I have not felt like writing. Well, I have wanted to
write... but only intellectually. I have not actually found
the will to do so until now. The days have mostly been a big
blur of sameness. I took thursday and friday off last week
so I got some good family time and a few hours of alone time
as well to read a bit and code a bit. Work keeps plodding
along. I am hopeful that they let me continue working from
home indefinitely. That would allow my family to buy some
land and live more in line with how we want to live (small
subsistence gardening, lots of time outdoors, solar power,
lots of cooking and tending to living).

Speaking of cooking: my, eleven months old today, daughter
has a soy sensitivity. None of the bread we have been able
to find in the store is soy free. So, I decided to bake
some bread today. I made two small loaves of wheat bread.
It is actually about 60% wheat to 40% white flour and I 
used maple syrup instead of honey. It came out pretty
well, the crust is amazing. Not at all like store bought.
I used to make bread at home a lot, but had fallen out of
the habit many years back. So this was nice.

Earlier in the week I finally tried making seitan at home.
It was quite easy. I made a vegan pepperoni sausage that
we can use on little pizzas or cut up into other things.
It came out a little spicy for my wife, but she can still
eat it. Since seitan is also soy free I will be making
some things the baby will be able to eat with it as well
(she has not shown any signs of celiac disease or gluten
intolerance).

Other favorites recently have been black bean burgers
that taste great from a pan or a grill (the secret is
adding rolled oats and a bit of panko, in addition to a
flax egg or two) and vegan cottage pie.

I read three novels in four days last week (all three
books of the Southern Reach series by Jeff Vandermeer).
I am now missing having a book to read. I re-read some
Ted Chiang short fiction the last few nights, but I need
to find a good book to dig into. Though I am not sure what
kind of reading mood I am in. Maybe there is something by
Michael Cunningham I have not read yet. That feels about
right after a bunch of weird sci-fi. Some good ol slice
of life would be a good break.

I coded an epub sharing library over on rawtext.club, so
that users can share epubs and cmccabe made an epub with
pandoc that tells users how to make epubs with pandoc.
It is pretty cool. I have enjoyed being able to ssh in
from any system and pick up a book right where I left
off... from a terminal.

I hope you and your families are safe and well.