I have a sudden vision of forum folks getting slightly drunk together on Skype while watching Cats.

Just casually leavin' the idea here for people to grab it.

It doesn't need to happen.

It's the way you say it.

Abbie, listening to the original Fall Out Boy song, I have no idea how that thought entered your head, but it absolutely works. Good catch!

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You also beat me to the thread, as I wanted to create a "general time-on-our-hands activities" thread. Had a title and all. Guess this is the place now? Let me know if the following is outside the realm of what you had in mind.

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So aside from the tagelharpa adventure that's been keeping me busy, Suzie and I have both been doing lots of cooking. She made some amazing hard-crust bread using a traditional Turkish casserole we brought home when we went there last year and I decided to make my own white bread so we could make croque-monsieur (grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, the french name literally meaning bite-gentleman, and no, I have no idea either).

Been making several of those, even gave one to my neighbor in exchange for eggs from her hens. We're already resolving to bartering!

More interesting, as industrial yeast isn't unlimited and because a more natural and ancestral approach could be fun, I've decided to make my own natural leaven.

Which is an absolutely crazy thing.

You put some flour and water in a jar, wait a day, then feed it every day with flour and water and sometimes a bit of sugar or honey to help, and it just starts making bubbles and rising. All thanks to bacteria naturally present in the air. These badass motherfuckers get into the mixture and start transforming it, making yeast. Nature is great.

I'm at day 6, and it's not ready yet, but when it is, I could be set for life. All you need to do is use some of it to make your bread, then regularly feed it so it stays alive. Either feed it everyday or you can put it in hibernation in your fridge and feed it every week or so.

Naturally, such a thing makes it a tradition for leaven makers to give it a name. A friend of mine called his Gollum, and I called mine Karadoc, from the french Arthurian legends TV show Kaamelott. He's the one knight always eating and claiming "Fat is life".

I may have forgotten how to sound excited because I've seldom spoken with another human being in two weeks, but that's exactly what was going through my head!

IT PLUCKED

IT VIBRATED

IT MADE A SOUND

Teague's my patronus.

I'd be down to participate. I'm notoriously bad at these and if the sound isn't top quality, I'll probably understand half of what Owen's asking... So lots of fun to expect!

I WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME SO BAD

IT'S HALF-LIFE GODDAMMIT

Can't believe I'm going to say this,

But.

The body is done.

That Tru Oil thing is really cool and easy to use, even for a butterfingered idiot like me. I applied seven layers in 14 sessions (alternating between top and bottom, alongside pegs, bridge and tailpiece) and letting dry each time for at least 2 hours, so it took me roughly a week to complete.

What's left?
- Make the bow (will probably make a temporary rudimentary one with a branch)
- Make the strings and bow hair
- Put the strings on the instrument
- Tune the instrument
- Apply rosin on the strings and bow hair
- Don't have rosin, order some
- Can't order, we're in confinement and delivery isn't working properly
- Well shoot

I'll see if I can get rosin but I think letting the instrument sit for a while so the wood settles and gets used to the tension will be a good thing. Also gives me time to stop having nightmares of it splitting in two.

Okay, so it's not exactly a creation, but the timelapse I did for it could be considered as one, yeah?

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My girlfriend did something beautiful a few days ago, which I realized as I opened a package freshly delivered to our home and found a freakin' Saturn V Lego box in it. It's now discontinued and she managed to get a hold of one of the two last ones at Amazon France. You see, her birthday's coming up in a few days, so naturally SHE made me a present.

[???]

Anyway, in those quiet sheltered days of ours, I decided to put some more fun into it and shot a timelapse sequence of my building it. Had a bit of fun with the grading, too, to get a 1969-footage-ish look.

You may glimpse a tacky $5 hat at some point, as a strong spring sun shone down on my scalp.

Took me about 4 to 5 hours, I think, over the course of two afternoons.

I can tell you, this thing is huge. 1 meter in height, 1969 pieces (still not over that nerdy figure, clever sons of bitches). Straightfoward but fun build. Real strong addition to my collection sets, that only my Star Destroyer rivals now.

...no idea where I'm going to display it. Again, huge.

I was thinking more of Coronharpa.

I still haven't got around to finishing season 3, not because it wasn't good but because life happens.

That said - I'm still not over the first two seasons and I probably never will. The gore is one thing, it's visual, either you're sensitive to it or you're not, but the psychological aspect of this show is absolutely insane. It's torn my brain to shreds over and over, and transforms the visuals into an impossible window into horror, Lovecraftian horror, the horror that creeps into your soul and breaks it down.

I absolutely agree with Abbie, Hannibal is a truly unique experience but you have to be ready to handle what it's gonna throw at you, because in a way, it's actually made Hannibal Lecter alive and manipulate your mind into madness through the screen.

heavily shrugs

I don't watch TV so I'm shielded from at least 70% of the state of panick the world is telling everyone they're supposed to be in.

The problem is, people are going into panick mode, and panicked people are stupid people. That sounds pedantic, but I'm really talking about global behaviors, not judging individuals. Thing is, doctors and hospitals are overwhelmed because anyone sneezing twice in one day suddenly think they have it, supermarket shelves are being emptied of pasta and toilet paper because you never know, and anyone looking remotely asian has now a clear area around them like they're plague-ridden. I'm not making this up, it's been seen in the tram in Montpellier. We're already in a really dark place when it comes to racism right now, but this situation is only making people more open about it. Panick.

Tens of thousands of people die from the flu every year. Media bias is making it look like people dying from the coronavirus is a new thing. It's not. It's more dangerous to people with health weaknesses, and probably a lot too, but this isn't the protomolecule (sorry - I'm in a deep The Expanse phase right now).

I'm not going "pft, who cares" because that would be equally as stupid. It's a dangerous flu. More than usual. We don't have a vaccine yet. I wouldn't want my father to catch it, nor my girlfriend and her asthma. But if I did, I'd be okay.

So let's be careful, things will eventually pass. Events being cancelled, infrastructures closing, that's okay, let's. Things will pass. This is not the end of the world, not yet.

Consequences - I don't have a kid so there's a whole spectrum of inconveniences I'm safe from. Schools, nurseries are closing and that's really a problem for a lot of working people. The biggest issue for me right now is that the retirement home my father lives in is now closed to visitors, so I may not be able to see him for a while. But he's in good hands, and phones don't transmit viruses (unless I didn't do as well in physics in school as I thought).

That said, the concert I'm attending tonight is maintained because they limited it to 1,000 people (which is, at the moment, the biggest crowd gathering authorized in France). So I've got that going for me.

We'll be fine. Look after your loved ones, be careful, and when all this is over, we still have the environment to panick about.

Oh, and unless the Internet itself goes down, the forum is always gonna be a safe place! Whee!