Today’s deck is Velouria’s Tarot.
While the style isn’t quite my thing, I definitely respect it on the level of useability and legibility.
Today’s reading just comments that hey, it’s fine if your plans are adjusted, don’t be tied by them if the cookie is crumbling a different way.
As the bit with the reading implies, the plans today shifted a little bit from “stress-testing the winter fit in the snow” to just more chill prep.
Early on there was a bit of prep I had to get going though.
One of the kinds of pickle I wanted to make was pickled eggplant. It’s a simple but laborious recipe where you peel and slice a shitton of eggplants, leave them soaking in salt, briefly boil in vinegar, squeeze dry, mix with herbs and such (it’s an italian recipe so oregano and garlic are amazing), and then pickle in oil.
I learned that recipe ages ago from the host of a small residence my family stayed in on the beach. My strongest memory in said residence is actually one time where we just arrived and there was no wind so there were CLOUDS OF MOSQUITOES, THICK CLOUDS, WE RAN LIKE HELL TO THE ROOM AND WE WERE STILL CLAPPING THE REST OF THE NIGHT.
Now, I could get sidetracked talking about how my family kept renting rooms as if me, my sister, and my cousins were still prepubescent babies meaning a bunch of young adults ended up crammed in too little space, but the point is that the soaking that the recipe requires is AT LEAST EIGHT HOURS so I better start early.
After chopping and soaking I went out. I had two main goals in mind: First was to drop by the Volks shop. I wanted to leave new photos for their dolls mural, but I also wanted to check if there was anything I could use with the fits I had in mind for the girls.
Then, I wanted to get a new memory for my camera and if there was enough time I wanted to buy an ink adapter for one of my fountain pens. The kind that allows you to suck ink instead of using a cartridge.
This mess is completely unrelated to needing the adapter, it’s just funny.
At the Volks shop I quickly found a couple of standalone skirts that would go great with some of the stuff I bought and I also left the staff some postcards with my Christmas photo for fun.
So I’m back in the train and I’m thinking of the next step…
Uh…
What was the next step?
Was there a next step?
Eh, whatever, I need to get lunch.
I go to the chinese food restaurant I always frequent and I’m running a mental inventory of stuff I should check before packing. The clothes I wanna take are sorted, I bought a new backpack a few days ago not because my current one is ripped but because it’s seen daily nonstop use since summer 2022 and deserves a break, I should charge the ca-
THE CAMERA MEMORY! AND THE INK ADAPTER! Son of a bitch.
So I go check those after lunch. Back to the train with my ADHD ass.
I get the adapter and for fun I got a couple of other ink colors. I also got a couple of stamp mats. A while ago I saw a thing where you take a moldable eraser and take the relief of like… a sign or a statue or something and use it as an improvised stamp and it sounded super cool so I wanted to try that.
Then as I’m checking for SD cards, I remembered that my camera actually has two cards, one is almost full and I’ve grown wary of deleting them just in case but there’s still the other memory completely empty, so no need to buy a new one yet.
So I went back home and put all devices to charge and set aside all my stuff. Eventually the 8 hours of soaking come in so I go to the next steps.
I lightly boil the eggplants and set them aside until they cool off. The next step after that is basically to squeeze all the water out.
I used a reusable paper towel and man, one detail I forgot is that not only do the fuckers shrink like crazy, but squeezing water is laborious as hell. But when I ws done and I mixed garlic and oregano and dumped it in oil, the smell had me knowing I was on the right track.
I was tired though. The trip prep was basically done aside from packing it all in the luggage and I’m leaving super late anyways so no issues there.
Then as I’m laying in bed, one last thought crossed my mind…
…son of a bitch, I could’ve saved so much effort if I used a tofu strainer.