Baking trays, baking paper, rolling pin. Unsurprisingly their
presence hasn't been missed in my kitchen until I determined to try
baking my onw shortbread. Butter wrappers can be used in place of
baking paper, but one needs some warning to start saving them. Also
looking more closely at the ingredients, given the amount of butter
required I'm not even sure if it's going to be cheaper than the
budget brand packs used to be at the supermarket. Anyway I bought
some baking paper last week, cleaned off some scraps of galvanised
iron sheet to use in place of baking trays, and found a cardboard
tube that I'll wrap in baking paper to use as a rolling pin. I'll
see how I go but I'm expecting disaster. At least the pressure is
off a bit, there's nothing worse than slaving away to cook dinner,
stuffing it up, and ending up with nothing edible at all.
Not that I'm ever really very adventurous with cooking, it's
usually just when I'm unwell or extremely tired. That evening the
day after the second COVID-19 vaccination dose was the last time,
jeeze that was hell. From next firday I'm going to be unwelcome by
the CFA (volunteer firefighters) because I haven't had my third
jab, then after the 15th of May I'll become one of the state
government's official unvaccinated non-people (_after_ they gave me
my "fully vaccinated" certificate!) and unable to go into
resteraunts, bars, nightclubs, and various other places I can't
remember. But they might have changed all the rules by then anyway.
Since they relented on blocking unvaccinated visitors to
"non-essential retail", none of these forbidden places are actually
ones that I've been going into anyway. Even before that when I went
to the trouble of carrying around the extremely impractical paper
copy of my vaccination certificate, nobody ever asked to see it.
Masks finally came off inside stores last week though, so I'm very
happy about that. I only recently had to staple folds into the old
underpant elastic on my 3D printed face mask because it was getting
slack. I never did see anyone else wearing a solid-plastic
face-mask. In all it got a handfull of comments from strangers, but
overwhelmingly just weird looks - ranging from the curious to the
slightly terrorfied. Mind you I thought I was done with it many
months ago, and then all the rules came back again, so who knows
whether it will really stay off.
Other phloggers seem keen to share opinions on what's happening in
Ukraine. Many real-life humans probably do too, but so far the few
I've talked with haven't brought it up. Since my early teens (when
Ukraine still had a Russian-friendly government) I've been
facinated with Russia, the former soviet union, and particularly
the instability during the collapse and transition to capitalism in
the 90s. So I'm facinated by this new chapter, as well as
frustrated at how poorly contextualised much of the mainstream
reporting has been, but I still hold to my standard stance when it
comes to entirely foreign affairs: I've never been there, so what
would I know? Besides the dubiousness of the reporting on most
foreign matters, there's inevitably a serious difference in culture
which defines the exact objectives of the people there. This
doesn't just apply to places like Ukraine, I had the same opinion
with regards to Trump in the US, of whome everyone in Aus loved to
voice their dislike. At the end of the day, I think that much of
what goes on in the US, and much of US culture itself, is nuts. If
I had my way there'd be a lot of things I'd change that neither
major polical party publicly considers a problem. So what meaning
is there to me spouting judgement over their government? All that
really matters is how their government and its policies interact
with our country, and Trump was pretty good to Aus actually.
But I will say that the Ukrainian government, or at least its
leader, has to be a bit nuts to have continued to pick a fight with
Russia even after it became absolutely clear that NATO wasn't going
to fight the Russian army directly in their defence. Any
understanding of Putin's support-base in Russia (though from many
media reports you'd easily believe no such thing existed) shows
that he really couldn't stand to have on his record as president
both the loss of a Russian-friendly government in Ukraine and NATO
(US, basically) forces on his doorstep there instead.
