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Soup

I spent nearly fourteen hours on ramen broth, yesterday. *laughs* I should have taken a picture or three, but it's a slow process.

Momofuku Noodle Bar has a cookbook out that details it's exacting process for making ramen broth, and I follow all the bits but the bacon and I use bonito shavings instead of bacon. I also probably skim a little more fat off the broth than they do, but it's all to the good, and I don't put any salt in it so that when we eat it with our noodles, we add it then.

I have a smoked salt that we love in it, along with the usual mirin, soy, and, when I have an extra chicken carcass leftover from making fried chicken or whatever, we do get tare of a sort.

I needed the long slow process to get through more profile, and through a bunch of Rainbow 6 videos teaching me about how to learn maps and how to flank and how to play a more vertical game on the various maps. That's one of those things about Rainbow is that a lot of the floor can not just be shot through, but they can be destroyed, and the destruction actually allows for better sight lines and ways and means for attack and defense. It's funny having built walls, floors, and ceilings to understand just how accurate some of that can be.

I also played with more of my old TF2 friends than I have in a long time, today and yesterday. I miss some people a lot, and it was nice to just touch base with them.

I've been sick for so long, that I haven't been playing at all, or when I do, it's been with the controller and doing Overcooked with the family instead of the usual keyboard and mouse stuff, so my hands are a lot better now than they were before the Christmas break! So it was really fun catching one friend to play Civilization 5, another to play TF2, another to play 100% Orange Juice, and another to do some contracts in TF2. It was interesting to hear from two friends who have decided to go into an ESL Open 6's TF2 team both ask me to just ping them when they're not in a sixes game, to just play with them when they single queue. They say the game's more fun with me than on their own.

I've also been making time to write, and I'm using my old writing keyboard instead of the gaming keyboard that I've used for the last three years, and the change in angle, positioning, and having a hand rest for the left hand has helped it a lot more than I expected. I liked my Kinesis Freestyle for various reasons, but now it's even more obvious that it is just better for me.

I've also been knitting a little. Small projects, only for people that I care about, and whom are willing to give me money for the time I spend on them. It's been a good way to limit my knitting time, but also feel like I gained something as well as the making of the project itself. I've been doing small cowls, fingerless mitts, and one pair of arm warmers that are modeled on Jet's.

We all went and saw The Last Jedi last weekend. I know, much slower than most of the SF folks I know, but while it was good, it wasn't a rendering that was entirely that close to my heart. Though I did love Rose, and her summing up of all the series for me in just two sentences, or maybe one if you use a colon, "It isn't about killing those you hate. It's about saving the ones you love."

Which about says it about everyone and everything in the series. Though I will admit my favorite comment from Jet wsa, "Wow, Yoda is such a troll!!"

Shiva wept. Yes, yes he is. I keep wanting to make s story about Shiva weeping as he mows down all the armies of all that is in order to make room for what is to come. That all the Rebels, all of the old generation, had to die in order to make the room needed, the space needed for all those inspired by their deaths. Or the deaths of an old guard in the name of something spectacular that does the same triggering, and their nemesis is Shiva in the guise of the cackling Antagonist of the Week, and Shiva is sick of it, though she knows why she has to do it. Kali knows. *laughs quietly*

Cultural appropriation, I know.

Destruction was different? Though along the lines of the idea behind the gods. Done to Death. *laughs* And still... magic and teamwork and something that ought to be alain but perhaps won't be. I have to work through the Story before I can lay out the plot. A bit like layering on each new addition to true soup...

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