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Weeknotes 48
- Welp, summer’s about over then, eh?
- Birthday week for both me and the cat. One of us is considerably older, wiser, and more dignified than the other.
- A lot of my Mandarin learning has been kind of annoying. The bulk of Chinese learning materials are, well, Chinese. And I’m primarily focused on talking to Taiwanese folks. Like most countries that share a language, there’s lots of similarities, but also a fair number of important differences. So last week I caved and ordered some textbooks from NTNU. This week they arrived (crazy fast). I’ve only completed Chapter 1 so far, but I’m happy as can be. The explanations are excellent, and have clarified a bunch of things that had been driving me nuts. Textbooks work. Who knew?
- Sold my old Flair 58 espresso machine on eBay. The buyer now claims it’s “defective” because it “doesn’t build pressure.” For context: this is a lever machine. You pull a handle, which pushes a piston through a stainless steel tube, through a bed of coffee. That’s it. There are literally no electronics, no motor, no pump. The only way it doesn’t build pressure is if you didn’t grind the coffee finely enough. Which is a bit like filling up your Honda Civic with diesel, watching it sputter and die, then calling Honda for a refund.
- I guess I’ve been gyming just too hard, and managed to develop a weird cyst on the palm of my hand. Going to take a break until I can get to a dermatologist to check it out. Of course, that’s going to be about a month’s wait time. The old trope is that in countries with socialized medicine you’ll “wait months for care.” Except here in the U.S., you also wait months… but after paying an insurance premium, a deductible, and the emotional toll of arguing with a insurance middleman who hates their job.
- Headed up to NY to see some friends for Labor Day weekend. Going to try the whole EV car trip thing once more, this time with a bit more planning. Fingers crossed it goes better than our last couple extremely stressful attempts.