting.) So I'm now basically combing through online textbooks written for teenagers to figure out topics to discuss.

Thirdly, from listening to a lot of bachata and merengue lately, I reminded myself I've been wanting to learn Spanish. I went far with Duolingo about 4 years with it but since that's not exactly a big help in learning a language long-term, just jumping in and learning all the grammar and vocabulary shock-style might be the best approach. Those flashcards my mother gifted me when I was a kid should now come in handy.

Also planning to make a push to finally finish the audiobook for Say Nothing (very good but starts to slog down towards the end), so that'll be nice. Sunny, warm, April is going out well since the next rain comes on May 1st here. - A.B. 4/29/25

P.S. Dogs are bread, by the way.