June 15, 2020 – June 21, 2020
Bucket List Items Accomplished
- Register to donate stem cells/ bone marrow. I’m just waiting to get the swab kit in the mail now. I just answered a quick questionnaire online. It was so easy to get on the worldwide registry. Happy to have this one done, as it was important to me.
- Make souffle pancakes
- Make nimono (simmered vegetables)
Things I Enjoyed this Week
- My weekly step count is below. I dropped the ball a few days this week, but my average was still above 10k. Going to try and do a bit better next week.
- Monday: 6,506 steps
- Tuesday: 10,353 steps
- Wednesday: 8,151 steps
- Thursday: 12,370 steps
- Friday: 10,174 steps
- Saturday: 20,273 steps
- Sunday: 6,909 steps
- Daily Average: 10,677 steps a day
- Weekly Total: 74,736 steps
- I also want to learn a new word everyday for the 30 days of June. The words of this week were grabbed from Wordsmith.org or Merriam Webster’s Word of the Day or in the wild from books or podcasts.
- Nebbish – a submissive, timid, meek person
- Magnanimous – forgiving, generous, showing lofty or noble spirit
- Polemicist – someone that aggresively refutes or argues against the opinions of others
- Henotheism – worship of one god without denying the possibility of others
- Hyponym – a word with more specific meaning than the general class/term it belongs to, e.g. spoon is a hyponym of cutlery
- Harangue – a strong and aggressive speech, lecture, or rant
- Perfidy – an instance of disloyalty, treachery
- My ongoing gratitude and photo project continues below.
Day 79: I am grateful for the lovely willows at the creek by my old high school.
Day 80: I am grateful for quiet spots in nature on the fringes of the city.
Day 81: I am grateful for unique paths
Day 82: I am grateful for cute lights.
Day 83: I am grateful for the fungus among us.
Day 84: I am grateful for local coffee shops. This apple fritter from Discovery Coffee was to die for. The edges were perfectly crispy.
Day 85: I am grateful for Sunday breakfasts with my grandmother and father.
- I watched no Oscar Best Picture Winners.
- I taught myself a few more constellations. Skymaps is a wonderful resource for monthly star charts. They list interesting celestial phenomena that will happen throughout the month, and which stars and constellations are visible. Wikipedia has good breakdowns of the features and mythology of each constellation. I want to learn more constellations as part of my bucket list. I also want to learn more about Greek mythology. It is a perfect match. Maybe one day I’ll know all 48 of Ptolemy’s traditional Greek/Western constellations, or maybe even all 88 of the currently recognized constellations.
- Scorpius – Another zodiac constellation. In one version of the myth, Orion boasted that he could kill all the animals on Earth. As they were fighting, Zeus sent the giant scorpion and Orion into space to put him on display forever for his excessive pride as a mortal.
- Cygnus – The swan or northern cross. There are a lot of transformations of people and Gods into swans in Greek mythology. The most infamous is likely the swan form that Zeus took in order to seduce the mortal woman, Leda, who later gave birth to Pollux, of Gemini.
Meal Prep and New Recipes Tried
It was such a good week for new Japanese recipes
- Zosui (Japanese Rice Soup) was my first new recipe of the week. I did this version from JustOneCookbook and it came together very easily and was comforting, warm, and would make a perfect convalescent food.
- I also made Omurice (Japanese omelette rice) using Chopstick Chronicles’ recipe.
- I made Simmered Sweet Potatoes with Lemon. This counts as nimono (Japanese simmered vegetables cooked with a otoshibuta, drop lid), so I get to cross that off the bucket list.
- Matcha Souffle Pancakes from JustOneCookbook were just such a delight. They were light, airy, and tall with a nice matcha flavour. My matcha was not the best quality, so they were not very green, but they tasted great.
- These simple Asazuke (Quick Pickled Cucumbers) from JustOneCookbook were so easy, fresh, and crunchy.
Updates
- It’s been three weeks since I’ve had dairy.
- I have been on lots of great walks recently and discovered so much more near my city.
Mayfaring 