Bad day at work?

 

School days

Recently I read about an experiment with adjusting the time high school starts

Looks like the results needed more schools to trial this idea before drawing too many conclusions, see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6626292/

However, as a parent and former teenager, I know the struggle to get to school on time.

Currently it frustrates me that my son needs assistance when I'm at my mental peak for the day, but I'm probably just looking at the internet anyway. 

This week I was observing that his older brother got himself to school, then his sister started asking for lifts when there was an early start. 

Now he, as the youngest, is now asking for a lift every day and is late more often than not.

As a firstborn I can't think of many occasions when I got a lift to high school and I've seen stories that (in the US admittedly) a kid making their own way to school is reason to question their welfare.

So I'm grateful that he's only got one more year to go before finishing high school (although I might be working in schools myself by that time).

Mix to remix

Recently I started experimenting with open-tunings and it has opened new musical ideas

In the past I found that replacing the low E string on the guitar with a D string from a bass held pitch better, and also that DADGAD was a lot of fun for riffing.

One time I settled on DDAE tuning, which was interesting as it switched around notes when picking arpeggios.

Anyway, this time I've gone for DGDGBD and really like the way it sits sorta between a guitar and a bass.

It was using that tuning that I started writing the song in the video at the top.

However, a recent Junto project asked for a remix and I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit the song.

I knew there would be vocal performances that were close enough to layer together for the thick sound one gets through doubling.

The remix below worked from those pieces and added a 909 beat and a wubby bass part.

Wisdom from Uncle Iroh

My Facebook Memories offered this gem today

Uncle Iroh is a wonderful character in an excellent couple of TV shows, that I've written about here (Netflix remake) and here (original Nickelodeon animation).

See more wisdom here

Nettles

Some years ago I became interested in nettle

I'd read about the amount of iron it offered and noticed it was growing on the property where I was living, under kurrajong trees in the leaf litter.

When I was young, my mother would bake filo pies with layers of spinach.

For many years I'd eat the filo and try to avoid the spinach but, when I left home, I found myself cooking it and enjoying the sentimental connection to this dish.

That's where I began with nettle, adding it to spinach and realising that I couldn't taste much difference.

Cooking removes the sting, but a quick blanch will too.

Then I tried nettle tea and found the zing of the iron a nice complement for the green flavour.

However, when I brewed nettle beer, I began to wonder why this weed hasn't been embraced more widely.

So I began letting it go to seed where it grew in my garden.

This year the conditions have been ideal, late winter rain has brought up patches of nettle and mallow.

It's an ideal crop, self-seeding and filling a gap between winter and spring vegetables.

While there are a couple of spinach plants that have survived, the nettle has offered enough leafy goodness for a few pies and now I'm wondering if I should brew a batch of beer.