nnozomi

Daily life: The Internet provided a Greek cabbage-and-rice dish as a way to use up excess cabbage; I smushed together two different recipes and cheated by cooking the rice in the rice cooker instead of the pan, but it turned out both simple and delicious.

Music: I'm still a little bit high from getting to conduct at orchestra rehearsal today, for the first time since pre-corona days. I really love it, and in order to get the chance I basically had to say repeatedly "I want to do this, you should let me do this" and then make sure I could actually put my money where my mouth is, none of which was easy. I am by no means expert but I'm good at reading a score and translating that into directions in rehearsal, and when it goes well it's exhilarating.

Books: More online than in book form, although the latter also exists, but I've been revisiting Nagomuru City (https://imgmap.chirijin.com/), which is basically a super-detailed, professional-quality map of a city that doesn't exist. This guy Imaizumi Takayuki started inventing this map when he was ten years old and drawing freehand; now he does it in beautiful Illustrator images, complete with neighborhood names, railway and bus lines, discussions on the possible history/geology/urban planning of the city as suggested by the map (luzula, I wish it were in a language you could read because I think you'd enjoy it) and so on. It makes me long for the required skills and background knowledge to make a whole mapped city of my own.

Chinese: The Grammar Wiki Anki deck is so great, I'm enjoying it a lot. (I need more active vs. passive practice too, but it's a start.) Also I've been using it for tone practice; my memory works best for text, so I'm basically memorizing the pinyin as it appears card by card. Even if I can't hear or pronounce the damn things properly, I can at least have a clue what they're supposed to be. (I still kind of wonder how tonal languages work as song lyrics, since obviously they do.)

Writing: I have an outline-after-the-fact and a list of what to change/expand on/emphasize where in it, which is a big step forward. I feel like there's one unanswered issue which is both thematic and related to plot nitty-gritty, but let's do this one thing at a time. I'm tempted to let off steam along the way with bits of fanfic, we'll see.

Photos: ( The flowers that bloom in the spring )

Be safe and well.